Tatterdemalion

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Canada!

Nah.

This is keeping up appearances. A display of majesty and power, soaking in the worship. But when that helmet shifts towards you, you see the way their limbs flex, as if they’re already beating you down. It’s a lot like setting out a cake and then waiting for the perfect moment to eat it so it’ll be special. They want the cake. It’s why they came down here. But the smoke is just smoke; there’s no satisfied, rattling sigh coming out of that helmet, no low, rumbling purr. It’s all a show.

“Excuse me, Exalted One.” There is looming. An Annunaki has appeared on your right side, accompanied by a Lynx who is now on your left. “This humble servant of your sister-wife, She Who Turns The Wheel Of Torment, mighty star-cracking Ereshkigal, who discerns truth through her implements of agony and delight, must have a moment of your guest’s time to discuss the security of the city.”

Shamash raises one hand. Everything stops. Prayers cease. Golden silverware (goldenware?) freezes on its way beneath veils. There is the crackle of burning meat and the sound of a lot of people holding their breath.

”I want her back,” the god says. ”Unbroken. Not yet.”

“But of course, most radiant master of the horizons,” the Inquisitor says smoothly. Fearlessly? With conviction. Her hand on your shoulder is steady and chill by their standards (which means it feels like someone who was just outside in the sunlight). “I would converse with her. Little more.”

”Do not make me seek her out.” The hand is lowered. After a tense moment, one of the attendant priestesses makes an impatient gesture at the musicians and the feast resumes.

You are pulled up to your feet and frog-marched towards a side door by an Inquisitor of Ereshkigal and her hunts-cat. On a scale of one to ten, how much are you making them fight for it?

***

Marianne!

The pathways of her secret heart are easy to slink down. Your flanks brush against black velvet curtains, and behind them is the sound of an audience, and the snap of camera-bulbs. An actress-in-waiting, then. The Annunaki took this from her, like they take everything and shape it to themselves. They do not ask their slaves what role they should like to play! They simply use them as tools to fill a need, yes. Mop the floors, little starlet!

Now your shoulders graze the cramped ceilings of a high school. Ah, she is young. To have already learned how to hate! So exciting. Faces float by, rivals, boon companions, an intricate web that she remembers more fondly than it deserves. Anyone would, after being torn away from both its joys and cruelties, and—

A flash of gold.

She knew your Ètoile’s sister. An underclassman, an acquaintance. A fleeting connection. But one that might stir a softer heart inside you. This girl should be grousing about her job serving coffee, should be coming home to a beloved she-cat sleeping in the sun (who she has not seen in years now), not mopping the passageways of an Annunaki arena.

Ah. Here. Squeeze yourself down into the residential cell. How it rattles and shakes and roars with the sound of chariots coming and going! Daisy holds her hands carefully around the flower growing from her chest, stained off-white. Her hands throb with smoke and fire. Anger chokes the roots, anger that curls into smoke and fills your lungs. Anger at the ridiculous dress codes. Anger at being taken away from home and pet and dreams. Anger at being disciplined at the whim of her spacey, careless owners.

How dare they? What gives them the right to do this?

***

Set!

Read between the lines. Sit in a safe place (where, exactly, is safe enough for perusal of stolen messages?) and let the symbols carve themselves into the slab over and over again.

Our tempestuous sibling is to be rendered the respect they are indebted. Their word shall be your reward.

If you screw this visit up, your ass is grass. If they come back and complain, your ass is grass. If they gush about their treatment, maybe you’ll get stockholder bonuses. We don’t actually respect Shamash, or at the very least, I don’t.

The high links are constant and certain in their movements. It is the low that are warm and likable.

If Shamash is erratic and acts like a rock star, indulge them. Your job is to act like a slave. Pass the shit downwards if you have to.

Thus is the proclamation of Marduk.

As interpreted by a secretary who took it to a Djinn so that it could be written down by another secretary. Wouldn’t it be interesting if that process was interrupted somehow?

Regardless. This might be the perfect time to blackmail the Seneschal. Have Marianne show up in his office, threaten to disrupt Shamash’s stay unless certain things are done, and you could play him like a violin. He’d be incandescent afterwards, but this is literally a once in a lifetime opportunity...

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

What has happened to the glen and the knightly home? Are the ruins of fire built upon, or left as they were?

The wood swelled around it like an infected wound, over the course of a sweltering summer. By the time Uther reassigned the former title and lands of the Alder Knight (to the Knight of the Red Adder, if you can believe it), the manor was little more than burnt stone and charred wood wrapped in root and branch. The Knight of the Red Adder made three attempts to clear out the wood before abandoning it as condemned ground.

