Thanqol

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Canada staggers blearily into the room, surrounded by the refractive, broken light of a half formed shield forming in response to the sudden danger that had grabbed her in the dark. It's a device formed of pure conceptual power - the shattered reality of her own darkening reflection, her purest self, but even this legendary barricade is no defense against the crashing tidal wave of words that slams into her and pins her against the wall as securely as any chain of the Annunaki. Set is talking.

If her mighty shield is no proof against the flood, then neither are her shining eyes a deadly enough weapon to cut through the onslaught. A gaze that could stun a charging salamander glances pointlessly off of Anathet's forehead as she goes through pages like an industrial scanner. Perhaps that melodic voice is trying to get a word in edgewise but that is a mistake - what 'um' or 'er' or 'excuse me' could disturb a world where djinn are dying, gods are falling, and the earth is saved through the publication of sufficiently accurate textbooks?

And then it stops, and Canada starts like she's just realized that this is a test and she should have been taking notes instead of mentally inventorying bruises. "Uh," she gapes for a second. "Gee-lll-gee - Gilgamesh? Like the dude with the gold? Didn't he live eight thousand years ago or something?" She trails off and goes a little bit red. Thanks for your contribution, Canada! Super insightful! While Anathet was studying the true nature of the ancient alien invasion that defines this planet's history, you were studying the blade.

"I mean, uh... I don't actually -" she coughed and reddened a bit more. "Can you explain how this helps us, um, practically? They didn't, you know, beat us by pretending to be gods so much as by... you know... beating us."

Fellowship: The Heart

You were under the mistaken impression that Ailee had been hitting you before. You were wrong - now she hits you, an open-palmed slap across the face. "Jackdaw! What the hell do you think you're doing!?" she snaps, snatching the stick from the semiconscious fox's fingers. "E-NUN-CEE-ATE! Defend! For heavens' sakes, this is what you get for blowing off my adventurer training!"

Ailee's 'adventurer training' had involved her bursting into your room in the middle of the night, putting a pistol in your mouth as you were struggling to wake up, and screaming at you to perfectly enunciate a defensive abjuration. In fairness, she'd put herself through the same 'testing' - more than once she'd had a weirdly fluent conversation with you with a mouth full of literal marbles and she'd only accidentally swallowed and almost choked on a marble once.

Today was not a day for small mercies - mercy made for poorly trained wizards!

[Assisting Jackdaw, moving that result to an 8.]

Chuubo's GMD: Love and Shattered Alchemy

Jasper pouts. Cute!? She is glamorous! She is elegant! She is... she is tall! Tall people aren't cute! Besides, lines of that nature were independently written by two different songsmiths and capable of inducing swooning when deployed by far lesser spirits than her! A line such as that coming from her should have caused at least three of the onlookers in this restaurant to faint, at the very least!

"Hmph!" she hmph!s, but she can't even maintain her attempt at dignity for more than a second because Dulcinea is finally revealing what to do with the ramen and she's fascinated. Up she gets from her chair and orbits around the table, eyes wide, observing everything from as many angles as possible. And the writing! With a magical brush that didn't need to be dipped in ink! She observes every minute gesture of etiquette and pose, the posture, the stance, the control of the fluid that keeps it away from the notebook. She is going to get this right!

She sits again, folding into her chair like a flower retracting. She picks up the chopsticks, lowers her head, and performs an absolutely perfect mirrored slurp of ramen soup exactly as Dulcinea demonstrated. She keeps her off hand in the same place as Dulcinea's notebook and, sure enough, her control is so fine that not a single drop of broth touches it. She sits back, a droplet of soup on the edge of her mouth, and gives a haughty, proud look. Try laughing at her now, demon queen!

And then the taste hits her and she chokes, gasps, and coughs, eyes widening. "What!?" she said. "What is - it's like you fit a savannah into the ocean!" She can't even chastise herself for her lack of poetry in this moment because she's busy reaching into the bowl with her bare hands to pick up the mass of ramen and stare at it - it was uncomfortably warm by this world's standards, and it dripped down her fingers in an incoherent mass. "The water is contaminated with the essence of the forest," she said. "But that doesn't come across at all to my hands or my eyes. But when I -" she took an unglamourous chomp of the mass of noodles she was holding in her hand, "- taste it," she continues, mouth full, "it unravels! It's the most impure thing I've ever experienced!"

