Thanqol

Breathless Dead

This is the realm of Ares and you are not welcome here.

*

In the Plousios above, Hermetician Iskarot mans the cannons. Tripod legs clatter up and down the deck as he hauls shells to the archaic cannons, placing them in batches into the autoloader, jamming the firing mechanism to full, and letting Ares put the shells where he wills. The ship is drifting out of control towards the Anemoi.

It is the responsibility of the enemy captain to evade - or of Lord Ares to guide the coming wreck to the house of Hades.

*

The toxic clouds drift down from the starships above, the after-effects of weapons that should never be fired in atmosphere. Miasma for blinding the eyes of a fleet has a wretched effect on unprepared organic life. Lungs strain to filter the chemicals, rifling through the gaseous sludge for fragments of oxygen. Some slam doors shut and seal themselves inside, some dive beneath the waves and frantically mutate gills, some bury themselves beneath rubble and enter a state of suspended animation, slowing their heartbeats and circulation to zero. And amidst these thickening storm clouds flashes massive lightning-strikes of shipborne ELF weaponry, illuminating the massive shapes of the starships like angry gods. Between the walls that burn a crimson agony with the fury of the Armada and the chemical abomination of solid projectile weaponry, the interior of the Eater of Worlds has become at last what it was originally suspected of being: a vision of Tartarus.

Only two cats are mad enough to fly shuttles through this storm, blind but for when a lightning bolt the width of one's entire shuttle burns through the smoke.

*

Merely being aboard a shuttle didn't strike Princess Epistia as a reason to put down Princess Redana. The Imperial Princess was hoisted over the Ceronian Princess' good shoulder as though she weighed nothing. When she wasn't put down during the confused crash-landing on the Plousios' hangar deck, or after stepping out onto the unfamiliar starship, it had started to sink in that maybe to Epistia, Redana did weigh nothing. After all, Redana had plenty of time and proximity to examine those steel-cable muscles - and plenty of time and experimentation to confirm there was no way to struggle free or coherently get a sentence out while being held upside down, speaking into someone's back, while they were maintaining a powerful sprint.

A foreign ship was a maze, but Epistia was a Ceronian, and boarding starships was wired into their genetics. She was drawn towards the bridge as irresistibly as a wolf hunting a stag and raced ahead of Alexa and Vasilia. She crashed in through the door with a scythe in one hand and Redana in the other.

Only once she had processed the fact that it was empty was she able to find the coherency to awkwardly put Redana down.

*

The Eater of Worlds was beset, but its beak was thick enough to endure the molten furnace of a planet's core. It was scorched and burned by the Armada but they would need more time than they had to pierce it - amidst the storm of Poseidon crashing Imperial ships together, and the whispers of mutiny and treason, the attack could not be sustained. The Admiral was forced to watch as the Leviathan's corpse hurled away into the void, the cold gears of her mind already bent to the purpose of catching up with it.

*

The Anemoi was not a ghost ship like the Plousios. It was filled with a full compliment of servitors who did not yet know they needed to get out of the way of the Praetor who ruled them. With her soaked, filthy dress, the owl-like guards did not even recognize her or permit her access to the bridge where Captain Lorventi gave command. Crucial seconds, minutes wasted at the tip of disrespectful avine speartips. Crucial minutes while Lorventi gave the order to evade, moving the Anemoi out of the path of the onrushing Plousios. By the time she finally made it onto the bridge it would be just in time to see Redana's ship accelerating out towards the open void, once again sailing into that rainbow storm.

It would be a rough voyage ahead.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Robena Coilleghille
The War Champion, returned pilgrim from distant Jerusalem

Accomplished
Held in honor and acclaim
Never forgetful of my mortality.

Dark forests breed strong knights.

Much has changed in the Bear Knight's absence. The land has rotted, the king is mad, and evil taints the hearts of once gracious knights. This is not the home remembered by the slender squire girl setting off on her first adventure.

Much has changed on the journey too. No longer do you see a tall, lanky willow-branch of a girl drowning in her tangled bearskin cloak. Now there stands before you a giant of a warrior with lance and axe and armour and the scars where armour fails. She has lost her skittish English mare, replaced with a huge and cold-blooded draft horse. She has lost her nervous stutter and wide-eyed curiosity, replaced with an austere economy of word and deed. She has lost the lady she was sworn to serve, and all of her brash and unseemly influences - replaced with a heartache and powerful sense of purpose. Her coin purse is empty, her traveling companions are lost, and too many innocences have been left behind.

