In what is now to be known as the First Canticle - formerly Year 347 of the Seventh Aeon - mankind's sins rose up as if to swallow him. War set fire to the Known World, terrible beasts swarmed from the jungles of its edges to devour his most ambitious holdings, and in the kingdom of Yachiel, ruled by the city of Dais at the world's strong center, a black flower of corruption took root and then blossomed. Men gave themselves over to unnatural pleasures - astrology, meditation, the seeking of visions, taking council with unclean spirits - and grotesque arts and theatre, and in this way Dais turned its eyes from the world, as it burned and was ravaged, and those wisest gathered in its defiled universities to whisper that all was lost.
But God had not turned Her eyes from the Known World, though it had rejected Her long ago, and She sent Her angels to save us.
Rejoice! In our blackest hour She smote the Black Flower of Dais and burned it clean with Her light - and though the city was destroyed, its people were saved! Reborn as Blessing, the City-upon-the-Altar, it has been made beautiful, pure, and a refuge for all Her wayward children, wicked or unworthy though they be. Now Her Blessing flows forth to blanket the Known World! Her angels soar to do Her work, raising men and women of good heart to an incredible holiness, charging them to strike back against the darkness and bring Her light to this awful world. They offer peace, freedom, and strength to us all without let or lien, asking only that we keep the least of Her graces:
Do not raise thine eyes to the stars. Let not thy mind be empty; let not thy flesh fall idle. Seek out no false truth, no false future. Never must thou take council with an unclean spirit...
In the year 347 of the Seventh Aeon, as the Known World reeled from the possibility of apocalypse - a word that means revelation or realization, and also the end of the world - the kingdom of Dais set all its resources to finding a way to save us. Well, themselves. But they could see the writing on the walls if the rest of the world fell, and so they sought out every magic, every power that might be turned to our defense. The Black Knives, the Children Who Never Grow, the Rose Lich, the Nephilim...somewhere along the way Dais opened a door long-sealed, and God came flooding through. In the thirty years since that day the Circle of Light, Her dominion, has conquered Dais and thirteen other nations. They're almost as good as their propaganda, bringing peace and stability, transforming the lands they take into places of gentle happiness, and they pile high the dead of bandits and monsters from beyond the Edge, higher even than those of their enemies. They seek always the convert, redemption offered with open hands.
It's a pretty good deal, right?
But there are costs that they're not telling us about.
Thirteen peoples fell to the Circle of Light, most historians agree. There's been a lot of correspondence about this; thirteen is the number, almost definitely. But the Circle of Light counts only 11 principalities outside Blessing, and no one can remember which two are missing. Something happened. Something bit right through the fabric of the Known World. Her people call Her God, but the gods - our gods, the true gods, the forest- and orchard-gods of life and loam - call Her the Exile, and vanish wherever her shadow falls. She bans no worship, but temples within the Circle are empty and silent.
Her priests can fight monsters, it's true, and Her paladins can fight horrors, those behemoths that all us unsaved rely on legions and witchcraft to bring down. But Her angels, which we think number seven, have only been deployed in two ways: the breaking of armies and the pacification of nations. When Quoliel descended on the city of Sarrash in 348 and the Seven-Nation Ambush took place, nobody knew if we could kill her. But at the least the city would have a respite after she was driven back...that was the plan. Instead, seven nations surrendered that day. They say every time the angel raised her hand, a thousand men were lost screaming, dragged into the sky - to Heaven, the Kingdom of Night. None of those men returned. What kind of God needs creatures like that?
What kind of God sends creatures like that?
