Tatterdemalion

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

“Robena Coilleghille must face death,” Constance says without hesitation. “She must be confronted with it; she must give herself over to it. If you pardoned her now, she would never know if she would be brave until the very end.”

She takes a breath. Her heart is an ember in her chest. How it burns! Like a bonfire on the solstice.

“But I do not believe she should die. If I held that axe, I would nick her neck, and let that hot blood spattered on the stone be enough. I would leave her a scar to remember her penitence by, one for her fingers to trace should she be tempted to folly again. I do not know if her doom can be turned aside, here in her garden, but— that is my judgment on her.”

Breathless Dead

Oh, dearest Alexa! How heroic you look, carrying a simple initiate like this! It is, indeed, one of the traditional heroic poses; if these students had any refinement, they would recognize this in a moment and give you the honor that you deserve! All their attention is on you, after all, the woman of the hour! Swept up in a daring chase, attempting to sweet-talk a gaggle of undergraduates, carrying an object of rescue like Percy Novus carrying Queen Andromella, and looking good doing it! As for all that with Athena and the loss of her favor, well, that’s the sort of drama-preserving handicap any good story needs, and one that everyone here is quite likely oblivious to.

And yet you still acknowledge the cultist’s gratitude. Is it, perhaps, that you are not so different? You have been driven to the dregs, your identity unmoored from its shining and steadfast purpose; small wonder that you are able to see, if only slightly, beneath that anonymizing hood and the air of absolute irrelevance.

“I’m very good at listening,” Skotos murmurs, sotto voce. You might be the only one who even hears, Alexa. “You should let us stay,” she adds. Can something be unheard but still understood? Like stage directions, or a passing thought. Like the wind, unseen but felt.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Episode 2: Ven.

Everyone gains 3 XP from the End of Episode resolution.

Tatters currently has available 5 Generic Strings out of 5 for the episode.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Heavenly Cytherean Machi!

There is an aching knot of Fate entangled in Turtlehead. The first building here was erected by a hunter of tigers, and these he would trade to travelers going up and down the Spearwort. Others stayed with him over time: friends, members of his family, a clever witch who saw the value of the surrounding marshes. Stories heaped heavily upon themselves here for generations, but still you know the very house where first a man looked upon the land that would become Turtlewort and desired it without knowing it.

What a fool! As if muddy bogs are better than the glories of worked stone and the shining treasures of Mount Fang! Steal, kiss, and laugh without remorse!

Kalaya is coming here. Look! Here she comes with a heart full of joy, tended to carefully by an obedient shrine maiden! Her heartstring drags her towards Turtlehead, following in the footsteps of an old friend. And here she must learn that her true nemesis is the N’yari raider!

But so too comes a daughter of dragons, raging and furious, her anger threatening to boil. She, too, is being dragged along by her heartstring. She aches with her loss. An easy tool.

And here, too, you stumble upon two witches on their way to Turtlehead, accompanied by a fearful and terrible knight. One sees you for who you are, but she seems deeply troubled by her own thoughts, her heart’s string tangled up frightfully.

How do you present yourself to her?

***

Giriel!

Following your heartstrings, as it turns out, was the way back to your bodies. They shine in all the colors of blue, and it is fortune that the General managed not to sever them. That would have been a terrible wound. They are things to be kept careful.

But when you got back, Peregrine’s eyes burned. And she was the one who told Uusha, and that’s why the three of you have been on a grueling march for two days with half-a-dozen of Uusha’s best followers. At Turtlehead, you will rest and sleep for hours, and from there you will seek out Kingeater Castle, the path to which is occluded from mortal eyes. The Stag Knight is loyal to the Flower Kingdoms first in all matters, after all.

Which has made it all the trickier that a heavenly spirit has revealed herself in the form of a N’yari. It’s the blue of her eyes that gives her away. (If Peregrine recognizes her, she gives no clue, merely raises an eyebrow.) As a witch, you need to acknowledge you are at her disposal, but you would be disrespecting her if you revealed her identity to Uusha.

How clever are you, Giriel? And though it’s been a few days, you can be honest: does the memory of Hell still haunt you?

[You, clever witch, may take a String on Zhaojun, but may not reveal her identity— yet.]

***

Kalaya!

“You’re not really a knight until you’ve won your first Branch War,” Petony says, not unkindly, as she buckles her gauntlets. “Don’t worry, though. I won’t go too hard on you.”