Many of these things you will know. Songs speed ahead of her and her constant delays, for never has she let a bandit or beast or blackguard pass her by. It has been a long road home, the kind of tale that makes girls dream of the Holy Land and the legend the journey will make of them.

But even still she does not have the manner of one who has returned home. There is still more to do.

My household and lands are in disarray. Once I held a place of honour in the household of Lady Alitel Sandsfern. As a squire chosen from the common folk for strength and courage, I was to serve as knight and bodyguard to the young countess. Once these lands had great orchards, meadows and pastures, forests and timber, enormous wealth and a fortified citadel overlooking a fast-flowing river. Now the tower is a scorched ruin, stone melted and fused, the woods are wild and overgrown, and the population has fled.

My arms and armour befit a questing knight. Helm, mail, lance, and great woodsman's axe - all as befit my rank, all worn from use. A bow and arrow are fitted for hunting small game, and come with a hunter's patience. A jeweled dagger is all that indicates I ever sat close to wealth, though it has since tasted both bread and blood. My bearskin cloak covers me, and to this day more than a dozen daggers and arrows are stuck within its tangled thickness. My warhorse moves with a ponderousness that has once seen a priest attempt to exorcise from him the demon of sloth - though watch your apples closely for he can strike like an adder when properly motivated.

My heraldry was once forest green and ivory white in checker patterns, though the road has rendered them black-grey and weathered cream. My crest is that of a great Irish-haired bear. I wear a tabard and a pale space on my index finger where a ring was once exchanged for coin. In one of my many packs I carry two formal dresses; one in the style of the Byzantines, and a much less modest one in the style of the Persians. I wear raking scars across my face, shoulders and chest from some ferocious animal. My left hand's scars suggest burns. No scars mark my back.

My countenance is shaped by the wilderness. Stone green eyes soften and heavy hands become gentle as they watch the wind and reach for a flute that they might sing to it in turn. On the soft grass of the hills, in the shadow of ancient trees, wild hair flowing with the breeze, I seem to fit in the world perfectly. Such harmony is difficult to find in the world of men. There I must duck my head when going through doorways, I must sacrifice many good combs to bring my raven hair to terms, I must bow far more deeply than my peers to bring my head lower than my sovereign, and I must remember that things are perhaps more fragile than I would like them to be.

My name is Robena Coilleghille, though once (and perhaps still) I dreamed of taking another's.

Bold +1
Good 0
Strong +2
Wary +1
Weird -1

With my full panoply of battle, I have 4 harm and 4 armour.

I have the right to be known by reputation. When I meet someone who should know of me, roll +Strong. On a 10+ they have heard of me, and I declare what they have heard. On a 7-9, they know simply to admire or fear me. On a 6-, I yet again curse the name of the bard Yomdaeler who decided to use my name to revitalize her failing career.

I have the right to own an enchanted item. The monstrous, scarred questing-bear I fought had a hide that could not be pierced by any weapon - I slew it unarmed. Its fur now provides +1 armour and immunity to any surprise attacks.

In single combat, I have the right to spend 1 more than my roll would allow. No mysterious skill empowers me; I am simply larger and stronger than the majority of those I encounter.

I have the right to own a trained warhorse and own a kite shield. My current horse is named Apricot. I wish I had the good sense to take some apricot seeds back to England with me. Fool.

I will live to be one hundred.

Experiences:

Fellowship: The Heart

"Pfft, listen to you, you sound like I just stole your girlfriend," said Ailee. She leans down and boops Coleman right on the nose with a smirk like the devil. "Well, if I did, I promise you I would have showed her a real good time. Very gentle. Very tender."

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

"Oh no," said Canada. "I'm so sorry for you. Imagine being looked at."

She was staring him full in the face. She wasn't afraid any more. Her white knuckled fists trembled.

"I can't imagine a worse thing that could possibly happen to you, poor baby darling sweetums," said Canada in her most patronizing voice. "I don't know how you cope with being looked at! That's the worst thing that's ever happened to anyone! How wise and mighty you are to know when people are looking at you! How clever and magnificent of you to to think of solving that problem with violence! I admit, I was doubtful at first, but now I really do see why everyone calls you a high god!"

