Tatterdemalion

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

“What a name,” you say with a smile, kneeling down to offer the hapless farmer a hand. You are stronger than you look, after all, a firm anchor to hold. “Wherever did she get it?”

Cath Palug has been an excellent traveling companion, now that Robena... you cannot hide it from yourself, you know. You took that woman, who deserved better from you, and you set her alight. You made her into a weapon, all because she begged to become one. And now she has ridden off, full of hot and raging blood, to attempt what you have dared, what no one has dared: to stand up to a king who has been rejected by the land.

She will be broken in the attempt. But what can you do, daughter of giants? You will not shame both her and yourself by begging her to stay, to be lesser for the rest of her days. You will not draw a sword and ride beside her, not without certain matters attended to first. It is not enough that the land has rejected him. The dead have spoken now, but what of the rivers? What of the keepers of the Wheel? What of oak and ash and thorn?

There is still more to be done, more wrath to arouse, before you may draw up a sword from the waters. Old, tarnished bronze, offered to the deep when the gods were young. Not for you any sword not consecrated by that surrender to the divine.

Yet, for Robena’a sake, whether she lives or she dies, you are surprised to find that you are ready to wake those who sleep and rouse those who are silent still. And, yes, for the sake of Cath Palug and her fool of an owner, that their harvest might be lean but enough. The cross makes many promises, but its cruelest is that death is a great joy. As if this scarecrow lying on his reeds, a deflated mass of bone and skin, would be a victory.

“Here is your box,” you say, closing his hands around it. “Take it with my blessing, but be warned: it came from unquiet ground. If it is not truly yours, it would be better for you to welcome an adder into your bed than take it home.”

Sunshards

Rose from the River does not advance as Chen withdraws. Rather, she falls into the stance she developed while traveling with Rabbit Running, blade in high guard at her shoulder, its hilt the same length as the gently curved blade. It is a stance for changing distances at speed, changing where she holds the blade to keep an opponent at arm’s reach or to suddenly come in within their guard. It has no name. Many things in this beautiful world do, to veil their novelty: names that match the aspect of the age, grand and dramatic and beautiful. This stance is just the one she learned from sparring with dear Rabbit. That’s all.

“I truly was a huntress, Princess,” she says; Chen has earned the honorific, for now. In this moment, footwork is all. She circles the Princess, waiting for the moment their blades meet again. Her heart groans in her chest like the oak in a high storm. "So I'm glad you're clever enough to believe it. But I was traveling with the cunning demoness, the Scales of Meaning herself, not because she bought my services, but because that was the path I found laid out for me. She happens to be looking for a girl. Yue the shepherdess, sought by monsters and princesses alike. My path leads to her, too. Though I do not know what I will do once I find her, I doubt that it will be compatible with what Scales means to do to her, or for that matter, what you might decide to do on a whim."

The Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade suddenly lashes out: one, two, three! Her blows are fluid, one leading into the next, a dizzying assault probing at Chen's defenses. With a huff, she disengages just as abruptly, returning to her guard. "You are a great clangorous thing of want, o most radiant princess, you and all the others. It is a skill your mothers hone in you until you are ready to cut the world into new shapes. But listen to me, as if I don't want, too!" Rose throws her head back and laughs, and then is already in motion to block a cheeky move from the Princess of the North Wind. She comes in close to punish that impudence, comes in hard, dares to push the Princess's sword to one side and come in close enough to hook a finger on that lovely red scarf. The tug brings Chen up on tiptoes, their swords shivering by their sides, like a naughty child being pulled close for reprimands.

"You started this fight, Princess. You wanted to save the Scales of Meaning herself from a monster; you wanted to dazzle her, bask in her adoration. And now that she is gone, you think you can sheathe your sword and leave me wanting?" Ah, there is Chen's sword, free at last; Rose from the River drops and moves like a willow-reed in the wind, passing underneath that shining crystal with a breath to spare, swaying upright outside of the guard. It takes all of her swiftness to bring her sword in place to redirect the backswing. "Am I beneath your notice? Will you not do me the satisfaction of winning honestly?" The air is broken ground between them, torn apart by strike and counter-strike, by the whirling of Rose's limbs. The blood in her runs quick and full to bursting of sunlight.

