Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

Redana knows this story. How can she not? The great battles were always her favorite to read about. In her mind’s eye she can see the Logos holding fast between the ruins of the First Fleet, allowing the Seoul and the York to withdraw behind that sheltering curtain of debris, releasing lifeboats until the captain and his husband’s brotherhood stood alone on the bridge, the guns stilled and the prow splintered, until the Light of Autumn drew close enough for a full broadside. And it would be easy for her to shrug and tell the girl that it’s Redana who knows the real story. But she doesn’t. Because the story isn’t hers.

There’s something vital, something real, something god-breathed in the story. Something that justifies the pride of the Alced girl in telling it, that brings Hera to touch her cheek. Something that makes it shine in the same way as the best stories from Redana’s childhood, stories of imperium and struggle and virtue displayed in battle.

”And through the gaping hell revealed
Vatmoral drove their frigate spent;
To stop the mouth of hated kings
the burning spear on wings they sent—

“On wings of fire and plumes of ash
the lupine arms flew straight and true;
through star-made plate and gunning lines
they pierced the Adelaide full through—

“Until the Alced reeling fell
in ruin on the golden sand,
and Nero wept to see the work
done by her ever-loyal hands—

“For night was then on Ridenki,
the night and doom of falling stars,
and black the sea and black the sky
from ruin of the Alced cars.”

“...that’s how we tell it. Part of it, anyway. The full poem is very long,” says Redana, who once managed to remember an entire sixty stanzas for the Day of Liberation, to recite before the court. “We call Ne’ro and Mengelisk Nero and Molech. And there’s a whole war they fought through space, but you’re right that she was hungry, Nero, because she needed to feed many, many mouths, and Ridenki was a Class 9 Agriplanet.”

She takes the girl’s hand in both of her own, looks her in the eye (with the one she’s got on display). “And our version of the story has Ne’ro finally trapping Mengelisk in his own cave, and then she gathered up all of the humans everywhere and trapped them underneath her wings, until she decided that if she was ever to die she wanted another version of herself to keep humanity in her nest. So she made a, um, a golden chick, and locked her in a cage to keep her safe. But then the chick escaped and now is fluttering from star to star, trying to win a boon from the gods.”

The words stumble out before she can even think of stopping them. “And then a girl of the Alced met the golden chick, the daughter of Ne’ro, in disguise as one of the Hermetics who revere her mother, because if they found her, they’d call for Ne’ro’s hunting-cat to pounce on her and take her home. And that daughter thinks that the Hermetics really do mean well, they want to understand the entire universe, but also she’s worried about the way they’re running around with guns and those portable generators because they don’t have anything like that back home, and they’ve got some sort of temporal cannon up in orbit, and, Kindly Ones, what if they fire it?” This is well past the part where she’s actually talking to the girl. “Because the Alced are still here, and they’ve got a unique culture and their own way of remembering the Battle of Ridenki and why are they kidnapping people?”

Then the thought strikes her and she grins infectiously, finally focusing on the girl again. “Unless, say, this Alced girl knows someone who can talk to my mentor, the Magos Iskarot, and convince him to speak on your behalf! That’s perfect! Then we can negotiate a fairer arrangement for the Alced, and nobody needs to get kidnapped, and everybody who wants to join the Order still can!” And she shines like the sunlight on the sea, irrepressible and joyful at seeing a way she can make everyone happy. Right?

[If the Alced girl is willing to listen to Actual Golden Retriever Redana Claudius, that’s an 11 (with Grace) on convincing her to introduce Redana and Iskarot to someone with pull in the Alced community, assuming that she does not see Redana as the child of the devil and someone to punch and run away from.]

