Tatterdemalion

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Jezcha!

The sound of thunder fills your head and makes you deaf. For a moment, you think that it is just more of the apparitions that have surrounded this arena. But, no, as the smoke and shadows lift, you can see that the great gate of the arena has been blown apart. It is the most terrible destruction you have ever seen inflicted upon your city, and your heart leaps into your throat.

Shamash stands, smoking, in the center of the arena, one fist still extended. That terrible gauntlet vents with a bestial roar, and Shamash lets it fall to their side. "Find the body," they say, their voice inscrutable. "Or what is left of it."

You don't say anything. You can hear the blood pounding in your head. To kill the human, the God of Motion unleashed the Huwawa. How... how terrible... how...?

No. It must have been justified. You rise to your feet, and with a dry voice, cheer the god who defeated an impossible foe. "Shamash," you cry, and your friends among the stands rise, too, desperate. No, not desperate. They, too, understand it was the only way to win. There will be stories told about this day, when Shamash slew Canada the Destroyer.

"Shamash! Shamash! Shamash!" The stupid slaves take encouragement to cheer their savior, but the prod of their guards gets their tongues working, even as Shamash's chariot descends to take them back once more to Babylon. "Shamash! Shamash! Shamash!"

Only your sister sits and says nothing. Dumb blind fool. One day, you will be rid of her. Maybe you should talk to the Inquisitors about her failure to show piety today...

***

Canada! Marianne!

You fall into the deep places of the city.

Down here there are vast machineries; there are storage-vaults; there are sealed tombs. There are shield generators; there are weather engines; there are hidden chambers. Here, there are passageways that lead from temple to temple, sealed thrice either way; here, there are oceans of oil and seas of circulated water; here, you are not meant to live. And yet you fall into the dust, hours away from the city far above, tangled among each other; and there is nothing but the wetness of your tears. There is no light, yet there is no silence; all around is the sound of strange and terrible device.

You are alone together. How cruel, to be so.

***

Anathet!

There is a huge and terrible sound that comes from the south. The kind of sound that signals disaster; the kind of sound that is so large it echoes across the bay, where the old city lies. Smoke rises, as do Shamash's chariots. But you're not supposed to do this; you're supposed to go and make sure everybody gets released on time. If you hurry, you can hit the release points and get everyone to scatter well before the Seneschal is found, but it's going to be tight. That means you need to stop crying and compose yourself. Get it together, girl!

How do you find solace and do what is needed of you tonight, Anathet? How do you find the self-control to keep going even when you just want to sit in a corner and cry about how awful everything is?

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

“It was...” Oh, Constance, listen to you! How your voice trembles! How lovely you are, even unwittingly! Your distress makes you seem like a tree trembling in the wind, even as you shade your eyes to watch the thrilling conclusion of the joust. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

Breathless Dead

“It would take an Empress, wouldn’t it?” Redana laughs as she says it, but watch her carefully: how she starts to think, her brow furrowing, her face growing suddenly solemn. Her mother would have the motive, after all. Maybe that’s what’s in one of the Imperial Vaults: the secret of igniting one of these roaring, howling star-chambers. There’s all sorts of things in there; that’s what mother told her one night, a visiting-night, at the end of the day, sitting by Dany[1] on the side of her bed. There are wonderful things and there are dangerous things and only she knows the difference, and only she holds the keys. When she was little, Dany imagined all sorts of things in there: an entire ocean, a little thin-handled hammer with a golden head, the first seeds of all the vegetables in the world, a tusked monstrosity in adamant chains, a sword so thin you could only see the hilt. She drew them when she should have been taking notes: all the marvelous things her mind could conjure, all the forbidden gifts and curses of the universe.

How easy it would be to seal up Ignition inside there[2].

“Well, if it is her,” she says, and for a moment she is the daughter of her father, her eye the unhealthy green of a thunderstorm, her Auspex the blue-white of lightning, “then you don’t need to worry. We’ll open that vault and let Ignition out when we go home. We’re going to give everyone the stars again.”

A moment; little more. She diminishes with a smile. The echo of the Nemean— no, the reminder that the Nemean is Redana, too— dissipates. “But that’s going to take us a while. Tell me more about how our engines work, please! And if you have to explain something else, or walk me through what it means, first, I’m listening.”

She sits down, tosses one knee over the other, and gives the Hermetican her most attentive, malleable smile. She’s ready to listen to this lecture.

***

[1]: And the hollow air where, one day, a best friend would be. But not yet.

[2]: Even Redana is fuzzy, here and now, on how much that thought is metaphor. The gods do enjoy making the metaphorical literal.

Breathless Dead

“Maybe there’s lost context,” Redana says, because she’s surely expected to say something. A princess does not sit like a lump and refuse to engage with her lessons! “The archivists are always complaining about that. That in previous ages, there are things that don’t get recorded because they’re obvious, or were, back then. Like where Xiban was! We have records of trading fleets and descriptions of their royal court, but nobody wrote down where it was because that was obvious, everyone knew Xiban, until we didn’t. So maybe everybody used to know what made engines ignite, until they didn’t, because there was disruption and tumult and cultural collapse. Or, or maybe that part was an oral tradition, because those are very prone to disruption, if everyone that knows what’s supposed to be passed on dies.”

