Thanqol

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

She'd been promised for years that she'd end up in a room like this. It was the promise of the Annunaki's oppressive, crushing system to those who defied it: one final interrogation before execution. And what was she supposed to do? Fight, snark, shout defiance? The Inquisitor had seen it all before and every step of this conversation was rehearsed. It wasn't like Shamash, who she at least might embarrass or anger. This was just the machinery of the thing, utterly impersonal in every way. Senseless bureaucratic paperwork with everyone involved checked out. So efficient.

So efficient that they'd double booked their interrogation room. Canada smiled a little - all the hard work of remembering the blindfolds and they'd still left a room full of heavily muscled people hauling around heavy objects.

She yawned, and stretched.

She glowed as she did, filled with inner light, filling the darkened room with a soft and irresistible glow, as fascinating as a sunset. Though it was wasted on blindfolded Janissaries, all the workers carrying heavy gold bars stopped, gaped, and dropped their cargo. The room was filled with clattering and clanging as carts tipped, treasure piles spilled, and coin spilled everywhere. And those keen-eared Janissaries who were tracking her by sound would suddenly be very distracted.

[Unleash my powers: 11]

Fellowship: The Heart

Ailee doesn't interrupt, or cut in with her own opinions or insight. Right now she's learning with such attentiveness that it's no longer a mystery how she got into the university. Not just the facts, though she does make quiet notes in her sketchbook, but she's clearly thinking deeply about the implications too.

"Strangely encouraging to hear," she murmurs to herself. She coughs, and continues a bit louder to brush past it, "And that's your endgame? You've lived a long and fulfilling life, and you're happy spending the rest of your days bound forever to a train? You've seen everything you wanted to see, had a family and children, and this is your idea of a happy retirement?"

Breathless Dead

The gods are your guide.

This is not a metaphor. This is terrifyingly literal. No science or artifice of man can perceive the ever-shifting nature of Poseidon's void at the pace a ship at full burn moves through it.

The galaxy is ancient and even the dark spaces between stars are cluttered. Vast hulks, the amalgamated mass of thousands of wrecked starships caught and blown about by Poseidon's winds move through the stellar void like nightmare planets. Great leviathans, oceanic swarms and creatures that were long ago human fill these impossible ecosystems of the void. Ancient weapons, trading convoys, mega-architecture, or even whole planets have been hurled into the dark to drift amidst clouds of blue-green nebulae.

In ancient days, it was perceived that the universe faced the inevitable death of physics. Natural philosophers proposed the existence of entropy overwhelming a closed system, leading to the stars scattering and burning cold. Such a concern made its way all the way to the Imperial throne where even the leadership allowed themselves to doubt the power of Zeus. It was to be the last time.

Zeus cast forth her hand, and from the galactic core erupted forth a cataclysmic storm. The entire galaxy was blanketed in polychromatic nebulae dust, feeding and renewing the stars, blotting out the heavens, and creating a dark age that lasted five hundred years. Since then space has not been black, and only the most ancient poems refer to it as such. Space is red. Space is gold. Space is veridian and blue and white and lit with the fire of renewed suns. To look upon the void is to look upon the most magnificent vistas painted by a god who had refined sunsets to the finest art back on ancient Gaia and sought now to broaden her palette.

So, through this turbulent space, through the wreckage of humanity's many great and many fallen empires, the boundless works of the natural world, and the eruptions of new stars in the thickest parts of the great clouds of dust, ships dare to travel. They do so with books and charts indicating where the greatest known obstacles are - precious relics, charted by daring explorers and worth fortunes. But there are no scanners that can pierce the storms of dust and energy. There are no sensors that can pick out heat signatures from the flickering ignition-sparks of new stars. A captain who wishes to travel these depths, does their best to stick to a known, charted route no matter how circuitous, for every potential short cut is a potential graveyard. And even within those well known routes, new and terrible dangers can drift as a log falls across a road or a storm cuts short a sea voyage.

To survive these unpredictable dangers of the void then the only forewarning one might gain is through careful prayer and invocation of the gods. Every spacefaring society that tried to do without was rendered extinct and their debris now serves as hazards and reminders for those who do give proper sacrifice.

But even for the favoured the ride is bumpy. The invincible adamantine prows of voidships still clatter and ring with the impact of meteors. Occasionally there are mighty crashes as the arrowlike starships inadvertently ram a large meteor at relativistic speeds. The perfect miracle of materials science renders these sundering collisions merely extremely uncomfortable for those inside rather than the instant death that would be presented to the vessels of a lesser civilization enduring such an impact. In ancient days, ramming a ship at hyperspeed was a dramatic and jaw-dropping gesture. These days it is a trivial reality of astral navigation, no more meaningful than hitting a pothole in the road.

