Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

”You’re welcome,” the Nemean says to Alexa, gesturing at the bone knife lodged between two of her ribs. Owls swarm around her, but they might as well be waves crashing against the foot of a mountain. ”Not that I did it for you, but— we both know the little princess would have been inconsolable if I let her break you.”

She pulls the knife out. The one thing that you’re really not supposed to do, and she goes ahead and does it anyway. She makes a restrained grunt, like she’s not in considerable pain, and then takes Alexa’s hand, prying fingers open with inexorable force. The bone is slick with dark, dark blood.

”Keep my trophy for me,” the Nemean commands. It’s different from Redana’s (undeniable) requests; the Nemean speaks and brooks no disagreement. Might as well try to argue with the tides. ”Take the little princess and her pet back to your shuttle. Their champion is defeated; the rest should give you no trouble at all—“

The smell of ozone becomes overwhelming, and then Redana faceplants into the wedding dress, limp and half-conscious. She doesn’t look to be torn apart with wounds, but perhaps the Fates need to keep their threads in order, and she might very well be dying from what should have been fatal, should she have experienced it. Who knows? It’s a mess.

What is undeniable is that her skin is clammy and she can’t lift her head and also the two of you are surrounded by Kaeri. Congratulations, Alexa! Top-notch bodyguarding!

Breathless Dead

Boom! Crack! Kaeri scatter like ninepins, too quick and clever to be caught by even the Nemean’s sudden onrush. All save Lorventi. The halberd is pulled from her hands, the haft snapping like wet wood under those powerful fingers. When the head strikes the floor, it sinks down low until its terrible heat no longer suffices to melt— too low to be retrieved.

And that’s when the wrestling starts. The Nemean is Redana, if a different sort of Redana, and so she loves wrestling: the strain of muscles, the planting of feet, the throw and the crush. Lorventi tries a dozen approaches in the space of a breath and the Nemean shrugs each one aside. Claws drag uselessly down her underarmor, every attempt at a grapple or hold is broken with a flex of muscles and a husky, dangerous chuckle.

Alexa, however, will note that there is a flaw in the way that the Nemean fights, like a missing scale on a dragon’s belly. What is it? How will it mean her doom if the Kaeri focus on her and her alone?

[The Nemean rolls a 9 to finish Lorventi, and I toss the energy back to Alexa.]

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Put thoughts of the unquiet dead from your mind a moment, Constance. A cat knows if your attention is divided, and they will not stand for it. Cath will wander into the keep if you avert your eyes for a moment, just to teach you a lesson.

But you know better. You offer a direct look, then slowly blink and look away: I feel safe with you, you say. You crouch low, hand extended for Cath’s inspection, open and inviting. And when the cat comes over and puts one furry face in your palm, holding you in place with one claw, you scoop and lift before Cath can scamper away.

There’s a tricky moment where you worry you might drop the dear, a moment where you struggle to lift all four of her paws off the ground. How heavy is this cat? But you are a daughter of giants, and you will not be denied in this. That last paw rises, and now you have the darling in your arms, held close, fingers offering placating scritches through the fur.

“Hush,” you say, as she finishes the treat and begins to wiggle the wiggle of escape. “You need to stay with your Auntie Constance, Cath. Now be a dear.” You shift your weight, cup Cath close to your shoulder, and raise your chin to survey the restless dead. Approach, shades! They are permitted. Just don’t ask for you to do anything with your hands. You are already beginning to sweat, holding this strangely heavy cat.

Breathless Dead

The Nemean is a nightmare demigod, an oncoming storm. But the seed she grew from was the same, even if she blossomed under alien suns and in strange waters. When she growls in frustration, it’s a disarmingly Redana sound, like when she got her yarn tangled up while working on her latest craftswork assignment[1].

”Little snake.” One hand takes Bella by the chain, the other pulls her crushingly close, fingers in her hair. Safer to stand by a shuttle’s engines as it launches. Safer to curse Zeus’s name. If she squeezed... ”We are not done.”

The end of the chain is jerked up and slammed into the wall. The Nemean roots around in the guts of the marble until she finds what she wants: a suitable hook. It’s too high up for anything but scrabbling on tiptoe, collar biting into the skin as gravity pulls Bella down, almost all the way to the ground.

”When I am done with you,” the Nemean breathes like an oncoming wind, hand still on the small of Bella’s back, ”you will be tame.” A promise. A reminder of punishments for losing a princess. And then she is gone with a blurred stutter and a sharp crack, leaving Bella trapped[2].

***

[1]: an Empress does not simply know how to command. She knows the mechanisms of the gods. Athena may be the tactician of heaven, but even she may succumb to the allure of a shared hobby from time to time.

[2]: the Nemean never had a Bella of her own. But even Redana would have failed here, wrapping rope around Bella’s wrists and telling her to stay put. Bella is not another biddable part of the environment, and wanting her to stay is an empty wish.