You are a knight in training, and therefore you are in need of a retinue. In the trading town of Turtlehead, then, you are holding a Branch War: using wooden weapons, you and glory-seeking volunteers will stage a mock battle over flags against Petony’s retinue. It’s not just a test of your sword skills, but your ability to inspire and lead fresh recruits against a superior foe. Your problem isn’t finding people to fight alongside you, however.

It’s the fact that Victorious Vixen of Violets has somehow convinced half the town to volunteer to join your side. This has spiraled very quickly out of control from a fun event for the young and restless to the event of the day, with the other half of town planning to watch and eat fried noodles on the sidelines. You’re going to outnumber Petony ten to one, at least, if you don’t figure out some way of winnowing the ranks.

Is that what you want? It’d be more glorious if you overcame Petony with a smaller retinue, and your knightly skills will be difficult to display when you can just overwhelm her defenses with bodies and sticks. But if you try, you’ll have to be clever to avoid causing offense to Victorious Vixen and the townspeople you reject from your ranks.

After all, you can’t just lead half of an entire town into battle against the N’yari, right? Right? It’d be like trying to hit a mosquito with a battle axe! Forget the guilt of leading so many people away from their town, just think of the logistics! Okay, maybe some of them are just volunteering for the day, but you’re still running the risk of having too many people want to join you— and if you’re leading a horde, how will any of them stand out?

***

Han!

Do you have a plan?

Do you even know where you’re going?

Your feet are leading you to Turtlehead, but is that intentional or simply the providence of Heaven?

What will you do to that duplicitous pilgrim with her stupid coin when you find her?

Questions. Many questions. All that is certain is that right now, you can see the wooden walls of Turtlehead rising up out of the marshes, hung with colorful reed mats.

(And that, perhaps, if anyone could help you now, it would be a witch.)

***

Piripiri!

Messages and missives pile up for Prince Ven while she is absent. It takes time for you to assemble a report out of each one (which is reported to the scribe-demon, each in turn, by hissing serpents), but two narratives emerge: one set of reports deal with challenges to an infernal assault, places where the Flower Kingdoms are weak, and ways in which it can be subverted and turned to Ven’s dominion.

But the second has to deal with the fallen kingdom of Snapdragon. After its fall, its royals were banished to the highlands, it seems, and Ven craves to know their movements, their health, and to have demons work to their good— unseen, by her orders, but even so. A narrative suggests itself: that she has offered herself to the very kings of Hell for the sake of her family. No, you decide after some further consideration: she made the deal for herself, but some small all-too-human part of her wants them to be awed and proud when she reunites the Flower Kingdoms under a green sun banner. So what if they would be horrified? She can keep lying to herself until that day comes. Then, her heart touched by Hell, she would likely lash out terribly, and do things that everyone would regret.

And therein lies the second problem: Ven will not let you go if you do not have leverage. And the trick is that information she would try to torture or bewitch out of you, possessions you clearly do not have on you (and information of where you have them, well, as above), and you have nothing you can meaningfully threaten.

It’s a question that gnaws at you. You’ve been in no-win scenarios before, but this one is particularly vexing. How can you force Ven to let you go short of somehow ambushing her and taking her hostage?

The solution, however, comes from an unexpected quarter.

“Prisoner!” It is one of the daughters of the Laema, having pushed her way through the Wrack-doll guards. “You have done such a good job in here that you will be required to do it elsewhere in the castle! After all, when the Prince arrives with the great prize of Hell in her grasp, she must be received in cleaned halls!” Her tail twitches, and her performance is just a bit too broad: she is trying to deceive anyone who might report to Ven. Maybe this is one of Hell’s intrigues, on behalf of an infernal rival of the Prince or her own mother; maybe she simply cannot bear to see such a good maid face a terrible fate. Maybe she wants to sneak you into a side-passage and seduce you for her own satisfaction.

Maybe she is enough like a human simply to pity you.

But that is not the only thing that you must address. For you have been watched this whole time, haven’t you? By such clever eyes. Tell us what Ven will soon know: how could Ven get you to submit to her?

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Han!

The tiger, frozen in an evil-banishing snarl, looms over the two of you as you relax from setting up camp. It’s a simple set-up, familiar to anyone in the Flower Kingdoms: a lean-to with a small fire pit at the open end, just large enough to give off some light and heat the turtle-shaped tea kettle. Comfortably cozy, safe, and comparatively dry. Melody picked this spot because of the tiny shrine grounds: so tiny, in fact, that it’s barely more than a handful of stone lanterns and the statue of the tiger.

