Tatterdemalion

Sunshards

Rose from the River should not care whether she is the object of mockery or not. Only the fool heeds the chittering of monkeys, and only the vain desire to be revered and respected by all. But there's something in how Chen almost falls over looking at her, how Hyra is carefully not looking at her, how Cyanis is radiating pure innocence...

So Rose from the River inspects herself carefully. It cannot be a sign that Cyanis has put on her back, given that Chen cannot see her back (nor can anyone else, given her braids). It is not something that she can see-- ah, when she looks down, something digs into her jaw. Something familiar. Something humiliating. Her grip on Cyanis tightens, and for a moment she considers punting the fox over a mountain, or at the very least onto the other side of the river. Instead she takes Cyanis with both hands and swings her, one, two, three, then sends her flailing into the water.

"Just a fox trick," she says, unbuckl-- hmm. This is. How does this mechanism work? She could tear it off, but that would be... admitting defeat. Yes. Except the longer she tries to figure out how to unbuckle this, the longer it might seem that she is either too incompetent to do so or does not want to do so, and so she tries to casually seem as if she was stretching, not trying to take it off. "This is why someone is going to Cutie Jail."

Then, calmly, rationally, as a response to Chen nearly dunking her head in the water doubling over with giggles, and as a response to the most shit-eating grin from a soaked Cyanis sitting up in the water with her hair in her face, Rose from the River wades into the river, spins her staff, and with a single blow reverses the flow of the water back on top of Chen and Cyanis in a mighty wave. Behold, the martial skill of the Thorn Pilgrim, defeater of rivers and giggling foxes and princesses! Let nobody challenge her who does not wish to be defeated, yes, not even Qiu, because that first battle was a fluke and next time the collar will be on the other throat!

Fellowship: The Heart

Jackdaw!

Seven by seven by seven.

Wolf pulls out something that isn't a candle and unlights it. It flickers dark and hungry, and you see that which is not in its light. Wolf smiling, hearty, hale. Unhaunted. Fortunate.

The woman who used to have a name that wasn't just Wolf came down into the Heart because she was hunting something. A sign, a crown, a betrayal. Seeking it, even. She hated that she dreamed of it, that in empty moments it would signify itself at her, seven by seven by seven, flickering candles one by one on the Candle Line. She took up a gig on the trains because the kobolds were friendly, and because she needed to go someplace that was otherwise than she was, and because she could drown the signs and symbols in the ten thousand lights of the Candle Line. And then her fate swallowed her up and stranded her in the oubliette of fortune, where all the bad girls go when they won't stop but they won't go forwards, neither.

You're seeking a Name, Jackdaw. She's seeking something similar, but it's not hers. It belongs to something else, some other story down here, the light at the bottom of a well or at the very edge of dreaming. What matters is that you're both being eaten up by something so much bigger than you. When Wolf regains her voice and her strength, that story is going to keep pulling at her. Her story. And maybe it'll eat her, and maybe she'll come through it different. Sometimes two people just meet for a little while, you know? And sometimes they give what they've got, because why else do we do things? Why have things if not for the moments when they're needed by the people whose orbits we move into?

In the priceless light of something that's not a candle, you can see the lack of exit clearly, if not painlessly. Wolf (which is not her name, but it is the name you know, a collection of sounds all crammed against each other, a signifier for someone with her history and heart trapped behind the hollows of the words she ate when there was nothing else left) takes your paw and leads you fearlessly to the place where there is not an exit (for of course there is no exit from this place, and it is not too dark and too regular and too impossibly frightening to look at, looming like the side door that led down to the unlit basement that you always convinced yourself did not have the monster from the woodcut so that you could walk past it without vividly imagining those bulging eyes leering at you through the window, a not-door that might as well be screaming that here there are monsters), and Wolf's shadow flickers with bells and candlelights and the way that light passes through the windows of a train, and for a moment, in the unlight, she is not beautiful and she is not at peace.

