Thanqol

Sunshards

Autumn evening steals in a little quicker than you're used to. That calls for fire to warm soaked and shivering bodies, and a shelter to block the gently rising wind. The former is the product of hard work but the latter is serendipity - one of Princess Kikil's travel castles can be found a few kilometers down the river and it's a perfect improvised shelter.

Even if you've never seen a Princess you'll likely feel some sense of personal connection to Princess Kikil. She builds castles, you see. If she stays in one place for a while it'll be a huge complex as filled with defensible tricks of mathematical subtlety as it is filled with sweeping spires. If she's just passing through she'll still leave some little maze or shelter or tower - she especially likes building lighthouses - behind her, swiftly to be overgrown and weathered into the landscape. While a lot of her works are too far out in the wilderness to move into, some are indeed occupied by aspiring hermits who are happy for the free real estate. Plenty more are left uninhabited for lost travelers to stumble into.

This one in particular is built like a birdwatching hide - sunken and low, entirely hidden from one angle in particular - you'd suspect built to spy on Princess Qiu as she worked to clear this river. It's a cozy enough space, but in these close quarters with the wind rattling across the exterior and the fire flickering in the middle, it's just eerie enough for ghost stories. It's also suitable for gossip, party games, or the general camping experience, but Cyanis was the first mover in the space and decided it was to be ghost stories.

Hyra actually took to the activity first with the energy of someone who hasn't had the opportunity to talk out loud in too long. She's good at it too, telling it like she just heard it herself, letting her eyes go large and startled while keeping steady eye contact until, almost like a small jump scare, she shifted her whole attention across to someone else.

"On Tuesday the Sixth of April, Countess Klarissa's bank account ran dry," said Hyra. "She didn't notice. Why should she? She wasn't a technomancer. Wasn't relying on any burrower services or features. She was a creature of the new world and held no truck with demons, so that surely meant she was safe. Everything she'd earned was from her own hard work, and now she was powerful and respected and independent. She hadn't asked for anything from anyone so now she wasn't going to give anything to anyone in return. She put up a huge fence around her land and told everyone to keep out. No matter what! One time when two children snuck in to steal her apples she drew her sword and spanked them with the flat of the blade until they were in tears. Stay out! Work your own land! What's mine is mine!

"Or so she thought. Countess Klarissa had forgotten the wishing well, you see."

"Wishing wells are, of course, common - a well is more likely to be a wishing well than to be safe. Whisper into it and the water will carry your voice down deep, deep, deep into the depths. Normally it's a priestess' job to guard the well and draw the water but young Klarissa hadn't seen it that way. All that chanting and nonsense just to get a drink? Nonsense! So she snuck a sip when nobody was watching and it was easy - water was water! So she snuck another and another and got used to it, and when you're used to it you aren't as careful. And when you're not careful, and you're not chanting to keep your voice busy, you're always in danger of saying something that might just sound like a wish to the ears that listen at the bottom of the well. And little Klarissa had said 'I wish they all listened to me!'."

"And for a while that's exactly what they did."

"She got used to bossing people around. It came naturally to her and she had a lot of orders to give. Stop this, do that, go away, give me that. She thought she was just charismatic and had a way with words but every word she said was amplified by the invisible demoness that hovered behind her shoulders and brushed her hair as she slept. And each time she gave an order it subtracted a few more dollars from her bank account."

"Now sometimes service cuts off when you hit zero. Some people unknowingly waste their technomagic for years until it disappears without a trace one day and all the demons go home. But sometimes you get an Afterpayer. These are the most dangerous demons of all because they're authorized to extend you credit - and that's exactly what Klarissa's demoness did. Day by day she used the power she thought was her natural talent, thought was her ordained birthright, and day by day the demoness clacked another bead across in the abacus."

"But there was hope. You see, when a demon is granting you credit it needs to provide warning of some kind. It can, however, get fairly abstract or hostile when doing this. Sometimes it whispered its warnings at the same time as other people were talking. Sometimes it made milk curdle or roosters lay eggs. As the credit progressed red lights began to dance in the sky and a passing monk took notice. She came to investigate the village, demon-smiting staff in hand, searching for the signs of corruption. But just as surely as the monk could smell the demon the demoness could sense the monk and she decided that now was the time to call in her debt."