(The third involved fire. That was a mistake. One of the peasant laborers threw himself on the bonfire and smothered it with his wet smock, and saved their lives, or at the very least their wits. The trees were leaning. The trees were muttering. The trees have learned hate.)

What of the glen?

Withered. The grass is brown. The trees are bare and creaking. One tore up from the soil, roots and all, and now lies with its head in the Thames. Biting insects swirl around the banks.

It is much like any other place one might stumble into while riding, now. A wasteland. A place where the world has gone brittle and dry and dead and callous.

Here there is fear in a handful of dust.

What secrets do your father's folk still protect?

The same they always have. The changing of forms and shapes. The languages of beast and bird and rain and wind. The knowing of where Bran’s head is buried. The way to walk the road to Perbast, where cats go by night.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

If you’re frantically flipping through books trying to figure out where the Changeling comes from: I renamed the Dragon because I wanted something Fae instead of something dragonish. (And then Thanqol swooshed right into that conceptual space anyway.)

I also scrambled around my core to make them Sleeping Beauty blessings instead of “I’m a dragon and these things I can do inherently.” There’s even a Norse myth shoutout in there!

Sidebar: I kind of want Constance to be, like, Unnaturally Strong and for that to flavor her +2 Blood. Should I do that, or should I remove one of my “I’m tripling down on +2 Grace” Traits and replace it with “unnatural strength, despite having been a fawn”?

(And if you’re wondering how I got those, I used my What Is A Dragon to snipe a core move from the Beast.)

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

I am Constance Nìm, daughter of the Bristol Avon, seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. In me flows the blood of the Old Royalty who ruled Britain before the arrival of mankind, the blood of giants.

My stats are +2 Bold, +1 Good, -1 Strong, 0 Wary, +1 Weird. I am fearless and a talented counselor, but am no warrior and am perhaps as easily fooled as my ancestors.

RIGHTS

• I have the right to due respect from all.
• I have the right to exhilarate and intoxicate when I win someone over, instead of asking a question, I may fill them with hope, kindness, love, mercy or faith; I may require from them a boon which may not be refused; I may leave them in despair, longing or regret.
• I have the right to be recognized as one of the Old Blood. I am to be given fitting tribute and recognition from all the rivers of Britain; I may bind warriors to my service with oaths and blood rites; I may solemnize the turning of the seasons and the bonds between our worlds.
• I have the right to receive gifts and offerings on behalf of the waters of Britain.

OBLIGATIONS

• I am obligated to care for the sword Excalibur until I find a rightful wielder, and to not let any unworthy destroy themselves by trying to draw it from the scabbard.
• I am obligated to care for the waters of the duchy; to see them cleansed when they are fouled, to see them honored and fruitful, to bring forth the mists in their proper seasons.
• I am obligated to care for my companions, Tybalt and Palug. I am to leave food for them, to hold them when they demand it, to scratch them behind their ears, and to let them roam the night as they please.

BELONGINGS

• I wear a pale blue gown with a belt of pearls and bronze links. My feet are bare upon the earth. My hair is knotted about an ancient comb of the Old People, made of polished bronze.
• My drinking cup is a gift given to the water, made of tarnished bronze, two-handled.
• My knife is made of flint, old as the hills, antler-handled.
• I may dredge from the river arms as I see appropriate: mail and sword, shield and helm. They are bronze, the fine ones, and of iron or the wild otherwise.

HOUSEHOLD

• I am head of my household. (My cats disagree.)
• I have a lake, a sacred shrine which I tend, orchards and woods which I keep, and a numinous reputation. (My larder is ever half-full of gifts.)
• I am on the far side of the lake from Bywater, and one must take a journey by wood or water to reach me.

***

PEOPLE
My people are from the Village of Bywater, the duchy’s oldest settlement. They are all who settle here, fifty or so strong, descended from the hill peoples. They keep the old ways.

Their stats are Rites +1, Wealth +1, War 0.

They are known for their veneration of me, the old enchantments wound about their village, their physical prowess, their generous hospitality and their rich land.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Canada!

Gasps. Stunned, horrified silence. The banner in front of your face drops and you catch a glimpse of the sun glinting on Shamash’s armor. You have mouthed off to a god, and that makes you mighty. And maybe mighty dead.

Then Shamash just keeps laughing, and the Huntsman of Caphtor joins in nervously, and so does everyone else. ”Ah,” Shamash says. ”I will keep you. Imagine killing such a funny creature!”

