Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

Alexa!

Redana laughs. It’s not an elegant laugh; it’s a snorting giggle with an edge of being completely overwhelmed. An “I am blitzed out” laugh. When she looks up at you, you get the sense that she is not looking at but through you.

“You... are a big virgin,” she says, eloquently. “Isn’t love a battlefield?” Redana, what? She pats your, um. Pectorals. “It’s raining cards,” she adds, going boneless and slithering her way out of your arms. She does a funny little hop-skip, still avoiding too much pressure on her leg as she nimbly gets out of reach. “And Bella had a shining spear, and Aphrodite shot me, and there was an eye of skulls. No. An skull of eyes. I think we’re being watched.”

And then she looks up at the stands. She looks, and looks, and looks.

“Yep!” She nods her head, satisfied. “There it is!” When she turns back to you, the sun peeks through the oppressive clouds for just a moment, just a moment, her hair flaring into a golden halo. “Let’s go say hello! Even if we have to fight, you’re here[1]!”

And she proceeds forward towards the stands, but at a much more catchable speed.

***

[1]: an ambiguous statement. Is she talking to you, Alexa, her bodyguard, in the flush and afterglow of a vision of Olympus above, beyond? Or is she speaking to your mother, whose face you share?

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Canada!

"This is the bit where she says No, I work alone, like a mighty timber howling wolf, and pouts about how she's not in the spotlight for once in her life." #MAT slurps loudly out of her work thermos in the most aggravating way which she is doing on purpose. There's bad blood here, and really, somebody (anybody) should have known better than to put the two of you in the same room for the foreseeable future. The Canada Safety Area has been blocked out in tape. It's tiny. And whenever you move out of the CSA #MAT starts yelling at you about delicate cabling work and how she's hard at work here, Canada.

And she is smart! She's really smart! She's decrypting the Fleet Key you managed to filch off Shamash and that might get you backdoor access into Caphtor herself, but also, god, she is insufferable. And because you started a fight that you couldn't see through, now you have to stay down here until Marianne gives you the go-ahead to leave. For who knows how long. Without a mirror. Without access to your sanctum. With #MAT.

Mark a Condition from the past, oh, 48 hours of being cooped up in here and try to ignore the, god, she's doing the tapping thing again, she's very definitely doing that on purpose, it's ever so slightly off beat from what she's humming, somebody make her stop.

***

Lamassie!

There are two Lynxes. Two... familiar... Lynxes. Because the Seneschal has made security a priority in the house, and wouldn't you know it? Wouldn't you just know it? Among the reserves called up from the barracks in the Temple of Marduk were these two: Am’met and Visha’an. The two Lynxes who walked you home after you stole the tablets from the Temple of Ishtar. The two Lynxes who made you squeak and squirm and wiggle the whole way back. And you have to walk past them, ignore them, and oh how the two of them are staring. You can almost hear their veiled grins.

But ignore them! Because Lady gives you a smile and cups your chin in one delicate, dark-veined golden hand. "Oh, you dear, silly girl," she says, rubbing her other hand all over the top of your head, "where are your darling ears?" Oh no! You forgot your precious triangles! How could you forget, sillyhead?

"I'll get them," Am'met says, so, so helpfully, so quickly, so eagerly. And you almost manage to forget, with Lady's nails lightly parting your taut-pulled hair, the fact that she will, that she must, return. Until she does, and assists Lady in getting those adorable triangles sticking up, framing your high ponytail just so. "She looks just like a kitten," Am'met says, tail flicking like she can see a mouse scurrying across the floor. "Isn't that so, my lady?"

"Yes," Lady says, looping your leash around her wrist. "She is the most beautiful kitten in the whole wide world."

And not even the sound of Visha'an strangling the wild laughter struggling to escape his lips, only audible to your keen ears, can ruin that!

Breathless Dead

Redana has never really known height. So her body doesn’t quite know what to make of this, her boot swinging free over the edge, the world below savagely fanged in broken spurs, her stomach loose and prickling, her fingers clamped white against the landing ramp, the wild winds tugging at her hair as her spacers’ jacket flattens and seals itself against the chill, it doesn’t know what to do with her at all, and yet her mind has relinquished the controls, has stepped away from the bridge, is in freefall already. Her mind is throbbing curved purple on yellow. Her mind is intoxicated, stripped bare of artifice, wide-eyed and drowning. She unfolds like a flower under the morning sun and drinks, drinks deep, the throbbing of color replacing her heartbeat, blood releasing and contracting as the rhythm compels her.