My treasure is that, impossibly, I am still alive, Wolf does not whisper into your ear, because she cannot, because she is skin and bone and trauma. I am still alive and even if every step brings me closer to the one I cannot take back, it's still one more than I thought I'd have. I am alive, and I choose.

And she chooses to walk you through the place that is not an exit, and into the rain (which does exist) and the storm (which does exist) and the clowns, wild and frothing and fatal (which should not exist). Wolf growls a warning, tail lashing, holding nothing, putting herself between you and the clowns and--

Oh.

Lucien.

***

Lucien!

click-clack click-clack go the hagstones. Crowhame is twisting and infecting the storm all around you as the Professor holds the book open as desperately as he can. The rain is black. The space between the rain is white. The Ringmaster is an offensive purple splotch of color, grabbing you with a hand like a sack of knives. And above you, the hagstones of the Flayed go click-clack click-clack click-clack as it gives you two a frozen idiot grin, all black-and-white-and-red all over, the black-dot eyes rolling in those white side-sockets. What better god to greet a clown but the shrike-god, the trophy-god, the sacrifice-god, white skin pinned back from white animal bones with black sutures, white stones swinging in that opened chest where all his organs should be, white antlers splitting the black sky into fractals?

You swing from one arm, which may very well be dislocated, as the Ringmaster bares his teeth in the mother of all smiles and then roars a challenge at the intruding alien god. (The Flayed being what it is, it doesn't seem to notice; its jaw clatters in what might be laughter, or might just be a spasm of sinew.) It appears that the Ringmaster intends to beat a motherfucker with another motherfucker. And there's not a lot of soft places to land there, just angles and bony knobs and fingers sharpened into talons.

Well, it's been a good run, hasn't it? And look on the bright side: you'll probably black out from the physical trauma well before you actually die. Like falling asleep at the end of a very long day.

***

Ailee!

There is a fountain. It falls in and on itself, water dancing for the sake of dancing, and Surma unlaces her boots and slips her feet into the pool. "<Bastard,>" she says, affectionately. "<A genuine> Victory of Crows <and he just takes it away from me.>" She doesn't talk about how Lucien was a hero. She doesn't ask you how you're feeling or tell you that everything's going to be all right. She just invites you to sit next to her by implication.

The interdimensional hutch is decked out in trophies from the Heart and keepsakes from the Old Country and a small shrine with the prayer sticks lit to keep the memory of people she's lost alive. What's one more stick slowly smouldering out? What's one more name added to the sticks, never to really die as long as they're remembered? What's a pretty girl like her doing alone at the bottom of reality, if not looking for one more score to make the prices she's already paid worth it?

The gun lies heavy in your hand, and ridiculously, impossibly, you know how you're going to kill King Dragon. Or, at the very least, what's been consecrated for that purpose.

***

Coleman!

"You know," Black Coleman says, thoughtfully, "the Heart can piss off. Because for you, that means you can try it, see if it works. But you and I both know that we're not going to meet again, like as not, and now I've got a face to put to the question of what if it had worked? What if I'd made that gamble, that we wouldn't tear each other apart over dwindling fuel supplies and the Powers muscling in on the Vermissian and... what if, what if, what if."

He tosses you a bit of the coal that Sasha likes particular. Naturally, you catch it. "Good luck making a better story, though. I'd like to think that yours ends well, you know? And in one version of the Heart's fuckery with time and space, there was a kobold who had a train, and for a little while, everything was all right. But you're needed somewhere else right now, aren't you?"

Aren't you indeed. Here you are, jawing off with yourself, when someone needs to go find where everyone's run off to. It's the conductor who knows the end of the line best, after all.

Breathless Dead

“I am playing rock-paper-scissors with our lives, Dolce!”

Redana is stressy. When Redana is stressy, Redana does not sleepy. When Redana does not sleepy, she ends up here, a bundle of nervous energy and frazzled hair, in the (now crab-free) kitchens. She is not drinking the calming herbal tea. She is making dangerous gestures with the calming herbal tea, grand sweeping commands that threaten to get tea everywhere.