——

The meal is ridiculously extravagant. You sit at the right hand of a god, who isn’t eating at all. Instead, food is being cooked in front of him, filling the air with the tantalizing aromas of cooking meat and spices.

You have some sort of crab drop soup. It is very unclear whether you are meant to eat the crustacean or it’s an inedible flavor additive. Ditto on the beaks filled with stuffing on the side.

Below the dais, worshippers shuffle in and out. Few Annunaki grovel here; instead, their slaves bring gifts and offer prayers of praise in their stead. No one dares look up at you, and the feast hall feels more like a cathedral in the middle of some very particularly sacred festival to a portentous saint.

It is begging for you to make a scene.

***

Anathet!

Escape? Actually pretty easy. Duck behind the statue of the Dying Lynx-warrior. Wait until the sweep has passed you by. Duck out, stun the light guard on the door, leg it. Lose your pursuit in the upper gallery. Effortless.

No, the real danger is that without any explanation offered, the Annunaki will be on high alert moving forward. This little incident will make them take further measures to stop you and any other psychics who might be in the city. If there were some way you could convince them it was natural or otherwise a simple accident, maybe relating to some trophy they had on display here...

***

Daisy!

Your heart hammers wildly in your chest out of a wild, terrified thrill. The words are stumbling out of you as you stumble forward on your hands and knees, your head level with the dangling slaver.

“I want you to do this to Abdi ab-Shamash, she’s from the House of Morning Falcons. And to Geba, her vicious sister. And to Lazaari, their Thornback. I want you to make them terrified and beg for mercy like they make us. I want you to leave them in the dark bound and gagged and wondering what you’re going to do to them next. Please. What do I need to do? Whatever you want.”

Even as you say it, you flinch. Did you offer the devil your soul? It’s quite possible. But right now, seeing the squirming Annunaki... you reach out and smack her cheek, once, thrilling as she squeaks indignantly. You want more. You want a cane and room to swing. No worse than what they’ve done to you and far more justified.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

The Knight of the Alder and the Elf

Spring is in the mild air
and sweetly breathes the breeze:
Kaheris rides her dappled mare
between the elm and alder trees.

The shadows dance between the boughs
and laughter fills the comely wood;
music lilts, no beast to rouse,
lest any one not call it good.

The maiden knight she rests a while
by the crossroad of Saint James,
and watches clouds pass single file
above the waters of the Thames.

Still she sits, as still as stone,
till not a hare would show its heels,
and out there comes, adrift, alone,
Jack'a'green playing his reels.

His beard is fine and pointed well
and gentle are his gleaming eyes;
his songs are ignorant of hell,
for fair he is, but not so wise.

His cloak is made of shaking leaves
and those quick boots are peeling bark;
he dances from the veiling trees
and makes merry as a meadow-lark.

Enrapt, the knight she watches him,
rude master of the wild glen,
and in his wrists and ankles slim
sees fit place to call her den.

Without a word she loosens mail,
lets armor fall from war-kissed skin;
her cloak it billows like a sail,
and now at last she's captured him.

She's caught him with a look, a glance,
a net she weaves with nimble feet;
she leaves without a thought her lance,
for only with force does it entreat.

They spend a year upon the hill,
tarrying as well they may,
and happy they'd be if there they still
sat and spoke and merry lay.

But the knight she has her duty true
and house to keep, and arms to bear,
so Jack'a'green she cunning woos
to make her home his summer lair.

For when the winds of winter howl
the Jack he must away to sleep,
and draw the heather as a cowl
about his head in troubled sleep.

And for a time they live and love
until ill fortune claims their bed,
and fire scores the roof above
and brings it down about their head.

But naught of this do either know,
while they laugh in summer's rain,
and feel the ancient earth below
and weave lily-leaf to be a train.

And of their daughter, half an elf,
bound seven years in skin of fawn,
the tale still unfolds itself
for time it marches ever on.

Of how she gained her fairy arms
we have no more the space to tell,
for the cock it cries varied alarms
and light in Eastern sky does swell.

Remember two, by love made one,
within the close embrace of trees;
upon the gentle slopes they run
and lose their fears by love's decrees.