Her fingers, too, release. And contract too late. She plummets insensate, her cunning plans out of reach of her mind, her grapple and her glider and her harness all requiring the touch of clever fingers reaching up now towards yawning neon heavenhalo.

She will survive the landing. She is a daughter of Tellus, and wrapped in spacers’ wear besides; the force of her fall will be canceled out, expelled into a crater. But if she strikes the earth, she will sink into dark dreams and bitter, under the lidless gaze of a watchful eye, and see no more.

[6 with Despair. Without? 6 again.]

Breathless Dead

Redana’s hand is on a very large switch. There is a safety, now disengaged, and its size suggests the difficulty with which it can be thrown. It is not a thing to be casually pulled. Her body moved by instinct, and it takes the rest of her a moment to catch up.

If an SP that size is fired through the window, the blunt force trauma and toxic gasses will be dangerous to everyone, but especially Dolce and Vasilia. It is likely everyone save Alexa will be incapacitated by chaos and pain as their bodies purge the toxins. And, crucially, no one will be piloting the shuttle.

They are the chaos of Ares, and while she might have her toes dipped in those waters, years of dueling as an elective were hard to shake. So cut the knot. Open the bay doors. While that might allow the grinning figure entry, better a clean fight than to crash and smear their bodies across miles of ruined landscape. It would take weeks to recuperate after a bad crash, and they didn’t have time like that, especially if her mentor had to come down and provide the medical attention himself.

So her fingers are hot and sweating on the cool material of the switch, waiting for the bark, the shattered glass, and the wild chaos. She’s not particularly worried about falling out of the shuttle: she has grappling hooks in her belt, and in a pinch she can repurpose her sleeves as a glider, and it shouldn’t be hard to guide herself over to a ruin of shining and, more importantly, magnetic metal. She’ll be fine. And so will everyone else.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

||Interstitial||

Anathet!

Casa du #MAT is a veil-free zone. No eye-conography (that’s a security measure) and no veils (that’s just personal). It’s so small and cramped that one can barely believe there’s room for one person, let alone two.

But here she is, just like Étoile told you: Canada. She’s... looked better. Those are some magnificent bruises. And she’s stuck in here until the coast is clear, and “here” is barely three steps across, even if #MAT is sitting all tucked up cross-leggies in a bed of wires, dissecting a tablet and drying her counterfeit keys.

And here she is. The only survivor of a battle with the gods not locked up in the Temple of Enki. Wow.

***

Canada!

As above, but it’s been pretty rough hiding out here, right? You need a plan. Or access to a mirror. Or something that lets you get out.

***

Étoile!

Lady is fading. The household is in chaos, Jezcha is throwing her weight around, there are guards everywhere, and the tumult is making Lady’s condition worse. She’s anxious, too, barely able to sleep at night, worried that she’s a target. There’s always the tramp of boots outside her chambers, and she’s so listless that not even your massages and fanning and perfect little tea ceremonies are helping.

You know what you have to do. There’s only one way to bring a smile back to that pale face beneath her wispy veil. And even if you have to be accompanied by guards while walking in the gardens... it has to be worth it.

It’s time for super-lamassie.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Caphtor!

You have ten thousand eyes with which to see. You are a panopticon with ADHD; you witness and do not understand, are not allowed to understand. You drift in and out of a wider consciousness.

This is what you witness: damage to the Arena of Shamash. You wake labor crews, reroute them to the scene of destruction beyond the ruined gates, instruct them to contact a supervisor if they find body parts under Edict of the Gods. It is a very big mess. Let’s cleaning!

This is what you witness: the council of the city, with raised voices, demanding information from your magnet-mired recollection. Is Set one woman or many, they ask. Why did you not raise an alarm, they ask. Where is Set now, they ask. You do not have answers. You don’t know things about Set! You could, if you were awake, make very accurate guesses based on evidence... but you are not allowed. The wines are heavy about you. Caphtor is not allowed to awaken.

This is what you witness: janissaries arresting every slave without a work pass who dares be out of their domiciles. Inquisitors in purple and black, who make demands of you that you can more readily answer. You are their hawk in the sky, their eyes that bring down the prey. You dutifully record names and tracking numbers for them on a tablet inside the Temple of Ereshkigal.

This is what you do not see: in an armory slave’s quarters, Tirzah ab-Marduk of the House of Blue Stone runs her fingers sightlessly over developed photographs, alone in a cramped room. You do not witness her. She has turned your gaze away; the night belongs to her and that room.

This is what you do not see: three girls having terrible coffee in Casa du #MAT, a forgotten alcove in your depths fortified into a studio apartment, a den of cracked tablets and mystic wires, a parasite deep inside you learning your darkest secrets. There is exhausted, incredulous laughter when a fleet key is revealed: the missing piece of a great work.

