[center][h2]The Briar Pilgrim, Equal Of Crowns Rose from the River The Devoted[/h2][/center] UPKEEP 5 XP -> [i]Mirror Ball[/i] -> 2 XP GUILTY 1 String on CHEN 1 String on YUE 1 String on Cyanis [b]Daring[/b] +2 Grace 0 [b]Heart[/b] +1 Wit -1 [b]Spirit[/b] +1 MOVES [list][*][i]Devotion[/i]: Mark a Condition when you act contrary to your Devotion. When you Defy Disaster, you may bring a subject of your Devotion with you. [*][i]Last Stand[/i]: when you face a superior foe on behalf of your Devotion, you may roll +Conditions to Fight or Defy Disaster about to fall on someone else. [*][i]What’s Best For Them[/i]: when Smitten with someone, you may count them as a subject of your Devotion. When you take action to help them be romantic with someone else, mark XP. [*][i]Fanatical Self-Sacrifice[/i]: you may mark a Condition to stop someone else from doing so. When you do, mark XP, and that Condition can only be cleared through the Bad Idea Action; mark it appropriately. Your Conditions only inflict -1 on the roll. [*][i]Gallant Rescue[/i]: when you Defy Disaster aimed at someone else, you can either gain a String on them (once per scene/person) or ask one of the following: [How do you feel about my Devotion?] [What secret pain lies in your heart?] [*][i]Lay on Hands[/i]: when you touch someone as part of Emotional Support, you heal their physical ailments. Tell them how your Devotion sustains you; they mark XP if they validate your Devotion, or give you a String if they criticize it. [*][i]Mirror Ball[/i]: when others [i]Influence you with a String[/i] to encourage you to dazzle an audience, describe your performance and roll +Heart. On a hit, your Influencer chooses one; on a 10+, you choose another. [Your audience is rapt and, optionally, interested in the influencer's perspectives or culture.] [The performance lingers; for the next scene, thinking about the performance can cancel out taking a Condition.] [You get +1 Forward to [i]Entice[/i] while performing. Optionally, the Influencer gets credit for the performance.][/list] *** [hider=A History]The Way that can be told is not the true Way. Once, there was a king who commanded his biomagi to make for him a hunter-carceral. They made it with an essence of fire, which changes from moment to moment and consumes to survive, and named it the HUNTER-Class 猎犬. It was a creature of the active principle. To better fulfill its duties, it learned to take the shape of Man. This was a blasphemy for which its creators disowned it, and its king declared war on it; and the creature answered in kind, and it ended in blood. Then the creature was sealed away in stasis beneath Mount Hoa in a place without honor, in an Eight Trigram Coffin, after a dozen executions had failed. Things may be named, but the name is not the thing. Once, there was a princess of a kingdom shrouded in night. To gain advantage, she took up the Seven Mountain Chart and identified each one, then dared to descend into the labyrinth beneath the Green Flame Mountain. Many were the dangers, and yet she found the prison at its heart, and within a warrior imprisoned for crimes against Heaven. He knew himself not; she gave it a face, a voice, a name. And giving these things, she thought she was owed; and for a time, her warrior believed her. His essence had concentrated into the lunar principle, which is still and without action. And so for a time he was a sword in her hand and a deep place in her bed. She who knows others is clever, but she who knows herself is enlightened. Once, there was a maiden who shrugged an old nature off like a shell, having nurtured the seed of her renewal inside her; from the still waters, the flowering tree. She had long considered truth, and concluded that it was only expressible in its pursuit. Her lover, not understanding the furnace of the heart, took the forsaking of form and the stated intent to follow the Way as mortal insult, and banished the maiden from the land. The maiden accepted this as the first step on the following of the Way. The Way cannot be spoken. It is old, archaic, passed down by teaching and not by text; it was ancient when the HUNTER-Class 猎犬 was charged with persecuting its followers. It changes like a living thing, and concerns itself with life. Yet to cling to one’s life is to lose it. Do you understand? To follow the Way is to pursue it through right action and surrender attachment, to listen to its dictates and allow it to flow through you. And yet she stokes a nameless hunger in her inner furnace, one which threatens to consume her from the inside out. So long as all things have not achieved unity with the Way, I will not expect to do so myself. Rose from the River has skin the color of wet earth and eyes like molten gold, the pupils thorns. Her hair sways despite the wind, and flowers bloom, quite literally laced through her braids. She is a thing that can cut her appetite with sunlight and dew. She is very good at almost seeming human. She has abandoned water-melancholy and laughs easily, but knows she is a monster following the path of righteousness; nothing more, nothing less. Her sword came from the high airs. We will not speak of its history here. Look, it is a metal rod; one flick, and it is a keen saber; another, and it is a long-handled glaive.[/hider] *** [s] Tenet: There is no difference between the enemy at swordpoint and the beloved under the tree; love all, keep none. Tenet: Keep nothing you cannot carry. To fix yourself to one point is to invite calamity; the practitioner of the Way moves at its will. Tenet: The follower of the Way fights with a clear head and a clear heart, not taking joy or despairing in conflict. If it is to be, it is to be; play your part to the extent necessary. (You might wonder why Rose from the River believes in these tenets. Her relationship history would be illuminating information in this context, particularly her last one, which involved a Princess with a need for control. Better, then, to deny control and attachment entirely.) (It was the only relationship she’d ever had where her partner knew who she was, and even then— she wanted him. Not her.) (She’s really bad about “don’t enjoy fighting.” She does. Throwing herself at danger and affecting a light attitude lets her drown out her guilt and, even more primal, her joy. She is, after all, a monster.)[/s] As of the Epilogue, the Tenets which she must not break are: [list][*]Don't let Chen be sad. [*]Don't invite someone to challenge you to a fight, or goad them, or incite them; trust in Chen instead. [*]Put Chen's needs before your own selfish desires.[/list] *** Rose from the River is... [list][*]my love letter to Sun Wukong and the wandering ronin archetype [*]despite the wolf/hound imagery, all about snake and floral imagery right now [*]an exploration of the aspect of Wood, a green and growing character [*]wish fulfillment, in that she’s a trans shapeshifting badass [*]a Thirsty Sword Lesbian[/list]