Thanqol

Sunshards

It takes a great many colours to make the western sky seem so colourless. The sky itself must be an indigo blue, so deep and absorbing that the only way to make it any darker would be to fill it with stars. The clouds must be a grey so mighty and dominating and varied that to look upon them is to feel the promised rainfall lash in imaginary waves across your skin. The mountains of the north must be the pitch black shadows they cast, the outlines of trees breaking up their jagged features, cloaked in a nondescript violet that matches perfectly with the rolling hills of the south. The moon must gleam in silver, haloed at its edges with an invisible light that renders the void of its shadow at the centre of a spotlight. Such painstaking attention to the sombre palette of twilight was a necessity. The splendour of the sunset in the west was rendered all the more magnificent because of how utterly it transcended the miracles of the east.

A cool summer's evening breeze ripples across the tall grass, the increasingly steady breath of evening. Carried in its lips are three red oak leaves, the first whisper of autumn. The distant hills are lit with gemstone lights, and here and there those light ascend directly upwards, the columns of red dots rising into the sky that speak the shape of the space elevators. The glass wreckage of broken suns form a ladder of refracted colours that descends all the way into the molten orange furnace of the east, passing behind veils of crimson red clouds in storm-rent patterns. Below the Terraced Lake reflected the colours of the sky in three levels, outline hazing with the patterns of waterfall.

The lights and leaves are tiny fragments against the scene itself, and yet they are transformative. They take this glorious act of cosmic beauty and render it a backdrop. They take all of these colours and lights and transform them into a blessing. They render the dance of mathematics and celestial mechanics a treasure to be appreciated by every weary farmer and yawning artist and pensive princess.

Princess Chen has been atop this hill for an hour now before her phone buzzes. A brief interruption that despite ending the moment of meditation does not feel like it has broken the otherworldly liminality of the moment

Qiu: hey
Qiu: nice evening
Qiu: you seeing this?

*

Daily Affirmation of the Way <3: "A masked king stood upon a beach and demanded the grains of sand tell him which of them was in charge."

The twilight breeze brings flames.

You are no stranger to fires at darkness. Though you are now the Rose from the River, though you are now centered utterly in the guidance of the Way, you once wore this aspect. Once you stood passionate and brilliant and inspired and all of the midnight electricity of the underground ran through you, and you ran through it. Once you burned in the knowledge of financial databases and viewership patterns and social network connections and the howling of cooling turbines was required to chill your pounding blood. Once you were a demon princess in your own way. No longer. Now you are devoted.

The Pyre of Inspiration has no such centre. She burns with all the glory of the darkening skies, all the fierceness of summer's night-time heat, all the direction of the wildfire. Purpose has been placed within her by the magic of Princess Qiu and she grasps for it like a masked king grasps for a peasant's wallet. Pity her.

She has come in the carnival of herself, the roaming celebration comprised of her joyous and bounding sub-souls; the broken aspects of her personality, vices so vast and craving that they could not be contained within a single body and soul. She sits on the throne wearing a mask of woven wire, red and blue and violet, as spiral-headed dancers cavort around her like halos of hypnotism. Three great sub-aspects lie at her knees, wearing as much fabric upon their faces as they do upon the rest of their bodies. You see here the Scales of Meaning, a naga with flowing white hair that turns into flowing white scales, horned head perfectly level as scales hang from each of her horns. The Secrets of the Stance is second, aspect of conflict, muzzled and trussed, still scratching pointlessly against her bonds that she might reach the blade that awaits her inches away. Finally the Voice of Ballet hangs upside-down by her ankles as spiral dancers sponge and wash and polish her gleaming crystal feet that already shine brighter than diamonds. Protestations cannot escape her gagged mouth and so she lets her fury be known with lashes of her tufted lion's tail.

Such is the Pyre; both ruler and landscape. She is each of these, and each of the dozens of demons that follow in train. She herself is as beyond mortal conversation as a mountain, her role is to rule and to laugh and to indulge endlessly as befits the great sovereign of Hell. And yet work must be done, and so it is to be done by her aspects - with a cry of mirth she plucks the gag from the mouth of the Scales of Meaning, breaks her chains with a flex of her slender wrists, and kicks her unceremoniously from the mobile throne dais. The Scales of Meaning lands in the mud and is trampled upon by two dozen laughing demons as they pass, many of whom take the time to ensure that they stomp upon her throat or back or tail and wipe their feet in her silver hair. When the demonic carnival has moved on and the Scales picks her disheveled, elegant form out of the mud transcendent fury and shattered longing burns in her eyes bright enough to see by. She will fulfill her task that she might return to her rightful place at her own feet and renew her hated humiliation.