“So take a look at this one, right?” She flourishes her sketchbook. You might be surprised at how good her technical drawing is; these had some thought put into them, with Hermetic glyphs scrawled in the margins. Displayed on the page is the Plousios with the kind of hull that cracks asteroids apart and multiple landing bays converted to secondary engine installations: the kind of ship that can make surprisingly sharp turns and hunts its enemies like a nearsighted wolf. “Stellar, right? But what if there’s something we can’t just or don’t want to just punch through? What if we get brought to bear by pirates? If we reduce our Plover bays, we’ll be relying totally on the prow and flying blind against anything too small to bring to bear. But if we don’t have extra maneuvering vents, we’ll be blundering about like a silly drunk Servitor, and say goodbye to outracing anything! Oh, so reduce the heavy plating, Redana, you say!” (Dolce did not say.) “But if we skimp on this, we risk being torn apart by space monsters!”

Even as she says it, she flips another page, and reveals an elegant, stripped-down Plousios, with solar sail mechanisms on every face to unfold when necessary, an unparalleled maneuverability, with landing bays and SP weapons bristling, a corsair-vessel that lives on its speed alone. “Sturdy, swift, and not toothless: we get to choose two. And if I choose wrong you’ll all die when the Plousios gets caught in the radius of a collapsing star, or when alien locusts tear through our depleted Plover coverage and burrow in to lay their eggs, or when a Star Dragon curls around the ship and squeezes us apart!” She flops, considers a moment, and then contemplatively adds: “Though maybe if we sacrifice Plover coverage, we’ll be lucky enough to be boarded by Azora corsairs and sold into slavery, which doesn’t get you all killed, so maybe that’s the least bad option?”

Somebody needs to actually drink her tea and calm down, right? And what’s up with her considering everybody else’s safety? Sure, she’s human, she’s tough, but she’s not that tough, right?

...right?

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Two weeks of worry. Two weeks to think about what might make a knight worthy. Two weeks to think about the death of Pellinore, as keenly as she did in those first terrible days after the brutal killing. The rise and fall of the axe-blow.

It is up to Tristan to say how he kept her from disaster, from spiraling into dark and worried thoughts. But she manages, thanks to him, and she considers how she may test Robena, the Bear Knight. The question, after all, is what Robena learned from that moment: whether she learned the lesson of the axe, deep in her heart.

Perhaps she should leave a trail for Robena that led to her. Perhaps she should let the castle rumor that she was leading Pellinore here, that striking her down would save the knight from her fated confrontation. That way, if Robena failed again, only one person would be at risk; and it was she who misjudged Robena’s mettle first of all.

And yet still she had not made the decision, still had not committed herself to the lure, as she fretted outside the banquet hall that fateful night. Or had she? After all, she wore foxfur on her robe, and the tail was draped around her pale neck. The symbolism was not hard to miss. But when would she gather up the courage to enter?

Breathless Dead

"If you're sure."

All around, mixed squads of Coherents and Alcedi worked together (by Imperial order; making them work together was the first step to making them want to work together, right?) to bring the shuttles onto the beach. Shuttles, plural. And there was the problem. Her words were falling on deaf ears; no, now she was the hero of the hour, champion of the Alcedi and Occluded Magistrix of the Coherent, and even if some of both contingents were going to be taking to the stars themselves, the lion's share of both were demanding the chance to serve her. And what could she do but let them? The crown demands.

"My teacher, Iskarot, Magos Iskarot, sorry, he's in charge of our Hermetic contingent by seniority and by my authority. And, frankly, Komninos? You might not have given the orders to abduct new initiates, but I'm not impressed with your judgment in carrying it out. 'The tool is nothing without the hand; yet the tool that fails the hand is nothing.' Am I right? Thank you, Magos. I'm taking you on, but part of that is trusting me when I make a decision. And I have made it. Now, Lacedo, Emissary for the Alcedi-- everyone coming with us will be Plousios-clan, but make sure everyone knows that they're going on a voyage to the gates of the gods, and not everyone's going to be coming back. We need you, and there will be glory, but it's still dangerous. It's worth it. But you need to know what you're deciding."

