Thanqol

Breathless Dead

Redana!

"Do not second guess yourself, you were correct the first time -" started the Hermetician. "Steaming the ship is the only way to ensure that the oceanic life does not simply enter hibernation, the question is... how do we... do it safely..."

The robotic voice trailed off as your idea began to sink in.

"Bold," he murmured.

"Decisive," he said, a bit more loudly, more confidently.

"Smart," said Ares, standing besides the Hermetician, causing that saffron-robed head to nod.

The War God smiles.

You've never seen him in peacetime before. You didn't know he could appear in peacetime. But now you can see him clearly, without the blurring motion of violence that normally surrounds him. In form and figure he is identical to Athena - he has her face, her eyes, her breasts, her four arms muscled like wire - but the lighting falls differently upon him. His shadows are deep and hard, transitioning between hard black and vibrant colour like a figure from an illustration. His clothes are different too - he comes not garbed for war, but in open-shirted plaid like a longshoreman, sleeves rolled up, ready to work.

"Correct," finished the Hermetician. "You solved not only the first problem, but the second within the same breath. Impressive. One adjustment. We will sever the occupied part of the ship and steam-cook the submerged part before venting the excess moisture. The work will be hazardous -" Ares smiles "- but less so than the alternative. Come, let us gather our tools."

Vasilia!

Apollo smiles and bows, fist in open palm, and steps away and elsewhere. He takes the golden peach with him, and in his wake you can feel your nose start to run and your throat start to close. It is a humble cold, a thing as enduring as life itself. A price to pay for falling short.

But Galnius nods in understanding. His patron god did not give you his blessing, but another did. Strong fingers tingling with electric power rest for a moment on your shoulder, making your fur run and fuzz and stand on end - just for a moment before they're gone again.

"I see," said the hoplite, in her own voice once more. "You rule your domain as a king. I was wrong. I am not your subordinate, I am your guest, and will behave as such."

She gives a respectful nod and turns to go.

Alexa!

"I don't know... mother tried to defy her purpose and look how that ended," said Isty, scratching at a tear in the fabric over her knee. "I guess she tried to shortcut the process. Fight gloriously and die in battle, and enjoy peace in the real Elysium Fields. What's wrong with that?"

Bella!

"She is more bomb than person," Mynx agreed. "We all are."

The Ikarani's eyes are moving. You only notice because of the intensity of your fascination, but they're following the course of an almost invisible mote of dust as it's carried within her own breath. The matter seems so mundane and minor but the more you look the more absorbing it is, like watching a star dragged into the black holes of those gleaming eyes. The philosophers say that all of physics is present in the motion of the smallest grain of sand and you wonder just how much information she is extracting from breath and dust.

The wine arrives. Tinny, weak, the taste of the farms that line the vast heating shafts that run all the way to the core of Tellus. Familiar. Home.

"The first words the Ikarani hears in this state will form her obsession," said Mynx. "They'll become the foundation of her identity and she will not be able to rest until she has achieved that goal or solved that problem. After the goal is achieved she'll return to quiescence. The art to this is giving her concrete goals she can solve within a day or so - in that time she'll be a superlative detective, thief, scientist, strategist or planner. After that she can be reset to use again." Again, that hesitation, and again a stubborn decision to continue talking regardless. "But the final use for an Ikarani is as a society killer. Unleashed she can consume kingdoms, fleets or worlds in madness and strife. It's not quick and she won't survive it, but it's what she's capable of."

Fellowship: The Heart

Ailee sketches the glyph of the Queen Awaiting - she has her own will, pride and agenda (the line across the face symbolizes a veil, meaning that last one in particular must remain hidden). Tribute must be paid to receive her blessing. She is not here to perform for your amusement - she will do so when she is satisfied, and not before.

(The bees made a terrible mistake when they revealed they comprehended a language other than dance. Now she has leverage)

Another character set: a migratory queen, with swirls symbolizing wind - companions lost, scattered by the breeze. She wants to know where to find them.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

There's been a thought in the back of her head since all of... this started. Where would she go if she had to fight Tirzah Asterion? What kind of landscape would play to her strengths and minimize the chances of collateral damage? Where could she go to gain the advantage? Perhaps it could occur in an Annunaki military base where the collateral damage would destroy enemy military assets, or on a prepared landscape with traps or hidden weapons or something. Marianne would probably do something like that, maybe even with strategically placed costume changes so she could go through the fight morphing into ever more beautiful and glamorous shapes.