"In a swirl of water and algorithms the demoness appeared before Klarissa. It told her of her debt and told her of the price. She was to descend with her into the depths of the Burrowing World, collared and leashed, dressed as a maid to cook, clean, and wait on the demon's every whim until her debt was paid. Klarissa balked, panicked, and ran. She ran towards the town, calling for the monk - who heard her! The monk raced out to defend her with staff in hand, and Klarissa ran towards her saviour in relief."

"But then they both came up short."

"There was, you see, a fence in the way."

"Klarissa's own fence, her own gate, her own KEEP OUT signs were now no longer a defense against small children. They were now a cage that was keeping her locked in. The monk tried to climb, but she was not young and the barbed wire line at the top seemed so excessive now, didn't it Klarissa? And the demon was able to come out at a leisurely pace, take the girl by the hair, and start whispering the terms and conditions of her new role as it dragged her down into the depths. There she toils still, a single slave in an empty hell, working off every order she ever gave."

Fellowship: The Heart

Ailee was surprised by the smile, but let it stay. That was a good thought. That was how she should tell this story. He went out stealing a book. She had a feeling that, a few years removed from these events, he'd love to hear her tell that story.

"Small thinking," she said as the water brushed her ankles. "Both of you. Why go through all that trouble to steal a book about someone else? Aim a little higher and the books will be about you."

She sat amidst emerald eyes. That's right. Those are her lines. A comprehensible motivation: pride. Vanity on a cosmic scale. Nothing new beneath those crackling eyes. Nothing new except a wink.

"You coming with or cashing out?"

Breathless Dead

Alexa!

"Who is this Mynx," said Mynx in the galaxy's most half-hearted Russian accident. "I am Sergivov Sergistan. I am humble investment banker. Why all this attention officer."

She sighs. Her eyes flick across to you and then back to the spot on the roof she's been trying to stare a hole through. She's flopped over a couch, arms hanging dramatically from the sides. Even the SP landmine she's hidden underneath a dirty hoodie right in your path is half-hearted - though for all of that you do almost miss it on first glance because this room has intense cannot-be-bothered-to-do-the-laundry energy.

She sighs again; she seems comprised entirely of those right now.

Vasilia!

Zeus looms over you, a monolith of indigo and eye-crackling violet. Her eyes fill with an unspeakable emotion and the clouds gather around her.

And then she squeals in delight, pinches your cheeks, picks you up by the scruff of the neck and sits you in her lap so she can pat your head. "I always forget how young you are!" said Zeus delightedly, like she might to a favoured daughter who has just proposed a new design of bicycle with rocket thrusters. "Oh, dear, sweet baby Vasilia! Of course I could snap my fingers and declare a new king. Why, I could snap my fingers and condense this entire sector of space into a black hole! You are very astute to have noticed that I am, in fact, very strong. However, you should also know that I am actually very wise - and it is not bragging for me to say so, for being wise is none of my doing; I merely happen to have my former girlfriend who is wisdom itself living inside my head. I have been known to be foolish nevertheless when my passions overtake me but this hardly seems one of those times. So why, then," she bounced you gently on her knee, "do you think that I am not intervening? Think hard, child!"

Bella!

There is at least one advantage to surviving the assault of Demeter.

You have never seen such bounty when it comes to food. The thorns and the chaos have passed on, the hyper-acceleration of evolution and growth dragged away as the Goddess went away on whatever errand took her fancy next. In its place is the harvest. Bounties of berries, every colour and shape and flavour. Interior fields of wheat so overgrown that a single caress sends seeds cascading down onto the metal below in their fistfuls. Thickets of eggplants, eruptions of spices, and mutations and crossbreeds of every vegetable you've ever known and more you'd never guessed at. And more than the quantity and freshness there is a difference of category when it is compared to food you've experienced in the past. For whatever reason it is plain, now, that Demeter never exactly showered her blessings on Tellus. Even food grown for Imperial lips was not kissed by the Harvest in this way.