This is different than asking Bella to come with her and not expecting a refusal. She's been a guest of the Alcedi, and now they want to follow her[1]. She can bring the Hermetics along without batting an eye, given that they have some idea of what they're signing up for, but taking the Alcedi along is... now she knows a little better how she might have seemed, so eager to explore the unknown that she was heedless of its realities and dangers.

But she can't say no to them, and not just because they need a crew. If she says no to the Alcedi, if she tells them that they can't come with her, she might as well go back home right now. Everyone deserves the sky. Human, Alcedi, Servitors; they all deserve to be able to make that choice for themselves, whether or not it ends up being the right choice.

When the shuttles begin to land, for a moment Redana is caught in a halo, and Lacedo can't tear her eyes away from the young woman: shoulders bare, eyepatch black against her fair skin, an omphalos that the world turns around. Then Redana turns, and shares the smile that kills maidens' hearts, Redana Acaceta in her glory. You can scheme against her, you can fight against her, but you can't be more charming than her, without artifice and unbowed by the weight of her phantom crown.

Redana is going to save the universe. And her magic is that you can believe.

***

[1]: or, as she's starting to pick up on, they want to follow Redana Acaceta[2], Gracious Redana. The shining hero who slips through time and saves the innocent, who dances between seconds and carries golden emptiness in her hand. Try not to think about living up to that, Dany!

[2]: Redana is blissfully unaware that the slang meaning of Acaceta is "completely guileless; well-meaning ditz (affectionate)." Already the Denunciation of Hera is being relayed to the Coherents, and knowledge of what sort of mistress they have sworn loyalty to is spreading.

Sunshards

Serenity is not effortless. Rather, it is a choice, an imposition on the world. Serenity in the face of a car being driven by a young woman doing her best while holding close a fox who wants to be in the safest place in the car (i.e. Rose from the River’s exact location) is... challenging. Yes, let’s call it that. A challenge. Something to be met and overcome. aum shantae aum. aum shantae aum. aum shantae nemo padhome aum.

Rose from the River wraps up her stress and her confusion and her desire to scream at someone and take control of the vehicle herself and wraps it all up in a blanket and cuddles it as furiously as she is cuddling the panicking fox in her arms. She smothers those emotions, which want her to charge down any road she can find, to take control of things and make her own decisions, in the cool resounding sound of her mantra.

The mantra, however, is not perfect. There are some things that even it cannot make right, some annoyances that even a follower of the Way cannot overcome. And for Rose from the River, that annoyance is Qiu showing up in a helicopter. If not for a certain someone getting tangled in her seatbelt, Rose would have climbed out the window, onto the roof, and taken the Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade in both hands, in a batter’s stance. The ostentatious gall! Was there ever any doubt that Qiu is being a huge drama queen about this?

As the car comes to another shuddering (and comparatively final) halt, Rose from the River growls, in a tone of voice most unbecoming of a monk and more becoming of a dangerously sultry monster, “Next time we see her, I’ll show her rockets.” The rockets carry the implication of physical discipline, at the very least.

Oh, how wonderfully easy it is to be pissy at Qiu, rather than admit that she is making a decent attempt at earning the adoration she demands, at wielding the monopoly-power of three Sunshards. How effortless to let the fire of competition spark, to imagine a world in which (assuming she even was interested, which she’s definitely not saying she was), she could yield to Qiu on her own terms. There is no safety in yielding to someone that Rose from the River could not defeat if she chose to.

(And speaking of Chose, our little fox friend might notice a slight but distinct relaxing in the mighty monk’s stance if Chen manages to get over the broken bridge, possibly with her sword-surfing skills.)

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

"You are ridiculous," Constance gently chides her escort, as above his japes as a stone jutting above the waves. "No. I do not think I will have time for more than one snowball fight, young man." As if she's that much older than him! "I need to know... I need to know her heart. To see it, rather than wondering for the rest of my days why she brought down that axe. Whether she deserves punishment or... mmm. This is still my responsibility. You may tempt me as you may, but do not stand between us."

