Thanqol

Breathless Dead

Redana!

"Our culture here is a shadow," said the Elder sadly. "Our ships are sunken, our knowledge is rusted, our herds are small, our horizons reduced to those places that can be reached with sweat and oar. Have no mistake, despite all of Demeter's gifts we still dwell within the hateful House of Hades. The Hermetics do not need to be conquerors to defeat us; archivists are appropriate for what we are now."

There is an edge of deep despair in her voice, and when she speaks you can see the spark drain from everyone about her. This is a perilous state for any people to be in, you know - if Nero has imparted to you one lesson it's that a population cannot endure without a vision of the future.

Alexa!

The cassette tapes click and play and the hall fills with the music of Hermes. Orchestral and organic music that seamlessly transitions into glaring blasts of artificial synth noise. It's music without centre, or stability, weaving into different instruments and styles and tempos, almost a demonstration of exotic musical wealth collected from across the galaxy and woven together.

You've got the feel for her body now - a cascading wave of cybernetic tentacles from the waist down. Keeping her in the dance has kept her from binding you with them properly because she still needs them to hit each beat but as soon as you are done you have no doubt that you will be bound just as surely. You could, of course, throw her first but she'll take Isty with her when she goes.

"I am Ramses," said the Coherent, breath rising - she's drawn in by the motion. "Scion of the Cobalt Desert, vanquisher of Ragnar the Wretched. What manner of person are you, Alexa?"

Sunshards

Princess Yin, radiant Yin, puts her hand to her forehead in a sign of exhausted exasperation.

"Princess Chen," she said. "I have crossed this entire kingdom, fighting demons and river-monsters, enduring betrayal and rejection, to do you a favour. I have tried to offer you a hand of peace and alliance. I have put," her voice drops into a hiss for a moment - just a moment, "myself out there only for you to -!"

She cuts her words short and looks away. There might be tears in her eyes. Her hands are trembling with emotion and the light around her is broken so harshly you could cut yourself on it.

"I have," she said, collecting herself a bit, wiping at her eyes with a sleeve. "Done my best. For everyone. I have done my best to be a loyal vassal, a loyal lover, a loyal mistress, a loyal friend. And time after time this is what I get in return. I get spat upon. I get treated like a -" she bit the words back and let her brow darken. "Fine. Fine. You hate me too, I understand. What I have to do I will simply have to do on my own, that is all."

She waved her hand, and in an eyeblink her radiant light went out, plunging the forest into total darkness. By the time eyes adjusted to the loss of her, she had taken her enchanted deer and ridden far away.

Fellowship: The Heart

Do not fear deception, fear revelation. the words of Judgement ran through the back of her head. If one poses to you as a friend entrap them within that lie and suffocate what lies beneath. Then you will have a friend forever.

Ailee flicked her tail and slapped one of the smouldering glyphs dyed into her shoulder fur where it had begun to glow hot and painful. This close to the Heart...

<I'm on my way to the Heart,> she said. She didn't feel like being evasive with the thought of having her lies hammered into her soul fresh in her mind. <And honestly, if I make it back from there with even one arm I'll consider it lucky. So... I thought I'd at least see what all the fuss was about with the carnival.>

Sunshards

Yue!

Cyanis swallowed. "I - okay. Okay. Fine. I'll do my best too, just..."

Fox magic comes easily to foxes. They don't need to chant or wave their hands or perform rituals because being a fox is magical enough by itself. Where a human might need to spend a whole summer perfecting the exact hand gesture needed to perform a single spell, magic spoils foxes rotten - presumably because it, too, is a sucker for cute little triangles. So all a fox needs in order to do magic is wishes, their own or someone else's. They can just take that wish and think about how happy they'd be if it came true until magic relents and gives in.

But even easy things can be done with great effort and concentration if it's important enough. So Cyanis screws up her eyes and wishes as hard as her little foxy heart allows - and with a flash of teal fire the same colour as her eyes, it does.

Hyra of the Wolves stands here again, with blade and bow and brilliant strength. Hair of silver and eyes of red and might of heroines, reflexively stepping out in front of Yue in a guardian posture. Even as she does so, she takes Yue by the hand. "How long do I have?" she asks.