Why? Had Empress Nero offended Demeter in some way?

Apollo provides no answers, but he does allow light to work with.

Breathless Dead

The Plousios!

The ship breathes in song amidst a gemstone storm.

Which god created these creatures, these nebulae clouds of light and dust? Which god gave them minds without language? Which god gave them music without shape? The Plousios is an arrow of adamant soaring through the void and all about it drift like jellyfish these enormous void clouds, each many times over its size. They reach out with glittering, questing tentacles formed of shining asteroid-ice and brush the side of the ship in flight. Each time they do a deep sigh runs all through the ship, the breath of stars, in time with the gentle glass rain of ice against steel.

The Alcedi pause where they fight. Their ceremonial spears lower and their heads turn to listen. Their society is in great turmoil, the old bonds of tribal elders shattered amidst this great return to the stars. They have formed many dozens of warbands around powerful leaders and engaged each other in constant ritual battle. Their prizes are acclaimed positions aboard the warship - to stand as the bridge crew, plover pilots, boarding champions. For these prizes they have clashed with thrown spears and stomps and martial music and night-raids, all to humiliate, kidnap and demoralize their rivals and achieve such prestige that none will challenge them for their positions. Those who lose these battles will be delegated to duties as deckhands, cleaners and repair crews. But for now they stop and listen to the song of the void. Even Athena, present at the heart of this warlike reorganization, searching for those she will favour as rising kings, turns her head to listen.

(Vasilia, the energy of your pistols have run dry but they are still changed from their experience as Zeus' favoured weapons. They retain Ranged, Piercing, Dangerous but now have Recharge instead of ammo. None of the Alcedi have yet challenged you but such a turn is inevitable - the eyes of the gods are upon this ritual conflict and whoever arises will have their support to claim the Captain's chair)

The Hermetics pause where they work. Iskarot's position has not been in doubt since he received direct confirmation from Redana but there are nevertheless doctrinal issues to resolve. Iskarot is from a foreign branch of the Order and his positions are heterodox - but nevertheless he can argue with evidence that his political opponents were all the thralls of Demeter and Cerberus. It is one against many in the whispered, chanting arguments in coded languages but the many have little they can cling to beyond their stubbornness. In some places consensus is reached. In other places, beliefs collapse and are buried by the machinery of church councils. Those who cannot accept these verdicts schism away to seek fresh converts to build their own independent power bases, but even fuming with pious rage they too pause in place. The discussions whisper to a close. The Order of Hermes stands for a while amidst their engine cathedral and then they wordlessly depart to seek the windows and listen to the music of the stars. Politics is all very interesting, but these are priests and their true calling is to witness and learn from the divine. They are people too, and no ensouled people will turn away from this celestial music.

(Redana - you now have materials, crew and skilled labour all, and Iskarot has come to you seeking your vision. He could make this ship a trireme, bristling with grappling hooks and a mighty beaked ram - or perhaps you would prefer a racing vessel built to race sunbeams, or a luxury liner to travel in Imperial style. Create the Ship as a playbook.)

The ceremonial royal phalanx has not engaged with the Alcedi conflict, nor has it sought to get involved in Hermetic politics. Galnius knows a soldier's politics, and she knows that it is better to present an Imperial princess with a gift than a fait accompli of one's military success. To this end she stalks the shapechanger. It is going well - the infiltrator is not showing any of the skill or creativity needed to evade warriors like them. They are moving through the ship listless and despondent and that makes them easy to pick from the crowd. This will make a fine gift for the Princess and a demonstration of their invaluable skill when it came to detecting assassins. They pause outside the room where the shapeshifter has locked herself, spears and ropes held - and they wait. They wait as the song of the stars fills the ship, their readiness suspended like a spear frozen in ice. Seeking the approval of the Princess is important, of course, but so too is this cosmic music.