The air of grim and otherworldly judgment, the sense that she is more an arbiter than a woman, dissolves when Constance finally manages to get herself in the bath. The groan that escapes her lips is blissful, and she melts into the fine wooden tub in much the same way that a stick of butter would. For a moment, she lets herself forget her shame, her knight, and her duty; the simple pleasure of hot water on aching muscles is world enough for her.

Breathless Dead

The joke, of course, is that (with the Ianuspater quiescent) Redana’s eyepatch really is an eyepatch. She’s back to how she was, in her Coherent jacket and eyepatch, but with her golden hair settling around her shoulders, the dye bleached away by coming so close to her father. And the very first thing she does is shove the Magos to the ground, scared and desperate. “That’s my eye,” she yelps. And then she looks around and sees the oncoming battle, and how she might even be a target for the furious Alcedi, and Hera’s threat flashes through her mind.

So she stands up straight, pulls off her jacket, and yells at the top of her lungs: “Coherents of the Saffron Path, Redana Claudius, daughter of Nero, calls on you to stand down and surrender! In the pursuit of blessed knowledge, you have offended the Daughter of Wisdom and the Alcedi who honor her! Surrender yourselves to me, or face their judgment!”

And that’s all she can hope to do. She can’t pry weapons out of the hands of the Alcedi; she can’t make the Coherents drop theirs. All she can do is make her play.

[8 to Talk Sense (very quickly) with Grace. This will likely put her in an awkward position, but stop the Coherents from being overrun and slain to a man.]

Fellowship: The Heart

Lucien!

Somewhere, The Fairy's Aire and Death Waltz is being played, enthusiastically and with great technical skill, on a pipe organ threatening to come apart from the violence being done to its keys. But that might be the point. Whatever a clown has become has no greater aspiration in eternity than being able to play something that should, by all rights, be unplayable. The band plays on, and the musical assault whines and howls over the chaos of the storm.

"It's downright magical, ain't it?" The Ringmaster has shucked off whatever he once was. It's impossible to say if he was once human or an animal; he looms like a statue, clothing pulled taut over bulging muscles. His buttons are gleaming gold roughly hammered into shape, and his coat is the rusty red of dried blood. His mouth is a nightmare of crooked knives, and his eyes are hot coals under the brim of his hat. "We haven't had a holler like this in too long, too long. We'll have a right sacrament for you, Pilgrim," he says, to the Professor trying to hide behind his book.

All around, grips tighten on pins and clubs and cleavers. In the midst of the storm, the assembled clowns of the Dark Carnival don't look funny at all. They look like monsters born from a cup of blood, wearing joviality and ridiculousness as an ill-fitting suit. They are a final punchline, mocking the world for thinking that anything could matter at the lip of reality's crucible. And the moment that one of the two feuding magicians wins, as soon as there's a winner on one side or another, they'll go into a feeding frenzy.

And only pieces of Ailee and Evil Jackdaw will be left after that. Very small ones. And a pitcher for blessing the man who doesn't want to go through with becoming immortal. You are, once again, the man of the hour. What's the last cheap trick you've got up your sleeve?

***

Coleman!

"Of course I don't remember," Black Coleman says, sourly: not directed at you, that longsuffering bitterness, but outwards. At this madhouse at the bottom of the drain of reality. "For all I know, you're an Angel trying to test my commitment. Or maybe you're the real one, and I just walked out of the Heart with all my memories no more than an hour old. The Vermissian was our stability, Coles, and with it gone, everything's sliding down into the Heart itself."

He squats down on his haunches and gives Sasha a lookover. "Though I've been thinking a lot about how things went down, back when I had to hatch Sasha myself down there. Maybe if I had the thought earlier, things wouldn't have gotten so bad. I thought I had to make her something that could survive the rails. But maybe what we really need is something that makes the rails better."

***

Jackdaw!

The Heart regards you in the dark with... not indifference. A lack of answers. A hole in the world that broken people climb down into to try to find something that's important enough to risk everything for.