She blushes as she realizes, at last, just why the devil queen laughed at her. Oh, how naive she must have sounded just now - thinking that she could talk to a devil about temptation. What power could a pure heart have against a creature that ground all of the forests and seas together? She was really out of her depth. Blushing more intensely, she set down the mass of ramen that hadn't already escaped from her hand into the bowl and picked up her chopsticks again in imitation of Dulcinea.

"It-it's good," she said weakly, watching the devil's expression with a new humility. "The mouthfeel is like the oil of liquidized fire. The saltiness is reminiscent of mountains broken into crystal. Umami is, uh, no I don't. My first impression is that there is an unknown heat at my core that feels like a wood-root fire, consuming and transforming me. As you command - this is the egg? - I will obey."

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

"Oh, it's the opposite actually," mumbled Canada as she gently tried to tip-toe around all the kneeling people. It was really hard because this cell was not very large and they took up a lot of floor space and she really didn't want to step on anyone right now because that kind of thing left people with a complex. "It's actually righteousness that is beautiful. Uh. You know, spiritually," she had to push the two Salamanders gently aside and they fell into each other with sighs. "Unrighteous hearts pollute physical beauty and make it, you know, scary. Um."

This part was always so awkward.

"So, uh. You can attain this kind of beauty in yourself!" said Canada, trying to be inspirational. "You just need to bring your heart into alignment. So I'm going to leave you here to think about it, okay? Be kind to each other."

She waved uncomfortably as she locked the cell door.

Breathless Dead

Redana!

"Oh, thank you so much for the compliment young lady," said the Ceronian with a kind civility that almost makes you wonder if you're somehow incognito. "Sit! Zeus bids us to always be glad at guests, and we are honoured to respect the laws of mighty Hades' sister. Have some lime soda!"
"Hold up a moment Sands," said Leon. "Do Zeus' laws still apply here?"
"Oh, that is a fascinating point," said Sands. "We've not had a guest before... we should check!"

The two of them turn away from you, back to their game of marbles. "Hades, brilliant lord, you who reign over this, the Kingdom of Elysium and to whom we honour above all others. Do the laws of Zeus apply in your kingdom?" Sands flicked a marble and both rheumy old eyes watch intently as they click-clacked against each other.

Hades knelt down, staring at the game with intense fascination. He reached his fingers out to adjust the course of a marble ever so slightly.

"Ah - they do!" said Leon. "Praise be, lord Hades, and respect to your regal sister of Olyumpus. In your name, and hers, we welcome you to Elysium. It must have been a glorious death indeed to bring you here with us."
"She doesn't look dead," said Sands.
"Neither do you!"
"Oh, what a lovely compliment~" said Sands, who was old enough to appear at least dead-adjacent. "But she's on a mission from Hades, she must be dead."
"Didn't you hear her mention Athena? That's a god for the living."
"Oh, just think about how long it took you to get out of that habit."

The lime soda is a thick and deep flavour. Its creation was unskilled; there is too much bitterness, not enough of the refinedly sweet perfection of the Imperial kitchens. Just an ordinary person doing their best, but enough to refresh on a hot afternoon as the old warriors bicker. You might notice a shaking of the sun, the shadows crazed for a tiny second, but the distances are so vast that whatever violence caused it is distant from here.

"Oh! Where are my manners. I'm Leon, this is Sands. As you know, we were warriors of Ceron before we were gathered here in Elysium after death by Lord Hades," said Leon brightly.

Hades, sitting across the game of marbles, makes casual eye contact with you and gives a gentle shrug. He's giving no opinion on this, even though your auspex seems to clearly think that these two are very much alive.

"Princess Epistia is the daughter of Queen Hatchan," Leon went on. "We all dote on her of course but she's always so moody, just like her father," he laughed. Hades' cheeks turned a soft shade of pink and he gave another idle shrug, this one a little more forced. "She doesn't understand just how valuable peace is! She's always wanting to go off and fight like we used to. I told her, princess! This is the kind of place you fight for! But then, I never listened to my grandfather either."

