Thanqol

Sunshards

Yue!

"Hm? A sword?" Princess Yin leans forwards in the saddle, and for a moment that blinding light behind her head falls upon Yue like a spotlight. "You hold a sword in my presence, little dove?"

"Princess Yin!" hisses the darkling world, "Princess Yin! Win if you dare!"

Through the fear and the everything, you notice that somehow, somehow, Yin is moving cautiously. Somehow she's taking you, little Yue, and your wooden sword blade seriously. She's not laughing. She's not sneering. She's watching your stance and your motions even as you tremble with radiant black eyes, and oh, isn't that somehow worse than if she laughed? If she laughed at least she wouldn't expect anything from you, if she laughed the worst would be past and you could collapse freely. If she laughed you might have a chance to do something. But she's taking you seriously, acting as though you had hidden training and secret skill and might yet prove her undoing, and if Princess Yin is taking you so very deadly seriously then you're not even small enough to avoid her attention.

One hand hovers near the hilt of her own blade, the other raises to snap her fingers. "Take that from her."

There's a ripple in the air. And stillness. Hyra's hand has come down to wrap around your sword-hand and no further. She grips it but she is as much holding your grip shut as she is on the verge of snatching it from your fingers.

"Oh?" said Princess Yin, straightening in her saddle. "What is this?"

Hyra radiated violet energy, the power of the curse coming off her in waves. The grass is blackening beneath her feet, and here and there it rots away the leathers of her armour to reveal wolf fur growing underneath. Her hands are rippling with wicked strength and power even as they wrap around yours but they do not try to crush you. A low growl begins to build.

Princess Yin slips from the back of the stag and where her feet touch the ground the grass erupts back to life along with a cascading overgrowth of brilliant white flowers. She walks step by step towards you and Hyra even as the girl trembles and shakes against your back. "Do you see this, Yue?" said Princess Yin, shaking her head. "My trusting heart is betrayed yet again. After all the effort I went through to train her, after all the hard work I put in, after letting her know what a big responsibility being let off the leash was. After everything, this is the thanks I get."

Hyra's growling in your ear is wet and animal. Her arms are covered entirely in white fur. Her fingers are contorting into claws and the shape of her is changing against your back.

"I suppose she'll just have to spend a little while longer as a dog, because she obviously doesn't have the discipline needed to be a human," said Princess Yin, smiling with genuine enjoyment. Her free hand coils with radiant magic, the raw power of a Sunshard. "And as for you? Perhaps if you spend some time as a mouse you'll learn something when it comes to respecting a Princess."

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Robena's reputation marches before her like a herald. Much of it has to do with her most recent exploits, the returning pilgrim humbled and noble, fighting monsters and healing the wounded on her long road back from the holy city of Jerusalem. Over that journey she became quiet, wise, respectful, chivalrous. The holy city had indeed changed her and left behind a gentle giant.

But what a change it had been.

Things are different when you are invincible. When you are invincible death is your slave and all her works are glorious. When you stand upon the field of Champagne, clad in frail squire's armour, bloody axe held above your head as lady Death holds down three full knights at your feet, the feeling is such that you can only howl. When you are invincible you do not need traps, snares, or patience to hunt a gryphon - you instead charge it in the full light of day beneath an open sky so all can witness who it is Death favours. When you are invincible you can drink any poison and kiss any woman and the spectre of Death looms behind you and smiles at any who would raise objection at your conduct. When you are invincible you stand upon the threshold of the underworld like holy Paeter and with a gesture decide who goes in ahead of you.

Robena Coilleghille was not invincible. But for a while she had been able to borrow it from one who was.

Countess Alitel Sandsfern had always been invincible, but hers had been the immortality of fire rather than the might of blood as Robena's had been. Wild, untamed, unteachable for she knew all things already - that fire had grown so hot that it was judged that the only possible remedy would be the most holy site in the world. It was thought that only Bloodless Xristos himself might be able to calm that fire.

If he had tried, he had failed.

She lights up the room. Her red-orange hair flows in curling locks, lower than her shoulders and brighter than a forest fire. Deep crimson scales mark her neck and ungloved hands, armour beneath armour. A flick of eyes as alight and deadly as the Persian fire-god is enough to steal one's entire vocabulary, a simple standing motion upon taloned feet is enough to root one as surely as an oak, and a deadly smile is enough to stop one's heart.

