Thanqol

Breathless Dead

The Plousios

The sheer scale of the Yakanov's operations are staggering. This ship alone has given this primitive world the orbital operations of an industrialized spaceport. Swarms of wardiscs flow to every corner of the system, massive macro-conveyors lower mining equipment to the surface and return bearing cargo holds filled with water, ore, and other treasures. The Yakanov itself is a glowing furnace of power, three Reactors linked together to power enormous manufacturing systems, the ship almost a spaceport. This is, of course, nothing compared to the Armada in terms of scale, but in co-ordination it is genuinely shocking. As befits the faithful of the Messenger God the speed and precision of every element at work here is spectacular. To someone who grew up on Tellus, only seeing the Order of Hermes as air conditioner repairmen, barely above the equipment they worked on, to think of them as capable of this kind of spectacular military might is almost unimaginable. It would be like discovering that the nation of mice had their own nuclear deterrent.

Pity Ridenki, and the pity the Alced, with their little wooden boats.

"See there?" Iskarot said to Princess Redana, pointing at a huge crystal spire emerging from the heart of the Yakanov. "That is the Regret Cannon, one of Hermes' great relics. It can destroy time itself when fired, trapping an entire ship - or an entire city - in visions of the past, leaving them helpless. We are blessed to witness it."

Though Iskarot may have bought you here to defeat his rival within the Order, even he can't keep the awe from his voice at seeing that gleaming weapon. Proof manifest of his God's might and presence in the mortal realm. It took him a moment to rouse himself to speak again.

"The Order is here in force, but do not think of them as unified, and do not think of them as heartless," said Iskarot. "Above all, each of them, from the lowest Apprentice to the most deadly Coherent is driven by curiosity. It is the one factor selected for in all our recruitment. No matter how they appear, approach them with knowledge in one hand and you approach them as an avatar of Hermes Zeus-Daughter and they will treat you fairly. These are priests who happen to be capable of war, not soldiers in service to priests."

The Anemoi!

Mynx has been weird.

You know her well enough to know what this is - this is her bodyguarding mode. She's been sticking to you like glue wherever you go in the ship and blithely ignores any sort of polite or even impolite invitations to buzz off. It takes physically shoving out the door to stop her standing and watching you sleep all night, and even then she'll just stand right outside with her ear pressed to the door right until the moment she hears you yawn first thing in the morning and then she'll come right back in.

It might at least be forgivable if she was guarding you against something specific. So far all she's been able to say is "Something feels wrong."

So that's the context for the moment when she walks in to your room not five seconds after your eyes first woke up in the morning, beaming brightly and carrying a plate with coffee and breakfast. "Good morning, Bella~!" she chirps in the voice of someone who literally has no idea what it's like to be tired. "Are you all right? Any soreness, mosquito bites, strange tastes in the back of your mouth? Maybe I should bite you with my antitoxin just to be sure -"

Breathless Dead

They sing as they march across alien sands. "Follow, follow, follow the Path!"

The voices involved are as different as the drums are from the clarinet. Some are synthetic, some are not, some might have once been human and others are definitely alien. But this diverse group has spent a great many years singing marching songs together and, as the clarinet can learn to compliment the drums, so have their voices merged into one glorious harmony. "Follow, follow, follow the Path!"

And it is glorious! It booms out, loud and unambigous, across the beaches, rising above the waves, all the way to the tropical rainforest where it spooks the parrots to silence. As the voices ring out so too do the Coherent of the Order of Hermes stand out dramatically. They do not wear the full brilliant yellow of a true magi - they wear heavy black capes, traced with lines of yellow, and they do not conceal themselves. They wear their augmentations openly, brazenly - bodies furred and smooth and scaled, armoured in black and bronze, synthesis of mechanical genius and organic perfection and as diverse as the stars themselves. Magi regard their bodies as secret, their augmentations hidden knowledge, their bodies private things - not so the martial arm of the Order! They are proud of the shapes that they have made for themselves, their bodies works of art to please themselves and the gods! "Through the storm, follow the Path!"

Each Coherent drags behind her a cable, wrist-thick, leathery and slippery. They trace their ways back and up to an tripod walker the size of a main battle tank, all the more resplendent in its glorious carved beauty for the thick black smoke that pours from it - and the cleaning such a sooty construction must require. Between its three legs hangs a great banner depicting a Coherent warrior gripping a burning moon with one hand and raising her scepter above its head, like a pharaoh of ancient Egypt about to crush an enemy's skull. This machine is a mobile chemical reactor (MCR), condensed Reactor-stuff that allows the Hermetic warriors tethered to it to fire their awesome weaponry. "To the truth, follow the Path!"