"Fight me to submission, Princess of the North Wind! Make me kneel, if you can! Do what even the Scales of Meaning herself could not, if you dare!" And in her laugh, a wild thing that spreads like vines, there is the truth: that she loves, despite herself, the dueling codes of the Princesses. This is why the Thorn Pilgrim is the princess of her school; this is why she dares to aspire to royalty. She defies the bearers of the shards both because it is her path and because it brings a frightening intensity to her smile. Rose from the River, in her heart, wants just as much as Chen does: she wants to be defeated, or to defeat, with equal passion; she wants to be at Chen's mercy, or to force Chen to swoon into hers, and she fights with her full skill because the space between the two outcomes is a zone of firelight and burning muscles she shaped for herself with her own arts.

"essan! essan! essan el-heloi!" And here's a truth, too, shiny and golden, unfolding in that battle-cry: that two futures war within Rose from the River. She tells herself that she wants peace and self-control, as any monk following the Way should; she tells herself that she wants to be a tool in the hand of her fate, the empty space in a ringing bell. But she so desperately hopes, too, that the Way will let her be a part of Chen's world: a contrarian part, the adversary that must be succumbed to or overcome, the shadow cast by those glorious shards, but a part nonetheless.

For who could see the world-within-a-world of Chen and her peers, truly see it, and not fall in love?

[Three questions answered. One tenet stepped over, with consequences to come. An enticement, if Chen is the kind of girl to be enticed by tugged scarves, challenges to take or surrender control, and unveiled passion, with a roll of 10. A question offered in return: Chen, what are your feelings towards princesses, those aspirants who claim title without right, those pretenders to royal glory?]

Breathless Dead

"Ah." Redana understands the saying; she might not have a head for statecraft, but she knows more than one might expect from a sheltered royal. "Well..."

What can she say? That she will never betray Alexa? Even if Alexa turns on her, turns on the adventure, tries to pick her up and take her back home? Even if Bell-- if somebody finds the codes that will turn Alexa into a killer bodyguard and takes command, forcing her and that mysterious somebody into a fight of command seals? Every promise she can think of seems like an invitation for the gods to take it and push her into it to prove her, to make her shine or break. "I'll do my best to juggle the shoe," she says, with a wry little smile. "You should have seen me and Bella playing off-the-ground back when we were kids," she says, and even though it hurts once it's out of her mouth, she couldn't stop the sneaky little thing from escaping! "I was really good at it, you know. So maybe we'll get all the way to Gaia and back before you get sick of me!"

She puffs herself up, and then dives into the crabs with a battle cry. Step aside, crustacean cossacks! Sure, she's over-exerting herself and will be a mess of aching muscles and congestion by the time they turn the tide[1], but to Hades with all that! She's got to show Alexa, and more importantly, prove to herself that when you work as a team, nothing[2] can stand in your way.

***

[1]: pun very much intended.

[2]: well, not nothing. There are still things that can defeat even teamwork. But if you believe that nothing can defeat it, you can defeat things that you very much could not have if you didn't have that faith, and when you come to the things that really no-fooling cannot be defeated, well, you already had a good run.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

You meet Robena’s eyes, my dear Constance, and see there the same strength that underlies Britain entire. The deep flint. Yes, here is a woman for the hour. Can you match her? Can you do the same?

“Who else? Who makes the law? Who commands the knights? Who holds tournaments they do not come back from? Who has lost his heir and clings to his throne like the ivy clings to the branches? Who is the land?”

The name hangs unspoken. It is a magic spell of its own; you need Robena to say it. You are afraid of how you will change if you say his name, and afraid that Robena will fail, and afraid that Roebena will succeed. But perhaps this last is nothing more than the fear of stepping out into the unseen dark.