Sunshards

The forest is older than Rose from the River’s wood-nature. True, she was decanted from her vat-womb before the seeds of the eldest trees here were shaped and sown beneath the lonely sun, but while she lay entombed and imprisoned beneath Mount Hoa in the Eight Trigram Coffin, the trees learned well here the secrets of wood: of growth, of life which ends in death, of death which brings forth life again, of interconnected networks, of seeds and their transformation. The world is shadow-dappled beneath the boughs, and low things grow between the trunks, bushes and creeping vines and delicate white flowers, and there is birdsong lilting from branch to branch, and there are great grey moths who settle here and there and fan their wings slowly, and fat red squirrels who chitter their many outrages as Rose from the River winds her way between the trees.

To her eyes alone, there is a golden ribbon that cuts through the world. In the trackless wood, it can only tell her the straightest, the most direct path. Leaves crackle briefly underfoot as she weaves her way through the wood, a continuous rushing motion, fierce and fearful to behold, more dangerous than bear or wolf. Her eyes catch the light filtered through dark leaves, and the flash of gold in her dark face is startling enough that were there any to look and catch a glimpse, they might think her some terrible predator of the wood, and they might not entirely be wrong. Her limbs might as well be branches, flexible and strong; her braids sway like the vines which catch in the wind, and she moves as quickly as the squirrels on the branches and as smoothly as the snake which darts from log to log.

If only she could stay here a while and listen! Each wood has its own song. This one is thick-trunked, strong-crowned, and the earth beneath rises and falls like a frozen wave, and so too the trees learn to shift their footing and grip the earth strongly to avoid disaster. But even disaster has its role, its purpose: fat black insects chew rotten bark on a fallen trunk, moss-draped, and scurry into hiding as Rose lightly vaults over it, pushes off it, veers left where the ribbon goes straight on through a thicket. Mushrooms sway in the wake of her passage, grown where the body of a small bird fell; now bone and feather are both gone, and only the mushrooms remain. The world around her is pregnant with meaning that should be interpreted and understood, if only she had the time. But she does not. Not if she wants to grab a fox by the scruff of her collar and discuss a certain upcoming deal, and instructions for how to carry it out. Steal from her, will they? Steal her Chen? She’ll teach them about foxes, make no mistake.

Then she stops, suddenly struck by instincts, and considers her path. It has brought her to a depression in the earth, overlooked by what once was a statue. It was done in a severe style, but wind and rain and faint sunlight and time have worn the corners soft and mild. There is only the faint impression of a face, and there is only the faint impression of a sword held close and low, point downwards, enveloped in fabric by the end (or else the point itself has simply been worn away completely). The hollow is clay-walled, root-matted, and it would take her but a moment to cross at a lope. But here, the birds have grown quiet. Sunlight streams down upon the statue’s head, and breaks into a numinous haze, a halo never dreamed by its maker. The underbrush is thick on either side, spilling over the lips.

Will0 cocks her head curiously; Rose from the River raises one finger to where she perceives the sprite’s lips to be. Her breath is still, her sudden flight brought to complete silence. The world aches for that silence to be broken, and she will not miss that moment when it comes. “I will owe you,” she subvocalizes, mouth moving noiselessly. The ribbon throbs as it snakes down through the hollow, telling her to rush on, to find her vulpine prize. But route generation systems are simple, and they never were good at recognizing danger.

Staff on her shoulder in deceptively casual form, Rose from the River walks down into the earth, letting it rise on either side to the height of her shoulders. The statue stands impassive as roots rustle beneath her bare feet. Her breath is silent. Her heart is silent. The world swells with the anticipation of noise. And in that moment, when it comes, Rose from the River will not be taken by surprise.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

“I have to go home,” you say, Constance, as much to yourself as to Merlin. There the sword waits, undrawn, hidden well. Because now you know, don’t you? All this time, you thought that you were nothing more than its caretaker. That one day you would return it to Merlin’s care, that if anyone were to choose the wielder, it would be him.

But it’s you. It’s always been you. The weight of your responsibility crushes your shoulders like the Sicilian mountain. Excalibur, in this moment, does not seem to you a prize but a terrible burden. Who would take it up? The matchless blade, the blessed scabbard? You think of Robena and then mistrust yourself. She is strong, but does she have the inner strength to bear that blade? Has she been made unsuitable for Britain by her travel abroad? Would that weight destroy her like you fear it would?

