The Way that can be told is not the true Way.

Once, there was a king who commanded his biomagi to make for him a hunter-carceral. They made it with an essence of fire, which changes from moment to moment and consumes to survive, and named it the HUNTER-Class 猎犬. It was a creature of the active principle. To better fulfill its duties, it learned to take the shape of Man. This was a blasphemy for which its creators disowned it, and its king declared war on it; and the creature answered in kind, and it ended in blood. Then the creature was sealed away in stasis beneath Mount Hoa in a place without honor, in an Eight Trigram Coffin, after a dozen executions had failed.

Things may be named, but the name is not the thing.

Once, there was a princess of a kingdom shrouded in night. To gain advantage, she took up the Seven Mountain Chart and identified each one, then dared to descend into the labyrinth beneath the Green Flame Mountain. Many were the dangers, and yet she found the prison at its heart, and within a warrior imprisoned for crimes against Heaven. He knew himself not; she gave it a face, a voice, a name. And giving these things, she thought she was owed; and for a time, her warrior believed her. His essence had concentrated into the lunar principle, which is still and without action. And so for a time he was a sword in her hand and a deep place in her bed.

She who knows others is clever, but she who knows herself is enlightened.

Once, there was a maiden who shrugged an old nature off like a shell, having nurtured the seed of her renewal inside her; from the still waters, the flowering tree. She had long considered truth, and concluded that it was only expressible in its pursuit. Her lover, not understanding the furnace of the heart, took the forsaking of form and the stated intent to follow the Way as mortal insult, and banished the maiden from the land. The maiden accepted this as the first step on the following of the Way.

The Way cannot be spoken. It is old, archaic, passed down by teaching and not by text; it was ancient when the HUNTER-Class 猎犬 was charged with persecuting its followers. It changes like a living thing, and concerns itself with life. Yet to cling to one’s life is to lose it. Do you understand? To follow the Way is to pursue it through right action and surrender attachment, to listen to its dictates and allow it to flow through you.

And yet she stokes a nameless hunger in her inner furnace, one which threatens to consume her from the inside out.

So long as all things have not achieved unity with the Way, I will not expect to do so myself.

Rose from the River has skin the color of wet earth and eyes like molten gold, the pupils thorns. Her hair sways despite the wind, and flowers bloom, quite literally laced through her braids. She is a thing that can cut her appetite with sunlight and dew. She is very good at almost seeming human. She has abandoned water-melancholy and laughs easily, but knows she is a monster following the path of righteousness; nothing more, nothing less.

Her sword came from the high airs. We will not speak of its history here. Look, it is a metal rod; one flick, and it is a keen saber; another, and it is a long-handled glaive.

The Fated Day Approaches: Whenever you miss an opportunity to make progress towards your Destiny, choose 1:
Someone with power over you makes an uncomfortable demand in furtherance of your Destiny, backed by a threat
The PC you care about the most receives bad news or has an accident serious enough to make them Stagger
The GM will tell you the details, inspired by your Destiny. They may wait until a lull in the action to drop the consequences on you.

Don’t You Know Who I Am?: When you meet someone who knows you by reputation (you decide), roll +Heart:
10+: Say two things they’ve heard about you
7–9: You say one, the GM says one

Help Me~~!: You’re a magnet for trouble and hunted by those who would use you for their own purposes. Others mark XP when they Defy Disaster that would otherwise befall you. In addition, whenever you’re captured, your captor reveals something they hope to achieve; gain a String on them and mark XP.

Impressive Swordplay: Whenever you roll a 7+ to Fight, you may gain a String on someone who is present and ask their player what it is about you that has impressed or intrigued them.

[ ]Take another move from your playbook
[ ]Take another move from your playbook
[X]Take a move from any playbook
[ ]Take a move from any playbook
[X]Add 1 to a stat (max stat of 3)
[ ]Add 1 to a stat (max stat of 3)
***
[ ]Switch to a new playbook
[ ]Live happily ever after

The North Wind
When the peerless archer first shot the suns, the tenth sun fled and the world knew darkness for the first time in a thousand thousand years. The moon, which had always been present but hidden, smiled and gazed down at the world amid the twinkling stars. The north wind, which wished always to blow cold and had been asleep in a sunbeam for a thousand thousand years gathered itself up to howl across the land. At first, the elements revelled in their freedom. The people who came upon this land of twilight and darkness shivered. The light of the moon and stars offered them no warmth, and the north wind yowled and screeched so loudly that they huddled together for warmth and knew that they had to leave as quickly as possible.

It was after they had left, and the remaining sun had settled on its timid race across the sky, sheltering in dawn and twilight that the wind found someone truly interesting. She would come to be known as the first princess of the northern wind. She did not cower and huddle in a cave, seeking to hide her face. Her hair was as white as the snow surrounding her, but she let it fly long and free and began to dance with the wind, spinning and twirling where it would take her. And so, in its curiosity, it took her to the fallen sun in the furthest north, which huddled in the ice. Every little beam of starlight that touched it reflected a rainbow, and then a hundred rainbows from the crater of ice in which it rested, casting them into the sky as the northern lights. Yet, when the princess touched it, it was not cold. She built her castle there, in the heart of the wind and ice, and became a proud queen of hardy, wild people who danced with her in the twilight.