One more night together. One more, and then you’ll have gotten her there, and it’s not like she’ll ask you to go any further. You’ve got to get back home, after all. And it’d be weird and pushy if you offered to keep going. So one more night’s all you’ve got, and so many things that you can’t say to her. Things that would be crossing lines or would make her look away and tell you that she can do the last day’s trip on her own or that she never wants to see you again. But you don’t even get that.

You’d think that it’d be out of the way enough that no one would disturb the two of you. You’d really think that! You can’t even see the road from here, it’s behind a bend in the path! But no sooner have you got the water poured and the tea bags steeping in the little turtleshell cups than you hear the crunch of twigs under a boot, and the pilgrim looms out of the darkness.

They don’t approach you at first, not even after Melody brightly and a little too loudly greets them. (You can feel her hand on your thigh, trembling with just a little bit of nervousness.) No, they approach the tiger and kneel beneath it, bowing their head in silent prayer and contemplation. Minutes tick by; Melody sneaks her cup under her veil and then squeaks because it’s still too hot. Finally, the pilgrim palms an offering into the tiger’s mouth and then turns to you.

“Honor to the servants of the Sapphire Mother,” she says, bowing her head in submission. “May I rest here for a time?” And she sounds so polite and tired, and besides, sheltering fellow pilgrims is auspicious. If you told her to go get stuffed, you might as well pack up and go home right now, because what would be the point of Melody finishing her journey?

So you pour her another cup of tea, and she accepts, and she cups it in two gloved hands. Her wide-brimmed hat keeps all but her strong jaw and the very fringe of her dark hair in shadow. You sit together, and the pilgrim lets out a melancholy sigh, and of course Melody asks if everything is all right, and that makes the pilgrim start a little— but then she gives a tight (self-ashamed?) smile and apologizes, and pulls out a flute. To repay you for your hospitality, she says. A shame she only has the flute, because those are unlucky, you know— but not like you give a hoot about priestess superstitions, and Melody doesn’t complain.

So the pilgrim plays her song, and the notes are sweet and warm. Or is that the fire? It licks at the air like a lover at your throat. Not that there’s any of that going on. A strange thought to have. Your body grows warmer and heavier, and Melody shamelessly snuggles up to you and closes her eyes to listen, and she’s warm and heavy too, and soft, how is someone this soft allowed out of her temple? You can feel every one of her breaths, slow and heavy and sleepy. The fire’s just orange on black now, and the flute is a bird calling in the distant mountains. So far away.

So very far away.

***

The sky is a yellow haze. High, behind black clouds, an emerald has been hammered into place to shine. Those aren’t birds. Those aren’t birds.

You are bumped and jostled on all sides. Coarse fur. Slick scales. Lashing tails. You reach deep inside you, but there’s just an empty hollow where your dragon nature should be. Noise. They are laughing and screaming and yelling from the stalls that crowd the streets. Your first taste of a real city, country girl? It reeks. It reeks of sweat and tears and blood. It is hot. So hot. That green sun bakes the black pavement stones and there is no relief, not even if you pulled off your skin and made of it a parasol. It’s in fashion, though. If you want to try it anyway.

Music. Bells that reverberate in your head. Drums that shake your bones. Flutes like knives. Wordless wails from things hanging in cages. Something without fingers will have played something that will have been in the shape of a harp that will have been in the shape of a heart that is not now because it is a thing that cannot exist in the now only in the then, because that was its punishment, it and all its sisters, for what happened in the War, so there is a hollow in the song that you will only remember as something achingly beautiful and lonely.

You shove against the crowd, but it’s no use. They shove back, harder, and bruises blossom on your skin like flowers, and they push you into the empty square, and there is a giant dancing there, and his tattered yellow robes billow as he spins faster and faster and faster. Beneath the layers of rotting bile fabric, his body is beautiful brass. So beautiful. You can’t see more than a flash at a time, but you know in your bones. Beneath his veils, brilliant light throbs where a face should be, might be. His footprints are red. So red. So red. So red.

You shouldn’t be here, he says, pityingly, without stopping. Don’t you know where you are, daughter? Don’t you recognize my body?