And you, Rose from the River, watch in darkness. If there ever was a perversion of the Way, according to those fellow monks who do not regard you as a perversion of the Way, it is the Pyre of Inspiration. Her carnival has been sweeping the Terraced Lake hunting for a girl seen only in the sketches of wanted posters, and the Scales of Meaning is the leader of this hunt. Your goal in all of this has yet to be revealed to you by the Way. Is it to rescue the hunted girl? Is it to defeat the Pyre of Inspiration in glorious battle, one against one-that-is-an-army? Is it to hang upside-down from the dais as the Scales of Meaning weighs your heart and determines if you are to take the place of the Pyre of Inspiration as great ruler of hell?

What is certain is that you will find answers within the dances of the Demon of Knowledge.

*

It seemed like a joke. Your face on a wanted poster, Yue? Perhaps your sister had been behind it. What was definitely a joke was the reward - a dance with Princess Qiu the Threeshard Sovereign, or equivalent, for whoever brings you in. As though you would be worth so much as a wink from her! An easy enough thing to laugh off, and easy enough to assume the uncomfortable number of the posters around the market was simply tasteless over-commitment to a joke. Biao Biao the woodswoman definitely seemed to think so, roaring with laughter and slapping you on the back and asking what crimes against the throne you'd gotten yourself into this time.

It had been a happy day, and a happy walk home. The sunset was too beautiful to care about the lateness of the hour or the deepening shadows. Right up until you saw something in them.

Rivers, for all their beauty and value, were ever things of peril and fairy-tale warning. One walks with one's wagon in between them and the water so that no grasping demons might pull you below. A silly warning, a silly habit, but it saved you - demon soldiers with spiral faces erupted from the depths and surged to catch you, and only the barrier of that heavy wagon bought you enough time to let out your scream and run. Over the darkening hills you ran, silhouetted against the setting sun, the pounding of wet and evil feet slapping behind you as froglike creatures pursued. You ran and you ran to the sound of demonic burbling and a fearfully yipping fox to accompany you, all the way back to your home where you dived inside, slammed the door and drew the curtains.

And then, as your heart still pounded, you noticed someone sitting in your grandmother's chair.

Silver haired, silver smiled, silver eared, silver tailed, leather of brown and black, eyes of red and hunger. For a moment it seemed like you had fallen into the arms of something even more terrifying than the demons outside. She stood in a smooth motion and stepped forwards, and again as you stepped back into a wall. She put one hand beside your head and leaned down a little so her eyes rather than her fangs were level with your face. "Don't worry, little dove," said the wolf, "My name is Hyra, and I have been sent by my princess to keep you safe."

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Ghosts are the worst, scariest monsters one could possibly fight and it wasn't particularly close.

A vampire was a thing entirely of the physical. Dead flesh given false life, yes, but though they would drink your blood and animate your desiccated husk in their service, they generally had no truck with one's immortal soul. The fae, as wild and terrible as they were, have usually been around for thousands of years and so people usually have a fair idea of how to manage their tempers and slake their thirsts. Century Wolves and hippopotami and manticores were mere beasts despite all their magic powers. An Azmych might tie a road into knots and crack the skulls of travellers lead astray, or the Karakoncolos would lash you for your sins, or the the cross-road deviless would... even all of these devils at least interacted with knowable patterns of virtue, vice and the divine.

But a ghost? No law bound a ghost other than the madness of man. A ghost might seek vengeance or eternal cruelty. A ghost might be bound by forgetfulness or grief. A ghost might possess a doll or tempt maidens down a well. A ghost might arise in the fields under the radiant sun or flow through the blood of its children like a toxin. A ghost might teleport, or it might whisper, or it might curse crops, or it might howl with the wind, or it might transform the world into a waking nightmare, or it might crush the unwary under fallen rooftops, or it might imprison its victim forever inside a painting. Only a fool would not be afraid of no ghost.

There are methods, true, but these are less about finding commonality amongst ghosts, who are as varied as the mad, and more about finding aspects of the natural world that interact with them. Dogs, for instance, can see ghosts - and this trait explained a great deal of the behaviour and eccentricities of dogs. A well trained hound was invaluable in exorcism work. There was also the exorcism itself, the recital of which was one of the greatest strengths of the priests of Bloodless Xristos. There were those who possessed close personal connections to the ghosts in question and could divine the methods and messages amidst the madness. There were northern mystics who knew warding runes, and Persian clergy with their sacred fires.