(Alexa, you have joined the phalanx on their hunt, though Ares has for better and worse not gifted you with any attention in the course of it. Your head and neck still burn from the comforting embrace you received from Princess Epistia and your heart and gut still churn from the echo of chaos you never knew you were capable of. Athena has not spoken to you, but you know enough from how this hunt has gone to know that it is Mynx you have cornered in this room).

The Plousios is filled with life, industry, purpose and music. It makes progress amidst the shining stars - chaotic, lively, communal progress. The Yakanov hangs dead and empty, with a heartbroken girl and a god's golden heart in the ruins of the station's own shattered core. The lights are dim and regret hangs heavy and all the saffron magi have fled.

And all that remains is Apollo. And still he smiles.

He has sat down on the ground legs folded like a lotus, one palm cupped in his lap as though to catch the manna from heaven, the other forming a thumb-forefinger circle above his heart with fingers spread like sunbeams. He is calm, despite the weeping. He is calm, despite the loneliness. He smiles, and though all earlier evidence suggested it was because he was vindictively mocking your misery, his smile has not dimmed or faded even as your tears have gradually trailed away.

Your skin has tinged green, Bella. You have been here for a long time and your body has adapted, generating chlorophyll to absorb the soft light emanating from the sitting Sun God. You realize with a start that you are no longer hungry, no longer tired - you are feeling full and rested and nourished with an uncomfortable prickling surplus of energy that makes it difficult to focus on the fact that your life is ruined. A sense of boredom and restlessness ripples through you, and some part of you hates it. How can you still be capable of feeling such drab and mundane feelings after everything that's happened? Why can't you just lie here forever?

But the sun is shining and sleep, fitful or otherwise, refuses to come. Like it or not, you're awake - and you're sick of staring at that mysterious smile.

Sunshards

As the smoke clears and the helicopter soars off into the distance, the price of victory is made known: the final, wheezing collapse of the escape vehicle. All four tires deflate, the entire rear door falls off, the engine sputters, wheezes and chunders to a halt and an endless column of exhausted smoke ascends from the bonnet.

It is to be walking, then.

But the full moon is still high in the sky, so Hyra helps walk Yue from the wreck. Below the broken bridge is a river which promises a release from the dust and panic and the weather is just so warm as to make it inviting. Better, the water runs quick and shallow, barely ankle deep in places, crashing white and loud over ten billion thumb-sized pebbles while sweet coralbark trees emerge from the shoreline to drop their star-shaped leaves one by one into the rushing water. A river like this is no accident. It is the work of princesses and queens to dredge the depths, slay the ancient monsters, seal any portals to the stygian depths, and then surround the banks with saplings that promise springtime flowers. There is a lot of hard, unglamourous work that goes into restoring a river, just as with restoring a shrine.

But now that it's been done there's nothing easier in the world than to enjoy it.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Oh, and here she was, the temptress! She who came begging before her with two eyes unshadowed and lips unreddened and requested the makeup of the gauntlet! There were a hundred ways to give the requisite offense here, a hundred ways to transmute this blustering conversation into something far less instantly tedious. Ah, well. If she'd wanted to spend her last days in mortal splendour she'd have turned to banditry rather than the church.

"Perhaps the Saxons come tomorrow," said Robena. "Striking forth on raid, catching us unaware, putting us to the sword and looting the castle's wealth for themselves. If that is to be the case then all your winter preparation will be for naught but the service of evil - and yet there is no twist of fate that can turn my hunt of that fox from a good deed to ill."

Breathless Dead

Redana!

There are glorious last stands, and there are glorious last stands in defiance of an Empress - and the Order of Hermes seems to have no interest in the latter. Immediately their weapons are on the ground and the chief Magos is begging you for the opportunity to serve as your humble vassal and without thinking you accept his oath - and whoops. That's that. Now you're responsible for an entire Coherent phalanx with their full support staff, over two hundred new servants with their own pride and agenda. You can positively feel the tension burn between them and the Alcedi - not to mention between them and Iskarot, as both the Apothecary Magos - who introduces himself as Komninos - and the Evoker Magos start jostling for the honorary position two steps to your left protocol demands your chief Hermetic should occupy.

