Tatterdemalion

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Anathet!

“You absolutely can,” #MAT says, scribbling down a shopping list on a hacked tablet. “I don’t leave, Canada doesn’t leave, so we have to rely on le resistance for meals— but you can just, vroop, in and out!” The list she holds out for you to reach over and take is... extensive. And expensive. But why not, right? In fact, if you raided the Seneschal’s larder, you could get all of them in one go.

***

Canada!

Set is about to run off and leave you alone with #MAT again. Do not let her do this. Figure out some way, some disguise, even dive through the portal after her. You have to stretch your legs and hang out with somebody who isn’t #MAT, or you’re going to lose your mind.

***

Lamassie!

The gardens are so, so pretty, aren’t they? Almost as pretty as you! The Seneschal spares no expense. And they’re large enough that, thus far, you’ve managed to avoid running into Anathet. Let’s hope it stays that way, right?

But there’s a problem, one that threatens the Lady’s mood: Tirzah is sitting, crowlike, in the Paradise Pavilion on the fake river, reached by elegant half-moon bridges. She is Brooding. Yes, how she broods that her Canada was defeated, finally, and not by her! And, worse, your Lady is drifting over towards her! She’ll clamber over the steep steps of the bridge (far too dangerous!) and try to make Tirzah happy, but nobody and nothing can make that blind spy crack her mask. It’ll just bring everything down! This is a disaster! How do you stop her from being drawn into her sister’s angst vortex, silly lamassie?

Fellowship: The Heart

Lucien!

You dance effortlessly through the chaos. The angel throws itself against the hexagonal projections of a Bee chorus with a shriek of rusting metal, and as you waltz on by, your feet avoid the singed, charred remains of Bees who gave their all for the hive, more falling with every slam of the angel's wings against those shining blue shields. Working under some alien matrix, the Bees part around you like the waves about a ship's bow.

Look up. You can see it. The Bees are the fingers, the manipulators, of something vast and many-angled. Call it the Anti-Heart. Cold clean lines and infinite geometries, hexagon upon hexagon, each limb becoming ten million buzzing blue stone-furred warriors. This is a beachhead. This is a war. But this is all wrong; this hive has been cut off from the host, locked away in a twist of dimensions, this cosmic drainpit, this mistake of a bolthole. The Bees fight for survival, for the structural integrity of their Queen (how she shines!), and if they had their way, the entire station would be clean and completely reorganized. There is an Order to how things should be, and the work of you messy little apes is wrong. Not as wrong as the Heart, but still wrong. The Bees would organize your bones from smallest to largest and make a tasteful mosaic with your organs if they became aroused to fury.

You emerge in the communing chamber, finding Ailee there, and her soul burns dragonflare all around her. No, not her soul; the soul of something vast and terrible, passing through the prismstone of her soul to seep into the station. The horrid metal flower growing from the floor begins to buckle and pop under the weight of that heat. For a second, you are seen by something huge and vast and burning and red, red, red, red as carnations, red as rubies, red as blood. Then it blinks and continues into the station.

And all the speakers begin to scream.

***

Jackdaw!

The people who made this place were very, very clever, and very, very arrogant. This place is a trap they made out of train station in order to catch bad luck and disaster and accident, just so that their railways would never run into problems. Were they the kobolds? Maybe. No. This place isn't made for people like Coleman, except in the small size of the staff doors. They were people who snapped their fingers, and the kobolds obeyed. But now they're gone, and the kobolds are still here. Maybe the trains ate them. Or maybe when disaster came hurtling down for them, in some other world or some other time, they came to the stations and pounded their fists on the carriage doors, and innumerable glimmering eyes looked from within as the kobolds implacably fed the boiler and chose freedom, the coldest and sweetest.

You want to use it; you don't want to break this. It would destroy the Vermissian Line, for this abscess to be lanced without care and forethought. For all of this backed-up filth of fortune to flood the tracks, and drip out into the Heart, and for the old systems of the stations to begin to feel age catch up to them. This is a wicked knot in reality, and it's not yours to heal. That's someone else's story.