"I think - just while the full moon is in the sky," said Cyanis meekly.

"That'll be enough," she said. Her eyes fall back onto Yue, and a smile fills her lips. "Stay behind me, okay? I won't let you get cursed too."

*

The whispers of the world rise into crescendo. Light and darkness separate like oil and water, detaching and running in radiant and sombre channels towards she of midnight. And there she arises amidst the enraptured voices of the forest, bow in hand, arrow already streaking out like the first ray of dawn.

It soars through the air and penetrates the red string that bound Chen to Cyanis. Immediately the fox's magic dissipates - with a snap and burst of radiant light Chen is back in her normal clothes.

Princess Yin slams the base of the bow into the ground, and gives a brief wave. "Hey, Chen," she said. "Your mom sent me to help you. We're to capture Yue for the Campaign and use the exchange as an opportunity to ambush Qiu."

Her pose is confident even to the point of laziness, but cautious - extremely aware of both Rose and Hyra's positions, stance leaving her ready to block a strike coming from either direction.

[Declining this would be missing an opportunity to further your destiny]

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

No time for hearts, Robena? As though it was your choice to make.

When she took up arms and oaths she told herself that she was a creature of fire and passion, inheritor of Lady Sandsfern's righteous anger. She told herself that she was a knight without peer, forged on foreign battlefields and beneath foreign swordmasters. She told herself that her horse for all his grand gentleness still remembered the beat of battle and his role as an instrument of perfect death. She told herself that she could defeat all of England's devils with her lance alone.

She told herself these things so that when it came time to make this charge she would not doubt.

It is a terrible thing to ride towards death. It is worse to ride with duties unfulfilled - wishes unfulfilled. To ride without discovering if the soul of Sandsfern is in fact damned? To ride without the favour of Constance? To ride without telling either of them what they mean, without telling them good-bye? No surer way of ending as yet another miserable ghost haunting England's moors, suffocated by the weight of her own wishes.

No time for hearts? As though the heart was weakness rather than strength. As though you were not going to battle unarmed.

[Leap into Action - alas, a 6]

Sunshards

Rose!

You sing, but it is not wordless.

"Princess Yin! Princess Yin!" the air itself twists into shape, for the wind and air itself know that the Sun is their ruler. "Princess Yin will forgiveness bring!"

The surviving sun begins to creep towards the horizon again, beginning that early and eternal twilight. A deep stirring of magic begins to run through Yin. Exhaustion washes away and the light of Yewan Night Sun starts to glow within her once again. Your wordless joy battles for expression and freedom but as the Radiant Princess awakens again in her majesty, Shard renewed, it slips further and further away. Magic starts to coil out from her, touching the trees and beasts in passing, darkening them as their light flows stolen into Yin herself.

You try to silence yourself but your voice carries on in the air around you, defiant of your closed lips. "Princess Yin! Princess Yin will sunbreak bring!"

You may be a creature of the ancient world, but if the ancients feared anything it was the suns. Toushui Water-Stealing Sun, Dongtian Cold Sun, Emo Demon Sun, Shoucheng Harvest Sun, Hangye Industry Sun, Fengbao Storm Sun, Wuxing Invisible Sun, Kuwei Wilting Sun, Yewan Night Sun. They burrowed beneath the world to hide from these primordial powers and even you knew better than to walk in their light.

Princess Yin, it seems, does not.

What is fear like for you, Rose?

Chen and Yue!

The darkness begins to gather, though its cause is distant still. Hyra's ears lie flat and she lets out a whine, and Cyanis does likewise. As Hyra presses up against your legs in warning and warding so does Cyanis scamper down the stairs to take cover behind Princess Chen.

"Oh, hey, Yue - you know, sorry to interrupt, but did you have a wish you wanted to make?" she asks. "I mean, you know, maybe you always wanted to visit the Sky Castle? I hear it's lovely up there!"

Breathless Dead

Redana!