In fact, you're in that most familiar of positions - surrounded by hundreds of powerful figures with private armies who have all accepted you as the supreme authority and seek to derive their own positions from proximity to you. Tell us how you navigate the intricacies of this new political situation as you arrange for the shuttles to take you and the Alcedi clan back to the Plousios.

Alexa!

"Oh, if it were up to me I'd let you go," said the Master of Assassins. "But a woman's got to have a code. Logic to one's being. A truth you can hold high before the gods. Live that truth hard enough and it becomes your destiny - and when that happens it doesn't just bind you, it binds the whole world. That's why I'll get as many chances to strike as I want and why none of you - poor, confused, conflicted little babies - will ever lay a hand on me."

She smiled and flicked her hair with smug contentment, fading back down the corridor, smoke seeping from her like a ghost.

"So call me Cerberus," she said, blowing a kiss - and then she was gone.

Vasilia and Dolce!

Shuttles begin arriving from the surface. And they contain your crew.

You sent Redana to find people and she delivered. Over two thousand Alcedi of all ages - a complete society - and two hundred and fifty members of the Order of Hermes, complete with clattering war machines and battlefield artifacts. Not quite enough to fill your ship to capacity - a fully restored and functional ship of the Plousios' size could easily host three thousand - but enough to overwhelm those few areas of the ship that aren't damaged, soaking wet, or filled with battle crabs.

Good thing you've got the time and manpower to fill your hold with the supplies left on the Anemoi's loading dock. In a stroke you're richer, more powerful and better armed than you have been in years. When Zeus' blessings come they don't come by halves.

Bella!

"Bella..." she can't let the silence be, can she? She starts talking before she knows what she's going to say because she hopes she'll figure out the sentence before the end of it. "You're okay. It's me. The Magos, Demeter, the Master, the Coherent, everything here was messing with your head. I get it, but it's over now - we made it. Just... take a breath, come back to me? Please?"

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

At the end of the day, Robena is filled with a deep glow of satisfaction. Before she was Sandsfern's squire she was a forester, and after losing her mistress the first time it was to the wilderness she turned again. It's such a calm pleasure, an eternal stability and an arena where wit, patience and strength can speak their true language. No questions of honour, no buzzing conversations, no foreign protocols or etiquette to struggle with remembering. No hearts to break.

The looming castle weighs upon her as though its foundations ran into her shoulders. This was a return to the world and she could sense it would contain trials more perilous than anything that lurked in this forest. But despite her reservations, Apricot just began picking up speed. That horse knew the shape of dinner on the horizon and she had to admit that she sympathized. She'd passed up three different deer trails to kill this damn fox and if conversation was the price for a meal - as it so often was - then she'd try her best to be presentable.

... Oh that was a good thought. Avoid provoking anyone. It probably wouldn't do well for her penance if she got into a drunken brawl in the castle. She'd have to do her best to resist temptation, Sandfern's habits ran deeper than she'd thought.

Fellowship: The Heart

Once upon a time a little mouse had made the decision to save the world.

People would ask her 'from what?' as if heroism was about waiting for opportunity to come knocking on your door. She'd always thought it should be the opposite. Evil hid, after all. It filled pits and archives and dark places, swarming and multiplying until it burst the seawalls and its creatures stalked the streets of Grand Jelt. They're fearsome enough while they're up here, how terrible must they be when they're down there?

But that was a lack of vision. The fingers are far more terrible than the Heart. She determined she was going to slip by them and plunge her golden sword into evil's core. Everything else, including becoming Evil's own avatar, was mere stratagem. Her deception would need to be perfect to fool the emerald eyes of King Dragon, the eyes that she herself wore. Be proud, Ailee. Be wrothful and judgemental and wasteful and curious. The fire alone is not burned.

"I'd like to let you in on a little secret to these formal events. Always ask for your glass to be topped up every three sips, make sure you always have something to nibble on with it, and nobody can tell how much you're really having. Well. For a while, anyway."