"Follow the Path!" the refrain roar comes from behind.

Thousands of voices. These Coherent are not alone - they are merely the vanguard of a much larger force. Hundreds of tripod MCRs, each cabled to eight Coherent warriors like the tentacles of an octopus. Above the army looms three massive War Daises, the mobile operations centres for powerful Hermatic magi and their apprentices. These huge platforms swarm with yellow-cloaked figures and extend mighty robotic arms to take samples from trees, to adjust settings on the MCRs, to even tweak the crystals of the esoteric weapons carried by the Coherent warriors as they march. Atop each War Dias stands a Choirmaster, paragons in black and yellow hazard stripes, Magi of the Order who study the secrets Hermes hid within war itself. "To the end, follow the Path!"

A shadow passes over the sun, for all this in all this glory is but the least fragment of the Order of Hermes. Behind the advancing column soars a great wing of disc-shaped atmospheric shuttlecraft, screaming across the heavens and leaving contrails like bars in the sky. And behind them, silhouetted in solar glory, looming as large in the sky as the gas giant that the planet Ridenki is a moon of, comes the Yakanov. The Galleon Hermetic looms in the sky, engines burning bright, the ultimate expression of the Saffron God's might. "To the end, follow, follow, follow the Path!"

What is a mere planet in comparison?

Sunshards

For a moment Princess Yin does not look pretty at all. Beauty is as much a thing of the heart as the face, and no amount of radiance could turn that flash of anger into something admirable.

It lingers on her, half suppressed, buried underneath a face that quickly re-adopts its calm and radiant expression. Not because she has control of the feeling, oh no, quite the opposite - she is merely thinking through the very best way to inflict punishment.

"You," said Princess Yin, at last drawing her long and glorious fencing rapier, "are going to wish you didn't choose the hard way."

"Princess Yin! Princess Yin! Silent screams above the din!"

As the world hesitates on that screeching orchestral chord, the moment before your very first fight - a crash echoes through the clearing. Two trees fall to either side causing the darkness to recoil - although what replaces it is not much better.

A demon enters the clearing - tall and mighty and muzzled, a two-handed katana held casually over one shoulder, smouldering with hellfire. She is a demon swordswoman whose kimono sleeves were torn off to make more room for her muscles, and what remains of the garment seems one solid flex away from bursting entire. Her skin is tattooed with ten thousand fencing diagrams, the sword-bearing stick-figures seeming to move and clash as the tattoos rotate in spiralling patterns up her arms. Beat, beat, beat. Behold, the Secrets of the Stance.

Behind her comes a figure from legend, a creature depicted on ancient statues and with the classical beauty of those forgotten times. Glowing golden horns and eyes the same, hypnotic enough to lull a mouse to walk willingly into her jaws. Her long serpentine tail flicks with that same beat, scales of lapis lazuli and the occasional gold gorgeous enough to draw attention away from the fact that she's soaking wet. Well, demons usually are, aren't they? These creatures are here from the river, hunting for one soul in particular, and the grin on the face of the Scales of Meaning lets you know that it is you.

Princess Yin steps back and her shadows cluster close around her, blade held ready for a fight. As the faces of evil look to engage you feel gentle teeth brush against your ankle. Hyra, trapped in the form of a wolf, is telling you that it is time to run.

Sunshards

Yue!

"Hm? A sword?" Princess Yin leans forwards in the saddle, and for a moment that blinding light behind her head falls upon Yue like a spotlight. "You hold a sword in my presence, little dove?"

"Princess Yin!" hisses the darkling world, "Princess Yin! Win if you dare!"

Through the fear and the everything, you notice that somehow, somehow, Yin is moving cautiously. Somehow she's taking you, little Yue, and your wooden sword blade seriously. She's not laughing. She's not sneering. She's watching your stance and your motions even as you tremble with radiant black eyes, and oh, isn't that somehow worse than if she laughed? If she laughed at least she wouldn't expect anything from you, if she laughed the worst would be past and you could collapse freely. If she laughed you might have a chance to do something. But she's taking you seriously, acting as though you had hidden training and secret skill and might yet prove her undoing, and if Princess Yin is taking you so very deadly seriously then you're not even small enough to avoid her attention.

One hand hovers near the hilt of her own blade, the other raises to snap her fingers. "Take that from her."

There's a ripple in the air. And stillness. Hyra's hand has come down to wrap around your sword-hand and no further. She grips it but she is as much holding your grip shut as she is on the verge of snatching it from your fingers.

"Oh?" said Princess Yin, straightening in her saddle. "What is this?"