The Elder has a long stick with a crook on the end. The metalwork of the twisting head says 'symbol of ancient authority' but the way she uses it to hook around the legs, waists, and wrists of young children, smoothly picking them up and depositing them out of the way with the gentle firmness of a shepherd says 'grandmother' - and the shocking speed with which she goes through the crowd says 'martial artist'. Many of them squeak with delight when they're lifted up into the air by their collars but none of them dare rushing back across the field for a second try. Stories are filled with ancient martial sages and your heart tells you that this is one of them.

She wears dark round glasses, a necklace of shark teeth, and what might have once been a steel grey military uniform before it was turned into an arts & crafts project by a classroom of children who all had far too ambitious ideas about depicting her legendary deeds with cloth patches. There are a lot of crudely depicted burning ships and stick figure fights. The faded patterning on her wrist feathers suggest that there is likely a far more professionally done version worked onto her body - many of the Alcedi around here have elaborate curving oceanic designs dyed into their feathers - but the Elder seems content with the children's depictions.

She looks at you - well, tilts her head in such a way that you suspect she might be blind behind those glasses. Even so you get the impression that she's taking note exactly of where your hands are. "In the name of Hera, the First Fleet greets you and gifts you with twenty pigs and fifteen chickens," she said. "We also offer you the hand in marriage of Lacedo, rank within the Fleet, and an honour belt woven by Jain Ovardaughter should you join our war."

She pauses, and there's a silence of expectation. Try not to give offense, Redana.

Vasilia and Bella!

Machine Intelligences, for all their subtleties, are not people. You can almost hear the audible click and clunk of gears realigning - lulled into a different formation by the hypnotic swaying of Bella and Mynx. With threat assessment regulated again to a background process then its other processes begin to re-engage and normal operations resume all over the ship. As Birmingham eases, so does the hall full of Hermetics who - while still paying close attention to what happens on the dais before the viewport - also start to maneuver for position in the coming dance.

Alexa!

"Yes!" said Princess Epistia. "A heroic and daring rescue against terrible odds! You're right - inaction would shame my ancestors!"

Okay so it seems like the Ceronians tell a different version of that story. It's too late to explain the military philosophy at stake - already she's leaping into action, mark of Ares shining upon her brow.

And not five seconds later she's wrapped in half a dozen cybernetic tentacles by the Coherent soldier. Athena's eyes! This is why fighting the Hermetics is such a miserable experience - you've never got any idea what they're going to do before they do it.

"Hey, so, totally up to you," said the Coherent to Epistia, "but if you want, we can dance for a bit before I take you over to the Anemoi? I don't know a lot about that ship but from what I gather this might be your last chance for a while, hey?"

Sunshards

Daily Affirmation of the Way <3:

A student once walked by a river and found enlightenment. He stood there for a long time, enraptured in cosmic bliss, until his master came by and gave him an apple. Immediately his stomach rumbled and he fell back into samsara.

"Why did you give me this apple?" said the student angrily. "I was perfectly in tune with the universe, and you ruined it!"

"It seems like you were in tune with a poor universe," said the master.

Chen!

Today you have learned a valuable lesson from a wise mistress regarding the relativity of concepts. A master might demonstrate incredible skill in swordplay and nonetheless criticism herself for a slip that only she can perceive. Likewise, a fox might look at a temple abandoned to the forest for a hundred years and flushed with an open trash pipe to the Underground and say that it was a tiny bit of dirt. Perhaps kitsune society is a strange and relative culture worthy of devoted study.

Perhaps you might have learned a second, deeper lesson about the ability of foxes to misrepresent a universally recognized objective truth - but were you to voice such a thought it would be blasted by the tearful eyes of a heartbroken fox who was betrayed by someone she considered a friend. How could you, Chen? What evil lurks in the hearts of princesses to allow them to get away with such wickedness??

Either way you're up to your ankles in muck armed with naught but a mop and a dress that seems innocent enough at first but tends to reveal rather too much of your thighs when you bend over to pick something up.

Cyanis is supervising your work from a nearby sunbeam, a task that's so exhausting and selfless that the Wheel of Karma itself insisted that she balance the scales by eating some delicious green tea ice cream, lest the injustice shatter the cycle of reincarnation. You were called over to spoon it into her mouth on a few occasions when lifting it was too much for her poor, delicate arms. She has, thus far, declined to share any with you, but she has given you some encouraging pats on the behind with her fluffy tails. So selfless!