Here we go! First and foremost, I'd recommend reading the Interest Check here, which contains a lot of helpful information about the setting and aesthetics. If this sounds like the right game for you, consider hitting up the Discord so you can workshop your character with me and with others, discuss and share ideas, and start building connections with prospective fellow players. Raring to go? Awesome! Here's what you need to know:
The Beginning
Elatreis, the Wolf-Haunted Kingdom, one of the surviving Eight Nations - a land of sprawling forested hills and recessed and rumor-shadowed noble estates, boasting many market towns but only one true city: Silver Spear, home to the royal seat of Elatreis, where rule Queen Isande and her two consorts, the Dueling Kings Ixil and Rajara. Here the trade of four nations - once more - passes beneath the watchful eyes of a small army of fanatic officials and through the teeth of the thousand-and-one trade laws of Elatreis. Here the walls stand tall and strong, mounted by six great ballistae at key junctions, and the war seems very far away - at least physically; whispers are everywhere regarding the Queen's efforts to procure a weapon great enough to repulse the angel Quoliel, who even now stalks Elatreis' borders and tests its legendary Great Hunt legion for weakness. Here...you have been led and now kept by signs in the stars and the low thrum of an earthbound scream gone unheard for half a hundred thousand years.
Every god and witch in the city can feel that something is wrong, something is changing, but only you, as sorcerers, can feel something more floating plague-like on the evening breeze: power. Opportunity. Destiny? Within the walls of the city, the omens are obvious, almost overpowering in their efforts to lead you to the undercroft of Silver Spear's immense Verimos Cathedral, where are interred the bones of the six hunter-saints who slew the behemoth Stonefur and founded Elatreis. It is the First Festival, a grand celebration of exactly that fundamental event, and above the city sings, sweats, and dances in a stylized re-telling of that mighty deed. You and those like you have gathered in the dark - a gathering of the sort not seen in an age. A sorcerer's gathering.
Elatreis is a divided, wild kingdom where the noble class holds tremendous strength and freedom and the royal seat is primarily a mercantile power, rather than a military one. True to its name, its vast forests are dangerous places home to Elatreian wolves - huge creatures interbred long ago with beasts from beyond the Edge of the World, possessed of singular cunning and appetite. Its guerilla-like legions contend with woodsbeasts, bandits, overtly rebellious or corrupt nobles (usually with the tacit support of other noble estates) and it's dotted with hidden villages, market towns, and clandestine fey revels. The gods are powerful here, and before She came, Elatreis was harshest and least forgiving of all nations when it came to practitioners of sorcery - a sentence of death, carried out by its famously vicious Shadowcatcher legion. Since the beginning of the time some are now calling Apocalypse, those restrictions have been relaxed, and any sorcerer willing to aid the war effort is offered letters of marque by the royal seat itself.
Are you a native of this ferocious land, or did you come to it to disappear? Are you a refugee seeking shelter, fleeing the fires of God, or an outlander seeking asylum, fleeing a fate entirely of your own making? Perhaps you survived Quoliel's last sortie, and are among those few survivors come to the city to report the near-total loss of the Great Hunt legion. Do you imagine your passage through Silver Spear to have been entirely coincidental, or did strange events already alert you to some guiding hand ushering you towards the city? How is that you come to be here and now, at the heart of the fate of the Known World?
The Character Sheet
[color=ed1c24][h3][b]HEART AND MIND - WHO YOU WERE BEFORE[/b][/h3][/color] [color=7bcdc8][b]Name:[/b][/color] [color=7bcdc8][b]Sobriquets:[/b][/color] [i](Optional)[/i]
[b][color=7bcdc8][b]Concept:[/b][/color][/b] Give me "you" in a few adjectives and a noun, or at most a sentence.
[color=7bcdc8][b]Origin:[/b][/color] At least two and at most five paragraphs covering your life before everything changed, and how it is you came to Silver Spear.
[b][color=7bcdc8][b]Appearance:[/b][/color][/b] So what's left of you? How do you speak, how do you move? What clothes make the (wo)man? Include an image if you want.
[color=ed1c24][b]Skills and Flaws[/b][/color]
[color=6ecff6][b]Name:[/b][/color] Everyone has to make a living, or lives a certain way. What defines your life? What skill centers you?
[color=6ecff6][b]Name:[/b][/color] In the Known World, death is never far enough away. When violence blossoms, how do you garden it?