After all, in the first days, when Adam’s children inherited Britain from your forefathers, there were ways to deal with a king like this. Your fingers rest lightly on the hilt of your flint knife. At Midsummer, at the height, or on the longest day of winter, when the dark seemed inescapable. Can you call yourself a daughter of giants if you flinch away from the oldest laws?

“Uther,” you say, “presently King of Britain.” And now there is no turning back.

Sunshards

The look that Rose from the River gives Scales of Meaning in the moment before blades are crossed is still amused, but with a scorpion-tail crook in the corner of her lips. “What guards? You mean the scraps of dignity you tried to hide behind? ara-ara, I’ll take those too~” The pole slips from her hand and strikes the ground so hard that it bounces right back up, so that Rose from the River may catch it in a more comfortable grip for sparring. Bold Thorn Pilgrim! Without taking the pack from her shoulders, she laughs and moves to bat away the princess’s blade, to toy with her and find her measure.

But the daughter of two queens moves like water rushing down from the peaks, bright and sparkling cold, swift enough to drag the unwary down into the undertow. Almost too late Rose realizes that she has been drawn out of position. Is she so old, then, that this little snowbrand can trick her? The crystal blade comes whistling in to count coup by kissing her cheek, and both Rose and the Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade twist with a sudden violence.

The swords meet with a high note, the Ice-Star gleaming cold in the low light, the crystal blade of the high mountains straining a hair’s breadth from Rose’s cheek. Eyes meet: one pair dark and beautiful in their focus, their intensity, their love of the sport of princesses; the other catching the dying light and seeming to glow, save for the narrowed pits at their golden heart, black as ink. Rose from the River inhales, long and slow, and lets the shiver run up from the soles of her bare feet on the grass to the flowers growing in her braids. Her heart races in her chest, fluttering like a bird caught in the hand.

“Oh,” she says. For a moment she stands on the edge of the sword, as they make no move to disengage. On one side of that blade, she continues to hold back and then makes some kind of mistake that will lead to this child’s sword pressed lovingly against her neck. She will offer her sword to the princess’s care and offer herself up to her mercy. It will be this girl’s decision as to what to do with her; to give her over to Scales trussed tight, or to bring her as a maidservant on a leash.

Or she could enjoy a real fight and try.

She should not. She struggles enough with her love of battle, real conflict, the burn of the candle. She should yield to this child’s insufferable confidence and prodigy-like skill, be a stepping stone on the great and grand destiny she wears like a coat. aum shantae aum, the jewel is the axle of the lotus.

But Rose from the River is only a good pilgrim. She is a masterful huntress.

So she stops playing and throws herself into an advance, meeting those teasing little feints with a delicate sword-web. As it is said,

The sword is the heart of the field
from which danger radiates in four directions;
turn aside this way or that,
know that the blade will meet you.

“Who are you, child?” Rose from the River is too intent on her craft to veil her respect for the girl’s effortless skill. Here is a girl who must be met by ambush! Her eyes do not miss a trick; her feet are light and heavy by turns, and the sword-katas of the White Doe School seek to instill through repetition and solemn contemplation what this girl knows from her heart.

She should lower her weapon and yield to the little blade-saint. She should! A low growl escapes her as she instead slings her pack to the ground, a humiliating gesture; that she would need to fight unburdened against this tiny thing! Doubt creeps in, her heart still pounding: what if she loses? Does she still cling to some foolish pride, hidden behind her affectation of serenity?

[Rose from the River gives into the temptation to have a real fight, going against the guidance of her philosophy; she also is so on the back foot that she rolls a 5 for Fight.]

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

“Britain is... wounded.” How dare you say those words? You should snap like a branch in a storm and fall insensate at the enormity of that truth. To say it, to mean it, yet to know that you have barely explained to Robena what it means.

But, then again, she’s been on the battlefield, hasn’t she? She’s seen sucking, festering wounds. Wounds that will last for the rest of a man’s life, one way or another. Maybe she understands. Britain is wounded.