The Panoply of Constance Half-Elven

• The mail is delicate, shaped like fish’s scales, and ripples queerly as she moves. It is something like silver, but firm as stone under a blow.
• Her tabard and gloves are a rich, deep black, and her riding-cloak is the delicate hue of the lavender on the hills. The coat of arms emblazoned on her tabard consists of silver branches beneath a white stag’s head, on a royal blue field. These are not her mothers’ arms, and neither are they registered in the lists. Fine thread links pale stones worked into the tabard as constellations: the bear, the wheel, the dragon.
• Her sword is white as starlight and cold as ice, and in the dark it gleams as if the noonday sun shone on it alone. RIMENAIL reads the rotten, flaking scabbard.
• Her bow is scorched, blackened wood, warm to the touch as if it had laid long in sunlight. Gold rings clasp it round tightly. It creaks alarmingly when bent, and every arrow loosed from its string catches fire at once. (This miracle has thus far been used primarily to start campfires.)
• She has a purse of queer dried and smoked fruit. The contents change from day to day. Sometimes there are little black squares, marvelously bittersweet.
• Finally, she is haunted by the monster that guarded her arms. It is something like a wolf and something like a rose-bush. She has named it Briar. It allows her to throw her arms around its neck, gentle as a dove, but growls and shakes its thornéd mane at any else who dare approach it.

Breathless Dead

Redana pulls Epistia close, one arm tight around the Servitor’s back, careful not to brush against the Thunderbolt. And for a moment, two exhausted princesses hold each other, covered in blood and spit and sweat, as the palace collapses around them.

“I wasn’t going to leave you behind,” she says, a feverish desperation in her voice. She made a promise. And she’s not, she can come back for her friends. For those who depend on her. For those who need her to be strong.

She looks up as the walls collapse, the storm tearing at her hair and ruined outfit, and looks desperately for... there. There she is, leaping and darting about effortlessly. (A chunk of masonry the size of a Ceronian bears down on Redana and Epistia, and Ares bats it carelessly into a shuttle, which explodes in midair, all hands lost.) “Bella!” She screams, and reaches, but her leg doesn’t move under her and Epistia is still sagging against her and all she can do is reach out, uselessly, as her lost friend bounds away.

“We have to go after her,” Redana says, brokenly. “We have to save her. I can’t leave her behind again...”

You don’t get to keep things you don’t value.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Canada!

The sound of Shamash’s laughter is uncomfortable. It’s wheezing electronica in good humor, but all it needs is a gentle push and it’d plummet down into unhinged mania. Like, this vibe is seriously unhealthy. Is this an Emperor’s New Clothes thing, like, where the Annunaki are desperately trying to convince themselves this giant wrecking ball is a stable genius?

“Don’t let Sister Ishtar hear you say that!” Their jovial backslap nearly knocks you off your feet. Luckily, the thews of Canada Taliv are dauntless! “She’d rip your spine out. What do you think, honored one?” Their attention falls on the Huntsman of Caphtor, heavy as lead. “Should I rip her spine out? Is that in fashion?”

“Whatever you deem worthy, Exalted One of the Higher Airs,” Asahel says bleakly. “As you will, so shall it be done.”

“I’ll take her eyes,” Shamash says, breezily. Have they forgotten you’re standing right there? “So she can’t look any more. Like we haven’t fought the Zhianku ever since they tried to hide their home from our sight. Like we don’t know when we’re looked at.”

They are one loose hinge away from absolutely unhinged. And everyone ignores it.

Shift your Dangerous down and your Mundane up, or reject their influence; their every word tells you that your only way out is by diverting them somehow, not fighting them head on.

***

Daisy!

You’re not supposed to be down here. And it’s a terrible idea, anyway. For all you know, that thing is actually some alien parasite and it’s planting bug eggs inside the Annunaki right now.

But what kind of space parasite can sing La Marseillaise?

“Hello?” Your strangled half-whisper is simultaneously way too loud and stupidly quiet. And what are you supposed to say, anyway? Hello, Miss Shadow Monster, if you’re eating Annunaki I have a LIST? Hello, Miss Freaky Alien, you don’t eat humans, right?

“If you’re down here,” you say at the dark, “I want to talk to you!”

***

Anathet!

It’s like your helpful explanations are slices of salami slapping against a brick wall as Tia roots through those memories of a happy date. She turns an interesting shade of burgundy and lets out a strangled psychic hiss that crescendos into an explosion of impossible broken angles and corrupted data. You almost manage to not look away. Almost.

Through the psychic buzz of Tia’s tantrum (and of course she’s gone, again, having stamped her foot and fragmented) you realize that the light levels are changing. The library shutters are closing! You grab at your rift generator, which happily throbs its “emergency reboot in progress” indicator.