[color=6ecff6][b]Name:[/b][/color] There's something that makes you different, special. What is it?
[color=0072bc][b]Name:[/b][/color] Not everyone's good at everything. Where are you weakest? What threatens to destroy you?
[color=7bcdc8][b]Hooks:[/b][/color]
[list][*]Something unresolved from your past. [*]Something you want for the future. [*]Something that interests you or captures your imagination.[/list]
[color=ed1c24][h3][b]SOUL - WHAT YOU ARE BENEATH THE SKIN[/b][/h3][/color] [color=7bcdc8][b]Initiation:[/b][/color] How did you become a sorcerer? A few lines, at most two paragraphs, is fine here.
[color=ed1c24][b]Weirds[/b][/color]
[color=6ecff6][b]Name:[/b][/color] Every sorcerer develops a few strange powers. When you stretch out your hand, dark wonders spill forth, and time and fate recoil.
[color=6ecff6][b]Name:[/b][/color] You are a thing of three worlds: the Known, where walks the present; the Dead, where lies the past; and the Celestial, where is written the future.
[color=6ecff6][b]Name:[/b][/color] Some sorcerers master distinct spells and share them with each other. Others are creatures of intuition and chaos. It's okay to have similar weirds, or even the same weird as someone else.
[color=ed1c24][h3][b]BLOOD AND BONE - THE NEPHILIM[/b][/h3][/color] [color=7bcdc8][b]Nephilim:[/b][/color] The name you'll find carved in pictographs you shouldn't know how to read. [color=7bcdc8][b]Sobriquets:[/b][/color] [i](Optional; what do YOU want to name your undead armor)[/i]
[b][color=7bcdc8][b]Concept:[/b][/color][/b] Give me "it" in a few adjectives and a noun, or at most a sentence.
[b][color=7bcdc8][b]Form:[/b][/color][/b] Give me "it" in as much detail as you like. Include an image if you want.
[color=ed1c24][b]Abominations[/b][/color]
[color=6ecff6][b]Name:[/b][/color] Nephilim evolve, metamorphose, transmogrify. Like sorcerers, their power demands expression.
[color=6ecff6][b]Name:[/b][/color] Convergent evolution means that some Nephilim share traits, similarities.
[color=6ecff6][b]Name:[/b][/color] Others are utterly unique in their unspeakable and grotesque abilities.
[color=0072bc][b]Name:[/b][/color] They are what they are; what they are is terrible; but with so much strength comes a little weakness.
Concept: Knight-errant doomed to a terrible fate. This is a sample character and has limited detail as a result; feel free to use longer descriptions for skills and powers if you prefer.
Origin: Once upon a time, Tazkalahad was the little rajah of a beautiful raj renowned for its art and its music. A celebration of human beauty, it was a place of sweeping mural-walls and sculpted thoroughfares to carry symphony and celebration wherever a body traveled. It paid its strong neighbors in portraiture and rare inks to secure its borders, and devoted its whole essence to the elevation of all people through moments of pure and childlike wonder. Everywhere were great tapestries, everywhere you could hear voices lifted in song, and Taz was very happy there.
But that raj is ash and silence, now.
There was an embassy in Silver Spear. He doesn't know if it's still there, or if they'll recognize him, or if anyone ever will, but it's all he has left to go on.
Appearance: Taz is very, very, very tall. He walks slowly and sadly, eyes downcast, and though his voice still contains traces of his people's ancestral lilt it has been roughened by breathing in ash, and by a wound he took years ago.
Skills and Flaws
Dusty Golden Notes: Taz was a singer, a long time ago. He doesn't sing any more.
Rakish Reaver: A dandy with blade and knife, Taz was once accounted a very fine duelist. Bandits don't duel, of course, so now he's mostly just a killer with a penchant for unnecessary theatrics.
Born to Rule: An extraordinarily gifted public speaker and firebrand, Taz would have made an incredible maharajah. Alas.