No, there is only one way to settle this, isn’t there?

There must be, as always, a contest. A challenge. A rescue. And a terrible foe. One that only the pure-hearted champion could defeat.

“No,” you say, to both of you. “I need to find a dragon.”

Sunshards

Rose from the River skids on grass. Only her sense of touch remains fully hers; she feels how her heel digs into the earth, how she leaves a strip behind her as she comes to a hard stop. Without thought, the Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade, still sheathed in its staff-shape, cracks right through Will0 WZP’s head; the lack of feedback means that she has no choice but to lean into the motion, to flip heels over head and land crouched low. Only then does she realize that she has been assailed by a sales-sprite. Of all the misfortune!

If she was a great sage, then perhaps she could meditate here until Will0 timed out. But then her Chen, which is to say, the Princess that she had defeated in battle and who had been temporarily removed from her care, which was in and of itself a temporary state, and not something that should make her want to scream at Will0 to get out of her way, would be sold off to a fox, and the fox would send her elsewhere, and likely as not great mischief would be done. But here is an enemy that cannot be fought with force of arms, one that steals perception and offers to sell it back to you at high price. How, by the jewel and the thunder, is she to overcome this demon of offers and deals?

The perfume is sticky. It makes Rose’s bark-smoothed skin prickle with unease. It reminds her of places she has been before: throbbing nightclubs, ultraviolet back rooms, urine-marbled restrooms. The sugary quality makes her teeth ache. It completely drowns out the scents that she has grown for herself with care. And, worse? Will0 makes the robe work. It is Vantasblack with gold accents, abstract designs interlocking at the sleeves and the placket, hugging her upper body tightly before spreading in a halo around her legs, one silver stilletto barely visible. It is wealth and good taste, and the good life which could be hers, all she needs to do is become her own boss and become a part of the Family!

(It would not particularly matter to Will0 which Family it was: the ones that sold miracle cures, the ones that sold weapons, or the ones that sold insurance and its breaches. What matters is that for a meager upfront cost and with a go-getting attitude that saw people around her as marks, she too could end up helplessly entwined in debt, moving product just to keep her head above water. Marie Ojixa explained that to her at length at the Sagegrass, so serious behind her thick glasses, speaking just loudly enough to be heard over the thump-and-boom of the music.)

(Later she’d cracked Marie’s glasses in the fight in her apartment, leaving Marie squinting tearfully as the HUNTER-Class 猎犬 wrapped its adhesive-secreting tentacles around her and pulled her into a cruel, hopeless embrace. Eighty years at an Incarceration Center and Production Facility for sedition, breach of contract, and propagation of terroristic anti-capitalist philosophy.)

No. The only way out is through. What is her pride, that she should cling to it?

“I need Foxes Near Me and route mapping,” Rose from the River says, rising to look Will0 WZP in the phantom eyes. “In return for two ninety-minute Ownership credit chits.” She flicks her wrist, and behold! Two of the iron coins, favors in material form. “Scales of Meaning, unfortunately, cannot afford two revelations and an epiphany, which, as you certainly know, is the current competitive price for my long-term service contract. However, I would be delighted to offer her a one-day free trial in my Secrets of the Black Serpents(trademark) meditation wellness therapy course if she wants to branch out into the market.” She talks shop patter exactly like she drank it in during infiltration. “Again, this is a limited time offer; we can only afford to offer two ninety-minute chits for the next forty-five seconds, so be sure to pick up this deal before it closes!!” That was… too much like Will0. And Rose has no way of knowing if anyone is nearby to have heard the way she just chirped. Please, by the axis point, let nobody have witnessed her Saleswoman Smile.

Fellowship: The Heart

Ailee!

Ping!

The weight makes a tiny bunny hop. The axolotl standing next to you blinks. There is a moment of embarrassed stillness.

“Well,” the clown says, clearing his raspy throat, “I guess I was wrong. That’ll be a ticket, little lady.”