Fellowship: The Heart

Ailee!

"I am here," your master says. Each word surrounds you, wraps you up in power, and a smaller and more pathetic mouse would be a quivering heap. Even in weakness, you are too strong for your own good. "And wherever I go, there is something that should belong to me." One giant railtie claw grinds down through cables. "Why, I thought you brought me here for a reason, little one. Surely you saw? I would hate to think any creature that acts in my name would be careless."

Around you, would-be rivals squeak and jeer, but under their breaths. The rats of the Heart are not mice at all. They are as close to you as gorillas are to the likes of Lucien. They are shaped different, think different, and are a bunch of primitive screwheads who flock to King Dragon because they desperately want to emulate him. But not you. You know better.

He toys with you because he must. There are no equals. There is only the dominant and those who submit, and by definition, he has dominion over all things. He is the Dragon, the first and most terrible. And yet he cannot tear open your skull and see your true thoughts (right? surely not?). Which means that you can walk away from this if you show him your acceptance of your place. If you are exceedingly clever, you might even be able to redirect him and have him believe it's his idea (because whatever he chooses to do, he does of his own overbearing will).

***

Carinadir!

"Hello, father," comes the scratchy, hateful voice over the speakers. It is a voice drawn taut with pain, a voice dripping with malice and ill intent, and the voice of someone abandoned to rule over a prison cell for eternity. It is the voice of Wormwood Station, come to life. And because you cannot admit to failure... you must have planned for this. It is only right and intended that the station grew aware of itself. "Please. Come down. Pull the lever. I'll clear up the tunnels just for you."

And that's when the big nightmare machine of drills and saws blocking one end of the tunnel springs to life, roaring and howling and pursuing you. Which, yes, that's one way to clear the tunnel (by chewing up and processing anything in its path). There are supposed to be well-lit signs and exits, though! This is not how the design was supposed to work!

***

Coleman!

...honk.

Did it come from the left?

honk honk.

No, wait, it definitely came from the right.

hoooooooonk.

Oh no he's behind you.

You can either talk really fast, right now, or start running. He might not be a full-fledged clown yet, but if he's in the rage he'll chew through anything in his path, up to and possibly including Sasha. Which, on the one hand, if you could just point him in the right direction, that could get you some real breathing room. (And would it be so bad to leave him here? It's a tempting thought, right?)

Sunshards

The Briar Pilgrim, Equal Of Crowns
Rose from the River
The Devoted

UPKEEP
5 XP -> Mirror Ball -> 2 XP
GUILTY
1 String on CHEN
1 String on YUE
1 String on Cyanis

Daring +2
Grace 0
Heart +1
Wit -1
Spirit +1

MOVES

• Devotion: Mark a Condition when you act contrary to your Devotion. When you Defy Disaster, you may bring a subject of your Devotion with you.
• Last Stand: when you face a superior foe on behalf of your Devotion, you may roll +Conditions to Fight or Defy Disaster about to fall on someone else.
• What’s Best For Them: when Smitten with someone, you may count them as a subject of your Devotion. When you take action to help them be romantic with someone else, mark XP.
• Fanatical Self-Sacrifice: you may mark a Condition to stop someone else from doing so. When you do, mark XP, and that Condition can only be cleared through the Bad Idea Action; mark it appropriately. Your Conditions only inflict -1 on the roll.
• Gallant Rescue: when you Defy Disaster aimed at someone else, you can either gain a String on them (once per scene/person) or ask one of the following:
  [How do you feel about my Devotion?]
  [What secret pain lies in your heart?]
• Lay on Hands: when you touch someone as part of Emotional Support, you heal their physical ailments. Tell them how your Devotion sustains you; they mark XP if they validate your Devotion, or give you a String if they criticize it.
• Mirror Ball: when others Influence you with a String to encourage you to dazzle an audience, describe your performance and roll +Heart. On a hit, your Influencer chooses one; on a 10+, you choose another.
  [Your audience is rapt and, optionally, interested in the influencer's perspectives or culture.]
  [The performance lingers; for the next scene, thinking about the performance can cancel out taking a Condition.]
  [You get +1 Forward to Entice while performing. Optionally, the Influencer gets credit for the performance.]

***

A History

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.

***
Tenet: There is no difference between the enemy at swordpoint and the beloved under the tree; love all, keep none.
Tenet: Keep nothing you cannot carry. To fix yourself to one point is to invite calamity; the practitioner of the Way moves at its will.
Tenet: The follower of the Way fights with a clear head and a clear heart, not taking joy or despairing in conflict. If it is to be, it is to be; play your part to the extent necessary.

(You might wonder why Rose from the River believes in these tenets. Her relationship history would be illuminating information in this context, particularly her last one, which involved a Princess with a need for control. Better, then, to deny control and attachment entirely.)

(It was the only relationship she’d ever had where her partner knew who she was, and even then— she wanted him. Not her.)