[Reject his influence: 11
Cancelling his influence and taking +1 forward against him, clearing Guilty by acting to prove him wrong]

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

The Fall of the Dragon Knight

The holy city of Jerusalem is governed by many rituals and many laws. The pious pilgrim might find divine revelation in accordance with these rituals. The impious pilgrim, however, may find just the opposite...

Selzi Ikaros, the glorious Dragon Knight of Antioch, had been sent on pilgrimage by her devout mother in despair at her daughter's behaviour. Sent in the company of a retinue of priests, monks, and with the assistance of the most sober-minded of her companions Felii Instansi, this journey was sure to bring some measure of divine calm to the hot-headed warrior. But the mother underestimated. Selzi had the aspect of the boar to her - she desired to feast, to fight, and to revel. She was a mighty warrior with muscles like steel cables cables and without parallel in the jousting lists and she had no respect for these soft religious creatures that surrounded her like sheep.

As soon as she reached the holy city she prevailed over Felii and spirited her away from the procession. They instead went through the bars and back streets of the city like a whirlwind, Selzi corrupting the naive Felii with drink and vice, engaging in brawls and robberies and behaviour entirely unbecoming of two young knights. After many nights of hard drinking the two of them walked from the city, laughing and carrying each other. Selzi walked ahead, and then turned to face Felii to show off the goblet she had stolen from a church. Walking backwards, she stepped into the centre of a crossroads.

Walking backwards, away from Jerusalem, into a crossroads - this is one of the many ritual taboos that a more attentive soul would know to avoid.

It isn't clear who the woman they met there was - a djinn, perhaps, or a wizard, or even the devil herself. But she sat atop the lamp post and smiled at the drunk and tarnished knights and offered them wishes three. She had not even had time to raise the topic of the price before Sir Selzi interrupted her with the same thoughtless arrogance that governed her whole life.

"I wish," said Ser Selzi, as confidently as the horns of war, "for the strength of a hundred knights. I wish for the glory of a hundred kings. I wish for the wealth of a hundred lords."

And so she of the crossroads smiled and shrugged. She hang down from the burning lamp-post by her feet like a bat and plucked the icon of the dragon from Selzi's shield, and with a symphony of fire, the knight and the dragon were one. Roaring in fury and horror, the wyrm clawed at itself, causing scales to fall as rain before flying away into the night.

"And for your wish, little dove?" asked she of the crossroads with a smile like ice.

"Turn her back!" blurted Ser Felii, aghast at the terrible curse that had befallen her friend. "Release Selzi at once, I command you!"

"Ah," said she of the crossroads. "That will carry a heavy price indeed. She had three wishes, so you must do three tasks for me to undo them."

"Name them," said Ser Felii.

"Firstly, you must cleanse yourself in a cathedral not of Rome," said she of the crossroads. "Then you must hear a king weep and beg for mercy. Finally, you must walk through Ser Selzi's own fire without being burned. When these terms are met then I will return Ser Selzi Ikaros to human shape."

But, said she of the crossroads in her malicious mind, even then Ser Selzi will not be free of the price of her own wish.

Breathless Dead

The Assistant Secretary of Fear And Doubt

There are protocols for this kind of thing.

One doesn't just address the gods using whatever words come into one's mind. The gods are more important than that. A prayer is more than a request, and many a foolish king has discovered that the pantheon is not satiated by simple bribery. The forms and paperwork and ritual and hats that the Administration had developed for interacting with Father Poseidon were all well and good, but the Assistant Secretary had always maintained that when interacting with the Darkening Rainbow the most important ingredient to a prayer was fear.

The well was overflowing. The storm had flooded drainage systems not designed to handle weather, and one of the ways that manifested was in a well that was a lazy fat geyser of brackish water. The Assistant Secretary lifted itself over the side and dove in, dove deep, dove deep and dark. In the dark it did not speak its request to Grandfather Poseidon. Instead it simply took the augury. Mind-altering chemical stimulants were released from glands below its eye and rushed through the central brain, neutralizing its decision making processes. The tentacles, each as intelligent as the centre body, were left to their own uncontrolled devices and began to slash and squirm independently. Colour rushed along the Secretary's skin, its camouflage patterns - never once used to disguise its location but to proclaim it - ran riot with the fires of the Earthshaker. The Assistant Secretary of Fear and Doubt asked Father Poseidon what it was it should fear, and Grandfather Poseidon showed it.