No! Do not submit! Maybe you just had a sweaty grip on the hammer! You very definitely have got this.

***

Lucien!

There are indeed fried pickles. And you’re getting closer, now, ambling along with the Professor. The electric lights all about flicker, and the wood of the stalls creak. There’s something about this place, you know? Like it’s rattling along on momentum just before everything falls apart.

“Before we get into the metaphysics, boy,” the Professor says, ambling with a deliberately careless stride that the clowns around effortlessly display, “I’m curious as to what you think of this. The Heart itself, you could say. What do you think its true nature is?”

***

Jackdaw!

Oh, Jackdaw. Sweet, lovable Jackdaw. That is an excellent question, you know. Where in the Dark Carnival could possibly be safe?

The Merry-go-round? Used in dark rituals. Have you been counting the number of animals and the number of riders? No, you’re not risking that eldritch nightmare.

The Jet Courser? Are you mad? You’ll probably be decapitated, or slip out of the restraints and get flung from the top of an arc, or choke on said restraints! Absolutely not!

Everywhere you turn there’s some new horror just barely submerged beneath the surface, and... hold on. What’s that over there? A house of mirrors, you say? Notice how the clowns give it such a wide berth. Like anything else here, it’s likely got some strange enchanted nature, but the more you consider it, the more it feels like a refuge.

As for getting Wolf there, well, Wolf is currently very animatedly motivated by securing more food for herself and keeping herself safe. If you just pointed out the clownlessness of the house of mirrors and made some intimation that food might be inside, she’d beat you to it.

***

Coleman!

Trouble, trouble, boil and bubble, fryer hiss and Heart rumble.

Before clowns can start approaching you to Have a Word about the train, you’re approached by someone you didn’t expect. Or something? It has no head, but eyes peer out of the thick black fur of its “chest.” It is holding a balloon in one thick and meaty paw. The balloon is red.

“How dare you show your face here, Conductor? After everything you did? I’d know your train anywhere, even if you’re trying to hide it in that strange frame.” Its voice is like the creak of old wood, and its breath is like a pack of wet dogs. It clenches its other paw into a fist the size of your head. “I will be avenged for my pod, Black Coleman.”

so the thing is that the heart sometimes has temporal anomalies and hiccups and that’s just the sort of thing you learn to avoid if at all possible you know but the Blemmyae are a bunch of reclusive bio-craftsmen and you’ve never even met one before and you don’t know if it’s packing a portable plague or a gun-tongue or if it’s just going to pick you up and throttle you with those arms like some great ape and the clowns are watching with great interest oh no

Breathless Dead

Okay, Redana. What would a hero do? For a moment, she tenses, imagining drawing her sword and fighting off these arrogant hermetics. Except that she’s a hermetic, too, and also they’re all tethered to a MRU, and also her sword was shattered by the touch of Dionysus. She’s unarmed, on the same side as these soldiers, and also if she tried to do something stupid just to save a damsel in distress, she’d just end up squirming and helpless next to the Alced girl.

So instead she hoists the Alced up, trying not to stare at the sun gleaming off turquoise plumage. “By your leave, Magister,” she says to Iskarot deferentially. “I will share with her the joy of the Order!” With a nod from Iskarot (though perhaps a grudging one?) she carries the struggling girl further down the beach, until she feels she’s no longer in earshot. She’s still observed, though. The beach is very exposed, and Lady Artemis has been invoked.

“Are you all right?” Redana asks, one arm gripping her bucking feet close. “I’ve only been with the Order a short time, but hurting people isn’t part of our way. We’re about exploration, and discovery, and... you could see the universe if you joined us, and see places that are just as amazing as this! Although your world is truly beautiful, so I can understand why you wouldn’t want to leave, and from the looks of it, they got a bit overzealous. If I untie you, will you try to kick me and run for it? Because I will catch you. I am very fast. And even if I’ve had a lot more experience being tied up than tying people up, lately, I’ll figure it out! And then you won’t get to find out some of my real secrets.”