No, you need to escape, and the way to make sure that it goes without a hitch is-- well, you've really got two options here. One is arranging things so that your escape is bad luck for someone else. An absolute disaster. As long as your escape is fortunate, it will be crushed. No, you have to be causing someone to fall to their knees and scream at an uncaring heaven for it to work.

But the other?

You just need to... localize misfortune. Make a problem so big and so explosive that Sasha hurtling onto the tracks doesn't have any leftover misfortune clinging to her. Again, an absolute disaster. Like, say, making the station unable to sustain itself indefinitely. Breaking it. Whoops, we're back to breaking it. But something on that level, if you managed to pull it off at the same time as you escaped, it could work. It really could work.

(Or you could stabilize and disinfect the rails long enough for you to get out, but you'd need time, the help of, like, an entire colony of Bees, and also the Station would be trying to kill you messily the whole while. Make yourself a little tunnel of good fortune, aligned perfectly and just so, and hurtle through it at top speed. But where would you even get that many Bees?)

And then all the speakers begin to scream.

***

Coleman!

You feel it first as a Presence. Burning. Sasha shivers and groans, her boiler letting out a frightened and high-pitched whine.

And then all the speakers begin to scream.

It passes over you and dives down into the rails, and drags them up with it. Steel twists and shrieks as it is molded by will alone, and fire kindles deep within. The back half of this part of the station, the part you arrived in, crumples up like paper; that presence demands that the world give it what it requires, and brooks no arguments.

When it lifts its massive horned head (easily three times the size of Sasha) and roars its deafening yawp, mice begin pouring out from every nook and cranny, dressed in black armor and red robes and carrying golden arms. The shadow of its wings stretches from wall to wall. It gestures with a forelimb and the floor begins to shear and tear, yielding under the force of that terrible will.

King Dragon means to dig down to the heart of the Station and add it to his collection. How can you outrun him? He is already here.

And also there are mice advancing on you and they look grabby. More treasures for the Hoard. An immature Train will look just fine stuffed and put on display in the King's Hoard.

***

Ailee!

It's not actually King Dragon. This is just one of his infinite talons being poked through into the Station. But you are a livewire conduit, probably because one of his idiot Grand Squeakers happened to be here, and in the seven breaths before you manage to clamp down on that transferal and close off the mystic circuit, your Patron has extended some of his power through you and poured it into the station.

And that's when the Station begins to scream in fear and pain as something just as big and vicious as it begins fighting it for control. Really should have made a deal with you the first time. It's its own fault, when you think about it. But while you are safe, if any of your friends get his attention (and, really, getting attention is their best attribute) they might just get incinerated. Spicily.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Constance!

There is a girl. She is young, barely budding, and quite ordinary, as things go. Her name is Bethany. You don’t want to leave your house in her care yet; she’s too young, the time’s not right. But what else can you do? After this tournament, you will return home; you will pack for travel, and pack lightly at that, for you are a daughter of giants and the Avon, and you demand the world bear fruit all around. (After all, feeding you is one way that those around you may give thanks for good food and quiet rains.)

But right now your head is whirling. In a time that is not this time, at dusk, you will trace swirls in the dirt, the great veins of Britain, and you will toss the stones upon them to see where they lie, where you are driven: to wild Lothian of the north, to the mist-haunted Isles of the west, deeper into fair Logres and nigh on to London Town in the east, or even the lesser Britain, that being Brittany, across the waters in the south. You will go as you are bid, and take what you may from your fate.

And you are to take Sir Robena, recently returned, strongest of your lady’s knights. All of a sudden it comes crashing upon you: it was Robby. Oh, oh, you have been beastly, haven’t you? You didn’t even recognize her! You will absolutely have to apologize. But does she need to know? Perhaps if you continue to be a little distant she will never guess and you can avoid that shame. Yes. Act as though nothing happened. That’s the way.