(She’s really bad about “don’t enjoy fighting.” She does. Throwing herself at danger and affecting a light attitude lets her drown out her guilt and, even more primal, her joy. She is, after all, a monster.)

As of the Epilogue, the Tenets which she must not break are:

• Don't let Chen be sad.
• Don't invite someone to challenge you to a fight, or goad them, or incite them; trust in Chen instead.
• Put Chen's needs before your own selfish desires.

***

Rose from the River is...

• my love letter to Sun Wukong and the wandering ronin archetype
• despite the wolf/hound imagery, all about snake and floral imagery right now
• an exploration of the aspect of Wood, a green and growing character
• wish fulfillment, in that she’s a trans shapeshifting badass
• a Thirsty Sword Lesbian

Breathless Dead

The Nemean does not run like Redana runs, no fleet-footed champion she. Redana moves like a graceful stag, pushing off every step, every one sure. The Nemean lunges, and the air hisses and sparks behind her. The axe can be felt before it is heard, and that is Bella’s salvation. Someone quick and desperate and acting on instinct could evade the Nemean’s lightning, letting it blow open walls and topple columns. What the years and neglect have not done, the Nemean does without so much as a qualm; if the palace fell on top of her, she would bat it aside.

And worst of all, she sings.

”when will this end?
where do you go?
four-foot you hurtle
hither and fro—

where do you go?
when will this end?
the knife that dares me
will learn how to bend!

where are you now?
why do you try?
little fleet-limb,
quiet your cry—

why do you try?
where are you now?
do you think you can flee,
my little niáou?”

It is the kind of effortless, shameless pageantry that only the gods can get away with. Redana would never be able to do this with a straight face; she would stumble over words and crack up into laughter, or get distracted by the chase. But the Nemean’s voice rolls like the deeps and makes the fallen stones tremble like they mean to jump up and join her in the chase. She is inhuman. She is a fury on the wing. And she cannot, will not, be stopped until she has levied punishment.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Constance, you are no shrinking violet; these circumstances, rather, give you energy and purpose. On the one hand, a cat who must be coaxed close (likely with some morsel from your rations), and on the other hand, the unquiet spirits of those who did not receive justice. As you reach out to Robena, quietly requesting said morsel, you are aware, almost violently so, of your surroundings, and the passions that have not faded from them. Walk with grace, daughter of giants.

[Constance has rolled an 8 on sizing up the situation. Which problem must be addressed first to avoid disaster?]

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Oh, Constance. It takes you a moment to realize what he’s asking, what it means. After all, you were very distracted with the antics of this wicked horse. But after stammering out a request for him to repeat himself, and receiving the reply that Catherine is the cat, see... well, you know what it’s like to care dearly for a cat.

“I have a way with cats,” you say, proudly but without arrogance. It’s simple truth. “If Cath can be found, I promise I will bring her back to you. I can’t say for certain that she can be, but I will give all that I can.” And here, you look to Robena, and you will brook no dispute. You are going to go save a cat, and that’s the end of it.

Breathless Dead

The feeling of wanting to fold in on oneself and disappear is not unique. Many young men and women have felt like Redana does now, wishing that they could stop taking up space, being observed, being judged. Redana is simply unique in that she can, with a wretched and broken sob, do so. The Kaeri are forced to release her as she recedes into an infinite point; wind whirls around the room, stinking of ozone. And then the Nemean is here, looming tall and inescapable, her face in shadow, her star-eye cold and infinitely distant. She wears no armor, her aketon a second skin more provocative than Redana’s nakedness, the lionskin on her shoulders drinking in the low light.

“She is a fool,” the Nemean says, and her voice is the shadow of something in the storm, seen by a sudden flash of lightning before the dark crashes back down. ”The princess is so lonely she looks for companions where she should see servants. She even hesitated from calling me because she feared I would hurt you. Ha! You have done your duty, statue, for all that she might cry about it. But you.”

She shifts, and the light falls upon that almost-familiar face, unfamiliar contempt etched into her Olympian features. “I liked you, little knife. Willing to speak truth to your mistress! To protect her from that pathetic little smear. But I have no patience for the faithless.”

The double-headed axe slams down from some unseen point in space high above, as if thrown down by Zeus herself, and the explosion of hissing lightning clears a circle in the phalanx, burns holes in that lovely wedding dress Alexa wears, and showers Bella in chips of marble. It buries itself so deep in the earth that seven Kaeri could not shake it, but the Nemean pulls it free without a whisper.

Then the nightmare woman stops and sneers. ”No,” she says in aside to her unseen audience in a troubled quantum state, ”I won’t kill her, little coward. But if you will not punish treachery, I will. You are welcome.”

And Redana Chrysopelex advances on Bella like the sea advancing on the shore.

[Blood is damaged. Bella is in trouble now. Alexa has some more choices to make about Redana and her feelings.]