Hyra radiated violet energy, the power of the curse coming off her in waves. The grass is blackening beneath her feet, and here and there it rots away the leathers of her armour to reveal wolf fur growing underneath. Her hands are rippling with wicked strength and power even as they wrap around yours but they do not try to crush you. A low growl begins to build.

Princess Yin slips from the back of the stag and where her feet touch the ground the grass erupts back to life along with a cascading overgrowth of brilliant white flowers. She walks step by step towards you and Hyra even as the girl trembles and shakes against your back. "Do you see this, Yue?" said Princess Yin, shaking her head. "My trusting heart is betrayed yet again. After all the effort I went through to train her, after all the hard work I put in, after letting her know what a big responsibility being let off the leash was. After everything, this is the thanks I get."

Hyra's growling in your ear is wet and animal. Her arms are covered entirely in white fur. Her fingers are contorting into claws and the shape of her is changing against your back.

"I suppose she'll just have to spend a little while longer as a dog, because she obviously doesn't have the discipline needed to be a human," said Princess Yin, smiling with genuine enjoyment. Her free hand coils with radiant magic, the raw power of a Sunshard. "And as for you? Perhaps if you spend some time as a mouse you'll learn something when it comes to respecting a Princess."

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Robena's reputation marches before her like a herald. Much of it has to do with her most recent exploits, the returning pilgrim humbled and noble, fighting monsters and healing the wounded on her long road back from the holy city of Jerusalem. Over that journey she became quiet, wise, respectful, chivalrous. The holy city had indeed changed her and left behind a gentle giant.

But what a change it had been.

Things are different when you are invincible. When you are invincible death is your slave and all her works are glorious. When you stand upon the field of Champagne, clad in frail squire's armour, bloody axe held above your head as lady Death holds down three full knights at your feet, the feeling is such that you can only howl. When you are invincible you do not need traps, snares, or patience to hunt a gryphon - you instead charge it in the full light of day beneath an open sky so all can witness who it is Death favours. When you are invincible you can drink any poison and kiss any woman and the spectre of Death looms behind you and smiles at any who would raise objection at your conduct. When you are invincible you stand upon the threshold of the underworld like holy Paeter and with a gesture decide who goes in ahead of you.

Robena Coilleghille was not invincible. But for a while she had been able to borrow it from one who was.

Countess Alitel Sandsfern had always been invincible, but hers had been the immortality of fire rather than the might of blood as Robena's had been. Wild, untamed, unteachable for she knew all things already - that fire had grown so hot that it was judged that the only possible remedy would be the most holy site in the world. It was thought that only Bloodless Xristos himself might be able to calm that fire.

If he had tried, he had failed.

She lights up the room. Her red-orange hair flows in curling locks, lower than her shoulders and brighter than a forest fire. Deep crimson scales mark her neck and ungloved hands, armour beneath armour. A flick of eyes as alight and deadly as the Persian fire-god is enough to steal one's entire vocabulary, a simple standing motion upon taloned feet is enough to root one as surely as an oak, and a deadly smile is enough to stop one's heart.

"My... lady," Robena breathes as she gazes upon her sworn liege who she had thought lost to the curse of the crossroads.

A kiss from those lips would be enough to render her invincible again.

Breathless Dead

Redana and Alexa!

The flow of crabs has trickled to a halt, and what crustaceans have survived this mighty confrontation against the galaxy's greatest warriors retreat fearlessly, clacking their claws in endless defiance.

Your trip here was not purposeless, though. Here in the unexplored lower depths of the ship you have discovered a strange treasure indeed - immense concealed compartments stacked floor to ceiling with orange-green glowing golden bars. They're hot to the touch - intensely radioactive, enough to kill a more fragile creature in hours - but they're the right shape to fit into a number of strange and empty compartments you have seen throughout the ship. Some kind of alien fuel, for some hidden esoteric power of the ship? Even as mere curiosities they are valuable, but will need further research.

Forge a bond with each other as well. You understand each other better than you did.

Vasilia!

Aphrodite raised his mug of coffee in a brief salute at Vasilia in acknowledgement of her lack of glaring.

Still, over the course of this conversation you have made a personal connection to the Hermetician. In coming days he is - well, he is still snappy, but he corrects more than he condemns. You've learned more about his ways and patterns, how he possesses a fixation on unmaking, salvage, and recycling valuables that perhaps rivals Dolce's focus on cooking. He seeks to apply this logic to all things: if something is worth more disassembled, then he will disassemble it and find joy in the doing. Forge a bond with Iskarot.

Bella!

You take your eyes off the snake for just a moment. Your head bows and you look down at the ground in perfect accord with the will of Nero. An act of ritual, an act of vulnerability, an act of dedication to the new codes of war.