[Redana rolls an 8 on Speaking Softly. She’ll forgo the three question buffet in exchange for one answered interestingly and brattily: what can the Alced girl tell Redana about the Order’s presence on Ridenki, particularly as to why they’re kidnapping new acolytes?]

Sunshards

“aum shantae aum. aum shantae nemo padhome aum.”

Nails slam into wood with such violence that sheep, sudden-spooked, bleat plaintively. Rose from the River needs no hammer. Between nails she chisels the words of her jewel mantra into the air. aum shantae aum. aum shantae aum. aum shantae nemo padhome aum.

Princess Chen trusted her. And the greatest good for the harmony of all things demands that this task be completed before pursuit. It is necessary that this road remain open; leaving it undone just because she can imagine those dark, pleading eyes staring at her through the rear window of a car now long gone? Just because she can feel her flesh straining with the desire to bloom into a terrible new form, many-limbed and many-jawed, a monster to equal anything that the Watchman has ever fought? Just because Rose from the River wants to feel good about herself, wants to pick up the girl and hear the sigh of relief into that scarf as Chen nuzzles into her arms?

There is work to be done.

The last nail sinks deep; too deep. She reaches behind the fence and bends the tip back in a neat curve. There. Now no sheep will find itself caught or bloodied by her carelessness. She stands, ignoring the thanks from those left behind in the car’s wake. She does not have time to accept the thanks for her work.

Up on the fence, on the pads of her feet. From there to the lower branches of a tree leaning over the flock. Up. Thank you, old one; your branches are strong. aum shantae aum. She moves in sudden shocking bursts, much like a cat, until she is perched on the very top of the tree for the space of a breath. Her weight focuses down to the size of a pin, and the trunk groans beneath her as she balances. Then, only then, she leaps.

Her braids stream behind her as she soars in an arc, trousers billowing, her blade held out to her side undrawn. And she looks out over hill and valley and forest, looks at the car on the winding single-lane road, looks at brake lights as small as puncture wounds, looks to the turn-off where the car will ascend into the sun-dappled wood. Going to find foxes, ha! And if you cannot give them a monster, a Princess is fine enough. Where were you when there was the work left undone?

Rose from the River reaches the apex, and she breathes out. In that moment of weightlessness, she makes herself empty, a vessel to be filled, and lets the wind twist her where it will. Then she falls like the sudden bolt of lightning which strides across the sky.

She hits the ground running. Still on two legs, but running all the same. Running because she has the momentum and she must move, because it is all she can do not to drop to all fours and lope faster, because her bare feet are sure and nimble on the grass, because her heart is an engine that churns and roils and can only barely be constrained and directed. Her self resides in the fire but does not burn; it radiates light to the eight corners of her heart. She sits within herself and observes her own unaware grace, her sensation of motion in the moment that does not begin or end.

Chen, little Twinshard-heir, Rose from the River makes for your destination. You are not her first and dearest responsibility; not yet. But when she finds the one who took you, then you will see the anger of an ancient huntress, for as it is said:

The birds are disturbed in their motion,
the clouds above roil and churn.
Better to throw oneself into the hungry earth
than awaken the pious woman’s wrath.

And yet, perhaps it will be longer still, for though Rose from the River may take a more direct route than the car may, still she may have more perils on her path. The Way does not protect its disciples from the ebb and swell of the world around them; it merely calls upon them to do better, to achieve more by more noble means, and to make the path to harmony smoother for the feet of all. Bold Thorn Pilgrim! Where shall those bare feet take you, hurtling as fast as you may?

[Rose from the River trusts in the Way to make her path short, seeking to perform the amazing feat of arriving at the fox before the car and its passengers can. However, she rolls a 5 with Spirit, claiming her second XP and allowing for a Downbeat.]

