Tatterdemalion

Sunshards

When Chen feels those strong arms wrap around her and looks up at the huntress, we must forgive her if her heart skips a beat. Rose from the River is, for a moment, naked intensity; her pupils bared slits, her nostrils flaring as her chest rises and falls against the back of Chen’s head, her fingers locked tight around the wrist of Chen’s sword hand. The Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade is half-sunken into the turf. For a moment, Chen may even worry that she is at risk of being eaten in wonderful and terrible ways. But then Rose from the River laughs, a low chuckle, rich and dark as river-mud, and allows her energy to bleed away and recirculate, changing into new forms.

Two new arms unfold from her body (how unfair that must seem!) and one new hand, which feels like smooth yet inhuman bark on Chen’s skin, cups the Princess’s chin. The other toys down Chen’s side, brushing with careful softness down those flimsy silks. And there is nowhere to hide from Rose’s eyes, which are watching carefully: do you like this, little Twinshard heiress? How fast does your heart beat in your chest? That fourth hand lifts from Chen’s side and then presses down on her chest, searching for that heartbeat.

“I am a follower of the Way,” she says, muzzling and dragging back the part of her that wants to mark her catch. Dear Thorn Pilgrim! How her own heart beats, holding the Princess so! “But I am obligated to help you, since you have asked for my assistance.” Her thumb brushes against Chen’s lip, and then gently opens her mouth, letting those helpless pants wash over her barkskin, still smoothing, still changing. “I will aid you in finding your path. But the first step is learning how to let go of your ambition and self-assurance, and I think...”

She leans in closer, her braids spilling over her shoulder, making a curtain for the two. A moment of privacy. Who would dare part that foliage? This close, the flowers in her hair smell like plum blossoms at the very end of winter. It’s sweet, almost intoxicating. “I think you desire my lessons, Princess Chen.” Her thumb presses down on that lip, ever so gently. “I think that you began this fight so that you would be here, even if you did not know it. And while I am not a member of the Black Snakes, I have learned pedagogy from their order.”

She shakes Chen’s wrist with a flick of her hand and the crystal blade falls from her grasp. It’s so close! She could reach out and grab it! But Rose giggles to herself, and lifts Chen off the ground as if Chen weighed no more than a pillow, grip firm but not painful. “Do wait just a moment, little Twinshard. I need my bag.” But instead of moving, she settles into place, one hand cupping Chen’s cheek, fingers resting on her lips, the other running through Chen’s hair, her original two distributing Chen’s weight evenly. Something slithers in the grass, off towards the bag. The smell of her is all around, and each can feel the beat of the other’s heart.

“There are eight million paths for you to take from the moment you wake up, Chen.” The dropping of the honorific is scandalous and overfamiliar, is it not? “Some, naturally, are better than others. For you to take a knife and stab your mother would be a very ill path, and perhaps for you to take up a brush and paint would be a much better one. But what to paint? How to go about the process? What to learn? Infinite variables. Infinite paths.”

The pack slowly begins dragging itself across the ground towards the two. Is that right? There’s hardly any way that Chen can turn her head to look.

“But there is a path that maximizes goodness and elides suffering. Our duty as moral beings is to search for it. To follow its footprints, to feel it tug at our heartstrings, to be willing to shed our vices and our attachments in order to walk where we are needed. We are called to surrender, Chen.”

The pack flops open next to Rose, and one of her braids brushes against a side pocket. Dark, soft ropes spill out, and a roll of demon-sealing tape, and... something folded carefully. Rose’s cheek touches Chen’s own.

“Allow me to offer three paths for us to walk, your radiance. On one, I will put you down and apologize for my audacity in daring to oppose you. Then we may go chase after Yue, and perhaps come to blows again when we have caught her. On another, you will surrender to me, the victor of our little game, and I will offer you further instruction in my faith and my protection from danger as we travel together.”

Her voice drops. One finger brushes between Chen’s teeth for just a moment. The fingers running through Chen’s hair tighten and tug her slowly but inexorably back. “Or, if you want to play as we travel together, all you need to do is tell me that you are a Princess and I will never get away with subjecting you to this indignity. That, simply. Do you understand?” Is that a note of excitement in her own voice? She does, after all, yearn to be the Adversary. How her heart beats like a drum on Chen’s back! Yes, it must be her hope that Chen chooses the third, yet... it is not entirely a selfish hope, is it?