In the dark, Wolf pulls you closer. She's still so skinny. So painfully thin. But there's a wiry strength in her that makes clinging to her easy. She strokes the back of your head and silently invites you to let the tears flow. The world is huge and cruel and doesn't make any sense at all, and the Heart is huge and cruel and eats sense for dinner, but the two of you are small and kind anyway. That's the secret, the one that she can't say out loud because she suffers from a scarcity of words just as you have too many, and for much the same reasons.

Two hurt and broken people hold each other, and the Heart watches from all around, in the wet and the dark and the silent. No. Not silent. A low drum. A heartbeat. A pulse in the dark. An absence of words. And in its presence, the boundaries between identities become more fluid. Wolf has opened herself to you, and you in turn to Wolf, and words are unnecessary here.

Roll to Speak Softly with Wolf, or to Speak Softly with the Heart, as you choose.

Sunshards

"Consulting fees!"

Cyanis soars in a graceful arc up into the air, still clinging to a still life. She curls all of her limbs around it for dear life as she comes hurtling back down right into Rose's crushing grip, the monk having cleared a space around them with a two-handed sweep of her staff. She grimly bites down on it as Rose tries to shake it loose from her grip. No! No dropping the painting! It's hers!!

"Oh, really? And what exactly were you consulting on, little thief?" Rose carries her under one arm and runs nimbly down a handrail towards the waiting car where Yue and Hyra are scrambling in. The smile on Rose's face as she sees Yue managing to carry Hyra is the very eye of the storm, so sweet that hearts would melt just to see it. Unfortunately, she is fending off Assault Ribbons and dangling a very naughty fox from one arm, so there's no one there to witness her tenderness.

"Well, as you know," Cyanis chirps haughtily, doing her best to balance necklaces on her tail without letting them fall off, "Princess Qiu intends to conquer the Nine Kingdoms and prove, once and for all, that she is the best! That is some top-notch villainy! So naturally she needed some advice on how to make her dreams come true, because that's all that we foxes do!" She leans her head back and beams pure, distraught innocence right into Rose's forehead chakra. "And then she paid me for my services because unlike some people she knows that all labor should be ethically compensateeeeeeeeeed!"

Up she goes, and back down she goes. Rose catches the frame of the painting and swings it around in a circle, warding off Assault Ribbons with a screaming foxgirl. Cyanis scrabbles on the frame until the centrifugal force is too much, and she is flung yowling into the air. Rose, for her part, tosses the painting to the Assault Ribbon creeping up on her and then races to catch Cyanis before she can hit the ground. She has to dive and curl up around her in a very rough and bumpy roll, but she manages to do it, fulfilling her commitment to both preventing fox crimes and protecting cuties. Then she has to run with Cyanis scrabbling and climbing around her face and shoulders, trying to distract her for the perfect escape, wailing as she trails her consulting fees in her wake, and in general being a huge distraction.

Rose tosses her into the car through a door graciously opened by Hyra. Cyanis doesn't even hit the ground before she's turned herself around and flings herself back out, right into Rose's arms. Rose buckles them both in with the same seatbelt and nods for Yue to hit it, before resting her head on the well-named headrest a moment too soon. Turns out that it's more of a head-smack when Yue's trying to figure out how to drive stick.

"Why in the name of the right path are you acting like this, fox?" Rose said, holding the suddenly very suspiciously unprotesting fox in her arms. "Just because you thought you could steal something from under my very nose? Or did you think you could escape me?" The very thought! Even if it had been a test of all her skills to keep Cyanis in check while also managing to escape, she'd done it. She was the best at fulfilling the will of the Way and the law of the land.

"Should have known better," Cyanis said with feigned grumpiness, tail wagging between Rose's ankles. "Nothing gets past you." Her cutiebeans ears twitch just underneath the name tag: ~Rose~ She may have been caught, but her honor as a fox remains pure. Sure, maybe Rose from the River will drag her off to cutie jail now, but she'll always remember the moment when she realizes Cyanis managed to collar her without her even noticing. She hums, the true mark of the unsuspicious, right up until the car accelerates and slams her head back into soft fluffy heaven.