One small problem, though. Every time she's tried to work through it she wound up crying into her pillow instead. And she doesn't think the process would have been any easier if she'd known she was going up against Shamash.

She's used to having time - at least enough to take a deep breath and decide to be brave. With the monstrous god bearing down on her both time and bravery are impossible to find.

[Assess: three!]

Breathless Dead

Redana!

"Contemplate the Engine," buzzed the Hermetic. "For the first revelation is that it is greater than the ship in which it rests. It can be made to burn as soft and cool as the heartbeat of sleep, or as loud and hot as the heartbeat of love. All devices and machines flow from the Engine but they are but emanations, ways to channel the celestial fragment into more precise forms. Sometimes they are unnecessary."

He finishes constructing - and it is a humble thing he has made. Instead of a bowl, he has made a covered pot.

Vasilia!

Apollo Silverbow watches you beatifically. Though he is serene and forgiving, in his eyes are reflected darkness. Your stress. Your nightmares. Your exhaustion. All that besets you and weighs you down, all of your regrets and doubts. His smile is kind and he does not judge you for them, but neither is it easy to meet his eyes and all the things that fill them.

"I don't give a damn how the captain feels about their post," said Galnius, but these aren't Galnius' words. These are the words of fear passing through a mortal conduit. "There are lives on the line. Potentially millions or even billions with an Imperial Princess involved. The Grand Armada is after us and they have weapons that can end stars and a leader who is confident in wielding them. With a word, Princess Redana would have a navy to match. Everyone here is fulfilling their function, but you? You carry the heaviest burden of all and do not seem to realize it."

Alexa!

Hades is sitting there besides the both of you. His eyes are crystal blue and gleaming, but he says nothing - just shuffles his cards.

"Hey, Alexa, I'm a Ceronian," said Isty, making a face. "Don't think I'm any less a tool of violence than you are. I might have blood in my veins but once the banners go up and formation instinct kicks in then I'm just another cog in the machine, same as you. I don't know if what we have is the same as what humans have, but we're in the same boat on this one, okay? So let's at least do the courtesy of calling each others' deconstructions deaths."

Hades smiles a little and starts laying cards out in the ancient game of solitare.

Mynx!

It takes a long time for that to soak in.

Bella is miserable.

Was she - really? This whole thing was so exciting, wasn't it? They'd left Tellus! That was her dream! Wasn't that everyone's dream? Wasn't the motivation for every single person on that enormous, horrible, wretched ball of cement? To get out? When she'd lain awake during the agony of the Second Ascension, listening to the sound of her bones crack and feeling her organs rearrange within her body all she'd been able to think was that this would one day be worth it because she might get to leave. And to leave in luxury and comfort, with a ship and her best friend and catching up with Redana so she could be with her too... that was the dream. Right? Together, to the stars...

But this wasn't that.

She was awake now. Awake to her friend who was crying. Who was desperate. Who had endured pain and betrayal and loss and night after night of fear. It hadn't been playful, excited teasing she was doing. It had been cruelty. Because she'd thought that Bella was just pretending to be grumpy and was secretly just as excited as she was to be away.

This wasn't her dream. Maybe that'd come later. But right now... right now she had to get back to work.

She hesitates for just a second as she reaches out to take Bella's hand. When she does it's a firm grip and she stands up, straight and strong. Bella said she didn't want an apology, and she didn't want her to tear up or look hurt. What she wanted was...

"I'll do better," said Mynx. What Bella wanted was someone reliable. She could shapeshift into that.

Bella!

You stare at the Ikarani Adept through a one-way mirror. She sits cross-legged in the centre of the gleaming white clean room, not one speck of dust to distract her, violet eyes wide and staring at nothing. All around you can hear the buzzing of incredibly powerful dampeners, machines that block out even the rumble of the ship's Engine from reaching through into that room.

"It's essentially sensory deprivation," Mynx said, not making any sort of comment about how creepy this was or any other expected wisecrack. "Ikarani are data addicts. They absorb information like sponges and can draw increasingly complex conclusions from even the slightest bit of information. Operational life in the wild is three days, less if they find any books, after which they need to be memory wiped or..." Mynx started to trail off, but then swallowed and finished the thought. "Or else they go rampant. That's a point where they've absorbed a terminal amount of data and have become true superintelligences. From that point there's no stopping them, they'll keep gaining knowledge and intelligence until they rival the gods themselves. And, like the Ikarus myth that they're named after - they fall."