*

Redana!

Though hitting a major asteroid at lightspeed is a mere inconvenience, it is nonetheless an inconvenience. The Plousios has been forced to a halt for some emergency repairs to the prow in the wake of a particularly nasty impact. Coming to a halt in the void of space is a perilous thing, far more dangerous than performing repairs in the relative safety of a charted sun and planet's orbit. There are things alive out here, after all, and the longer you wait the greater the chance that you are rendered into permanent biomass for the ecosystem.

So these repairs are a rush job - but it's still a rush job measured in days. Iskarot the Hermetician is working alongside you and while his initial impression of you was a combination of his natural irritablism mixed with a genuine fear and respect for your Imperial title, the ice has broken a bit as you've worked side by side. And oh, hasn't it been good to spend your days in demanding physical labour? Pain of your injured leg notwithstanding, there's been more than enough work to blot out any other kinds of pain that you might otherwise focus on.

But now you're sitting together on an observation deck after a long morning's work, opening up a packed lunch cooked by Dolce, staring out at the slow-motion collision of two massive dust storms, swirling together the red and white like capillary veins of blood spreading out over a white canvas.

"So, Your Imperial Majesty..." the Hermetician said, tearing the wrapper off his sandwich. "The Plousios. She's in need of fundamental repair and overhaul, far more than this patch work we're doing right now. I suspect the ship spent a considerable amount of time underwater. Of the twenty decks, the bottom eleven are flooded - everything below the hull breach on deck twelve. The waterline is above the reactor, which is a problem because if the water reaches it the steam will flash-boil everyone working in the engine room. I currently have the situation stabilized by angling the grav-plates on decks ten-eleven towards the fore, but that means they can get jostled by direct impacts. I could try to drain it but I suspect that there is a functioning biosphere down there, and we could face a shipwide infestation of angry, hungry migratory giant enemy crabs who are sent looking for a new food source. I have developed a list of other major concerns that need attention, but I can't even begin to assess the damage, inventory our resources, or propose solutions until we've dealt with all of this sea water one way or another."

*

Vasilia and Dolce!

Music is filling the dining hall.

Galnius sits atop a table, plucking at a guitar with soft, mournful notes. The rest of their squad surrounds them, their own instruments set up - accordion, drums, violin, flute - but right now not playing. They're listening as their leader, helmet off to reveal a cascade of sandy, elfin hair that brackets their face as they sing in time with the soft music.

"I came begging to the Ferryman,
For I had no coins to spare.
I'd said spent it first on clothes and dice and whoring,
And last on drink and morphine.

I offered him my dreams in lien,
For wonder'ous memories I had aplenty
I told him first of kings and war and glory
And last of those who'd gone on ahead

I offered him my heart and love
For lovers I had too many
I sang him first of flesh and warmth and kisses
And last of children I'd never known

I came begging to the Ferryman,
For I'd gone to death a pauper.
He smiled and said that I was not the first
But he offered me a kindness at the last.

You come to me with naught but soldier's memories,
Drink from Lethe and you will at last be free."

*

Alexa!

"My gosh! Princess Redana!" said the Assistant Secretary of Fear and Doubt, squishing his tentacles together in delight. "Daughter of Director Nero, you say! She's not quite at the top of the list, but she's easily in the top three things the Eater of Worlds was afraid of. And she procreated! Oh my goodness, I can feel chills running right down my body. I should be taking notes! The most intelligent creature in the galaxy had a child - tell me more about her! What has she invented? What is she thinking about inventing? What kind of thing bothers her?"

The auguries are dark. They're confusing. You've been doing many of the navigation rituals for this journey - what form and method do you use to divine the will of the gods, Alexa? - and the signs of Ares and Athena are overwhelmingly dominant, but also confused and intermixed.

You know already that you're going to your home. The planet Barassidar, the Old Capital, the seat of the Warsage, bloody-handed Emperor Molech who sought to organize all of war according to one great and perfect design.

And distracting you from contemplating your impending doom is this wildly talkative octopus bureaucrat wearing a tricorn hat and flowing robe.

*

Bella!

The Anemoi is making incredible time. The Augurs say that Aphrodite has been uncharacteristically clear in his directions, and they believe that you are likely to arrive before Redana.