Tia (accidentally?) alerted the Annunaki there was someone here, because you’d have to be a rock not to get the backwash of that psychic tantrum, and you’ve got maybe a minute before household janissaries start investigating the stacks. And you are definitely not supposed to be in here.

Breathless Dead

“BLL’HH!! Wssssh uurrr nnnnggghhhfff!”

Where did she learn to talk like that? Was it the servants? Or was she always like this behind her mistress’s back? Sneering once Dany’s back was turned, calling her a sl— a very inappropriate name once her back was turned?

Redana inches along on her good leg like a crawling worm. She flops over and scrabbles blindly in broken tiles. Her fingers slip and she hisses into the wet leather. Healing doesn’t come. Are all of her little soldiers under siege within her torn leg, fighting off invaders that want to burn her up from within? Or are they being somehow suppressed? Has she lost her father’s favor for her failure to be the leader that Bella needed?

There. Her wet fingers curl around a sturdy enough shard with a blunt enough handhold. She inserts it within the chain and twists, hard. The chains tighten agonizingly around her, but she keeps twisting.

They’ll give way before she does—

She fumbles it. She bleats something pathetic and frustrated as it slips out of her bloodied fingers, knocked ever so slightly askew by the touch of Hera.

She looks up into the face of the goddess she could never, ever please, no matter what she offered, beaten and helpless. What does she see there?

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Anathet!

[They are cruel. They are above. They will take you and break you into pieces.] Tia is agitated; you feel clay crack under your skin, hear the aftershock of a sharp retort. [I have to keep you safe,] she continues. [You are my friend.]

There is an undercurrent there. Possibly an unhealthy attachment. The kind of desperation that suggests you might be her only friend.

[You should hide under the city, where it’s safe, and—]

Oh, whoops. Her head tilts as she picks up on your recent associations with the undercity. [Who is Oumou?] If you didn’t know better, you’d say she sounds jealous.

(Oumou is the Malian bouncer who took you out for fried tofu. Two years your senior, her day job is animal husbandry in one of the Agricultural Blocks, and she used to work at a women and children’s center in Halcyon. She’s got a laugh that starts low and you’re not quite sure whether she’s interested in you or just intrigued by your audacity. She’s hard to read. How did the date go, by the way?)

***

Canada!

This is the most awkward parade float you have ever been on. You have an honor guard of janissaries that are mostly decorative; everybody here is very, very aware that the minute you spring into action, Shamash will be the one responding. So instead they’ve been assigned to glower at the back of your head so that Jezcha can feel like she’s been a big girl.

Another example of the awkward energy is the question of what, exactly, to do about your face. Shamash hasn’t commented on it, yet, but your incredible beauty is a thing of legend already, and you’re walking around veilless. So a compromise has been made and you are currently hidden from the city behind multiple fans and banners being held by a retinue under strict orders not to look at your face.

“When did they train you?” Shamash does not look down at you, standing at the prow of the massive chariot-themed parade float. But he does modulate his heavily-synthesized voice so that it doesn’t deafen you. “We thought we had kept the Zhianku out,” he adds, with a wave of his hand to the adoring cheers of the assembled Annunaki (themselves underneath umbrellas and elaborate tents, being fanned and served chilled drinks) and the Faithful (abasing themselves and praising Shamash in a dozen tongues, both alien and terrestrial). “Was it after our arrival?”

Probing. Looking for information. Or just making awkward small talk. The complicating factor is that you probably have no clue what a Zhianku is. Is the Cat a Zhianku? That totally makes sense, right?

***

Marianne!

Strange things happen in the half-relic of the Shamashi arena. The racetrack is the cultural center of this temple complex, but there’s no way that the High God will simply challenge Canada to a race. No, it’s going to be a beatdown. One that, for the sake of the human race, Canada Taliv must lose.

This is a place of avarice and hunger. Illicit deals are made here in the private boxes, and forbidden pleasures from across the stars are smoked. The Shamashi are overly helpful in assisting the Marduki in preparing the decrepit place for a proper gladiatorial spectacle, and you can taste their anxieties, their lies, their sins. But they are sins not within your purview to punish, by and large, save that they ignore the slaves who clean the stands and wipe down the stained seats and polish the stairs until they shine.

The game must be rigged, just to be sure that shield does not heroically doom humanity. Canada must be made to lose. And there are so many places where you may play here, yes, yes: the unattended power couplings, the labyrinth of half-abandoned tunnels, and the hidden stashes of strange fruits and crushed powders. This is your domain now, though the sun shines so bright at midday. The brighter the light, the darker the shadow, non?