Diamonds in blue and red and the dance of artillery.

An ark that carried the death of time.

Extinction in the form of ten thousand perfect gardens.

A tear in the universe stitched open with castles of white stone.

Intellect so mighty that the gods would regard it as hubris.

A planet freed by mad artifice from the tyranny of distance.

Markets of flesh and metal, warriors leashed and arcane.

The creaking voice of Aphrodite, that last terrible mutilated titan.

Agony and ecstasy to lie in the mouth of Poseidon Polychromatic like this. In this moment the Assistant Secretary was one with its god. In this moment it was the trueborn son of the Sea God, of it and with it and amidst it. And when it desired to see these terrors with its own eyes that was what Poseidon desired too.

So the storm changed.

*

Admiral Odoacer!

Perhaps there had been a way to cross this distance without spending so many lives. She would regret it if there were. The hungry graveyard had descended on her fleet, the hurled corpses of those lives she'd spent before, accusatory with their burned-out hollow shells. The hulks hurled at her as though bitter they had died for her glory.

With a gesture - a raised and outstretched hand in a sweeping motion - the order was given. Shouts went up from all around the bridge, and teams of sweating slaves hauled the massive cannons into position. Gunners ran the calculations with slide rules and mechanical abacuses and enginseers stepped back as the vast stellar furnaces they tended to burned too hot for even their transhuman skin. She watched as the void burned gold and then red. The galaxy was carved up by the fiery breath of a hundred thousand warships as they ate the ungrateful dead.

Still the corpses came, hurled about by Poseidon's winds. Impacts and collisions shattered all over the fleet, and with another gesture loyal commanders were sent forwards to break the iron winds. The carved, sharp beaks of the ships did much to shatter the hurricane, but there were cross-drafts that needed to be tended to. The politically suspect took care of those. After all, Poseidon was not her enemy here; she could not wage war against the sea. She was waging war against those who would deny her Imperial destiny.

She'd regret not finding a way to preserve her soldiers, yes. Their deaths, she thought as her fleet blew away the corpse-ships, would reflect badly on her. But then, she could hardly be expected to give her full attention to every skirmish. She was just human. She had off days. If she applied her full energy and effort every time a few thousand lives were on the line she'd never have time to relax.

And it was precisely her relaxation that enabled her to notice exactly when the wind changed. The great storm of Poseidon changed direction, no longer blowing the shipwrecks towards her but away. Towards the Eater of Worlds. And... it was moving too.

"Concentrate fire," said Admiral Odoacer. "Cut the Eater of Worlds open. Do not let it escape."

*

Bella!

You are fire. You are wroth. The world will do you this kindness, but only this one: It will burn to match.

The great esoteric weapons of the Armada strike the Eater of Worlds once again. Great fusion blasts tear into the mighty beak and skin, causing the earth to boil hot and red. Fires erupt in the mangroves and the ocean evaporates massive gouts of steam. The howling winds tear the roof from the palace and the building begins to fall apart all around you.

Above you, in the sky, looms a massive black silhouette shape. The razor sharp assassin cruiser Anemoi gifted to you by the Empress, larger than this entire city. Captain Lorventi, renowned for her boldness and aggression, has not only caught up with the Eater of Worlds but taken shelter inside its mouth. Yours. Your ship. Your sky.

Black smoke impacts against it - a solid projectile round. Another ship is in here. Redana's ship, the skeletal, ocean-rusted Plousios - it has taken shelter here against the storm. Even as the Armada's fury batters against the walls, the two cruisers circle and fire ragged volleys at each other above.

Redana!

Those eyes are made for softness; this coldness does not come naturally to them. It does come to the peacock eyes that surround them, though. Hera stands there, drab in leathers and resplendent in feathers. "Just like your father," she said. "You don't get to keep things you don't value. You don't get to own things you don't appreciate. You broke her, you lost her, and you will never get to have her back -"

Blood splashes your face.

Hera looks down in shock. There's a spear run through her breast - right through her very heart. She turns about and there in the doorway lit by the fires of Ragnarok is the wolf grin of Ares.