Ikarani Adept

Ikarani Adept
A data-addict, capable of weaponizing an entire world against itself.
System Integration: An Ikarani can raise the Escalation Level of an environment it is in. It may need to take actions to accomplish this, but there is no limit as to how far it can raise the Escalation.
Data Absorption: An Ikarani can accurately identify and locate everyone within an environment it is integrated with. It can accurately guess plans and reactions and is almost impossible to surprise.
Rampancy: When a Temple Assassin has reached the stage of Rampancy, it becomes a Threat to the World. It also has the ability to instantly destroy any other threats contained within the Environment.

Fellowship: The Heart

Ailee Sundish looks to the right. Ailee Sundish looks to the left. Ailee Sundish confirms the lack of witnesses with the careful, deliberate watchfulness of a hitman, uncaring of the minor laser-stings the process costs here. Finally Ailee Sundish produces a book the width of her torso from her backpack, opening the massive, well-worn tome to one of the bookmarked sections labeled R.E. BEES. Ailee Sundish takes a moment to double check the notes on the page and compare it to one of her hand-drawn sketchbooks labelled LANGUAGES. Ailee Sundish checks. Ailee Sundish confirms. Ailee Sundish nods grimly.

Then Ailee Sundish places her hands up to her ears, breaks into a wide smile, opens and closes her palms, steps to the side, and starts to dance. "Like the kitty in the house, I go meow meow meow meow meow~..."

She's not a natural or studied dancer so she avoids any challenging techniques. It's mostly step, step, cute pawing at the air, step step, lean and pose, step step...

"Like the cutie on the prowl, come on meow meow meow meow meow~..."

Neither does she have the song exactly down either. Dancing and singing - there's a lot to remember! Everything needs to be moving just so and in time with the words she almost rushes through accidentally. But despite her inexperience she thinks she's doing okay - the lyrics aren't, technically speaking, a necessary part of the communication experience.

"Like my heart is beating out, fascination of your smile~..."

Step step - technically she learned this from Jackdaw. Because of Jackdaw? Jackdaw liked taking language electives and while Ailee didn't particularly give a damn about being understood by lesser minds she wasn't going to trust some roomful of linguistics majors with her best friend - especially when she'd learned that there was going to be dancing involved. So she'd gone and she'd studied and... well, she'd enjoyed it more than any non-Jackdaw person was ever going to find out.

"Whatever you do, I do, meow meow meow!"

Anyway the point is that she's not all bad, give her a break. She's not here to steal your honey you dumb bees.

[Talk Sense with Grace: 11]

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

It is cold justice to be used as a beast of burden. Ten thousand wordless equine grumbles are finally soothed with some small measure of justice as the bread is stacked atop the apples and the leg of ham and the blackberry preserves and - oh!

With strength and balance so impressive as to draw a gasp from the entire crowd, Robena shifts the entire great weight piled upon her to one arm in an instant. She bends down with the speed of a viper and her hand closes around the honey-jar - and around Constance's smaller and more delicate fingers. For a moment they're caught there, half-bowed, hands entangled, making the mistakes of looking into each other's eyes.

"Thank you,"

"You're welcome,"

Words that may as well come from bystanders for all they communicated that strange electricity that in this moment existed between them.

Robena stands tall again, drawing another appreciative murmur from the crowd as she once again hefts the entire weight of the gifts without any loss of balance. Those arms can hold a shield of metal steady through the horizontal waterfall of a horse in gallop and so they hold all of the river-daughter's gifts steady. Perhaps were Constance herself to climb as she did as a wild-faced child and sit atop that bounty the knight's arms would still not tremble - or at least, not from the weight.

"You are happy here?" she asks, again bystander-words borrowed from the tongues of those who might speak without tangling their tongues. "No evil has beset you or yours?"

Breathless Dead

Redana!

"Hm. Arguably your motivation is more pure than much of the Order," said Iskarot, nodding with a surprisingly pleased thoughtfulness. His tone now has changed, and he seems to be taking a very different tack from earlier in the conversation. "The Order of Hermes seeks the god of travel, wherever she hides within the cosmos. We feel the drive you do - that distant calling, the drive to explore, to seek, to discover, to trade. Or we do in theory."

His hands are gathering the shattered fragments of his bowl, holding the seams together so the material can heal. He's building something new out of the pieces, not repairing but constructing.