And at first Lucien had seemed like just what she'd needed. A ruthless, thuggish mind wrapped in a smiling face and hideous shirt, no different from the rest of his government. Here, she had thought, is a henchman - exactly the kind of person I won't have to mourn when he dies within the Heart. Exactly the sort of person whose life I can spend wastefully at some critical moment to prove to King Dragon that I am his creature and slide the celestial sword one step closer towards the Heart.

And that's exactly what happened - or close enough to the plan that she can run when she has to. She'd known that when the moment came she couldn't afford to hesitate or let regret - or Regret for that matter - slow her down. She'd known she'd step over the bodies of all her friends before the end, and here she was doing just that. She'd allowed herself all those dark and melancholy moods on the promise that when the time came she'd have done her crying in advance.

But now the Sword of Heroism was no longer a blade from a fairytale in her hand. Now it was a six-shot revolver. A hidden weapon, one she could conceal within the folds of her shirt until the time came to shoot evil itself in the spine. He'd gotten there first but she'd bring down the bigger game.

Breathless Dead

Redana!

It is your Auspex they turn against you.

A golden strobing sequence of lights is projected into your eyes, shifting and morphing trails of light and it catches the attention of your Auspex in a way you have never felt before. It feels like your eye is awake and curious by its own will rather than yours and as it focuses in on the golden light it tries to drag your whole self into its curious contemplation like a whirlpool.

"Anomaly scan finalized," wheezes the Magos as she drags the projector towards you. "The Extrasensory Organ is intelligent, with its own memories and will, which allowed the subject to interface with the Regret at an intellectual remove. This data indicates the value of the Extrasensory Organ and the importance of its immediate removal. May Hermes smile upon this surgery."

The Magos' back unfolds into an arsenal of terrifying medical implements. When you walked the streets of Tellus you heard people whisper that Hermetic doctors were skilled enough to steal a woman's kidneys as swiftly and painlessly as a thief might pick your pocket. And worse, with the Auspex disabled by that strange light, you feel yourself coming untethered and skinking back into the depths that you briefly emerged from...

And then the light switches off.

The shattering beam from the Yakanov goes dim. You're back in the jungle, back in the present, back in the Alcedi compound. And while the Coherent are here in force they are very outnumbered by the hundreds of awakening Alced.

That could be it, if you wanted. You could stand by and watch as the enraged Alced tear the Coherent apart in a fit of vengeance. It would cost you even less than a thumbs down in the arena, Redana Nero.

[Damage your Auspex]

Alexa!

"Now?" said the Master of Assassins, sweeping her hair backwards to loop it into a ponytail. "Honestly you'll probably wind up wishing I killed you. I'll try again, of course, Demeter hates taking chances, but you'll be just as dead if I spend the next few months curling my eyelashes. Urgh, helmets!"

"Helmets are sensible," said Artemis.

"And elegance is the opposite of sensible!" said the Master.

"I like sensible," mumbled Artemis, putting her hands in her pockets.

"But yes, even if you somehow slip through my fingers - and in fairness, it has happened a few times - you're still just as doomed. Lord Aphrodite, in his wisdom, has quite literally cut the entire galaxy in half in a rather spectacular fashion. Like the explorers of ancient days you are sailing directly off the edge of a flat world - and I can say from first-hand experience that there, in fact, be dragons."

Vasilia and Dolce!

The world no longer resists you. In a moment you are together again. Scorched and broken and bitten and bloody, soft and sad and filled with heartache. For a moment there's quiet and stillness and so very much to say.

Bella!

For a moment Mynx's presence is huge; she fills the room like a sensory supercomputer smelling for blood, listening for your heartbeat, scanning for injuries, tensing to wreck violence on anything that might threaten you.

But she senses that you're not mortally injured and that there are no targets. And she breathes out. She relaxes, fuck her. How can she still relax after everything?

"Bella, you're okay," and her voice is filled with relief. Like things are better, like this even counts as okay. "You're okay! Oh, Hera and Aphrodite, thank you for keeping her safe! This whole station was a trap set by the Master of Assassins, but I'm here now and I won't leave your side again."