This is what you do not see: a brilliant man, wondering why he was released from his work for the cult of Enki, accepting a hot dumpling from his new roommate: farm worker by day, she says, bouncer by night. He won’t see her often; keep the place clean and keep your head down...

Fellowship: The Heart

Lucien!

This place is a rolling disaster. You see it, for a moment, dizzying and vast and sharp-edged, a web/net of stolen misfortune. There has to be a balance. This is where every disaster ends up; this is where every accident bleeds to; this is an infected abscess of the world. Already you can see how having a juvenile train here is leading to a train crash, inevitable and horrible. People will die. That’s why something’s a disaster.

But that’s not what you need. You need to fit in. You need to follow the lessons of the clown. The clown paints their face to reveal the true face underneath, all grinning teeth and holy skull. They become something other. You need to become something other.

You need to become the Fool of the Sky Court.

It’s an old, old story; almost as old as the Stone Chorus. The Fool is the avatar of Now. His past does not exist; her future is incomprehensible. He exists in the flickering heartbeat of sensation and rides disaster as if it is her bicycle. And the Fool could ride Wormwood Station like a wave.

The Fool is neither clothed or naked; neither armed or unarmed; neither man or woman; neither servant or master. Fulfill those four symbols correctly and you will have Protection from Wormwood Station. Fire will not touch you; debris will fall in a halo around you; and angels will turn their faces away. Only the cannibals might give you any pause, if you were the Fool.

***

Ailee!

The Station’s reply is the rusting screech of an Angel from the entrance to the Hive. Awww, somebody’s sulking.

Okay, let’s recap. The Station’s aware of itself, cheerfully homicidal but still trying to bargain with you, and when you go outside the hive it will likely start gunning for you. If it has a heart, or a core, or something? Coleman would probably be able to tell you where it is. Speaking of Coleman, Lucien, Jackdaw and Professor Clown, they’re not in the hive— and you care about most of the above.

So what’s the plan?

***

Coleman! Jackdaw!

Feeding Wolf takes time. Twice, you are obliged to move to avoid, in order, a malfunctioning steam vent and a spacial glitch that would have folded you all into... interesting new shapes. (And if you were really lucky, you wouldn’t have survived. But this is Wormwood. You would have survived.)

Then she takes you, laconically, to a spur. Here, Sasha can get on the rails and rejoin the Vermissian, given a full head of steam. Easy. Too easy, maybe.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

You squeeze the priestess’s hand gently and nod. “It’s all right,” you say. What else can you say? “Everything will be all right.” Oh, that’s better. More honest. You only remove your hand once you’re sure she won’t fall to pieces without it. So now it’s time to deal with the Duchess.

It’d be much neater if you had a plan, don’t you think? Yes, much neater. Or maybe something that needed to happen to stop your vision from happening. Or maybe it’s supposed to happen and attempting to fight against it will only bring ruin. And by wind and flower, don’t even think of asking the Duchess if she’s plotting against Uther.

“Your grace,” you say, delicately. “I apologize for my outburst; the vision came over me strongly. The sight of the black and silver standing against the unicorn... it was so terrible that I lost myself.” Not just the fighting, of course, but the dire implications. “It may still be averted, I think, if we are wise...”

You study the duchess not out of suspicion but out of instinct. Only a fool of an apprentice blinds herself to the world around her, and you have grown up, yes, look at you. How your eyes linger on her neck, her gaze, the grip of her fingers upon the chair. But is there anything to be read there, daughter of rivers?

[Marvelous! You have rolled a 6. So tell us, Marianne, what do you intend to do?]

Breathless Dead

"Are you watching, Nero?" Molech tugs at his wild black beard, lips drawing back from his teeth at the corner of his mouth. Unlike his bodyguard, the fearsome Pallas Rex, who wears a breastplate of black armor whose neon overlays beat in time with the cannon fire and whose helmet bears the goddess's sacred crest, Molech is wearing a simple robe. Bearing arms would imply to those around him that he was not certain in his ability to act according to the collated Codes of War, which he carries in three tomes chained to his wrist. No enemy will approach him if it is not according to his wish, and no traitor will survive the heavy spear-blow of the Pallas Rex. "You hubristrix! You senseless owl! It is my lady's will that I win in her name, by her doctrine, before her image! My rule is the last the age will see, and not one pretender will survive my wrath!"