It doesn't feel like it. It feels like forever. Whenever the ship is starting to feel silent and still there's a tremble or grinding crash against the hull. The serfs who make their shuffling way through the dark, lightless, soundless rubbery interiors of the vessel are infuriatingly immune to these tremors and shakes - but they are satisfyingly spooked about running into you. The sight of the Praetor suddenly looming into the dim light of their candles always provokes a jump, a yelp, and a craven bow. One of life's few remaining pleasures.

The other major population aboard the ship are the terrifying owl soldiers, the Kaeri. The Kaeri are vicious, secretive and proud - you know that they consider themselves rivals to the Ceronians for the title of greatest soldiers of the Empire, and they've got a chip on their shoulder about it. Captain Lorventi in particular you remember from a feast where she clawed one of Odoacer's noble puppets half to death for insulting the Empress - a trait the Empress found commendable, but politically inconvenient. The other Kaeri call her the Redfeather, a title you gather has some context as a curse or indication of Ares' favour.

She's come calling.

"There is a human aboard this ship," she said, matte black armour moving fluidly about her body, glowing with a artificial orange light in the joints. The organic and the technological blend seamlessly in it - it's a relic, much like her foldable halberd. "Ivory Smile. Priest of Hades, defector from Odoacer. His presence," she clicked her beak, "complicates the chain of command, Praetor. Obviously my soldiers can be trusted, but I cannot be sure of the loyalty of the serfs," or you, "especially if threatened by an agent of a god. If you wish it I will dispose of him."

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

This is a date.

She'd fallen for it again. Again! People just kept asking her on totally innocent group adventures or team missions, or made some big show of suggesting checking something out together, but then whoops nobody else had shown up and the penny dropped that all of that elaborate setup had been for her benefit. All of this wasn't because he was a powerful divine figure, it was because he was trying to butter her up so she'd - er, give him a good fight. Principle was the same! Just another giant horse-headed androgynous skeezeball who thought they could win her over with their fancy chariot and the labours of the oppressed.

Well there was one thing she could do to absolutely ruin their day.

"Oh, thank goodness," she said, standing up abruptly without needing to be pulled. "At last, someone who wants a real fight without needing dinner and a backrub first." This was coming out with way more innuendo than she'd planned but with the date metaphor in her head it was hard to shake. It was easy to walk out without a second glance at Shamash - it was something to emote boredom and stifle nervousness at the same time.

She honestly had no idea what she was in for with Ereshkigal but she was hoping she'd at least get to the point. A spiteful part of her mind thought that if she got defeated by her instead then Shamash would have come down onto the planet for the first time in years, insulted to his face without retaliating, and stood up at dinner. And given that she knew a thing or two about really bad dates, she actually kind of thought that might sit with him longer than if she'd just kicked his ass.

[Provoke: 10. I want Shamash to stew in friendzoned frustration until they snap and goes after Ereshkigal to prove that they're the real top villain here]

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

While Tatters and Stevje are focusing more on the fae side of Britain, I'm going to be focusing more on the Church side of things. Here are some things I am thinking:

- I am going to borrow the Dark Age thing of referring to the messiah figure as Bloodless Xristos. This is because I am not at all skilled at or entirely comfortable with using actual biblical references. This also sets me in a comfortable space where I can confidently make stuff up without worrying if I've gotten 5th century religious doctrine wrong.
- Further, this is fifth century religious doctrine. It's extremely focused on mysticism, sorcery, pilgrimages, and esoterica. There is no line between religion, science, magic and medicine, and there has not been the hammering out of doctrine in church councils. Xristia is extremely freeform and heresy hasn't been invented yet. Wizards will seek out the church because they reason it will make their spells better. A doctor might go on a pilgrimage to learn how to cast a spell to relieve pain.
- Accordingly, Felii knows how to do exorcisms, break curses, and do cast some spells of her own. She personally has no idea what the origin of her magic is, it's a freeform mix between wizardry, prayer, and faerie bargaining based on the situation.
- Felii is very unusual for her study of magic while serving as a Knight. It's a family tradition dating back to her ancestor, the Paladin of the Threshold, who defended the Emperor against arcane threats. Her family is kind of Belmont-esque in that they've accumulated a very significant store of mystical knowledge over the generations. But, being based in Constantinople, they haven't had much opportunity to actually fight monsters recently, meaning her sisters have mostly slipped towards being more standard knights. Felii took a particular interest in magic as a seventh daughter, which gave her a natural knack for the Art.
- Juliet the Apostate is the current empress. She is attempting to syncretize the faith with the Egyptian pantheon. The Egyptian view of the afterlife is a massive cultural influence on the Church, much more so than the Greek.