"My... lady," Robena breathes as she gazes upon her sworn liege who she had thought lost to the curse of the crossroads.

A kiss from those lips would be enough to render her invincible again.

Breathless Dead

Redana and Alexa!

The flow of crabs has trickled to a halt, and what crustaceans have survived this mighty confrontation against the galaxy's greatest warriors retreat fearlessly, clacking their claws in endless defiance.

Your trip here was not purposeless, though. Here in the unexplored lower depths of the ship you have discovered a strange treasure indeed - immense concealed compartments stacked floor to ceiling with orange-green glowing golden bars. They're hot to the touch - intensely radioactive, enough to kill a more fragile creature in hours - but they're the right shape to fit into a number of strange and empty compartments you have seen throughout the ship. Some kind of alien fuel, for some hidden esoteric power of the ship? Even as mere curiosities they are valuable, but will need further research.

Forge a bond with each other as well. You understand each other better than you did.

Vasilia!

Aphrodite raised his mug of coffee in a brief salute at Vasilia in acknowledgement of her lack of glaring.

Still, over the course of this conversation you have made a personal connection to the Hermetician. In coming days he is - well, he is still snappy, but he corrects more than he condemns. You've learned more about his ways and patterns, how he possesses a fixation on unmaking, salvage, and recycling valuables that perhaps rivals Dolce's focus on cooking. He seeks to apply this logic to all things: if something is worth more disassembled, then he will disassemble it and find joy in the doing. Forge a bond with Iskarot.

Bella!

You take your eyes off the snake for just a moment. Your head bows and you look down at the ground in perfect accord with the will of Nero. An act of ritual, an act of vulnerability, an act of dedication to the new codes of war.

And so your eyes are averted during the ensuing act of divine violence.

When you look up there is Hera, Queen of Olympus, flanked by two great golden heifers, flicking a few drops of envenomed blood off her parasol. Athena has knelt, and within moments everyone else upon the battlefield has as well.

She is nothing like her wife. Zeus is violet and dark blue, darkness so intense that to go any darker it has to explode into the purest and most brilliant light. Hera is of silver and rose gold interlaid in chain links that wrap her arms in gleaming sleeves. Zeus is solitary, a creature of the mountain and the sky, as beyond peer as physics, clad only in a simple dress without jewelry. Hera comes with the riches of Olympus, followed by servants bearing plates of ambrosia, fanned by peacock feathers, feet surrounded by purring cats, hand resting upon the head of a brown doe. Zeus is so mighty that she needs no displays of power, for her every act is a display of power. Hera is so mighty that she needs no displays of power, and yet she puts the effort in anyway.

She walks across the corridor towards you - fierce, angry, heartbroken, but still observant of the codes, still protective of your subordinates, still respectful of the gods. For a moment her divine hand comes down and tousles your hair, running around your ear, adjusting the Imperial Tiara into place. She glances around the hall, ensuring there is no mistake in her intent.

And then she is gone, the vision is past, the pirate queen is dead upon the floor and few the sounds of battle that had made their way through even the Anemoi's oppressive architectural silence fade into nothing. Hera has given you victory, Bella. She recognized you and blessed you in front of witnesses, establishing your power over the Anemoi as absolute.

And now a hundred eyes look to you, awaiting command.

Everyone!

Time passes. The Plousios approaches the planet Ridenki, home of "Species AVX-44" - colloquially, the Alced. It is time to take the auguries.

In the candle-light of the ship's Pantheon, the fire burns far brightest around the Statue of Hera. She is the patron goddess of this planet, and it is her will that the Hermetics defy in their harvest. And yet, defy her they do, for the empty altar of Hermes practically blazes with power and footsteps form around its base. The presence of the Messenger is equally strong to the Queen's and you don't need to be a Hermetic to read the signs of his passage here. The third altar to ignite is that of Artemis - those sigils burn cold and subtle and indifferent, providing fair warning of the Huntress' presence and no more.

Hermes, Hera, and Artemis. Tell us which of these gods you seek the favour of, tell us of your history with them. Then tell us of what you hope to find upon this planet.