"The Order of Interface was a minor branch of the Order back in the day. They originally believed that by training themselves to administer machinery they'd be able to hitch lifts on any passing starship, paying kind with kind. Later the Order became more... stagnant. A movement began within the Order, theorizing that Hermes was not to be discovered wandering the stars but hidden within the shadows of Natural Law. They settled in place and began to construct massive wonders of science - particle colliders, microwave tubes, N-fusion plants. They accumulated resources and began to coerce the other Orders to finance their constructions."

He looked up from his work, glowing yellow eyes gleaming in the shadowed depths of his robe. "We went from pure-hearted seekers like yourself to a shadow Empire. Empress Nero has allowed the Interfacers unprecedented freedom in their experiments and given them inconceivable resources and in return they have given her their utter obedience, as though she was Hermes herself. We who hear the call out there in the black, Redana, are the minority - and there is ever less space for us."

Vasilia!

"Of course I'm not satisfied," said Galnius, putting his hands on her hips and igniting with the golden light of Apollo Silverbow. "I've been singing, the rest of my soldiers are playing, the sheep is cooking, and you are lounging around eating, gambling and chatting without contributing a damn thing. The Princess tells me that you're the Captain here but all I see is a layabout."

Apollo himself smiles at you from Galnius' face, but it's a dangerous kind of smile - the smile of a God testing you. Galnius wears the icon of Apollo on their wrist, and in their open left hand they hold a beautiful peach. That divine fruit carries trust, belief, respect and everything you need to corral this rigid heart - should the God choose to give it to you.

Alexa!

"Oh, sure," said Isty. She doesn't sit in a relaxed posture, she's sitting in a military crouch, with a soldier's wariness. It doesn't have the faintly artificial edge of a trained human to it either - this is someone whose martial instincts are baked into their bone marrow. "They're goofy, but they've got authority. The swarmers all obey the brainsquids. All we needed to do was hand them the correct paperwork and they'd build a house or harvest the grain. Wouldn't have been much of an Elysium if there was all that manual labour, right?"

She hesitates, clearly chewing over a profoundly difficult question and having no idea how to even begin phrasing it.

"So we're alive, huh?" she blurted out eventually. "What's it like?"

Bella!

"Bella, you gotta know if she had the hots for you," said Mynx as you walked down the corridor together. "I scheduled the meeting right as you were having a shower - wasn't there any chemistry? Aphrodite, Bella, you're the second hottest girl I know, if you couldn't get a reaction out of her then I don't know what to do!"

She pressed her fists into her cheeks and pouted.

Mynx has been fucking insufferable since Artemis had told her that she'd fucked up her disguise last mission by 'not having the Admiral's fetishes right'.

"Next time, could you at least flirt with her harder or something?"

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

He's so fast. She's never, ever met anyone before who can move like she does. She's used to being able to just be places, as smooth and quick as thinking and this is like having someone inside her thoughts. She should have time to assess this, to figure this out, to plan her defense strategically but in all of those private moments he's still moving.

And he's moving wrong.

When she moves at speed, thought and action are the same thing. She can see with him it's the reverse - he thinks, he decides, and then something happens he hurls forwards following that thought to its conclusion. He turns his brain off and attacks like a marionette, whirling and striking and grasping out its premeditated expression of hate and nobody has the power to stop it.

It's all she can do to get the shield between her and him before he screams his terrible scream.

It buckles under her fingers.

It bends.

She curls her legs close to her chest and ducks her head and curls up into a ball, neck still caught in that terrible fist, hiding herself behind her darkened mirror as the world shatters around her. It's so loud she can't breathe. The air is too fast, too violent to beg for oxygen.

And then, with a crash, she's on the floor. She finally realizes that the sound has stopped and it's just that her ears are still ringing.

Harrowed away to a single instinct, she gets to her feet and readies her shield. That reaction takes priority over breathing, over running, over shaking in fear. All of those things are happening to some degree as well - she's backing away, gasping and trembling - but they're ultimately subordinate to the instinct to defend.

[Nevery Give Up: 10]

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

All of Europe can be seen upon her boots. All of evil's monsters can be seen in her scars. They say that learning to see the faerie realm is a matter of perspective, and so it is with Robena's beauty. Look at her one way and all you can see is the weariness and the fruits of battle. Look at her another and there is strength and nobility shining like the full moon through the clouds. She wears silence more heavily than her bearskin cloak, and when she speaks it takes a long moment to realize that that pleasant, strange accented curl of air had meaning beyond the mere beauty of it.