“So how may I serve you, o mighty and revered Princess Chen of the Northern Wind, heir to the twin powers of Sourcefall and Ys?” And effortlessly she spins the power, positions herself as if she was a humble handmaiden, eager to help, despite the way she holds Chen in her embrace, her limbs like the branches of an oak, heavy and still and sheltering Chen from any storm.

[Rose from the River uses her one String immediately while offering Chen another. Chen may mark XP if she plays the damsel with Rose from the River. Rose’s choice from Chen’s Fight is, of course, to find an even stronger position holding Chen, from which she may offer Chen varied paths. I feel it would be spamming moves to Entice here, even if Rose is hammering Chen’s buttons.]

Breathless Dead

Redana sets the loose sheafs of paper down on the altar of Hermes with revenant care. She may still be fragile after what happened on Baradissar, her heart still weighed down with sorrow like lead, but she’s had enough energy to prepare this offering: her handwritten notes on the journey, her observations on the nebulas and the vagaries of Poseidon’s domain, complete with her careful, cramped sketches.

Feeling miserable and sluggish and vulnerable is one thing. Neglecting her responsibilities as a mediator between Olympus and her people is another. She has offered Artemis arrowheads hand-carved from scrap metal, inscribed with her holy insignia, in the hopes that it will blunt whatever offering Bella has made, and as for Hera...

For Hera, her shorn locks of golden hair, braided into grain-sheaves. Beauty and artistry and the kitchen, which is the heart of the home[1].

But this, for Hermes, whose mysteries she is being invited to study? This is special. “Messenger,” she says, head bowed. “Last Guide, Caduceus-bearer. I offer you observation and study, in the hope that you will find within some fortunate insight or information new to you. Please, ease our path and open our eyes to the wonder of the universe, if it should align with your transcendent understanding. In the name of the Threefold Magus, I beg you to accept.”

Then she remains, head bowed, listening to the sound of her heart, feeling the ache of her muscles, trying to quiet herself into something worthy of brief notice by the god of the Saffron Path.

***

[1]: don’t be fooled. Redana is under no illusions that the offering will be accepted. She still has to try. She won’t give her stepmother the opportunity to call her ungrateful.

Fellowship: The Heart

Deep within the bowels of the Heart, that terrible wound in the world, that prison of forgotten ruins, the air is still and hot around the bones of a dead city, bleached white and black. Walls lean. Streets lie crooked. The world yawns empty.

A wall sloughs open with a careless shrug. Dust spins and spirals. Groaning, rust-bloodied rails rise up out of the broken earth.

And Sasha screams out of the collapsing reality pocket faster than the Legendary ‘11, running down those comforting rails until Coleman manages to get his claws around the brake. Behind — at a safe distance, thank whatever gods can see this deep down — Wormwood Station implodes with a shriek and a damned wail.

Well. Nothing more to be done about that. There will be dire consequences for what has transpired, but most of them are the sort that you won’t have to worry about, since they’ll happen to other people. Really, if your name’s not Coleman, you don’t have much to worry about at all.

And here’s some real good news: you’re deeper. A lot deeper, actually. Too deep to think of going back up, not when the Heart’s core is so near. Pick yourselves up and carry on.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

“What a name,” you say with a smile, kneeling down to offer the hapless farmer a hand. You are stronger than you look, after all, a firm anchor to hold. “Wherever did she get it?”

Cath Palug has been an excellent traveling companion, now that Robena... you cannot hide it from yourself, you know. You took that woman, who deserved better from you, and you set her alight. You made her into a weapon, all because she begged to become one. And now she has ridden off, full of hot and raging blood, to attempt what you have dared, what no one has dared: to stand up to a king who has been rejected by the land.

She will be broken in the attempt. But what can you do, daughter of giants? You will not shame both her and yourself by begging her to stay, to be lesser for the rest of her days. You will not draw a sword and ride beside her, not without certain matters attended to first. It is not enough that the land has rejected him. The dead have spoken now, but what of the rivers? What of the keepers of the Wheel? What of oak and ash and thorn?

There is still more to be done, more wrath to arouse, before you may draw up a sword from the waters. Old, tarnished bronze, offered to the deep when the gods were young. Not for you any sword not consecrated by that surrender to the divine.

Yet, for Robena’a sake, whether she lives or she dies, you are surprised to find that you are ready to wake those who sleep and rouse those who are silent still. And, yes, for the sake of Cath Palug and her fool of an owner, that their harvest might be lean but enough. The cross makes many promises, but its cruelest is that death is a great joy. As if this scarecrow lying on his reeds, a deflated mass of bone and skin, would be a victory.