Blind Man in the Land of the One-Eyed: The truth is that Taz isn't sure he's meant to survive. He tends to focus all his energy on whatever his immediate goal is, and collapse completely when compelled or coerced to divide his effort. One-foot-in-front-of-the-other is the only thing he knows.
Hooks:
Taz knows his sister is out there, and some day, he's gonna kill her.
If only there was a way to sing again.
The Black Knives are fascinating, but is only a former foreign prince good enough to attract their attention?
SOUL - WHAT YOU ARE BENEATH THE SKIN
Initiation: Taz hid in the family tombs to escape the burning of his people, and realized too late he wasn't alone. The worms were swift, and burrowed deep, and when he awoke from the screaming fit their writhings buried him in, he could hear the weeping of the stars above.
Weirds
Warrior's Bane: Taz knows a word that means "conquest" in the language of the dead; speaking this word can shatter things like swords and shields within a dozen paces, spraying wielders with the shards of their weapons, destroying implements of war in every form. If he's quick, he can break an arrow in flight.
Seeing Red: Taz has mastered a forbidden secret of the blood; he can douse himself in it to heal wounds and fatigue, and by draining most of the blood from a person he can prepare a scrying-pool to interrogate their memories.
Red Right Hand: Blood obeys Taz, flowing according to his desire and forming weak hands to do his will. By dispersing blood into water, Taz can perform many impressive feats of hydromancy. By dispersing blood into wine, he can make a man into a puppet.
BLOOD AND BONE - THE NEPHILIM
Nephilim: Howling Blasphemy Sobriquets:Yvyaraine, the Vengeance of Burn-ed Gauron
Concept: Wild-eyed and maniacal, thirsting for divinity.
Form: This strange, slender Nephilim is roughly humanoid, but its arms are twining steel serpents and its hunched and helmed head shows only a single baleful eye. When it leans forward, its head and much of what seemed to be its upper torso can split along five seams, opening its body like a bright blue flower lined with teeth.
Abominations
Starlight Dancer: When touched by starlight, Yvyaraine can slip through gates unseen by mortal men and cross a hundred paces in a heartbeat, seeming to flit from ray to ray with a grace and lightness nothing so large should be capable of.
Calling the Choir: Wherever Yvyaraine's mad eye falls, within about a hundred paces, the dead begin to glow and pulse. Soon enough they rise, swift and under the Nephilim's complete control, and capable of exploding into bursts of arcane fury should they wrap their arms around a hapless enemy.
Celestial Voice: Yvyaraine can exhale torrents of killing light and sound, floods of color and music that devastate the world just by passing through it.
Tristan watched the others, watched Tabitha approaching. Watched his weapon gleam in his hand. So elegant, he thought. It had been a good moment. Well-ordered. Koda had been dangerous, but newborn, and hunger had driven him to irrationality. When the others turned against him, they would be stronger, and killing them would require a progression of weaponry and armor, each outfitting grander than the last to ensure each death remained clean and perfect. He could burn them away without the mess and ruin of fire, he could -
Tristan watched the others, watched Tabitha approaching. The arm holding the gun dropped, letting it hang at its side. The rush from the silver fruit wasn't fading, but it wasn't intensifying any further. Everything was illuminated, collecting focus along lines and angles, and his thoughts felt precise, swift, powerful, snapping bolts of lightning between neural tissue and intricate circuits.
"When you sit to dine with power, take care to consider what's placed before you," he said. "And put a blade to your throat if you are called to gluttony. Do not desire those delicacies, for they are deceptive..."
More eyes slid to Tabitha. "Proverbs 23. I wonder what he believed," he said, gesturing to the space where he had been. "If it helped. If anything was -"
Whatever Tristan was now didn't seem to have the capacity for vomiting, so he just remained still and silent, keeping a biomechanical vigil. Listening to Tabitha, to the voices he could hear. Watching Anni cry, the cop and the killer face off over her. Stormy crying alone. Once again, the scene took on an arcane resonance. Something Biblical. And what am I, in this tableau? Answers flowed through his mind and he turned from them, turned to his companion.