Sunshards

Chen and Rose!

Blades clash. Hearts sing! The wild horses gallop away and the North Wind wraps and whips and howls! This is war, here amidst the mountains and the yellow flowers on the blade edge of coming nightfall! Be wary of the falling sun as you fight, maidens, for he will blind you as surely as he hopes to blind any archers who look his way.

Blinded by sunlight, blinded by passion, blinded by each other, neither of you see the Scales of Meaning slip away. She scrambles over the edge of a cliff and dives into a cool mountain stream below, letting the white-rushing waters carry her like a dart away. Perhaps if you were not blind you might have seen her glance behind her, torn by a desire to stay and watch the duel, but she cannot yet calculate the value of this scene and so she pays the coin of regret in leaving.

Yue!

She comes in white. This is an absolute. Colours only exist in relation to each other; a white dress at sunset will be tainted with red and orange and shadow. Unacceptable! To allow herself to be defined by her environment? To let the purity of her heart be contingent on circumstances? Never! She comes in white. If that means the world must be darkened around her, then so be it. That is why Princesses invented Sunshards.

She comes riding a black stag, antlers woven through with the strings of a crystal dreamcatcher. She rides him sidesaddle, one hand resting on the quiver of arrows, the other on the scabbard that holds her diamond thread bow. Is not a bow the ultimate weapon of a princess, by which she might shoot down a hateful sun? She comes with dark eyes and flowing black hair and a cape of mirror-ribbons that flows around her shoulders like the pelt of some divine animal. She comes with crystal slippers that have never known the touch of mud, with a single orbiting light like her own tame sun that floats behind her head to provide her with a halo. It hides her face and casts you deep in her wide and looming shadow.

And you are not the only thing in those shadows. Eyes glint. Terrible shapes flick and move in low, savage dances. Faint flows of that deep violet curse magic drifts around you in all direction, reaching out for Hyra of the Wolves, as the ocean reaches for a raindrop.

"Princess Yin," the shadows hiss like a chorus, whispered heralds of royalty. "Princess Yin. Princess Yin. Do your best, if you dare."

She holds up a hand imperiously and the whispers fade into the background. She stares down at you for a moment, and then her gaze flicks across to Hyra. "Fetch," she said. "Bring."

A rough hand, glowing with curse light - was this really that hand that touched your chin so gently a moment before? - grabs you by the shoulders and drags you forwards. Hyra's red eyes are locked on Princess Yin like she can't look at anything else. You're pulled up far too close to the Princess, far too roughly, far too like a captive. And Princess Yin is no easier to look at this close.

"Princess Yin," the shadows hiss again, all around you. "Princess Yin. Princess Yin. She'll catch your dreams, if you dare."

"And what," she asks, voice heavy with contempt, "makes you so important, I wonder?"

Sunshards

Chen and Rose!

The Scales of Meaning is a creature who knows a thing or two about opportunity.

She transmutes from embarrassed ferocity to control in a moment. She raises her horned head, and oh, the perfect balance of her bearing! You could balance a teacup atop her head, such is her poise and dignity as she calculates. New markets, new buyers, new risks - plenty of raw material for her to work with.

"Princess Chen of the Northern Wind - or is that with the Northern Wind?" she purrs, as velvet as snakeskin. "How lucky I am to find you! I am being positively tormented by this, the Hunter. Abomination of ancient days, she has somehow become even more odious in this day and age, ambushing me in my bath, destroying my guards and entrapping me upon the tip of her blade. Oh, won't you save me~, noble princess~?"

The Scales of Meaning manages to find a moment to flash you a smirk so bratty it almost makes you envious, Rose.

[Offering a universal string to Chen: Get into a sword fight with Rose from the River and mark an XP]

Yue!

"Of course I don't," said Hyra in a voice far too soft to have once wielded such confidence. "Not one princess does. Perhaps not even one girl does. Perhaps not even Princess Qiu, perhaps not even the moon herself, can truly know that they are beautiful without being told. That's why..."