Breathless Dead

That is not quite correct. Redana has imagined the sea before. The sea is vast and still and contains both wonders and horrors within its depths; it is a motif in the Pelagic Hymns. In her imagination it is dark and colorless, water piled upon water, and Poseidon keeps all that lies below. There are horses that live in it. And her mother took the sea and reclaimed its depths, filtered the waters in great supply-vats until they ran sweet, turned the hidden places of Poseidon into more residential space, and sacrificed something unspeakable to Poseidon so that the skies above would not drown Tellus in retaliation. The sea once was; then it was remembered in song; and now it is here and she was wrong, she was so wrong, because the sea shines.

It’s like the sun is leaking and light lies slick on the water, unwilling to come close to the shore, because that’s where Poseidon’s horses are. She can see them now; she has that much imagination. The tossing manes, the rushing hooves, the leap and the break and the charge. And then there’s nothing left and the water runs back down leaving the sand black with absorbency, black as the shadows in that one poorly-lit bathhouse near the gymnasium, black as Bella’s hair. Then the charge back up, foaming, ferocious, coming almost up to where she stands in her tall boots.

Her chest is ever so slightly tight, and it hits her after a few more waves that this is why poets are always saying beauty leaves one breathless. It’s as if her body knows just as much as she does that this moment is special, that the processes of her must still until she can be sufficiently quiet, until she can remember this moment until she’s three hundred: the light-spill and the horse-foam and the roar, roar, roar, like the breath of Leviathan, which is a metaphor she now understands, too[1]. Like she can feel its breath on her skin. Like she stands before something alive in a way that resplendent multicolored space is not, for all that it is the art of the gods, for all that she loves it. The sea is not space; the cat is not the painting.

And when she looks up! When she stares at the clouds, actual discrete clouds, it makes her feel as if they are standing very still and she is moving beneath them instead, as if she is watching the rotation of this planet in real time. And between them, empty blue, and how is it that she does not take a step forward and tumble forever into it? It seems more present and fearful, a more certain place to drown than the ever-moving waves. Perhaps that is why Poseidon rules all seas.

Iskarot will need to try to get her attention three separate times; she is lost in worship. Poseidon, horizon-strider, earth-breaker, glory be to you, who knows what lies beneath the deep places of the waters. You who delight in the armored hosts, the silver-scaled armies; you who tamed Leviathan and made the waters salt. To you I sing, keeper of what is known not.

***

[1]: like the best metaphors, Leviathan is entirely real. But don’t tell Redana that yet. She is very proud of her discoveries in literary criticism today.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Your grandmother. You remember her as she was, unbidden: tall and unbent, unbowing. Watch the thread as it runs between her fingers. She is always working this magic in one form or another. She changes things from one form to another: flax to thread, thread to cloth, cloth to wonderful things. She does not tell you her secrets; you learn them through observation, with red fingers and long afternoons without words. She changes other things, too: beneath her house is a cellar, and not everything in the barrels came from the wood and the fen. Your grandmother! The sudden blue of her eyes, like the sky after a storm; the heavy curls of her golden hair; the set of her lips like the fold in stone. If she were here, she would be treating with this man as an equal, reputation or no.

But what you learned of the sword, you learned in the shapes of the silences.

"...your disguise is excellent," you say, and you cannot entirely hide the flush of embarrassment. "I come all this way to look for you, and here you are by the side of the road. And Cath..." Your eyes flick to the innocent-looking cat, licking one paw as if it is the most natural thing in the world to be doing. Ah. Now here's a beast of legend indeed. "Well. Well! Go on, get up," you say, your childhood accent slipping into the words, lilting light. "We have things to talk about, you and I. Kings and crowns and visions."

Breathless Dead

"I'll be fine," Redana says, and she almost manages to whisper it. And she means it! Despite all the things that have happened to her thus far on this voyage, she still believes that she will be fine; that she will not need Alexa looming over her; that she doesn't need a bodyguard as much as she needs someone who believes in her. Her sincerity is painful, isn't it? And yet, it is precious. Something that refuses to die despite someone's best efforts to snuff it out.

She wants Alexa to know she's not going to cling to her. And more than that, she needs Alexa to know that she won't be slighted; that she does feel she can take care of herself, and she will, she really will this time, honest. How can anyone say no to that face?