Robena possessed none of these. Her method for dealing with ghosts has historically been absolute terror, blind fumbling, and outrageous luck. This strategy has met with far more success than its components merited, and tales of its success have been further punched-up by Yomdaeler who bragged that even the immortal dead would know her legend. Alas.

[My right to be known by reputation extends to even the dead. Alas, a two.]

Breathless Dead

Alexa!

"It is natural that the Heir sees our lives as worthless," said Captain Lorventi. "Our entire species lives and dies at her whim. You are bound to her, and she will use you as a blade to spill our blood. We are humbly grateful she did not send a legion."

She seems perversely satisfied with this. The prospect of a pointless death seems to fill her with a strange serenity, and her feathers flick and rustle as she sinks into a predatory crouch.

Another trick. She launches straight up in a burst of feathers, and as she does her halberd drags the floor up in molten lines to splash and burn you with superheated stone.

Hider

Captain Lorventi
A Kaeri Bloodfeather can turn a duel into a murder.
Frenzy: When this stat is damaged, or the Bloodfeather is Taken Out violently, she may damage three stats.
Still Useful: The Kaeri will drag their champion back from the brink of death if at all possible.

Behind her, you can see the Nemean surge towards you like an avalanche, but Lorventi does not see. She has begun her death dance, and your challenge becomes to prevent her from dragging you both down with her.

Vasilia!

Zeus gives you a look. This isn't a look of reproach or disappointment. This is the face of someone who's having to tell a truth so brutal she's honestly surprised you didn't already know.

"It's that nobody likes you, Vas," said Zeus. "It's that you've got no friends. You think it was a coincidence only you two made it aboard the Plousios? It's not. Your crew fell behind on purpose."

She leans back, flexing her fingers, and the muscles that show through the sheeting gaps in that indigo-black silk could lift mountains. "I have strength, Vasilia," she said. "If all of my kin, all of my divine family, gathered all the physical mass under their respective domains and hurled it all along with themselves into the black holes at the heart of the galaxy, even their combined gravitation would be no obstacle to me. I could reach into those absolute depths and tear forth a new cosmos should I wish it. I could reign forever as a lonesome cosmic tyrant. That is strength, but it is nothing compared to the power that binds them to me in joyous servitude."

Dolce!

"With Hermes, naturally," said Hades, never letting his attention fall from the game for a moment. There's an obsession there, a focus on each hand and each play, a craving and desire that renders this conversation almost an afterthought for the God of the Dead. "Ordinarily it would be her duty to bear this message from me, but she is," his lip twitched, "busy. So each year I come before her to demand she fulfill her function and instead she bets on a group of mortals being able to make the trip on her behalf. She is playing for time, of course, but she has masterfully raised the stakes year after year."

Clubs drip from ivory fingers in mismatched sequence.

"I am intrigued about what she will offer next year," he murmured. "How much room does she have left to move? It can't be much now."

Fellowship: The Heart

There was opportunity in this.

"Not I, lord," she said. "There is another here who calls upon your power..."

This was oh-so-perilous. To bother a king with the politics of slaves risked his ire falling upon the entire region indiscriminately. She needed to capture a very narrow band of interest - enough to raise his curiosity but not so much that he'd feel inclined to investigate himself. Academia didn't prepare her for this. Intelligence couldn't help her with this. No matter how much she'd studied, no matter how much she'd prepared, no matter how glorious she might think herself this was still begging and supplication.

So begging and supplication she gave. She bent her knees and kissed those talons and felt death beneath her lips. "Our destinies tangled, our scents mixed. Two slaves stand on the same rung. Allow me to cast him down. Send me to make him bow, to make him kiss my feet as I kiss yours. Let me wring my words from his throat so your slaves might speak your holy Words with one voice."

[Talk Sense: 13]

Sunshards

“To train with the sword, first master sweeping.

When you have mastered sweeping, you must master the way of drawing water. Once you have learned how to draw water, you must split wood. Once you have split wood, you must learn the arts of finding the fine herbs in the forest, the arts of writing, the arts of paper making, and poetry writing. You must become familiar with the awl and the pen in equal measure. When you have mastered all these things you must master building a house.

Once your house is built, you have no further need for a sword, since it is an ugly piece of metal and its adherents idiots.”

– Meti’s Sword Manual

Sunshards
A game of Thirsty Sword Lesbians

Once upon a time there were ten suns. That is too many suns.