“Here is your box,” you say, closing his hands around it. “Take it with my blessing, but be warned: it came from unquiet ground. If it is not truly yours, it would be better for you to welcome an adder into your bed than take it home.”

Sunshards

Rose from the River does not advance as Chen withdraws. Rather, she falls into the stance she developed while traveling with Rabbit Running, blade in high guard at her shoulder, its hilt the same length as the gently curved blade. It is a stance for changing distances at speed, changing where she holds the blade to keep an opponent at arm’s reach or to suddenly come in within their guard. It has no name. Many things in this beautiful world do, to veil their novelty: names that match the aspect of the age, grand and dramatic and beautiful. This stance is just the one she learned from sparring with dear Rabbit. That’s all.

“I truly was a huntress, Princess,” she says; Chen has earned the honorific, for now. In this moment, footwork is all. She circles the Princess, waiting for the moment their blades meet again. Her heart groans in her chest like the oak in a high storm. "So I'm glad you're clever enough to believe it. But I was traveling with the cunning demoness, the Scales of Meaning herself, not because she bought my services, but because that was the path I found laid out for me. She happens to be looking for a girl. Yue the shepherdess, sought by monsters and princesses alike. My path leads to her, too. Though I do not know what I will do once I find her, I doubt that it will be compatible with what Scales means to do to her, or for that matter, what you might decide to do on a whim."

The Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade suddenly lashes out: one, two, three! Her blows are fluid, one leading into the next, a dizzying assault probing at Chen's defenses. With a huff, she disengages just as abruptly, returning to her guard. "You are a great clangorous thing of want, o most radiant princess, you and all the others. It is a skill your mothers hone in you until you are ready to cut the world into new shapes. But listen to me, as if I don't want, too!" Rose throws her head back and laughs, and then is already in motion to block a cheeky move from the Princess of the North Wind. She comes in close to punish that impudence, comes in hard, dares to push the Princess's sword to one side and come in close enough to hook a finger on that lovely red scarf. The tug brings Chen up on tiptoes, their swords shivering by their sides, like a naughty child being pulled close for reprimands.

"You started this fight, Princess. You wanted to save the Scales of Meaning herself from a monster; you wanted to dazzle her, bask in her adoration. And now that she is gone, you think you can sheathe your sword and leave me wanting?" Ah, there is Chen's sword, free at last; Rose from the River drops and moves like a willow-reed in the wind, passing underneath that shining crystal with a breath to spare, swaying upright outside of the guard. It takes all of her swiftness to bring her sword in place to redirect the backswing. "Am I beneath your notice? Will you not do me the satisfaction of winning honestly?" The air is broken ground between them, torn apart by strike and counter-strike, by the whirling of Rose's limbs. The blood in her runs quick and full to bursting of sunlight.

"Fight me to submission, Princess of the North Wind! Make me kneel, if you can! Do what even the Scales of Meaning herself could not, if you dare!" And in her laugh, a wild thing that spreads like vines, there is the truth: that she loves, despite herself, the dueling codes of the Princesses. This is why the Thorn Pilgrim is the princess of her school; this is why she dares to aspire to royalty. She defies the bearers of the shards both because it is her path and because it brings a frightening intensity to her smile. Rose from the River, in her heart, wants just as much as Chen does: she wants to be defeated, or to defeat, with equal passion; she wants to be at Chen's mercy, or to force Chen to swoon into hers, and she fights with her full skill because the space between the two outcomes is a zone of firelight and burning muscles she shaped for herself with her own arts.

"essan! essan! essan el-heloi!" And here's a truth, too, shiny and golden, unfolding in that battle-cry: that two futures war within Rose from the River. She tells herself that she wants peace and self-control, as any monk following the Way should; she tells herself that she wants to be a tool in the hand of her fate, the empty space in a ringing bell. But she so desperately hopes, too, that the Way will let her be a part of Chen's world: a contrarian part, the adversary that must be succumbed to or overcome, the shadow cast by those glorious shards, but a part nonetheless.

For who could see the world-within-a-world of Chen and her peers, truly see it, and not fall in love?

[Three questions answered. One tenet stepped over, with consequences to come. An enticement, if Chen is the kind of girl to be enticed by tugged scarves, challenges to take or surrender control, and unveiled passion, with a roll of 10. A question offered in return: Chen, what are your feelings towards princesses, those aspirants who claim title without right, those pretenders to royal glory?]