“The people like the farmer with the donkey... they’re fighting a blight on the corn. It’s worse near Camelot. I’d almost convinced myself that if we kept our heads down and did what we could, it would be better soon. But then this...”

You gesture hopelessly at the graves. More of Uther’s subjects failed by their king. More of Britain groaning under his rule. And what can you do against him?

“Merlin has not been seen for... three years, now. There’s a price for him. If he was here, maybe he could keep us from the worst of it, but he’s a traitor to the throne. Or so it’s said. And I wonder if he saw what I did. The fire and the blood and the dark rolling over us, blind and thoughtless.”

You hit yourself, fist clenched, against your hip. From a deep well the bile comes bubbling up. “And I thought I could hide by my lake and stop nightfall with candles and seeds?”

Sunshards

A princess! Well. Small, but that’s no indication of skill and power. Which one is this? The face (moonish, backed by night) is unfamiliar. One of Qiu’s enemies or servants. Who is to say which one? Not from this distance. If she is an enemy, then she will attack them (glorious and yet, very technically, regrettable), and if she is a servant, she will hijack their journey, give orders wantonly, and generally be troublesome until Rose from the River strikes from within. Either way, she will have the better of the princess. Her palms are damp on her sword-staff.

“My companion,” she says, projecting her voice down the hillside, “who is most definitely Scales of Meaning, magistra of accounts and balances, most capable of transforming a wayward princess into an expensive auction lot, note the child down there.” Haha! Smart-mouthed? You’ve seen nothing yet. “The one underdressed for the chill of evening, down by the horses. How unlucky for her, to meet not just one of the subsouls of the Pyre of Inspiration, but the most cunning and determined! If she is not in favor with your mistress’s mistress, the inexhaustible Princess Qiu, then she must be in more danger now than she has ever been! What is her value, do you think, oh most sagacious of serpents? Enough for you to snap her up if she does not turn aside?”

It would be a very silly princess indeed who fell for the first layer of Rose’s words. No, that was quite the intent. Peel away, princess, look for what must lie behind them: that this pilgrim must be exaggerating, that this demoness is puffing herself up to a higher tier and cannot possibly be the Scales of Meaning, and that you should hop up here and throw yourself into your passion thoughtless of any danger. That is the second trick, all done without doing undue injury to the truth; that is how it is done, dear Scales!

And if she is astute enough to notice she is being lured into an unfavorable position, then she has earned the wisdom hidden within Rose’s words, and is to be respected.

Now, Scales is certainly cunning enough to get to the second layer, and exactly cunning enough to throw a blushing tantrum there. If she can provoke the demoness to indignantly agree with her in seeming incoherence, oh, all the sweeter! That is why Rose smiles so, watching the princess to see what she does, like a coin tossed in the air. But where will she fall?

Heads, tails, or rim?

Breathless Dead

“Oh! My! Gosh!!” Redana’s eyes sparkle, and she shoots up out of the crabs with more energy and vigor than she’s shown this entire time, scrabbling back up Alexa. “So of course you killed Molech! He probably knew secret codes that would turn you back into his killer bodyguard! Oh stars, is that why you’re so awkward, because I’m like my mom?”

She leans into two of Alexa’s arms, carefree. “Because all I want is to prove to Mom that it’s time for us all to see the stars again. I’m not looking for a permanent bodyguard. I’m not going to war or anything like that. Do you want me to call you Pallas, or Alexa? Palexa?”

She beams, heedless of crabs, heedless of pain, heedless of anything but the joy of getting to know a friend better. Or make a friend? Perhaps here is a princess worth fighting an army of crabs for, neon green bangs and all.

Sunshards

Rose from the River laughs. She does not seem to watch where she is going, but note how nimbly she steps from rock to rock. Look now, she jumps in the water, up to her ankles, and sends little cold droplets all up and down Scales’ back; she lets a shiver run from her feet all the way up to her trembling braids. Petals retract as if winter had suddenly come to her hair.

“See, this is what I mean. You come so close to getting it right, and yet you stumble at the final... slither?” When she steps out of the water her feet shine like shark fins cutting through the surf. “Unless you mean to say that Qiu has forgiven and forgotten?”