So when you see the knight coming along with her well-beloved nag, you incline your head, just so. “Our liege has requested that you accompany me on a...” Call it what it is, Constance. “A quest. We must seek out a way to ward off coming disaster. Thank you for your service.” There, wasn’t that easy? No need to grovel for her forgiveness.

[Constance’s consultation will be a 10 on where her destiny will take her and Sir Robena.]

Breathless Dead

Alexa!

Redana laughs. It’s not an elegant laugh; it’s a snorting giggle with an edge of being completely overwhelmed. An “I am blitzed out” laugh. When she looks up at you, you get the sense that she is not looking at but through you.

“You... are a big virgin,” she says, eloquently. “Isn’t love a battlefield?” Redana, what? She pats your, um. Pectorals. “It’s raining cards,” she adds, going boneless and slithering her way out of your arms. She does a funny little hop-skip, still avoiding too much pressure on her leg as she nimbly gets out of reach. “And Bella had a shining spear, and Aphrodite shot me, and there was an eye of skulls. No. An skull of eyes. I think we’re being watched.”

And then she looks up at the stands. She looks, and looks, and looks.

“Yep!” She nods her head, satisfied. “There it is!” When she turns back to you, the sun peeks through the oppressive clouds for just a moment, just a moment, her hair flaring into a golden halo. “Let’s go say hello! Even if we have to fight, you’re here[1]!”

And she proceeds forward towards the stands, but at a much more catchable speed.

***

[1]: an ambiguous statement. Is she talking to you, Alexa, her bodyguard, in the flush and afterglow of a vision of Olympus above, beyond? Or is she speaking to your mother, whose face you share?

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Canada!

"This is the bit where she says No, I work alone, like a mighty timber howling wolf, and pouts about how she's not in the spotlight for once in her life." #MAT slurps loudly out of her work thermos in the most aggravating way which she is doing on purpose. There's bad blood here, and really, somebody (anybody) should have known better than to put the two of you in the same room for the foreseeable future. The Canada Safety Area has been blocked out in tape. It's tiny. And whenever you move out of the CSA #MAT starts yelling at you about delicate cabling work and how she's hard at work here, Canada.

And she is smart! She's really smart! She's decrypting the Fleet Key you managed to filch off Shamash and that might get you backdoor access into Caphtor herself, but also, god, she is insufferable. And because you started a fight that you couldn't see through, now you have to stay down here until Marianne gives you the go-ahead to leave. For who knows how long. Without a mirror. Without access to your sanctum. With #MAT.

Mark a Condition from the past, oh, 48 hours of being cooped up in here and try to ignore the, god, she's doing the tapping thing again, she's very definitely doing that on purpose, it's ever so slightly off beat from what she's humming, somebody make her stop.

***

Lamassie!

There are two Lynxes. Two... familiar... Lynxes. Because the Seneschal has made security a priority in the house, and wouldn't you know it? Wouldn't you just know it? Among the reserves called up from the barracks in the Temple of Marduk were these two: Am’met and Visha’an. The two Lynxes who walked you home after you stole the tablets from the Temple of Ishtar. The two Lynxes who made you squeak and squirm and wiggle the whole way back. And you have to walk past them, ignore them, and oh how the two of them are staring. You can almost hear their veiled grins.

But ignore them! Because Lady gives you a smile and cups your chin in one delicate, dark-veined golden hand. "Oh, you dear, silly girl," she says, rubbing her other hand all over the top of your head, "where are your darling ears?" Oh no! You forgot your precious triangles! How could you forget, sillyhead?

"I'll get them," Am'met says, so, so helpfully, so quickly, so eagerly. And you almost manage to forget, with Lady's nails lightly parting your taut-pulled hair, the fact that she will, that she must, return. Until she does, and assists Lady in getting those adorable triangles sticking up, framing your high ponytail just so. "She looks just like a kitten," Am'met says, tail flicking like she can see a mouse scurrying across the floor. "Isn't that so, my lady?"

"Yes," Lady says, looping your leash around her wrist. "She is the most beautiful kitten in the whole wide world."