The sun, in a flash of gold, descends across the horizon in a celestial sprint. The twilight vanishes in an instant and the world plunges into darkness. Across the lake lanterns ignite and across the hills fireflies rise and across the tree-tops bioluminescent caterpillars unwrap themselves from their hidden places. The lights come back on but ragged, chaotic, soft, in a craze of blues and greens and soft violets. For a moment it's magical.

And in another moment it's dangerous. There are twists in the shadows where things that had been creeping in darkness find themselves illuminated by different light sources. And as fast as the sun's free-fall, Hyra is standing, blade in hand, once again sharp lines and pointed ears and eerie curse-light. Whatever it is that rises inside her rises to the surface in the darkness, and the way she's smiling and the way she licks her lips in anticipation don't seem entirely her own.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

One does not imagine a bear can move. They are ponderous things, inevitable - dangerous, but safe. One does not imagine one might snatch a leaping salmon from the very air until it is too late.

Robena has turned so she looms over you. Her hands are up, sweeping her wild and untidy hair brown back behind her, binding it into a functional ponytail. As her hands descend down her body they adjust straps with rehearsed precision. Her axe no longer hangs loose, her shoulder plates are more rigid, the faint layer of rust that dimmed the edges of her lady's crest is knocked clean with a flick of armoured mail. But more than the corrections her face has hardened and her eyes are ablaze. This is no soft and gentle cub any more, no traveling naturalist knight with a nightinggale voice.

This is a crusader. A warrior of righteousness, a will that would no more suffer evil in this land than she would suffer it in any other. As the lines in her face harden so too do her scars.

When she asks you, Constance, it is not because she is in any way unaware of the answer. When she asks you it is not as a friend asking for information. The words are ritual, the precursors to violence and devastation, each one filled with fire.

"Who has done this?" said Sir Coilleghille, the finest weapon of war crafted by the land of England.

Breathless Dead

Vasilia!

"My father told me something once," said Aphrodite, spectacles on as he quietly tapped away on his archaic typewriter in the corner. "To move copy, add a dash of unrequited love."

The Hermetician, rather bizarrely, reached out to pat Dolce's head in a there-there gesture. "There, there," he added in an uncharacteristic tone of voice. "It will all work out."

His hand had a gentle coating of spotted grey and black fur. He quickly withdrew it and hid it back inside his robes.

"These marriages," he said, "must be salvaged. Any combination of components, personnel, or life lessons that can be extracted from them will undoubtedly prove essential to our journey. Navigating the Tear will require as much divine support as possible, and if even one god is displeased with us then the task will truly be impossible."

The Tear - you've heard stories. The great storming rift at the centre of the galaxy. A weapon of Molech? A curse from the gods? It is far, far away from anywhere you have traveled, but only the most distant stories of its nature have reached you here. It is, to say the least, not the sort of thing that people go in and out of.

Bella!

The Empress Nero, in her wisdom, had declared new codes of war. The primacy of surrender was key amongst them - rituals for how violence was to conclude. Overmatched like this, it is not to Big Bone Lick's credit that she keeps fighting - it is a prideful blindness that believes that even now she can pull victory from the jaws of defeat. You see Athena turn her face away in disgust right as you tear open the cockpit and that may as well be the end of things right there.

As the metal comes away you see a gleaming serpent eye in the shadows and then - she lunges! Coiled like a snake, knife gripped in her hand, she flies at you with blade in hand - and jolts short. Amidst the crash and chaos she forgot to unbuckle her piloting harness and just as that blade is about to reach you the pirate queen jolts to a halt against her restraints. The only thing that touches you is her involuntarily expelled breath.

Information flows into you as the serpent-servitor struggles with her harness. You can smell her fears - ghosts, primarily, the data drawn from the click of bone dice on her half-dozen bracelets, charms to Hades. You can taste her preferences in food from the stains on her shirt and hands - marrow stock soup, oily and garnished with spring onion. You can hear her sins from where Apollo has marked them - sloth chief amongst them, so proud of her creativity and skill that she would stab a man who told her she could do better. You can see the chemical formulae of the poison in her fangs and again on her fingernails, enough to let a gentle caress inflict hideous suffering. You can feel her past in the luster of her scales - no child of necessity this, she has the strength and suppleness of a woman who has never missed a spa day her life.