And the stones beneath you buckle, because they are skin. And the high spindle-towers buckle, because they are bones. And the sun throbs, because it is a heart. And beneath you, a scream boils upwards through the Broken King’s ruined body, agony and fury and desolation and despair, and when it reaches you? You will throw back your head and it will tear through you and split you apart like an orange as you birth it and you can’t run you can’t even move your feet and the creator of the world spins faster and faster and raises five hands in merciful benediction as the scream rips through your feet—

***

The gasp jolts you awake. It’s so soft that you barely hear it leave your lips. Your throat throbs, raw and hoarse, with the effort of its passage.

You’re lying on your side. It’s a mist-shrouded morning, and the rain is a gentle thrum on the lean-to. The fire is cold ashes, and the tea cups lie where they fell.

You are alone.

In the tiger’s mouth, a beautiful Snapdragon coin waits for you to find it, turned down on its face so that it would not witness its lady’s deeds.

Sunshards

Rose from the River recognizes that fatal moment. How can she not? That moment of hesitation. When someone’s heart gets in the way of their sword, and they leave themselves wide open.

It’s never been her. Did you know that? When she was the monster that haunted the Burrows, that moment was her cruelest weapon. Thief of faces, ruiner of hearts! But on Chen’s face, there’s none of that oh-so-familiar hurt and betrayal that Rose from the River remembers from these moments.

No, she recognizes this from a different place. From her own face, pale and gaunt and noble, with painted lips and a gauzy veil. It is desire, need, interlaced with fear that you will be tested and found wanting, that you are incapable of even knowing what you do not know, like a blind woman who has been told that the very culmination of the Way lies just across a bridge as thin as a knife. Rose’s heart aches in sympathy for Chen’s—

But foxes are still bringers of miracles, aren’t they? And Cyanis, for all her fox crimes, brought Chen here. She brought Chen where she needed most to be, where she could be confronted with someone confident and knowledgeable, willing to initiate her into those seemingly impenetrable mysteries.

So when Rose screams wordlessly for Chen, straining against her bonds, eyes wide, her heart throbs in time with Chen’s own. She knows this story, sweet little princess. She knows that sometimes, dreams are kind, and the world is in truth eager to guide you across that perilous bridge. So know defeat, Chen, just as First of the Radiants knew defeat in soft silk and gentle hands!

Breathless Dead

How wonderful, Alexa! The wonders of the Endless Azure Skies crumble into dust beneath those strong fingers, even as Skotos all but swoons into that multitude of firm arms. This is the shape of the story, after all: an attempted theft, a moment of danger and fear, tension rising, and then salvation. It’s as intense as a drug running through Skotos’s veins.

Can you feel them shiver, Alexa? How they shake and tremble against your stone! How their breath comes suspiciously fast and how, how Skotos leans on you as if their strength had left them!

“Philosophers are the most perilous of scholars,” they quote by rote. “Their experiments cannot be contained within anything less than the sphere of pure logic or the cradle of a world. They alone dare to camp beneath the shadow of Olympus and present their findings to the mighty ones far above, an act which is as much the enticement of the harlot as it is the unveiling of a painting.” Their voice is soft and easy to ignore. Go right ahead! Let danger drown them out. It has no inflection, merely a gentle monotony. “By the graces of philosophy was the Atlas Cultural Sphere raised up above all other cultures, refined and wise, and by the follies of philosophy did Molech bring it crumbling down upon his head.” They do not laugh at the unintended joke. “Philosophy, at its heart, consists of the proposition, which is simply as follows: that it is possible for civilization to more perfectly please the gods through a change in its fundamental principles, whether on a small scale or a grand one.”

They didn’t complain, so it’s absolutely fine, it’s not like they’re trying to make a point about the dangers of speaking to a philosopher, and that is indeed the next step that should be taken.

…but maybe Skotos should be carried over. Yes. Just in case. They’re already right here, Alexa. All you would need to do is scoop them up. It would be so easy. Practically effortless.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Constance Nim is the other side of the wheel, rising (or perhaps descending) towards mortality as the Lady Sauvage withdraws from it. For the first time in days, there is color in her cheeks, freshly washed and scrubbed until they shone, and rather than gliding stately along, as unapproachable as a snow-capped Caledonian mountain, she... walks. She moves as you or I might, simply, as a woman. A smile is not far from her lips, and if you have the eyes to see, it can be glimpsed hiding in the quirk of her lips or the tightening of lines around her eyes. More than one choice was made last night, and so, perhaps, Constance will continue on this road, and dwindle, and become nothing less or more than a priestess.