And not even the sound of Visha'an strangling the wild laughter struggling to escape his lips, only audible to your keen ears, can ruin that!

Breathless Dead

Redana has never really known height. So her body doesn’t quite know what to make of this, her boot swinging free over the edge, the world below savagely fanged in broken spurs, her stomach loose and prickling, her fingers clamped white against the landing ramp, the wild winds tugging at her hair as her spacers’ jacket flattens and seals itself against the chill, it doesn’t know what to do with her at all, and yet her mind has relinquished the controls, has stepped away from the bridge, is in freefall already. Her mind is throbbing curved purple on yellow. Her mind is intoxicated, stripped bare of artifice, wide-eyed and drowning. She unfolds like a flower under the morning sun and drinks, drinks deep, the throbbing of color replacing her heartbeat, blood releasing and contracting as the rhythm compels her.

Her fingers, too, release. And contract too late. She plummets insensate, her cunning plans out of reach of her mind, her grapple and her glider and her harness all requiring the touch of clever fingers reaching up now towards yawning neon heavenhalo.

She will survive the landing. She is a daughter of Tellus, and wrapped in spacers’ wear besides; the force of her fall will be canceled out, expelled into a crater. But if she strikes the earth, she will sink into dark dreams and bitter, under the lidless gaze of a watchful eye, and see no more.

[6 with Despair. Without? 6 again.]

Breathless Dead

Redana’s hand is on a very large switch. There is a safety, now disengaged, and its size suggests the difficulty with which it can be thrown. It is not a thing to be casually pulled. Her body moved by instinct, and it takes the rest of her a moment to catch up.

If an SP that size is fired through the window, the blunt force trauma and toxic gasses will be dangerous to everyone, but especially Dolce and Vasilia. It is likely everyone save Alexa will be incapacitated by chaos and pain as their bodies purge the toxins. And, crucially, no one will be piloting the shuttle.

They are the chaos of Ares, and while she might have her toes dipped in those waters, years of dueling as an elective were hard to shake. So cut the knot. Open the bay doors. While that might allow the grinning figure entry, better a clean fight than to crash and smear their bodies across miles of ruined landscape. It would take weeks to recuperate after a bad crash, and they didn’t have time like that, especially if her mentor had to come down and provide the medical attention himself.

So her fingers are hot and sweating on the cool material of the switch, waiting for the bark, the shattered glass, and the wild chaos. She’s not particularly worried about falling out of the shuttle: she has grappling hooks in her belt, and in a pinch she can repurpose her sleeves as a glider, and it shouldn’t be hard to guide herself over to a ruin of shining and, more importantly, magnetic metal. She’ll be fine. And so will everyone else.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

||Interstitial||

Anathet!

Casa du #MAT is a veil-free zone. No eye-conography (that’s a security measure) and no veils (that’s just personal). It’s so small and cramped that one can barely believe there’s room for one person, let alone two.

But here she is, just like Étoile told you: Canada. She’s... looked better. Those are some magnificent bruises. And she’s stuck in here until the coast is clear, and “here” is barely three steps across, even if #MAT is sitting all tucked up cross-leggies in a bed of wires, dissecting a tablet and drying her counterfeit keys.

And here she is. The only survivor of a battle with the gods not locked up in the Temple of Enki. Wow.

***

Canada!

As above, but it’s been pretty rough hiding out here, right? You need a plan. Or access to a mirror. Or something that lets you get out.

***

Étoile!

Lady is fading. The household is in chaos, Jezcha is throwing her weight around, there are guards everywhere, and the tumult is making Lady’s condition worse. She’s anxious, too, barely able to sleep at night, worried that she’s a target. There’s always the tramp of boots outside her chambers, and she’s so listless that not even your massages and fanning and perfect little tea ceremonies are helping.

You know what you have to do. There’s only one way to bring a smile back to that pale face beneath her wispy veil. And even if you have to be accompanied by guards while walking in the gardens... it has to be worth it.

It’s time for super-lamassie.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Caphtor!