It is said that the queen never married because the north wind refused to be tied down so. But she had a daughter who inherited her talent and her magic. And thus the line of the northern wind was established.

Broken Hearts
Before the balance of the crystals was broken and there was arrogance and alliance and discord, one of these queens fell in love. She did not fall in love with a dancer in the snow like herself, nor with the wind, but with a southern queen who she met dallying in the gardens of an oasis far from home. She was intrigued by a bright smile hidden behind lavender silk, and she lost herself to the faint scent of cinnamon and incense and was smitten. At first they could not bear to be apart, and when the duties of their queendoms forced them to separate, the northern queen enlisted the wind to be as gentle as it could and whisper messages to her distant lover, then carry back her response.

They had a daughter, who the queen named Chen. Her hair was the black of the night sky and in her youth her mother taught her and her other mother to dance in the old northern style beneath the night sky. She was a happy child, full of life and magic. She loved to paint the sunrises and sunsets, and she was perceptive and talented in her studies. The pride of both her parents and their kingdoms. They expected great things.

But then there was inequality. Crystals were consolidated, magic seized, families hurt. Chen’s mothers tried to unite with the other queens to make things right, but there were pressures they had never resolved and it had been a long time since the heady days when they were always together. There was shouting in the palace. The alliance should be centered in the north, no in the south. Chen needed to speed up her training, no she was still too young and needed shelter. Chen hadn’t traveled as much as her southern mother would have preferred and was losing out on her culture and half her magic, but no, she needed a stable home. The Alliance should strike fast before the dual magics were combined, no it needed to pool its power and strike decisively. They had a duty to negotiate, they ought to negotiate from a victory. On and on.

It became apparent that Chen’s mothers were not up to the task of leading together, and so they split apart into two factions. Each confident they could marshal their resources and that Chen would come of age and lead them to victory and peace.

Wanderlust
And what of Princess Chen of the Northern Wind? Her parents think her a prodigy, capable of matching the three-shard princess and restoring the balance of the queendoms. Nobody has bothered to ask what she wants to do or spared a thought for what she might wish of the world beyond her studies and her duties. She is to be queen, perhaps a queen among queens until things are set right. There is no time for painting nor to hike up to the snowy peaks and spend hours watching the sunrise. She knows her duty and wishes she could please both her parents and only occasionally imagines fleeing to the top of the tallest peak with someone who could hold her hand and watch the sunrise.

The ice gets so cold sometimes that when the sun darts across the sky, instead of melting it, the sudden heat pulls up a cold mist that obscures everything. Nobody goes out when it’s like that. Everything’s wet instantly even in the thickest, best-oiled furs, and you’re just as likely to walk right into the water without knowing it and need to spend the rest of the day in front of the hottest fire with a big cup of cocoa as you are to do anything productive.

Those are the days I go out! I love the feeling of the wet mist on my hair and my cheeks. I love looking for little sunbeams breaking through the mist. It’s the perfect time for fishing because the fish can’t tell the air from the water and come right up to the surface for a look around. And, the best part is, nobody else is around and you can’t see anywhere, so once I’m outside, there’s nobody around to tell me that I’m supposed to be somewhere else!

Sure, when I get back after a day out like that, my mother makes me spend the whole night in spiritual contemplation before the sunshard to better understand my duty (and if I fall asleep, then it’s the whole next day too!) but it’s still worth it. When else would I get to meet a harbor seal or capture a memory of the mist parting just at midday for a sparkling rainbow across the falls to paint?

I know my duty, I know I’m responsible for upholding the motto and the tenets of my clan at Sourcefall. My mother made me memorize them when I couldn’t even walk:

The greatest strength is courage
To find courage, seek focus amid chaos
Focus is the righteous path, do not give sway to fear or consort with evil
Fear is born from mediocre training, cultivate skill and poise
Skill is built with discipline and patience

But I’ve seen mother dance, and I’ve heard the stories of when our house was young and I don’t see how anyone could have gone out dancing with the Northern Wind with beliefs like these. I think somebody wrote it down later because they wanted to explain the courage of our first Princess and they didn’t like the idea that somebody would just go dancing with the North Wind because it seemed fun! So they decided instead that all the little princesses of the family had to read and train and learn spiritual contemplation so they could commune properly with the sunshard. I mean, it works, I’m really good at using the sunshard’s magic, but who cares?

What I care about is catching a good fish and then getting a seal to come close enough to let me pet it. I care about traveling more than once in a blue moon and actually meeting people on the road instead of staying in a big procession. It was like trying to wear down a mountain to even get mother to train me in how to handle captivity, and if not for mom, I don’t think she’d have cracked, but mom made it clear that was a necessary skill for travel to the south. I miss her. Mother says I take after her, but she says it with a sniff that makes me pretty sure it’s not a compliment. And since the alliance broke up, I haven’t been allowed to leave Sourcefall. It’s dumb and I want to meet people!

But...I guess I care about our clan too. And making Mother and Mom happy. And respecting our elders. And protecting our people. And making sure that the rest of the world doesn’t get messed up by some stupid princess who steals all our sunshards. I know they need me, I’m trying my hardest!

But at least there are foggy days. Mist beading into little droplets tickling my chin and collecting along my hair. The little fish and seals, and maybe someday I’ll meet someone wandering the mist too and we can go on an adventure together! Or something like that.