Breathless Dead

"Ah." Redana understands the saying; she might not have a head for statecraft, but she knows more than one might expect from a sheltered royal. "Well..."

What can she say? That she will never betray Alexa? Even if Alexa turns on her, turns on the adventure, tries to pick her up and take her back home? Even if Bell-- if somebody finds the codes that will turn Alexa into a killer bodyguard and takes command, forcing her and that mysterious somebody into a fight of command seals? Every promise she can think of seems like an invitation for the gods to take it and push her into it to prove her, to make her shine or break. "I'll do my best to juggle the shoe," she says, with a wry little smile. "You should have seen me and Bella playing off-the-ground back when we were kids," she says, and even though it hurts once it's out of her mouth, she couldn't stop the sneaky little thing from escaping! "I was really good at it, you know. So maybe we'll get all the way to Gaia and back before you get sick of me!"

She puffs herself up, and then dives into the crabs with a battle cry. Step aside, crustacean cossacks! Sure, she's over-exerting herself and will be a mess of aching muscles and congestion by the time they turn the tide[1], but to Hades with all that! She's got to show Alexa, and more importantly, prove to herself that when you work as a team, nothing[2] can stand in your way.

***

[1]: pun very much intended.

[2]: well, not nothing. There are still things that can defeat even teamwork. But if you believe that nothing can defeat it, you can defeat things that you very much could not have if you didn't have that faith, and when you come to the things that really no-fooling cannot be defeated, well, you already had a good run.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

You meet Robena’s eyes, my dear Constance, and see there the same strength that underlies Britain entire. The deep flint. Yes, here is a woman for the hour. Can you match her? Can you do the same?

“Who else? Who makes the law? Who commands the knights? Who holds tournaments they do not come back from? Who has lost his heir and clings to his throne like the ivy clings to the branches? Who is the land?”

The name hangs unspoken. It is a magic spell of its own; you need Robena to say it. You are afraid of how you will change if you say his name, and afraid that Robena will fail, and afraid that Roebena will succeed. But perhaps this last is nothing more than the fear of stepping out into the unseen dark.

After all, in the first days, when Adam’s children inherited Britain from your forefathers, there were ways to deal with a king like this. Your fingers rest lightly on the hilt of your flint knife. At Midsummer, at the height, or on the longest day of winter, when the dark seemed inescapable. Can you call yourself a daughter of giants if you flinch away from the oldest laws?

“Uther,” you say, “presently King of Britain.” And now there is no turning back.

Sunshards

The look that Rose from the River gives Scales of Meaning in the moment before blades are crossed is still amused, but with a scorpion-tail crook in the corner of her lips. “What guards? You mean the scraps of dignity you tried to hide behind? ara-ara, I’ll take those too~” The pole slips from her hand and strikes the ground so hard that it bounces right back up, so that Rose from the River may catch it in a more comfortable grip for sparring. Bold Thorn Pilgrim! Without taking the pack from her shoulders, she laughs and moves to bat away the princess’s blade, to toy with her and find her measure.

But the daughter of two queens moves like water rushing down from the peaks, bright and sparkling cold, swift enough to drag the unwary down into the undertow. Almost too late Rose realizes that she has been drawn out of position. Is she so old, then, that this little snowbrand can trick her? The crystal blade comes whistling in to count coup by kissing her cheek, and both Rose and the Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade twist with a sudden violence.

The swords meet with a high note, the Ice-Star gleaming cold in the low light, the crystal blade of the high mountains straining a hair’s breadth from Rose’s cheek. Eyes meet: one pair dark and beautiful in their focus, their intensity, their love of the sport of princesses; the other catching the dying light and seeming to glow, save for the narrowed pits at their golden heart, black as ink. Rose from the River inhales, long and slow, and lets the shiver run up from the soles of her bare feet on the grass to the flowers growing in her braids. Her heart races in her chest, fluttering like a bird caught in the hand.

“Oh,” she says. For a moment she stands on the edge of the sword, as they make no move to disengage. On one side of that blade, she continues to hold back and then makes some kind of mistake that will lead to this child’s sword pressed lovingly against her neck. She will offer her sword to the princess’s care and offer herself up to her mercy. It will be this girl’s decision as to what to do with her; to give her over to Scales trussed tight, or to bring her as a maidservant on a leash.

Or she could enjoy a real fight and try.