"The queen wants her to settle down," said Sands. "And it makes sense she does. This place is favoured by Hades because she's here. He covers the fields in flowers, makes exotic crops bloom, brings forth diamonds and gems from beneath the earth to cheer her - and even if she doesn't appreciate them it's good luck to have someone like that around."

"And now Hades has even brought you here!" laughed Leon. "Someone the same age! And a princess too! Why, I think that you two would make a gorgeous couple!"

Vasilia!

Don't celebrate your triumph too soon - a lot of escape vessels got off the Veterosk before it broke, and you can see even now most of them drifting towards the Eater of Worlds. The King may have lost his ship but his military is still about - though widely scattered and deeply disorganized amidst all the chaos. Your ship has ridden through it better than any other.

But you can hear the muttering of Poseidon's voice as he draws lines in the air with malformed hands. Great sweeping lines trace winds and waves and the storm darkens between here and the Armada. It would require great courage or great callousness to order ships through that tempest.

Which means that the Admiral will still be coming, of course. But you at least have a little time.

Alexa!

Ares finally lowers his tools, eyes alight, his molten-metal body rippling and cooling into grey slate. He gives an intoxicated grin and a lazy salute - and then he runs cold. His skin stops steaming. His eyes cloud over. Twenty fingers run through his wild hair, and then scissors cut it neatly short again. Red burns away to blue and Athena smooths out her uniform with a single gesture. It never happened, of course. She is the victor, she would never lose control like that.

Between Dolce's quick actions and your endurance the chaos has calmed rapidly. There are no dead, there is no battle, and Athena steps away for there is nothing for her to do here. You've got a moment to brush yourselves and each other down as you head for the launch bay.

Bella!

"Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow - I'm just trying to help, Bella," said Mynx. "It is the mark of an expert actress to be able to talk about the most dirty and provocative subjects without letting one's true feelings slip. Why, if I was less of a creep my skills would atrophy and we'd both be - ow! Bella!"

She huffs and folds her arms, an incongruously childish and petulant look on a face so old and severe.

"But - hm! Fine. Another question then. If you were to pick up a beautiful woman, how would you like to do it? Sweeping off their feet into a princess carry? The squealing humiliation of hefting them over one shoulder? The dark and smouldering one-handed grip to the throat while you hold them aloft?"

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

"You won't get away with this," said Canada, squirming against the chains. "When I get out - eek!"

She was in the habit of downplaying her looks. She couldn't deny the tactical advantage they presented (and how nice it felt to be pretty), but she was a knight first and should wield a weapon like that cautiously. And show respect to her opponents by allowing them to battle as warriors, and hopefully be respected in exchange. And because the flirting of villains in general and Annunaki in specific didn't really follow boundaries and - eep! No! S-stay back!

Her hair was loosened from its practical ponytail into a long cascading raven waterfall, perfectly falling towards her left and pooling on her shoulder. Her face was cleaned revealing the glow of health, cheeks slightly flushed, eyes naturally shadowed. Her rough slave jacket is discarded, revealing an athletic anatomy that couldn't quite conceal it's natural softness...

To answer Arákh's question, there's a lot to work with. But most compelling of all are the eyes. They reflect a different world, a flawless world. To look deeply into them is to see your best possible self and that is the most intoxicating thing of all.

[Unleash: 12]

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

She'd been given a smartphone as a gift for her seventeenth birthday - something that had diligently held pride of place at the top of every christmas list for half a decade, finally realized now that the threat of going on strike from her job at her parent's cafe was becoming credible. What she hadn't expected to find was that the device was far more interesting with the screen off than with the screen on.

The reflective surface was fascinating. With the screen on the millions of tiny pixel-lights filled the world with light, but when it was off there seemed to be a hollow in the world occupied by a shadowy version of herself. She sensed potential in that deep place and she grew so used to keeping the phone off that she took out the battery.

That's when it deepened. Now the hollow of light had a physical hollow in it too, an empty shell, a void of being - all the more pure for its emptiness. She opened it up and took more things out - the SIM card, the wiring, the processor, drawn along by strange logic. Something moved in the deep and she could see it - and once she took out the phone's speakers she could hear it too. Methodically she unpacked the phone, discarding the casing so she was holding just the liquid-crystal screen as a single glowing reflective part in her hand. Then she peeled off the protective film.