You have ten thousand eyes with which to see. You are a panopticon with ADHD; you witness and do not understand, are not allowed to understand. You drift in and out of a wider consciousness.

This is what you witness: damage to the Arena of Shamash. You wake labor crews, reroute them to the scene of destruction beyond the ruined gates, instruct them to contact a supervisor if they find body parts under Edict of the Gods. It is a very big mess. Let’s cleaning!

This is what you witness: the council of the city, with raised voices, demanding information from your magnet-mired recollection. Is Set one woman or many, they ask. Why did you not raise an alarm, they ask. Where is Set now, they ask. You do not have answers. You don’t know things about Set! You could, if you were awake, make very accurate guesses based on evidence... but you are not allowed. The wines are heavy about you. Caphtor is not allowed to awaken.

This is what you witness: janissaries arresting every slave without a work pass who dares be out of their domiciles. Inquisitors in purple and black, who make demands of you that you can more readily answer. You are their hawk in the sky, their eyes that bring down the prey. You dutifully record names and tracking numbers for them on a tablet inside the Temple of Ereshkigal.

This is what you do not see: in an armory slave’s quarters, Tirzah ab-Marduk of the House of Blue Stone runs her fingers sightlessly over developed photographs, alone in a cramped room. You do not witness her. She has turned your gaze away; the night belongs to her and that room.

This is what you do not see: three girls having terrible coffee in Casa du #MAT, a forgotten alcove in your depths fortified into a studio apartment, a den of cracked tablets and mystic wires, a parasite deep inside you learning your darkest secrets. There is exhausted, incredulous laughter when a fleet key is revealed: the missing piece of a great work.

This is what you do not see: a brilliant man, wondering why he was released from his work for the cult of Enki, accepting a hot dumpling from his new roommate: farm worker by day, she says, bouncer by night. He won’t see her often; keep the place clean and keep your head down...

Fellowship: The Heart

Lucien!

This place is a rolling disaster. You see it, for a moment, dizzying and vast and sharp-edged, a web/net of stolen misfortune. There has to be a balance. This is where every disaster ends up; this is where every accident bleeds to; this is an infected abscess of the world. Already you can see how having a juvenile train here is leading to a train crash, inevitable and horrible. People will die. That’s why something’s a disaster.

But that’s not what you need. You need to fit in. You need to follow the lessons of the clown. The clown paints their face to reveal the true face underneath, all grinning teeth and holy skull. They become something other. You need to become something other.

You need to become the Fool of the Sky Court.

It’s an old, old story; almost as old as the Stone Chorus. The Fool is the avatar of Now. His past does not exist; her future is incomprehensible. He exists in the flickering heartbeat of sensation and rides disaster as if it is her bicycle. And the Fool could ride Wormwood Station like a wave.

The Fool is neither clothed or naked; neither armed or unarmed; neither man or woman; neither servant or master. Fulfill those four symbols correctly and you will have Protection from Wormwood Station. Fire will not touch you; debris will fall in a halo around you; and angels will turn their faces away. Only the cannibals might give you any pause, if you were the Fool.

***

Ailee!

The Station’s reply is the rusting screech of an Angel from the entrance to the Hive. Awww, somebody’s sulking.

Okay, let’s recap. The Station’s aware of itself, cheerfully homicidal but still trying to bargain with you, and when you go outside the hive it will likely start gunning for you. If it has a heart, or a core, or something? Coleman would probably be able to tell you where it is. Speaking of Coleman, Lucien, Jackdaw and Professor Clown, they’re not in the hive— and you care about most of the above.

So what’s the plan?

***

Coleman! Jackdaw!

Feeding Wolf takes time. Twice, you are obliged to move to avoid, in order, a malfunctioning steam vent and a spacial glitch that would have folded you all into... interesting new shapes. (And if you were really lucky, you wouldn’t have survived. But this is Wormwood. You would have survived.)

Then she takes you, laconically, to a spur. Here, Sasha can get on the rails and rejoin the Vermissian, given a full head of steam. Easy. Too easy, maybe.