But that was a while ago and Cyanis is now napping and you are trudging through sludge when suddenly a great flow of water gushes down the corridor, sweeping you from your feet. When it is past the worst of the muck is gone and Cyanis has moved all the way to the edge of her sunbeam to see if you are all right - and then immediately suggest that if it is the case you have somehow managed to flood her one and only home then, while she is understanding and forgiving for what was no doubt a genuine accident, it would still be honourable to stay her slave until the debt was paid -

But then, from the shadows of the tunnel, emerges a warrior princess of legend, flanked by a magnificent silver wolf.

Yue!

Right now, in this moment, you're not just Yue. The way Cyanis and her, ah, new maid(?) are looking at you? This is the way that the people in the vision looked at the Demon Swordswoman. Awe.

You're not sure if it's the dress or the kiss that is making you so radiant right now.

"Yue?" said Cyanis, tails waving uncertainly as she looked down at you, lying flat at the top of the stairs so just her face and elbows were visible. "Are you, um. Possessed by the ghost of an unstoppable demon swordswoman, perhaps? Because if you are, don't worry, I have my personal maid, Princess Chen, working to clean this tomb and bring honour to your memory, so you don't have any quarrels with me!"

Hyra gave what was, to your more sensitive ears, a playful growl, but it was one that made Cyanis' ears lie flat across her head and made her duck her head so just her eyes were visible.

(Did she say Princess...?)

Rose!

There are chains and there are chains - and these are distinctly the non-italicised version.

Ah, Yin! What happened to these knights? Where is Hyra? She might have been, if not your equal, at least your best student - and one who would have been frightening indeed to see leading this pack of knights. Instead it is Carlyle here and, oh, there must have been some staff turnover if he wound up as the right hand of the Princess. You ask and see a flash of openly grumpy anger on Yin's face and that's answer enough.

You can't run a kingdom on heartbreak alone. It makes you too sensitive to betrayal. Yin has been doing poorly without you, it seems.

Does that soften your heart at all, Thorn Pilgrim? Does standing in the fullness of your power even while wearing Yin's brittle collar give rise to pity or compassion? Does seeing how lost she is, nursing hurt until it ferments to anger, spark some form of mercy in your heart?

Or does it spark mischief, trickery, thievery, and general brattiness?

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

This lesson the Holy Land taught Robena above all others: When the earth quakes, the skies burn, and the end of the world is at hand, that is the time for knights to go to war.

Apricot alone of the stable's horses has not panicked and shrieked or fallen. He stands sure-footed and ready with the same grim resolve he learned on the fields outside Antioch. Her helmet falls into place, deafening her ears and constricting her sight - things that were far more advantageous than mere protection on a battlefield like this. She draws her lance and levels it straight as they emerge from the stables in their full panoply.

Upon burning sands and shaking earth there is no time for the confusion of hearts. Lady Sandsfern is beside her, that is enough when they may both be dead in minutes. It would be a cruel irony indeed for them to have survived the Holy Land to perish here in green and gentle England but perhaps that was the true lesson of the pilgrimage: that the devil's work extends beyond any single kingdom and any single conflict.

Her hand touched the chalice amulet of Exsanguinated Xristos and she spoke the words of Roman prayer. She touched her heels to the sides of her Roman stallion. She lowered her lance and faced the foe and prepared to unleash Roman war upon these forgetful and doomed daughters of England.

Breathless Dead

Response Level 3: Patterns of Enforcement
The Order of Hermes sees the value of things - and unfortunately, you are now bargaining chips.

The Order of Hermes: The Order of Hermes is present here in force.
The Huntress Awakens: You are being observed, no matter where you are or what you do.
Patterns of Enforcement: Investigative channels have opened from the Magos to the Order's forces; they will attempt to arrest any player character they encounter

Redana!

Even in times of total war, Nero tried for something better.