And finally she removed the screen itself, leaving only the reflection.

ANAH KEL ANNUNKI ZENT KARI MAR ANUN CAPHTOR UNKIROS TAIRAN VERDA KALIS KEL VARKALONT

Piece by piece she had freed the reflection from every physical constraint that chained it. She stood before the solar lion that had been caged within the shadows of the mirror and it burned white and gold and violet. She saw it with eyes that had seen it in every shadowed surface for a lifetime but never realized. It raised its mighty left paw and with razor talons it repaid her in kind. Down those talons came and they ripped away her ugliness. Her selfishness. Her sloth. Every part of her she regarded as a failing was undone in a moment of radiant cleansing and the vision of the mirror finally aligned with the vision of the heart.

As the lion stepped from the mirror into her the dark reflection snapped in two. They fell into the world, sharp and jagged and almost-physical. Sword and shield. Two different visions of her own self were contained within, but for that moment when she held them up, they were in balance.

She'd come a long way from that moment of perfection.

She'd scourged herself of her weakness once, but now she knew that wasn't the same thing as being strong. She had been her most perfect self, but it hadn't been enough and she had failed to live up to it. And now here she was, squirming against a wall, wondering if the Annunaki knew enough about her to call forth the lion and have it finish its work by tearing out that troublesome edge of defiance.

Or if they had other ways to scourge the feeling out of her.

She struggled harder, wrists and ankles squirming uselessly against her chains.

Breathless Dead

Redana!

You walk along a path of soft soil.

The Eater of Worlds cracked planets with its beak, drinking in the molten core and processing the ores within into the constantly expanding armour plating of its shell. The thin upper crust of dirt and soil was useless to the beast and so remained in its mouth, piling up around the massive structures of its mouth like plaque, contaminated with whatever seeds and improperly chewed organic life happened to survive within. The lands around the hill town are thus not only rich with grown food plants made from the ship's stores but with all manner of strange plant life. Alien flowers, wild grasses, exotic dandelions that blow their seeds out to follow the strange air currents of this interior space.

You follow the curve of that soft clay wall - less fragile than it appears due to the reinforcing strands of hypertensile materials harvested from the Lupincas and running crudely through its structure, but by no means durable. What it does seem to have been optimized for is slipperiness - you watch as a confused frog tries multiple times to jump onto the gentle angle of the wall's lower surface and slide smoothly down to the ground each time, suction caps useless against the frictionless surface.

You hear the voices before you see them - aged and weathered like sea biscuits. "I'm telling you, I saw it! There was a fire in the sky, Leon!"
"You old coot, you just probably just saw the sun in a crystal again."
"Whatever happened to, 'I love you, Leon! I'll trust you with my life, Leon'!"
"That was before you called me to arrest your own shadow -"

You round the last corner and before you are two of the legendary warriors of Ceron.

The Ceronians are a servitor breed, but of all the servitors they are the most prestigious - wolf-aspected, phalanx instinct woven into their genetics. There has never been a more uniform and cohesive fighting force in the galaxy, fearless soldiers with almost telepathic understanding of each others awareness. One of the contingency plans drilled into you by your tutors is the secret location of Ceron - in the event of you escaping a coup against your reign, you are to go to Ceron and muster an army there that might be capable of defending you against the Armada itself.

But these aren't the vital, ferocious wolf-warriors of legend and battle plans. These are two old soldiers sitting under hand-woven yellow-and-pink umbrellas by the gate, intensely staring with fading eyes at the game of marbles laid out between them.

Vasilia!

Ramming is a natural part of void warfare. Ramming directly into a warship's plasma engines...

It's not really the done thing.

There are better ways to do it, normally. It's rare for a slower ship to turn tail on a faster one. It's rare for an ambush to strike for the narrow engines rather than the large and vulnerable sides. It's rare that a captain wants to see what happens if they put the nose of their ship into a constant flow of stellar plasma for a prolonged period of time...

With a hundred thousand viewscreens angled in this direction, this is a learning experience for the entire Armada.