The sky burned with their combined heat. The land scorched and blackened. The people fled down, down, down. Bunkers became cities. Cities became empires. Empires became nightmares. Always down they dug, day by day marching further from the suns, day by day slaving to build a kingdom to rival hell. With masks of power and terrible new forms of organization, with harnessed magic and enslaved machines, every atom was accounted for. Every puff of chlorine gas, every happy habit, every ancient spell was catalogued, weighed, marked, and assigned a price tag. An inverted pyramid formed in the depths and all the slime flowed towards the pit.

And then one day a princess decided that this had gone on too long. She ascended into the sky and with her bow slew nine of the ten suns, one after another. They fell from the sky and shattered upon the earth and the heavens were for the first time in many ages clear.

The planet erupted. The hunger of the pit was at last unleashed and it sought to flee into the stars. Great silver elevators to the sky were built, a web of orbital shipyards arose one after another amidst the shattered wreckage of the suns, and without a second's hesitation the wealthy launched themselves into the void. For a long moment the planet breathed out all the poison that had grown within it.

And then, when only those too poor or too damned or too compassionate were left, the rains came.

The planet erupted back into life. The rainforests bloomed and exploded. Trees and grasses dormant for ages burst into life. The mountains came to be covered with flowers and the air became cool and soft. After an age of greed and hate and scarcity, civilization found itself in a state of abundance.

And then, the greatest treasures of all. Nine girls found the nine hearts of the nine slain suns. Within them they found magic limitless, enough to alter the world around them to match their dreams. These were the first Sunshard Princesses and their wars were dances.

Axiom: War is dance

When two princesses stand upon the field it is not to kill or injure. When a sword is drawn it will not taste blood. Battles are waged for hearts - the hearts of onlookers, the hearts of your foes, one's own confused and conflicted feelings. The greatest warriors are the ones who can break the hearts of others. Defeats are humiliations and imprisonments, victories are celebrations and vindications.

Axiom: The past is buried

All the wickedness of the ancient days still exists below the surface. Great abandoned cities of machinery, terrible and toxic systems of commodification and slavery, sick and deranged artificial intelligences. Some treat with these creatures and relics. Some find strength there amidst these demons of forgotten ages. Abandoned and inert, it will not strike out on its own - instead it waits with bargains ready to embrace those who have been driven to despair.

Axiom: The world is renewed

All things are young. The natural environment is flourishing, science and technology and magic are freed from ancient restraints, music and art and culture are flowing in rivers. The world is being re-invented moment by moment and there are no ancient masters or legendary traditions. Plants and animals find new expression with each day, sorcerers push the frontiers of magic, and the internet exists as a new, quiet, exploratory technology of basic communication methods. Nobody has all the answers, no precedent has stood for long, and more miracles are born with every passing moment.

Breathless Dead

Alexa!

There is much that has surprised you today. The Kaeri are, blessedly, not amongst their number.

You recognize their formation, liquid and continuous in secret prayer to Ares and the fear that shatters armies. You realize the futility of striking out against it. You set your back to the wall and hold your spears and now you are a mountain before the wind - two unassailable forces, united and apart. The Kaeri consider their options. They consider gas and grenade and confusion and darkness. They consider all the techniques by which one can be rendered weak, all of the air's subtle poisons, all of the lashings by which they might shatter stone. You see their motions and contemplations as clearly as if they were asking you out loud. These are not exchanges, they're tests in the language of war.

But they are weaker than you. They need to prove themselves. And instead of hunting in their true way, seeking out your weaknesses over the hours or days that may require - if they found them at all - instead they send forth their champion.

A Kaeri Bloodfeather. This secret too you know. The ideal of the Kaeri is stealth and subtlety, the ideal Kaeri leader is one who manipulates from the shadows. To stand plain and open is a curse, a vulnerability, a trial borne by those too brutal to wield the dagger. A pitiable figure. There is no doubt they see Bella the same way.

There is low cunning in that stance, the way that gleaming crimson-orange halberd hovers low above the ground, the fusion-heat of its miraculous cutting edge causing the stone to sizzle and hiss. There is precision whirring in the joints of that sleek, matte-black divine armour. This is not a true warrior you face, it is an assassination via single combat. She is not dangerous because she might win, she is dangerous that you might both die here.

"I am Captain Lorventi, lord of the Anemoi, bound in service to Imperator Nero," and here you must be careful for the speech too is part of the assassination. Blink your eyes in reverence to the name of the Empress and you'll never open them again. "The Throne calls its wayward children home. Submit."