Fellowship: The Heart

"A -" Ailee suddenly stops. "You're serious. This isn't an ego thing. You're actually -"

Her fingers tap rapidly against her forearm as she contemplates, eyes up and to the right.

"I assumed that this was just a thing you owned," she said. "But there's more to it than that. Why are you heading to the Heart, Coleman?"

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

The gulf of time between her actions and their consequences is having a confusing effect on Canada's mindset. Her heart had been pounding in terror, her hands had been shaking with adrenaline, her body had been soaked with sweat. She had been ready to fight. She had been ready to be broken. And it just kept not happening. This day just kept going. The tension kept building but she couldn't get any tenser so was, perversely, relaxing instead.

Was this the plan? To have her twitch and sweat herself out before the fight?

... did they need to have a plan like that?

She stopped paying attention to the pagentry and started to focus on her opponent, this god. Were they smiling? Were they actually having fun? Had they really broken their habit of years to come down to this planet to laugh and watch people kneel before them? Was this their best life, right here?

Was there anything below the surface at all?

[Pierce the Mask: 11. Is he actually enjoying all of this?]

Breathless Dead

This is the realm of Ares and you are not welcome here.

*

In the Plousios above, Hermetician Iskarot mans the cannons. Tripod legs clatter up and down the deck as he hauls shells to the archaic cannons, placing them in batches into the autoloader, jamming the firing mechanism to full, and letting Ares put the shells where he wills. The ship is drifting out of control towards the Anemoi.

It is the responsibility of the enemy captain to evade - or of Lord Ares to guide the coming wreck to the house of Hades.

*

The toxic clouds drift down from the starships above, the after-effects of weapons that should never be fired in atmosphere. Miasma for blinding the eyes of a fleet has a wretched effect on unprepared organic life. Lungs strain to filter the chemicals, rifling through the gaseous sludge for fragments of oxygen. Some slam doors shut and seal themselves inside, some dive beneath the waves and frantically mutate gills, some bury themselves beneath rubble and enter a state of suspended animation, slowing their heartbeats and circulation to zero. And amidst these thickening storm clouds flashes massive lightning-strikes of shipborne ELF weaponry, illuminating the massive shapes of the starships like angry gods. Between the walls that burn a crimson agony with the fury of the Armada and the chemical abomination of solid projectile weaponry, the interior of the Eater of Worlds has become at last what it was originally suspected of being: a vision of Tartarus.

Only two cats are mad enough to fly shuttles through this storm, blind but for when a lightning bolt the width of one's entire shuttle burns through the smoke.

*

Merely being aboard a shuttle didn't strike Princess Epistia as a reason to put down Princess Redana. The Imperial Princess was hoisted over the Ceronian Princess' good shoulder as though she weighed nothing. When she wasn't put down during the confused crash-landing on the Plousios' hangar deck, or after stepping out onto the unfamiliar starship, it had started to sink in that maybe to Epistia, Redana did weigh nothing. After all, Redana had plenty of time and proximity to examine those steel-cable muscles - and plenty of time and experimentation to confirm there was no way to struggle free or coherently get a sentence out while being held upside down, speaking into someone's back, while they were maintaining a powerful sprint.

A foreign ship was a maze, but Epistia was a Ceronian, and boarding starships was wired into their genetics. She was drawn towards the bridge as irresistibly as a wolf hunting a stag and raced ahead of Alexa and Vasilia. She crashed in through the door with a scythe in one hand and Redana in the other.

Only once she had processed the fact that it was empty was she able to find the coherency to awkwardly put Redana down.

*

The Eater of Worlds was beset, but its beak was thick enough to endure the molten furnace of a planet's core. It was scorched and burned by the Armada but they would need more time than they had to pierce it - amidst the storm of Poseidon crashing Imperial ships together, and the whispers of mutiny and treason, the attack could not be sustained. The Admiral was forced to watch as the Leviathan's corpse hurled away into the void, the cold gears of her mind already bent to the purpose of catching up with it.

*

The Anemoi was not a ghost ship like the Plousios. It was filled with a full compliment of servitors who did not yet know they needed to get out of the way of the Praetor who ruled them. With her soaked, filthy dress, the owl-like guards did not even recognize her or permit her access to the bridge where Captain Lorventi gave command. Crucial seconds, minutes wasted at the tip of disrespectful avine speartips. Crucial minutes while Lorventi gave the order to evade, moving the Anemoi out of the path of the onrushing Plousios. By the time she finally made it onto the bridge it would be just in time to see Redana's ship accelerating out towards the open void, once again sailing into that rainbow storm.