Her voice is silver. It should be a growl, it should sound bitter or weary or old beyond its years. Instead it's the voice of a singer, a voice she did not have when she screamed and fled from the snipping pincers of a crab, threatening to tell your mother, the duchess - even the king if necessary - about your crimes. Where did she acquire such a voice, such a musical rhythm? Did she bargain for it from a faerie, was it a gift from the Lord for her virtue, was her throat healed by drinking holy water from the temple-fount of Jerusalem? If ever there was a voice for speaking to the hills of England, this was it.

The words come into focus only belatedly and after much effort.

"You've... grown," she said.

She felt like she should apologize. Whatever she'd done to snuff that radiant smile. What had it been?

"I'm glad to see you again, Constance," she said, for she was still too sincere to let doubts still her tongue. "When I saw the tower... I was worried about you."

*

As you well know, I have spent many seasons in travel. I mark experience towards a Right of the Wider World, and I return with news from afar. Tell me what it is.

As for confidence? Within one of Apricot's saddlebags are contained stones and minor relics from the Temple of the Exsanguination in Jerusalem. I have carried those holy souvenirs across a continent, through storms and frost and werewolves and river fordings. No hand or spirit was able to part me with those pieces of the Holy Land, although many tried and tried desperately. Just this morning, in preparation for the festival, I hauled the whole wretched sack into the church and turned it over to the priest, receiving in turn his blessing and his gratitude.

I have not yet laid down all my burdens, nor have I resolved the heaviest, but this one at least is done.

Breathless Dead

Redana!

The Hermetician whirred, coming about, clattering under his robes as his tripod legs shifted into a triskellion cross-legged sitting position. "It is impossible to be born perfect. After all, you grew. You changed. You honed muscles and reflexes, habits and mannerisms. You obtained cybernetics and new forms of perception. You became an adult. Became a woman. Became a runaway. Even now you are embarked upon a ludicrous journey beyond the frontiers of known space. Stating that you are nothing more than your genetics and augmentics is a sign of perilous humility."

The Hermitician set down his bowl, and then with a sudden move of his concealed hand shattered it. "Intelligence is the same as strength - a brute force thing obtainable by machines. Not without value, but not worthy of praise. The virtue required to walk the Path is curiosity, Princess. Do the machines spark it within you?"

Vasilia!

"Gaia!?" said Galnius in surprise. "It was destroyed, surely? A world inverted and abandoned, coughing up bones of iron. And that was before the Tear, even -" they stop, and then frown. "You're joking with me. And won't tell me where we're actually going."

Alexa!

Princess Epistia pauses awkwardly, and then sets the paper and pen down on the ground. She looks like she's making a difficult choice "Everyone calls me Isty," she said. "Relax. I'm not a real princess... I mean, if I was I'd be a queen right now anyway. I'm just a warrior."

Bella!

"Your will, Praetor," said Captain Lorventi, and by Hera, wouldn't it have been nice if she at least sounded satisfied at that? Some confirmation that she actually cared about this work - that she was passionate about something.

"Then we should discuss assets," she said. "In addition to myself and five hundred Kaeri soldiers - plus two thousand menials - the Anemoi contains representatives of four of Artemis' greatest hunter-temples. You know the Toxicrene Adept, but you also have -" a little emphasis on the 'you' there - Lorventi doesn't quite have the guile to disguise the fact that the assassins do not answer to her at all. "- an Ikarani, a Diodekoi and a Oratus at your command."

And honestly you're not sure the Kaeri in their full five hundred strong could take on those four assassins.

The Toxicrene temple you know - Mynx, the poisoner and shapeshifter, master of the biological - and there's a reason she's the only one you've met in person. Simply put, she's by far the most stable of the bunch and Toxicrenes often serve as handlers and deployment for the other types. The Ikarani are known for being information addicts, hypergeniuses that absorb every fact that they encounter. Diodekoi are warriors who train to fight the very gods - prayer-soaked walking cathedrals who can find ways to harm even those blessed by the most powerful divine favour. Oratus are political operators and hypnotists who can incite madness in crowds and wield entire nations as crushing hammers to slay their targets.

Deploying even one of these is no small matter. Many cannot be recovered once unleashed, consuming themselves in their own madness and hubris until the gods put them out of their misery.

"They are available to inspect at your will, Praetor."