Rose from the River has not met Princess Qiu. The First of the Radiants did, but only in the context of parties, a trophy to be shown off on Yin’s arm. But not since her metamorphosis. No, the reason that Rose from the River has a bounty (now doubtless devalued by the price on the shepherdess Yue) is that when she chose to follow the Way, she aligned herself with the White Doe school, seeking out its sifu and defending its adherents where she found them. The same White Doe school at the heart of the Foxglove Pact that sought to take one (just one) stone from Qiu’s crown, for the good of the land.

An audacious plan, one that saw their entire sect thrown into disarray when Qiu let them almost succeed. For the drama, probably, or to catch as many conspirators as she could. Maybe Rose chose to follow the White Doe because of the romance of standing up to a princess; maybe she really did choose it because its teachings sang to her heart, because they rang with truth. Or maybe it was because they had the best meditative dances, and not even the risk of making an enemy of the Threeshard Princess could keep her from walking that lovely path.

Or maybe it was all three, blended together.

“But we both know she wouldn’t do that without something in it for her, and so you succumb to the desire to misrepresent the world for your own gain. Don’t tell me, don’t tell me the value. I don’t want to know the number. Just don’t make an insect of me, my little Scales! You beautiful buy-and-sell! You wound yourself!”

Rose from the River hops onto a flat stone backward, as much imp as sage-in-training. “No, to truly be the illustrious demoness, the sub-soul of the avaricious Pyre, you must be honest with your evaluation. Let go of those petty grudges. Don’t twist the world to fit your shape. Illuminate it instead.”

Another stream, but here Rose takes her pole and tucks it underneath Scales’ belly, giving her something to push off to keep her from the water. Only many more to go. The sound of her not even mentioning it is deafening.

Her rings almost glow in the low light, looped in ear and set in nose and worn on fingers. Easy to come by, with her skills, and easy to give away. And easiest for her, too, not needing a hot needle when she wished to add more or change their placement, merely time enough for the slow change of her twice-strange flesh.

They are well-sized for a hooked finger, should a demoness be tempted to try and assert herself. What would it be like to hold Rose from the River and know she lets you hold her? Would she let you? What would it mean if she did?

[If Scales of Meaning is appealed to by either service or jewelry, it is her choice as to how to respond, as Rose from the River has rolled a 7. If not, both service and sight are free, regardless.]

Breathless Dead

The complex dimensions of the conversation crumple under the crushing weight of that thought-rail, that awful suggestion. It can no longer be about Bella. If it is about Bella, then... then Alexa would be wrong. Because she wasn’t there. She was there for a little bit but she wasn’t there.

”And guess what? That person’s not on this planet.”

Alexa doesn’t have the context and doesn’t know what she’s talking about and so Redana doesn’t need to think about those words she just said because they’re wrong and also hurt. Alexa wasn’t there when she asked Bella to come. Alexa wasn’t there when Jas’o’s throat was ripped out. And Alexa wasn’t there when Bella promised to take her home in the dark, struggling, friendless...

“You’re not a weapon,” Redana says, instead, sliding slowly down despite returning the hug, squeezing like she wants Alexa to be the one feeling safe. “I needed you to come because I needed a sailor. I can take care of myself,” she says, completely sincere, despite all evidence to the contrary. “I just can’t do it alone, and...” Oh, whoops! Ouch! Don’t think about that! That’s a thing which is not being thought about! “And I was out of options and I’m sorry I pulled you away but I never ever needed a weapon.”

She looks up at Alexa and sniffles. “You’ve seen the giant woman I turn into, right? You’re not just a bodyguard, you’re...” A thought begins hammering at the doors of her perception, and she looks up, even as the crabs begin clambering up her legs.

“Alexa, were you... who did you bodyguard before Mom won your loyalty? It wasn’t... like, it’s silly, we all know it was the Pallas Rex who protected him, but were you, like, assigned to a Minister? Because I think you really did know him back then.”