Vasilia!

"Ah, little lioness, don't think I don't hear you telling me off!" laughed Zeus, as bright as noon-time, her hair and eyes and laugh and dress crashing from indigo to radiant blue. "You're trying to be mad at me, just like my big brother Hades is. But I'll tell you the same thing I always tell him: I'm always right, you're just mad because you haven't got around to admitting it yet."

She pinches your cheek affectionately, like a little sister playing at parenthood. "You're so cute, thinking you're above all this. You think you're above bombast, above showmanship, above pride! Isn't that the way of things? When children like you think you're smarter than your old lady you become gothic edgelords like Hades there, like dressing in dark colours and thinking badly about space dad is some deep truth about the cosmos you're clever for having figured out! But just like Hades, you're wrong about everything because the future is bright! It always is! And I see that underneath all those scowls you have the strength to overcome your curse, don't you see if you don't!"

Dolce!

What surprises you is how often and readily Hades loses. Not tragically bad, but you win two thirds of hands that the two of you play. For all the stories of the hubris of challenging death to cards or chess or checkers, the God of the Dead seems to trust to luck and his luck is often poor. He does not bemoan or curse his misfortune either, but each hand of cards causes increasing intensity to burn in those neutron star eyes,

"Against," he said quietly. "You are the two hundred and fiftieth crew I have sent on this errand," that number is not random - it is the two hundred and fiftieth reign of Empress Nero, two hundred and fifty years since this planet burned in the fires of the great war. "And you have nothing to set you apart from any of the others. This is not the first princess I have called on, nor the first captain, nor the first legendary warrior, nor... the first chef," his mouth twitched enigmatically. "In each case the crews are consumed by their own nature. Strengths and weaknesses are the same thing, you see. When the stars change then arete becomes hubris, compassion becomes indecision, valour becomes idiocy. There is not a being in this galaxy who can cross Aphrodite's scar, and yet I throw soul after soul into the depths of the river for no sane end. My strengths, too, are my weaknesses."

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

English castles are so calming. She has seen the Theodosian Walls, she has seen the walls of Jerusalem, she has seen the hill forts of the Anatolian Themes. Fortifications built by empires, designed by eastern architects and maintained in heightened states of readiness. She has seen grander defensive works, to be sure, but they never felt like castles. A castle is a home, a place of residence and filled with personal touches and family traditions. Castles are lived in, not simply maintained by a revolving arsenal of soldiers. This castle may have ghosts? All castles should have ghosts.

Nevertheless, her experience in wandering the lands of the Balkans has informed her that a great many castles do, in fact, have ghosts. So her axe is hefted over her shoulder with one hand and her crucifix is held in the other - not many hands left for acquiring lost cats. Thus she relies on Constance.

"Ho there, lady Cath," she said, rearranging her gear in her hands so she could provide Constance with a treat. "You must be a huntress beyond compare, or have a truly devoted human. Come hither that we might return you to your slave."

Fellowship: The Heart

As you said, there are laws. The price a dragon pays for having treasures is that they must be treasured. If a dragon is unprepared to destroy a kingdom over a single stolen cup then the cup is worthless and so is the dragon. Likewise, in accepting one's place as in the hoard one becomes a treasure to be defended and admired. It is not that the treasure commands the dragon, but that the treasure would be worthless if it had no power.

"Master," said Ailee in a voice she hoped was more than a squeak. "What do you seek here?"

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

"As the lady declares," said Robena, "so shall it be."

Then, without once putting Constance back on the ground, Robena steps into her stirrup and with the trained skill of a knight who knows how to leap into the saddle while carrying sword and shield both. She lifts Constance up alongside with her into the saddle in a heroic motion and, still cradling the lady in her arms, touches her heels to Apricot's flanks. "Haste!" she cried. "A cat awaits!"

And they gallop away towards the sunset.

Breathless Dead

Vasilia!

Guards lower. The guards of the gods, the guards of the hoplites, the guard of the princess, the guard of the Emperor. There is plenty, and Zeus has declared that there is to be peace. And so, here in the machine hell at the heart of Baradissar, there is peace.

In this moment, beneath the auspices of the Thunderer delighted, opportunity comes. As food fades away, and as Dionysus weaves their magic over the cups with gleaming fingers, tongues loosen and secrets start to slip. Vasilia, you may ask one question of anyone present, and Dolce may ask another - as Heroes of the People you do not need to roll for this, simply ask and you shall learn.