She manages to find a trick amidst it all - pulling on the cord of her ejector seat. Her chair erupts from the wreckage of the Plover and sends her, spinning, half-way down the corridor. It buys her enough time to unbuckle herself, struggle to a vertical position, angle her knife correctly, and say a few words to dig her in even deeper to the war goddess' contempt. "This is fucked up. War is about stuff. My stuff was better, you didn't even have any stuff. I should be winning! What the fuck!"

Sunshards

Chen!

"Oh Chen," your mother's voice finds a new warmth that still hides a deeper chill. "I'm proud of you! Standing up to Princess Qiu and Princess Yin at the same time? That's exactly what you should be doing. Of course I'll help darling, you're the speartip of our entire Alliance in this matter, and I'm delighted you're taking this so seriously!"

She hangs up and you're left waiting. An ugly bird cry echoes out from the mountains, and a little while later a small herd of bearded horses canter to a weary halt down a little way away from you and give you suspicious looks as they start to graze. As you watch them the wind picks up, chill and arctic. Follow the snake, it rasps in your ear, and it does not leave. It surrounds you like the opposite of a blanket, present and waiting for its next instruction.

[Princess Hesha takes a string on you]

Rose!

"Hmm. Hmmm! Argh!" the Scales threw up her hands and covered her increasingly red face - a sound so loud it caused half a dozen bearded mountain horses to gallop across the path in a startled rush. "Shut up! Today has already been the worst! You are the worst! What the fuck happened up here, that the god-damn Hunter has turned into such a smart-mouthed brat! You used to fit into the world, not like..!"

She folds her arms and retracts her neck and huffs into her damp suit. She mumbles aggressively and furiously to herself for a minute, practically steaming with the blushing fury of it.

Down below the air chills. The ice had been lessening as you came downhill but here it is again, growing more and more intense until it reaches a soft bundle of deadly princess.

Yue!

"I'm asking you to hold it," said Hyra, hands gently but firmly placing on your shoulders from behind and straightening them, "so that it stops being scary to you." Her fingers run down your arm and catch on your elbow, twisting it into a position that feels more natural. "Stories of swords, seeing them in battle... they're glamorous..." she pulls your left hand into position, wrapping around you from behind as she brings both of your hands to hold the sword, "... intoxicating, dangerous..." Now it's her foot, hooking around your ankle and pulling it to the left, widening your stance. "... distracting. And that's the main reason why nobody can stand against a princess but a princess. Beauty," the breath on the back of your neck almost carries the touch of lips, "is perilous. In the face of it," her hand traces over your shoulders, across your collar - and then pulls. Your entire body rotates seamlessly - all the corrections she made to your body flowing together at once to make that simple turn the most elegant thing you've ever done in your life. "you can lose yourself."

She steps away and oh, you did not notice how cool the evening was until it was contrasted with the warmth where her touch lingers.

"So hold the sword," she said, smiling and tracing your jaw with a single finger. "Learn to see it as an irritant. Learn how awkward it is, how heavy it can feel, learn its flaws and limits. You'll cut yourself, and that too will be a lesson. You'll build up a tolerance and become blind to beauty, and that's when you can really start to explore your weapon's secrets."

Breathless Dead

Vasilia!

"A harem is where one individual has multiple sexual or romantic partners who are usually in a subservient role," Iskarot said. "Though in some cases, the harem is able to socially overpower the ostensible owner and seize whatever power they possessed. The reigning Azura Shah is little more than a ceremonial figurehead and war leader, as a faction within her harem has seized real political power. They are harsh negotiators, I would advise steering clear of Azura space even if we didn't have an Imperial Princess on board. In a similar vein, I expect you to keep your own harem in line, I do not have the time or desire to memorize an elaborate web of who is topping who."

Once again, the Hermetic's shadowed face and robotic voice makes it impossible to tell if he's serious.

Bella!

That awful gun crashes away into the side of the room and almost no sooner has it landed than a wall compartment opens and a team of the ship's Hermetic cultists lunge forth to grab it and drag it back into their hidden passage. As they swing the panels shut behind them, one of them slides something across the floor behind the Plover - your Auspex identifies it as an "Abductor Mine", though what that means you don't have time to figure out.