What of the knights? She's been so withdrawn, her heart locked away, that she knows them best as partners in Tristan's japes; as a Greek chorus offering judgment on her and her schemes; as people whose hurts and needs she has not addressed as she should. But she will have long days, in the summer, in the waiting, perhaps with Robena, perhaps with Apricot alone, and time enough to remember how to care; time enough to plant crops in the soil and water them through the cracked-earth days of the dog star, time enough to relearn gentleness and vulnerability and how to be firm enough to be a shelter and how to be soft enough to be held.

The worst is over. Now the future stretches out in front of her in yellow and gold and red, and all that remains is to see whether her knight walks away alive in the face of the numinous, or whether Constance will bury her bones in British earth-- but however her story ends, there will be a place for Constance. The ice has broken; the river runs.

"A good question," she says, quietly, not as a gnomic pronouncement but as an acknowledgement. Leave it to Tristan to ask it.

Sunshards

Click!

Clack!

Click!

Under the best of circumstances, navigating down a flight of stairs in high heels is tricky. Descending while being led on a leash is trickier. Doing all of that with your ankles tied together and your hands behind your back? It’s lucky that Rose from the River is in control right now, because silly little Rose would have had to scoot down on her butt, or even be carried by the handmaidens swirling about her, all of them ready just in case that characteristic Rose clumsiness kicks in. And it looks like it will! Rose might not have laser claws or power armor, but she knows how to get some attention, doesn’t she just? What with her thighs flexing with each hop, her jingling top bouncing along, her veil flying up and showing off how firmly she’s gripping that scarf between her teeth... Rose from the River loves to show off, and if she can’t do it with a glaive and a flourish, she’ll do it one hop at a time.

She’s being led to a pillar that Keron had set up all along. Really, incredible work from her; she knew how all of this was going to go down, and knew that Chen would need a visual reminder of what she’s fighting for. Rose happily wiggles her way over and lets her friends (yes, that’s what they’ve been to her over the course of her training) free her wrists just to secure them over her head, which really helps emphasize her hips and stomach as she wiggles them in turn, dramatically tugging on her wrists as she looks out over the battlefield: at Chen (beautiful and spunky and achingly cute) and at Yue (who is shining with a very inauspicious but familiar love of battle, one that the monk knows she should quietly condemn, but the slave feels free to gasp at) and Keron (who she treacherously hopes will win, or at the very least, will try to distract Chen by, oh, shredding Rose’s top with her laser claws, for a start) and the squire (who is herself, whether she knows it or not, attuned to the Way).

Her job is to be the prize. To be fought over. To sink into the bliss of not having to make a choice between Keron and Chen— to simply accept whichever outcome unfolds. (Not that she’s going to entirely be neutral. If Chen wants to win, she’s going to have to prove her mastery of the self and her enlightenment of not being distracted by Rose’s squirming, grunting, jingling, and muffled calling out of her name. Consider it a challenge, girlfriend.)

Breathless Dead

“You don’t have to worry, champion,” Skotos murmurs, their voice like the morning mists. “Beware humility; it is a vice. You do not need to hold back for their sake, noble one. If you fear reprisal, this one will swear to your provocation. If you fear endangering one in your care, this one will vanish and not be seen by them again. Show them your might, blessed of Athena.” Still, the cultist nods their saffron-shrouded head. An order is an order.

And perhaps, just maybe, they might still want to see Alexa toss around some rogues and scoundrels with those perfect, chiseled arms. To fight with fist and improvised weapon against enemies bearing weapons more threat and accessory than danger. These are the Endless Azure Skies, after all; getting in fights along the grand streets, scuffling with villains, and discovering the thread that leads one to an exciting story is the sort of thing that happens all the time here.

And Skotos is not allowed to take part. It is not Skotos’s place to wrestle again, to sharply rap knuckles against the street so that weapons go clattering uselessly to the ground, to pull carpets from clotheslines and toss them over an assailant’s head, to sweep ankles and crack jaws and dangle thugs over a drop until they admit what foul business they were sent on by some scheming vizier or wicked noblewoman. Therefore, Skotos’s only hope of being, in some small part, witness to that story? It is the hope that brave, strong, patient, fearsome, kind Alexa will protect them and be the heroine of that story instead.

Not that Skotos’s hopes are of any value. Not that they deserve to be any part of that thriller. Not that they may expect Alexa to do so for them. Not that they may even use the seal on one gloved hand without Redana’s permission. They are a servant, and Alexa’s will is to be their will. As she says, so shall they do, and their wishes are completely immaterial. This is what it means to be penitent.