It would be a rough voyage ahead.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Robena Coilleghille
The War Champion, returned pilgrim from distant Jerusalem

Accomplished
Held in honor and acclaim
Never forgetful of my mortality.

Dark forests breed strong knights.

Much has changed in the Bear Knight's absence. The land has rotted, the king is mad, and evil taints the hearts of once gracious knights. This is not the home remembered by the slender squire girl setting off on her first adventure.

Much has changed on the journey too. No longer do you see a tall, lanky willow-branch of a girl drowning in her tangled bearskin cloak. Now there stands before you a giant of a warrior with lance and axe and armour and the scars where armour fails. She has lost her skittish English mare, replaced with a huge and cold-blooded draft horse. She has lost her nervous stutter and wide-eyed curiosity, replaced with an austere economy of word and deed. She has lost the lady she was sworn to serve, and all of her brash and unseemly influences - replaced with a heartache and powerful sense of purpose. Her coin purse is empty, her traveling companions are lost, and too many innocences have been left behind.

Many of these things you will know. Songs speed ahead of her and her constant delays, for never has she let a bandit or beast or blackguard pass her by. It has been a long road home, the kind of tale that makes girls dream of the Holy Land and the legend the journey will make of them.

But even still she does not have the manner of one who has returned home. There is still more to do.

My household and lands are in disarray. Once I held a place of honour in the household of Lady Alitel Sandsfern. As a squire chosen from the common folk for strength and courage, I was to serve as knight and bodyguard to the young countess. Once these lands had great orchards, meadows and pastures, forests and timber, enormous wealth and a fortified citadel overlooking a fast-flowing river. Now the tower is a scorched ruin, stone melted and fused, the woods are wild and overgrown, and the population has fled.

My arms and armour befit a questing knight. Helm, mail, lance, and great woodsman's axe - all as befit my rank, all worn from use. A bow and arrow are fitted for hunting small game, and come with a hunter's patience. A jeweled dagger is all that indicates I ever sat close to wealth, though it has since tasted both bread and blood. My bearskin cloak covers me, and to this day more than a dozen daggers and arrows are stuck within its tangled thickness. My warhorse moves with a ponderousness that has once seen a priest attempt to exorcise from him the demon of sloth - though watch your apples closely for he can strike like an adder when properly motivated.

My heraldry was once forest green and ivory white in checker patterns, though the road has rendered them black-grey and weathered cream. My crest is that of a great Irish-haired bear. I wear a tabard and a pale space on my index finger where a ring was once exchanged for coin. In one of my many packs I carry two formal dresses; one in the style of the Byzantines, and a much less modest one in the style of the Persians. I wear raking scars across my face, shoulders and chest from some ferocious animal. My left hand's scars suggest burns. No scars mark my back.

My countenance is shaped by the wilderness. Stone green eyes soften and heavy hands become gentle as they watch the wind and reach for a flute that they might sing to it in turn. On the soft grass of the hills, in the shadow of ancient trees, wild hair flowing with the breeze, I seem to fit in the world perfectly. Such harmony is difficult to find in the world of men. There I must duck my head when going through doorways, I must sacrifice many good combs to bring my raven hair to terms, I must bow far more deeply than my peers to bring my head lower than my sovereign, and I must remember that things are perhaps more fragile than I would like them to be.

My name is Robena Coilleghille, though once (and perhaps still) I dreamed of taking another's.

Bold +1
Good 0
Strong +2
Wary +1
Weird -1

With my full panoply of battle, I have 4 harm and 4 armour.

I have the right to be known by reputation. When I meet someone who should know of me, roll +Strong. On a 10+ they have heard of me, and I declare what they have heard. On a 7-9, they know simply to admire or fear me. On a 6-, I yet again curse the name of the bard Yomdaeler who decided to use my name to revitalize her failing career.

I have the right to own an enchanted item. The monstrous, scarred questing-bear I fought had a hide that could not be pierced by any weapon - I slew it unarmed. Its fur now provides +1 armour and immunity to any surprise attacks.

In single combat, I have the right to spend 1 more than my roll would allow. No mysterious skill empowers me; I am simply larger and stronger than the majority of those I encounter.

I have the right to own a trained warhorse and own a kite shield. My current horse is named Apricot. I wish I had the good sense to take some apricot seeds back to England with me. Fool.

I will live to be one hundred.

Experiences:

Fellowship: The Heart

"Pfft, listen to you, you sound like I just stole your girlfriend," said Ailee. She leans down and boops Coleman right on the nose with a smirk like the devil. "Well, if I did, I promise you I would have showed her a real good time. Very gentle. Very tender."