"What's on my mind...?" I went insane. I can't control this. I need to control everything. I can't control that either. I know we're not really going home again, even if we get back to Lightsbridge. I know what I am now. I'm afraid. I'm so afraid. If you betray me, I'll be destroyed.
If you betray me, I'll destroy you.
He was silent for a moment, and then remembered to shake his head. "A man just died. One of us. The first of us...maybe not the last. Why did he die? Part of me doesn't even care. Her part," he said, the thought automatic, not knowing for sure who he meant. "But that's not all of me." Not yet. Not like Koda. Don't let me be like Koda. "What's on my mind is a man just died, a man who lived looking for answers. We still don't know anything, Tabitha. About anything."
Tristan turned to the tower, pointing with the barrel of the gun of killing light. "According to our architect, there's answers in there. So let's honor the dead," he said, raising his synthetic voice. "Let's go see the Magician of Irriss."
Hey, guys! Glad for all the interest. I'm gonna kick up official recruitment at the end of the weekend, but for now I'd like to open the Discord for character workshops, questions, coordination, et cetera. Link's here: discord.gg/ce4FPDp
Alright. Sheet up tonight. Anybody watching and mulling, interest in character ties? I'm working off the concept of a frustrated semi-genius who considers his particular talents - which are real but unfocused and improvisational in nature - entirely inadequate, and has entered the Gaslit Guardian scene to seek out conflict and drive himself to some kind of epiphany of originality that probably isn't coming. Upper class, family issues - his brother is the ominously decadent version of himself he wants to be - and a sense of noblesse oblige either charming or grating depending on your perspective.
@Viatos Tentative interest. So we’re controlling flesh mechas? When we upgrade, are we essentially going Dr. Frankenstein on gigantic half-angels? How do pilots control their Nephilim? Telepathically? Is there like a cavity inside the Nephilim’s body or something?
Armored flesh mechas, yes.
You are indeed going Dr. Frankenstein on gigantic half-angels. You may also just be letting them eat and evolve (un)naturally; this is an aesthetic choice, how much conscious control and effort you want your character to expend in this process. Nephilim are capable of "organic" development on their own if allowed, or you can treat them more like traditional mecha and engineer them deliberately.
Pilots control their Nephilim telepathically through sorcery. Most Nephilim have, or can be shaped to have, an internal cavity. Some swallow you. Some have EVA-style entry points. Some you can saddle and ride like giant death-horses. Up to you!
I'm a little confused. Do we control the Nephiliams directly, or are we just pointing and saying 'fuck dat up.'
Directly, for the most part. Has to do with their armor; you have to be close (internal or at least saddle-close) to make them fully animate. They're not wholly immobile when you're not piloting them, but they're not capable of doing much beyond basic locomotion without that direct conduit to your power.
I'm thinking I'll kick up the full recruitment thread in a few days, no later than the end of the weekend. If anybody has questions or stuff they want to run by me in the interim, go for it.
I myself am actually fine with that and honestly prefer it for basically the exact reason you said-In my past experience though that...kinda upset people. I guess if I go ahead and make that super clear in the top post we could go that route though? Really just don't wana scare people off that would have otherwise wound up joining
There's a certain element of unfairness either way, I guess, but I feel like that route's probably better at producing groups that'll work together and that you're happy with, so yeah, it has my vote. I could fire something off now but it wouldn't be my best, you know? And granted I probably wouldn't be voting if I didn't feel good about my chances, but a timed selection instead of first-come gives more people a better chance to put their best foot forward.
Three days sound fine. Honestly I just want to sleep before I make a sheet. :P
Is there a reason NOT to do competitive applications? First-come first-serve is only really fair to people in the right time zone, anyway (me, right now) - but then you don't necessarily get the best group and might end up missing players you'd really like over players who are, as you say, quick but maybe at a cost.
If you're not under a time crunch to get the game started, you could just declare a time period, let people app throughout it, and then pick the group you want at the end.