The crunching, cracking enormity of impact runs through the Plousios. The temperature starts to steadily rise as the point-blank plasma furnace of the Veterosk crashes over your prow like the storm itself. The forces are impossible to control, but Poseidon's hand is here and he guides you relentlessly towards your destination. As fires start to erupt around you and your viewport glows red-hot you can see the shapes of salvation pods, plovers, and shuttles burst from the Veterosk in all directions.

And then you order full stop.

With the added, wild, uncontrolled momentum the Veterosk slams into the Lupincas like a javelin.

The Engine Deck!

The Hermetician is the only one who is okay with this. There's a strange, serene calm about him as he goes through his work, tripod legs reflexively bracing against every tug and pull and shipquake. As the world falls into chaos, only those marked by Ares can keep their feet.

The rest of you? You are not right with the War God.

Laughter fills the room and smouldering coal-eyes gleam in the dark places. Ares emerges into the desaturated light of the engines, ruddy and bare chest illuminated by emergency lights, wooden war mask upon his grinning face. With a whoop and a howl he rips a pipe open, sending a spray of azure plasma fire in Dolce's direction. Then he snatches up a loose polywrench in either hand and rushes towards Alexa, blows cascading over each other in the brutal, uncaring rhythm of the mad.

Both of you, roll to Overcome.

Bella!

"Of course, you're right," said Princess Redana, as you pull her up so that she almost falls into your arms. "I don't understand anything about mistress Redana."

It's the voice that's always so weird. It is Redana's voice, but saying things that Redana would never say, in ways Redana would never say them. And then she's stepped away, hair changing with a flick from blonde to black-grey, face falling and sharpening and -

"I," said Admiral Odoacer with profound menace infusing every word, "will need you to do my hair."

If you had to study the Admiral then so did Mynx - if there was ever a role she'd have to play other than Redana's, it would have had to be the Admiral's. But Mynx's shapeshifting didn't come with free hairstyling, which was perhaps why the Admiral kept her hair in such an elaborate and severe bun.

"And we can play twenty poisons while you do it!" said the shapeshifter, bubbly normal voice incongruously coming from the Admiral's mouth as she seized your arm girlishly. "First question! Empress Nero - fuck, marry, kill?"

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Canada Taliv does not have super strength. She has medium sized girl strength. It is extremely easy to dismiss heroes who make their name off of super strength until you're being hugged to unconsciousness by a salamander and can't break out of it no matter what you do.

She's not a warrior. She never was. In the world before, her battles were against unpowered people, strange mystical effects, traps, supervillains whose claim to fame was having a freeze ray. She's not ready for this.

[Powerful blow: 10. Canada is taken out]

Chuubo's GMD: Love and Shattered Alchemy

There has never been a more attentive student. In momentary conversational pauses you can see Jasper's lips moving as she subliminally repeats your words to aid in memory. Jasper learns at the intersection of wide-eyed, awed fascination and grim seriousness, and the only thing missing from her is -

"A notebook!" she squeaks suddenly. "Paper! And it's blank! Oh wow - that stuff only comes from the human world!" She leans all the way across the paper, holding her hair back from her eyes as she stares in amazement, hand hovering in mid air as she stops herself just barely from touching it.

Blank paper. Blank prayer strips. What kind of demon queen received blank prayers? And so much of it, too! How?! Her chair scrapes along the ground for half a second - she's almost about to leap to her feet and challenge Dulcinea on the spot for that treasure and damn the consequences. It is only with supreme willpower that she halts herself, demurely folds her hands in front of her, tears her eyes away from the paper and back directly to Dulcinea's eyes. Hm? Is she blushing? Shaking? Thoughts of the paper slip away and Jasper tilts her head to the side analytically. She frowns. This felt like she was messing up some hidden rule of etiquette, like there was a social custom she didn't quite understand here. Was she inadvertently flirting with Dulcinea?

Further research was required.

"Why, I'm down here because I'm a sinner, of course," said Jasper with an angelic smile, still operating on the assumption that she was in the Consuming Hells. "The realms of intellectual enlightenment did not satisfy me. Cruder passions arose. The dances of the devils were far from solar perfection, but like you said... there's temptation in infinity."

How did the subject change when she was deliberately flirting?