As the feral machine catches it's bearings it swings about to look at the space where it's weapon had briefly been and half-flinches as though wanting to go after it. But then its helm swings about to face you - glowing blue visor and a long hideous painted tongue that drips down onto the machine's torso. It rolls its shoulders and with a whine of energy it activates its Electromagnetic Flux generators. Two jagged shoulder electrodes begin sweeping the area around it with dramatic jolts of lightning, flicking back and forth lazily.

"You're a thief," said the machine's pilot, sounding surprised, sullen and accusatory in equal parts. "That was mine and you stole it. What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Power begins to burn around it as its cable drinks deep of the Anemoi's reactor. A ragged volley of solid projectile shots slam into its face and torso - Jil and the surviving Lanternites - but it pushes through without slowing. It roars forwards towards you at full speed and then, just before impact, it burns all of its braking thrusters simultaneously - sending multiple blasts of fire vaguely towards you. The aim is off - the pilot had to target this blind through the solid projectile shot - but the wash of heat and surge of ELF lightning passes far too close for you not to feel.

Sunshards

Chen!

The mangroves and rainforests of the Terraced Lake's archipelago surround you, a latticework of thick and tangled roots weaving into and out of each other. The trees are thick and heavy with fruits and the tropical birds who eat those fruits, and they are not quiet or dignified eaters. The birds take one bite of a fruit and drop the rest on the ground so they can screech at the top of their lungs at nearby birds for some avian slight. And while their cacophony of yelling is not yet echoed in your mother's voice you can feel the potential for it to start.

"Chen. I asked you to call me right as sunset started. Did something delay you?" There's an edge to Princess Hesha's voice, but she's giving you the benefit of the doubt. She's open to the possibility you have a good excuse but is prepared to move decisively if you don't.

Rose!

In a different age, twilight would be a moment to rest and reflect on the journey, a time to prepare camp and gaze out over the mountains at the setting sun. Nowadays it seems like it's always twilight, and so twilight is a time for walking too. You come over the crest as the river falls away into a waterfall below you, standing high up on sheer and rocky mountains, overgrown with blooming yellow mountain flowers just so lightly dusted with snow. Little creeks run through the rocks, slivers of fire in the fading light, narrow enough to step over - if you do not have to crawl on your belly. The Scales of Meaning winces and mutters dark oaths every time she touches one.

"I seek -" she starts, and then closes her mouth and pouts at being invited to reveal a valuable secret. Her horns glitter and pulse with electric light and she sighs as she realizes that you do not value it enough to respond to her withholding it with anything other than mockery. Reluctantly, she instead takes the opportunity to express a little displeasure. "Nobody cares about you, Rose. You have tucked yourself away and rendered yourself as financially and politically irrelevant as a shipwreck, a washed-out old hulk only valuable to pearl divers. Only I see your value, just like I'm the only one who sees the value of the shepherdess Yue." She sniffed haughtily. "This is a veritable antiques road show of hidden treasures and the appraiser lives in the arbitrage."

Yue!

Bait was offered and accepted, and just like the secret to catching flies is slow and steady motion so the wolf languidly pounces. She uncoils herself from the ground and steps up to you, taking your sword in fine fingers. She smiles because the wooden weapon is amusing, but there's only affection and gentle teasing and no contempt at all. "A wooden weapon can teach you bad habits," she said, turning it over in her fingers. "The weight is wrong, and the balance, so a real sword will feel wrong if you're used to this..."

She runs her fingers around it, brow crinkling in concentration. She's doing that same motion she did when she was casting her flight spell but slightly different - and then she gets it wrong. The magic sparks and breaks, but almost before you have time to process that she mucked it up she did the same motion again twice more with exceptional speed. On the third try it sticks, and oh, isn't the most remarkable part of all this that she just screwed up a spell twice in front of you without so much as blushing? Wouldn't it be great to learn that magic too?

"Here," she said, putting the sword in your hand and folding your fingers around it. It's heavy! And in all the wrong ways! "I adjusted the weight, this is what a real sword feels like to hold," said Hyra, stepping around behind you. "While we travel, I want you to keep this in your hand no matter what you do. Cooking, cleaning, eating, walking, I want you to get used to holding this even if it means doing other tasks one-handed. Can you do that for me, Yue?"