Redana takes it all in, eyes wide. On the backdrop, the lights shine in simulation of space. Space! There, look at that painting-- the ships cut smoothly through the swirling winds, firing their long-lance batteries as they close in upon the Spear. And there, taking up an entire wall, the sword shorn from the figurehead of the Classical, pitted with starlight and frost. Her hands itch; she wants to vault up onto point in a painting, lead a battalion of Ceronians, crash through a doctrine-perfect phalanx with nothing but fury and courage; she dodges each spearhead as the howl from her throat and the throats of her war-band mingles with the savage cry of Lord Ares, who gives them the strength to do the impossible!

Up on the stage, twelve Machine Intelligences wearing theater masks and billowing robes surround Molech. Redana squeezes Bella's hand, pulls her a little closer. "It's the Board of Administration," she hisses in excitement. "They're convinced by the omens that disaster is about to befall Baradissar, and--"

The first sword moves an inch out of its scabbard, hidden in a sleeve, but the Pallas Rex is impossible to deceive. With a contemplative grunt, she hoists her mirror-polished shield, dark as night, in the air and slams it through the neck of the offending Board member, who falls with a crackle of static. Eleven short arming swords, straight and gleaming, are drawn, and the Pallas Rex begins her deadly dance. (That is why there are Stage Machines here, you see; it would be cruelty to make twelve Servitors die eight times a day for a museum exhibit.) Molech doesn't even turn as the recorded shrieks of the dying traitors ring out. "Nero! Nero! Are you watching, Nero, for once in your damned life? Are you witnessing perfection?"

***

"You know," Redana says, settling onto one of the seats with a relief she can't hide, her leg supported by a lattice of light braces woven into her trousers, "I wonder if Molech's bodyguard is still on the planet. After Mom kicked her out through the viewscreen. The Pallas Rex. She was a statue of Athena, like Alexa, but Molech used her as his personal bodyguard. I always wondered if she got caught in the planet's gravity well and fell to earth, leaving behind a crater. What would she have done, anyway? Probably become a hermit in the Imperial Palace. Defeated weaponmasters are always taking up vows and becoming ascetics."

Amazingly, she has never put together two and two. But, you know, why would she? There's the Pallas Rex, invincible image of the goddess, who faltered in the face of Ares-blessed Nero's swordplay, and then there's Alexa, who sat in a niche outside her prison's front gate until the day she needed her help to escape, and is friends with Isty (the Pallas Rex would never), and probably doesn't even like fighting all that much, and just wants to go home and sit in her niche again. Like Alexa would ever become an ascetic meditating on virtue and the gods!

Fellowship: The Heart

Lucien!

The terminal where you end up looks like a wartorn death zone. Bodies lie here and there, mostly ones so strange and warped and inhuman that they must be angels, slowly sprouting into a variety of odd mushrooms where they lie. But the angels did not die fighting themselves.

On the other side of the terminal, the architecture has been repurposed into blocky, sharp-angled pillars and walls, mathematical precision cutting into normal curves and surfaces. The only thing curved about those walls are the many holes— and if you looked closely, you’d see they’re hexagons.

From the ceiling above, something is being hatched. One metal wing has punctured its cocoon, more frame than structure, and needle-thin claws are raking at the thick wood pulp of the cocoon. In response, a hum that sets your teeth on edge issues from the severe, inhuman walls as glowing neon blue bees begin to emerge in their dozens.

But nobody has noticed you. If you wanted, you could set up a chair, munch on suspicious mushrooms like popcorn, and watch the show.

***

Ailee!

“InSPector!” There is a whine of radio static, the flickering of voices, as the receiver tunes in on you. When it speaks again, its voice is choppy, rising and falling, as if assembling words from fragmented sounds stolen from other words. The two voices are there, always there, entwined perversely: the polished charm of the station announcer and the jagged growl of the station itself. “You are very late. Nevertheless, we here at Wormwood Station apologize for the current conditions. Safety is everyone’s responsibility!”

You are considered a moment; there is a sound that is almost like breathing. “Due to present unfortunate conditions,” the station offers, “We are willing to arrange an expedited departure from Terminal Ivy, provided you first assist custodial staff in clearing the cancer in this Terminal. Safety is everyone’s responsibility! Reply.”

***

Coleman! Jackdaw!

For a moment, you are safe. There is a waterfall that is flooding the Terminal, but you have high, safe ground. The ragged-coated Wolf pants and licks her lips, tightening her grip on Coleman’s leash, but you have that moment.

Oh, Jackdaw, that’s a thing. Coleman is very caught by someone who looks like they are starving. Quite literally starving. Ribs can be seen. And the look they’re giving you suggests they haven’t made up their mind whether you’re a friend, or whether you’re lunch.

Coleman, want to make introductions?