That’s not a cheerful thought. Lots of serious, devoted technomancers, passing on the great big secret, from the old to the new, and then something happens all at once: Poseidon drowns them all, or the Drive Yards burn with fire and light, or a mad king orders the dissolution of the turbulent priests that ail him...

“It’s okay that you don’t know,” she adds. “I’m not mad. Thank you for telling me what you do know. I really appreciate it. Can I keep asking questions? Or is there a limit? Oh no, have I run out already? Why do I keep asking? I’m sorry!”

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Set!

“Grrrrrmph...”

The Seneschal is looking at you more appraisingly, Set. As he sinks his stylus into the malleable surface of the tablet, he’s not looking at the glyph he signs: he’s looking at you. There’s a wicked cunning there, a foxlike intelligence and refusal to give up.

You’ve made him all the more zealous in wanting to stop you, to catch you, to punish you for what you’ve just done; but he knows now that he will have to be clever and decisive. Set, avatar of her god, is a dangerous enemy clambering up the Chain.

Ah, but there it is, you have the release orders now. What’s your parting gift for him?

***

Canada!

Shamash buffets you with waves of sound from what feels like every side; they’re here, they’re there, they’re kicking up great clouds of sand as they damage spacetime. It’s an unsteady and berserk assault, and it’d be easy to punish if your feet weren’t sunk into the arena.

How heavy is your shield? How do you protect your ears and eyes? Why is Marianne doing this?

***

Marianne!

The world is growing dangerously thin. That great brute chews their way through the world, and their insistence on staying in one little arena is making things quite, quite threadbare.

What begins to leak through into the audience? What signs and portents and stray thoughts are made manifest among them as their god threatens to send them all hurtling down into your demesne?

Breathless Dead

Redana considers carefully. A good question has to demonstrate not only comprehension of the material but the vision to build upon it and make connections to previously learned material, because that is what is expected of an empress. But what can she say? Most of what she has known about ships up to this point is on how to deploy them, how to manage construction requests and delays, and practical knowledge stolen from planetary romances and contraband codices.

“Is the Engine a sun?” It sounds so stupid even as she asks. “I mean... are they sacred to Apollo? I’ve always wondered, but nobody ever thought I needed to know that. If they are, did he teach us how to make them, or did Hermes, or did Haephestus?” The words tumble out faster, as if getting squeezed from a press. “And how do the engines harness its power for propulsion? I haven’t had the chance to look at them yet, but Vasila said it was too dangerous to meddle with them without good reason and the blessing of as many gods as would listen...”

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Oh, Constance! How your cheeks burn with shame when you come to yourself. This is undignified! You have made a scene! You take a seat, accepting a glass gratefully and sitting among the Duchess's advisors. You move your legs nervously, tempted to pull them close to yourself, silently willing everyone to turn their eyes away from you and back to the list.

Ah, the joust! Which has stopped being a joust; your champion has dismounted! You watch her with mingled shame and curiosity; shame that you still do not remember her name, but curiosity at seeing the way she handles that mock-ax. How will she handle it? Will she move with the irresistible strength of a mountain or the subtle grace of a river? Your heart is a faint and feeble thing in your chest, but still you watch.

Fellowship: The Heart

Ailee!

The smell of the flower blooming is indescribable. Lenses and speakers bud and blossom, glowing from within, as you are examined in turn. The Bees buzz furiously and agitatedly; some throw themselves against the metal flower and burst in a shower of sparks, while others lash out and sting you because you’re the closest thing to sting. Throbbing waves of growth cause showers of static as the flower looms over you.

“Welcome to Wormwood Station!” The voices of the speakers entwine like snakes fucking, one black and jagged and rusty, one shining neon sugarpop. “Please be mindFUL and follow all POSted secuRIty measures! Security is [bzzzzzt] byword! Report SUSpicious aCTivity to your near [bzzzzzzt] injury, maiming or DEATH. Mind the Gap! Mind the Gap! Mind [bzzzzzzzt]!”

***

Lucien!

You’re halfway up the shaft when there’s a gravitational inversion. Up becomes down, and down, unfortunately, becomes up. This means that you’re now hanging upside down to a rusty elevator chain, trusting in your core strength to not hurtle down to your doom far above.

The other problem is that the crashed elevator far, far below is hurtling down towards you with a hideous screeching sound, like a bat out of some terrible hell. You have to outrace the descending elevator to an exit without falling to your doom!

***

Jackdaw!

The Chief Squeaker crumples and begins to sob. They sob so hard and with so much volume that salty puddles begin to form. Wait, no. There are waves moving in them.

In no time at all, there are waves breaking against the carefully maintained glass dunes, waves glittering like ice, but infinitely sharper.

And that’s when the floor underneath buckles and gives way, sending everyone in torrents below.

***

Coleman!