After this planet was broken, but before it was rebuilt, it was a staging ground for the final conflict in a galactic war. To oversee this battle Nero built a castle. Though it is squat and lumpen to stand against the winds of a burning planet, though its surface was made of scorch-black steel and stone hurled from orbit in prefabricated arrays into the heart of a combat zone, though any other ruler would have been content with a battle-bunker, Director Nero still had an eye for the aesthetic. Incongruously domed roofs, sweeping walkways and slender towers disarm the brutality of what is still nevertheless a building shaped by and for war.

It is overgrown now. The jungle has moved in, and with it, the Alced. They took this place in the end, bless them, and the tribe's warriors and maidens flit amidst the battlements. There aren't seem to be enough to occupy a fragment of this place - this place could house an entire Ceron Legion - but their presence gives this place a little bit of the loveliness Nero aspired to and fell short of.

You're not two steps into the gates before you're mobbed by hatchlings - young Alced covered in adorable fluff or the hideous scrag of pubescents halfway through their first molt. Soon after them are a number of very visibly armed parents who have their eyes not only on their young children but their adult children, many of whom are pointing, giggling and whispering as they size you up.

You're being pelted with delighted questions, interested glances and threatening stares. You're a visitor from the stars and one of the mythical humans of legend. It's not that you're not used to being the centre of attention, but this is raw and direct and not bound by any courtly etiquette. How do you handle it?

Vasilia and Bella!

The gears inside the Magos' voice emitter start to whir. Internal fans start to rumble and a tremor passes through the entire ship. The distant clatter-clack of a difference engine overclocking rises on the air and the Auspex floods Bella's body with adrenal responses as the only way to process how dangerous all of this is -

And then the situation resolves. Vasilia is not standing before you proud and free and defiant. She stands before you in chains, her words now the defiance of a prisoner. You can all remember what happened - Vasilia came before the Magos to surrender herself rather than to seek the protection of hospitality. You can remember it even as you are also aware that's not why she originally came here, that the act was some sort of non sequitur, that the Magos is almost certainly responsible for this - somehow. Both versions of events stand equally clear in your minds, and if the changes were less blatant you might wipe the former version of reality away as a strange moment of deja vu.

Only Vasilia is in chains - the rest of her crew remain free, though equally confused between versions of events.

"Praetor," rolled that deep machine-mind voice. "We long for compliance with the Imperium. As a sign of our submission we present to you this wanted criminal. As a sign of our submission we shall share with you all the details of the planned experiment. As a sign of our submission we shall beg for Imperial mercy, for we only sought to learn that which the Empress Nero, she who crossed the galaxy upon a thunderbolt, has left behind."

Vasilia, this is what they in the negotiations business call a bad sign. Birmingham is legitimately afraid of the damage Bella could do to him and his station - the Order of Hermes is deeply pro-Imperial to begin with, and the Magos believes Bella has both motive and ability to destroy him personally. He is focused entirely on Bella and doesn't give a single damn about you and yours, and the only way to get him to stop obeying would be to make him believe that obedience won't save him.

Hider

Magos Birmingham
The Saffron Lord travels between life and death - surely time, too, is within her power.
Threat to the World: You must pay a price to act against the Magos.
Master Chronomancer: The Magos holds the secret of nonlinear time within his clattering contraptions, giving him limited precognitive abilities and some ability to alter the past.
Fateful Bargainer: The Magos may use his magic to alter the conditions of any deal struck - a gift may become a trade, a promotion can become an exile. Subjects will remember agreeing to the updated terms, though they will not recall why they did.
Locked In A Bunker: The Magos' bunker walls are impenetrable, though he can only leave them by proxy. Inside, he is helpless.

Alexa!

"We're - leaving?" said Princess Epistia. "We're not going to fight to rescue her? Our Captain is in trouble, Alexa!"

She's very plainly eying up the nearest Coherent warrior (who has noticed the attention and misinterpreted the signal, and so is flexing her muscles and striking cool poses with her spear). But you're up against Ceronian loyalty here - punching their way though anyone who threatens their leader is right up there with 'drink water when thirsty' as far as instincts go, so you'll have to talk sense if you don't want to start a brawl right here.