"Hello, mother," he snarled in his male-female voice, as he half-carried the blood-soaked Princess Epistia forwards. "May I ask what the fuck you think you're doing in my domain?"

The Queen of the Gods tried to speak, but blood drowned her voice. She stepped back once, twice... and then she was gone, leaving the taste of ambrosia and iron upon your lips.

Princess Epistia staggered forwards, Ares alternating between supporting her and roughly shoving her forwards. She stumbles and collapses in front of you, Thunderbolt still lodged agonizingly in her shoulder, crackling with lightning every time Ares gives a friendly shoulder-pat of encouragement. Soft hands and a sharp knife part silk and leather that holds your voice.

"Princess. You," she hesitates in saying it, but despite everything you are still somehow in worse shape than her, "okay?"

Fellowship: The Heart

"Oh, now that you mention it -" Ailee handed a notebook over to Coleman. Inside are incredibly detailed drawings of the train, compass-precise as though stolen from the original blueprints. Coleman was there too - illustrated in flickering motions of lead, red arrows showing ranges of motion, bracketed by endless little cascades of kanji. Many little aspects of his day and routine were captured - detailed illustrations of every aspect of engine operation and maintenance, but also incongruously a number of quieter moments drawn with a timeless attention to mood. A landscape scene of him looking out at the desert, much like he was now, tiny against the vastness.

"Obviously I don't know everything," said Ailee, "but that's not for lack of trying. You're trying to take refuge in your own petty sense of expertise, imagining that this bunsen burner on wheels is somehow incomprehensible to me - it is not! I am fully capable of operating it based on my observations, and while I don't have all the nuance down yet I am not a helpless passenger. Maybe if you'd been paying attention to my magic rather than bricking your mind shut you'd have learned something too."

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Canada knew her way around a parade - but usually they came after she'd defeated the villain rather than immediately prior. And this wasn't really an autographs and encouraging smiles kind of situation. What was she meant to do with her face? What energy should she be giving out? Grim and stoic? Let's try for grim and stoic. She frowned in what she hoped was a way that signaled her disapproval but... like... in a resistancy way.

"You'll have to forgive me," she said, "but your educational system is far too miserable for you to reasonably expect me to know who the Zhianku is. But you know that already, seeing as how you assume I've got my training from elsewhere..."

The awkwardness of the High God made her feel strangely confident in dropping some smack talk. Sure, he was ten million feet tall and about to kill her but he wasn't crying with laughter and consuming the concept of innocence so she was already way ahead of her expectations right now.

Fellowship: The Heart

"Your grandpa sounds like one of those idiots too cowardly to do medicine on himself," said Ailee, taking the soup and throwing a disgusted look at Coleman for sipping directly from the bowl like a cavekobold. "This fucking sense of learned helplessness people have - ooo, trust a professional Ailee, representing yourself is a bad idea Ailee, there's no way you can pull one of your own teeth Aye-leeeeeeeeeeeee." She's a razor hand with her chopsticks if nothing else. "It's not hard, Coleman! People have been pulling their own teeth for thousands of years before we invented dentists and put them in charge of everything."

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Whatever it took.

Canada was moving as soon as she saw the laser volley, fast as thought. Of all the weapons of the Annunaki lasers were her favourite. Weaponized light? Against her? You can't fight Poseidon in the ocean, friends, and you can't fight Canada with your false suns.

Her shield sweeps like a tennis racquet, catching the volley all along its length. The light touches the mirror and bends, reversing exactly along her angle, concentrated to a single spot. And then she's moved again, as quick as thought, into the new path of the volley of laser beams - the point behind Shamash. She will catch that now-concentrated volley of laser fire on her shield and reflect the entire destructive blast into a single point in the small of the High God's back where the armour was thinnest. Defense and offense and light and speed - this was how the sun went to war.

Her heart was pounding so hard she felt it was going to burst. She had won. She hadn't hesitated. She just needed to hold steady until those lasers hit.

Until those lasers hit...

Time wasn't moving in slow motion. Canada's eyes reluctantly strayed over to the right where the concentrated volley of crackling, deadly laser fire hung suspended in mid-air, not moving - heading right towards her but never reaching her.

And instead the High God had turned about to face her and was smiling and inviting her to dinner.

...

"um," said Canada, giving another hopeful, yearning glance at those frozen lasers, "I... guess?"

[Unleash my Powers!!! 3!!!]