You get your answer when the water starts leaking from the roof. Wolf and you react almost at the same time, scrambling for cover as the roof caves in underneath water and glass and screaming mice and kobolds.

But as you’re scrambling together (and, one might note, Wolf leads the scrambling, as she’s still got you on a leash), you see a familiar raggedy fox on her way down...

Breathless Dead

It is vital that each and every member of the Pantheon receives their due from the Empress-to-be; one careless slight might bring disaster down upon everyone’s heads. So Redana has a checklist. Every morning. Without fail.

Each shrine receives its own careful attention. Zeus, depicted in victory over the leviathans of the deep, gets fresh cubes of frankincense in her brazier. Before Apollo’s shrine she kneels in the lotus and recites the Thyssian Koans. She pours salt water from a horse-head jug over the icon of Poseidon and sings the tuneless Apophic Hymn, dreaming of seeing the crash and swell of nebulas as her tone rises and falls. She clears the rotting, spoiled fruit from Hera’s shrine and relentlessly replaces them with farm-fresh produce. The freshly-minted Binaric obol will be gone before she leaves the room, for Hermes comes and goes as he pleases, slipping freely between the seconds. Blindfolded, she sits in front of the jagged bismuth altar of Dionysus and listens to the holy madness of the Maenadarium record with her hands pressed firmly against her lap, refusing to give into panic.

But lastly there is the shrine to Athena. It is pure and mystically clean, flawless and cold. The bust of the goddess is in an old Atlas style, made of high sloping rectangles melded into her profile, sharp and ominous. And here she kneels and refers to Athena, and Athena only. Here she reads from the Principles of War and the blood chills in her hands as she feels the eyes of Olympus upon her.

And here, she never experiences the second face of the goddess.

***

There are things that Redana could (and wants to) say. She wants to ask about Ares, and if Iskarot knows a version of Athena Devouring Her Brother that she does not[1].

But this is important. This is important. Iskarot wants her to remember this. But it’s not philosophy, or history, or strategy, or legal studies; it’s engineering. It’s reverence and a series of steps to placate something vast and dangerous that could destroy her without a thought. Redana has been dealing with those her whole life.

So she stares, and doesn’t say a word, and makes a checklist in her head, step by step. And while she might not understand the why, she can understand the do...

***

[1]: Redana very much wants to know if there is a version of this story that doesn’t make her existentially terrified if she thinks about it too long[2].

[2]: Cannibalism is forbidden even the gods[3], but Athena swallowed her brother’s bones and flesh. She is a walking paradox, an inflection point in the way the world works[4]. Some of Redana’s first nightmares were about Athena swallowing her whole[5].

[3]: ”The virtue of Zeus is not that she is able to eat of the Shameful Feast and remain pure; the virtue of Zeus is that she possesses the insight to be in all things within the laws that bind even Olympus. The rebuke of King T——— is for his hubris; that he would dare attempt to trick Zeus Panopticus into consuming the flesh of the murdered dead is proof enough of his folly. Yet, surely also, his consignment to Tartarus reflects the severity of the crime he attempted to pander Zeus into committing, and the weight of judgment that would fall on her in turn...”
— Aspcleon of Tarrat, The Joviad.

[4]: ”And for such crime was Cronos of the Bloodied Sickle overthrown. O Chiefest Calamity! O King of Utopia! The black seed of his act choked that mythic age, the days before the gods themselves. So was paradise darkened, and all manner of thing brought to ruin; and you think yourself his better? It would be better for a man to throw his aged parents out into the wilderness than to reenact the first and gravest sin...”
— Anonymous, A Condemnation of that Detestable Perversion, V-X-R-E

[5]: Alexa must never find out.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

You know that visions and forewarnings of the future are a natural part of the world. You further know, Constance, daughter of giants, that they are drawn to you like metal to a lodestone. It is for this reason that you walk like a madwoman to the tournament, your eyes unseeing, as if struck dumb by grief. Your mind reels and whirls as you feel the weight of what you have seen: death in Lostwithiel, war between the king and the duchess, Merlin reclaiming the treasure he left in your safekeeping. Will you fail, Constance? Is this your doing somehow? Or are you the only one who may avert it? Or is this fated to be, and your struggle against it will only bring it about?

No. You rally within yourself as you mount the steps, your feet sure on the path that has seared your eyes. If it will be, then you will struggle against it in vain hope. Better to take arms than to lay them aside.

The shocked face of the duchess swims before you. You are in the royal box, and this is where you are meant to be. There is the crack of lance upon lance, the crack of doom upon Lostwithiel.

“I see Lostwithiel stand against the crown,” you pronounce, too loud, too wild. “Against a black sea and a silver surf, the unicorn stands alone. I have seen a sword returned to its keeper; I have seen brother standing against sister. The land cries out its grief in days to come.” The words ignite in you; you stand tall and straight like a brand leaping to life against the night sky, and then just as suddenly crumple like ash. Your footing is unsteady; someone pulls you into their grasp to keep you from falling limp into the stands.

[An 8 — you fill the Duchess with faith, yet a complication arises.]