She should not. She struggles enough with her love of battle, real conflict, the burn of the candle. She should yield to this child’s insufferable confidence and prodigy-like skill, be a stepping stone on the great and grand destiny she wears like a coat. aum shantae aum, the jewel is the axle of the lotus.

But Rose from the River is only a good pilgrim. She is a masterful huntress.

So she stops playing and throws herself into an advance, meeting those teasing little feints with a delicate sword-web. As it is said,

The sword is the heart of the field
from which danger radiates in four directions;
turn aside this way or that,
know that the blade will meet you.

“Who are you, child?” Rose from the River is too intent on her craft to veil her respect for the girl’s effortless skill. Here is a girl who must be met by ambush! Her eyes do not miss a trick; her feet are light and heavy by turns, and the sword-katas of the White Doe School seek to instill through repetition and solemn contemplation what this girl knows from her heart.

She should lower her weapon and yield to the little blade-saint. She should! A low growl escapes her as she instead slings her pack to the ground, a humiliating gesture; that she would need to fight unburdened against this tiny thing! Doubt creeps in, her heart still pounding: what if she loses? Does she still cling to some foolish pride, hidden behind her affectation of serenity?

[Rose from the River gives into the temptation to have a real fight, going against the guidance of her philosophy; she also is so on the back foot that she rolls a 5 for Fight.]

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

“Britain is... wounded.” How dare you say those words? You should snap like a branch in a storm and fall insensate at the enormity of that truth. To say it, to mean it, yet to know that you have barely explained to Robena what it means.

But, then again, she’s been on the battlefield, hasn’t she? She’s seen sucking, festering wounds. Wounds that will last for the rest of a man’s life, one way or another. Maybe she understands. Britain is wounded.

“The people like the farmer with the donkey... they’re fighting a blight on the corn. It’s worse near Camelot. I’d almost convinced myself that if we kept our heads down and did what we could, it would be better soon. But then this...”

You gesture hopelessly at the graves. More of Uther’s subjects failed by their king. More of Britain groaning under his rule. And what can you do against him?

“Merlin has not been seen for... three years, now. There’s a price for him. If he was here, maybe he could keep us from the worst of it, but he’s a traitor to the throne. Or so it’s said. And I wonder if he saw what I did. The fire and the blood and the dark rolling over us, blind and thoughtless.”

You hit yourself, fist clenched, against your hip. From a deep well the bile comes bubbling up. “And I thought I could hide by my lake and stop nightfall with candles and seeds?”

Sunshards

A princess! Well. Small, but that’s no indication of skill and power. Which one is this? The face (moonish, backed by night) is unfamiliar. One of Qiu’s enemies or servants. Who is to say which one? Not from this distance. If she is an enemy, then she will attack them (glorious and yet, very technically, regrettable), and if she is a servant, she will hijack their journey, give orders wantonly, and generally be troublesome until Rose from the River strikes from within. Either way, she will have the better of the princess. Her palms are damp on her sword-staff.

“My companion,” she says, projecting her voice down the hillside, “who is most definitely Scales of Meaning, magistra of accounts and balances, most capable of transforming a wayward princess into an expensive auction lot, note the child down there.” Haha! Smart-mouthed? You’ve seen nothing yet. “The one underdressed for the chill of evening, down by the horses. How unlucky for her, to meet not just one of the subsouls of the Pyre of Inspiration, but the most cunning and determined! If she is not in favor with your mistress’s mistress, the inexhaustible Princess Qiu, then she must be in more danger now than she has ever been! What is her value, do you think, oh most sagacious of serpents? Enough for you to snap her up if she does not turn aside?”

It would be a very silly princess indeed who fell for the first layer of Rose’s words. No, that was quite the intent. Peel away, princess, look for what must lie behind them: that this pilgrim must be exaggerating, that this demoness is puffing herself up to a higher tier and cannot possibly be the Scales of Meaning, and that you should hop up here and throw yourself into your passion thoughtless of any danger. That is the second trick, all done without doing undue injury to the truth; that is how it is done, dear Scales!

And if she is astute enough to notice she is being lured into an unfavorable position, then she has earned the wisdom hidden within Rose’s words, and is to be respected.

Now, Scales is certainly cunning enough to get to the second layer, and exactly cunning enough to throw a blushing tantrum there. If she can provoke the demoness to indignantly agree with her in seeming incoherence, oh, all the sweeter! That is why Rose smiles so, watching the princess to see what she does, like a coin tossed in the air. But where will she fall?

Heads, tails, or rim?