And so your eyes are averted during the ensuing act of divine violence.

When you look up there is Hera, Queen of Olympus, flanked by two great golden heifers, flicking a few drops of envenomed blood off her parasol. Athena has knelt, and within moments everyone else upon the battlefield has as well.

She is nothing like her wife. Zeus is violet and dark blue, darkness so intense that to go any darker it has to explode into the purest and most brilliant light. Hera is of silver and rose gold interlaid in chain links that wrap her arms in gleaming sleeves. Zeus is solitary, a creature of the mountain and the sky, as beyond peer as physics, clad only in a simple dress without jewelry. Hera comes with the riches of Olympus, followed by servants bearing plates of ambrosia, fanned by peacock feathers, feet surrounded by purring cats, hand resting upon the head of a brown doe. Zeus is so mighty that she needs no displays of power, for her every act is a display of power. Hera is so mighty that she needs no displays of power, and yet she puts the effort in anyway.

She walks across the corridor towards you - fierce, angry, heartbroken, but still observant of the codes, still protective of your subordinates, still respectful of the gods. For a moment her divine hand comes down and tousles your hair, running around your ear, adjusting the Imperial Tiara into place. She glances around the hall, ensuring there is no mistake in her intent.

And then she is gone, the vision is past, the pirate queen is dead upon the floor and few the sounds of battle that had made their way through even the Anemoi's oppressive architectural silence fade into nothing. Hera has given you victory, Bella. She recognized you and blessed you in front of witnesses, establishing your power over the Anemoi as absolute.

And now a hundred eyes look to you, awaiting command.

Everyone!

Time passes. The Plousios approaches the planet Ridenki, home of "Species AVX-44" - colloquially, the Alced. It is time to take the auguries.

In the candle-light of the ship's Pantheon, the fire burns far brightest around the Statue of Hera. She is the patron goddess of this planet, and it is her will that the Hermetics defy in their harvest. And yet, defy her they do, for the empty altar of Hermes practically blazes with power and footsteps form around its base. The presence of the Messenger is equally strong to the Queen's and you don't need to be a Hermetic to read the signs of his passage here. The third altar to ignite is that of Artemis - those sigils burn cold and subtle and indifferent, providing fair warning of the Huntress' presence and no more.

Hermes, Hera, and Artemis. Tell us which of these gods you seek the favour of, tell us of your history with them. Then tell us of what you hope to find upon this planet.

Sunshards

Chen and Rose!

Blades clash. Hearts sing! The wild horses gallop away and the North Wind wraps and whips and howls! This is war, here amidst the mountains and the yellow flowers on the blade edge of coming nightfall! Be wary of the falling sun as you fight, maidens, for he will blind you as surely as he hopes to blind any archers who look his way.

Blinded by sunlight, blinded by passion, blinded by each other, neither of you see the Scales of Meaning slip away. She scrambles over the edge of a cliff and dives into a cool mountain stream below, letting the white-rushing waters carry her like a dart away. Perhaps if you were not blind you might have seen her glance behind her, torn by a desire to stay and watch the duel, but she cannot yet calculate the value of this scene and so she pays the coin of regret in leaving.

Yue!

She comes in white. This is an absolute. Colours only exist in relation to each other; a white dress at sunset will be tainted with red and orange and shadow. Unacceptable! To allow herself to be defined by her environment? To let the purity of her heart be contingent on circumstances? Never! She comes in white. If that means the world must be darkened around her, then so be it. That is why Princesses invented Sunshards.

She comes riding a black stag, antlers woven through with the strings of a crystal dreamcatcher. She rides him sidesaddle, one hand resting on the quiver of arrows, the other on the scabbard that holds her diamond thread bow. Is not a bow the ultimate weapon of a princess, by which she might shoot down a hateful sun? She comes with dark eyes and flowing black hair and a cape of mirror-ribbons that flows around her shoulders like the pelt of some divine animal. She comes with crystal slippers that have never known the touch of mud, with a single orbiting light like her own tame sun that floats behind her head to provide her with a halo. It hides her face and casts you deep in her wide and looming shadow.

And you are not the only thing in those shadows. Eyes glint. Terrible shapes flick and move in low, savage dances. Faint flows of that deep violet curse magic drifts around you in all direction, reaching out for Hyra of the Wolves, as the ocean reaches for a raindrop.

"Princess Yin," the shadows hiss like a chorus, whispered heralds of royalty. "Princess Yin. Princess Yin. Do your best, if you dare."

She holds up a hand imperiously and the whispers fade into the background. She stares down at you for a moment, and then her gaze flicks across to Hyra. "Fetch," she said. "Bring."

A rough hand, glowing with curse light - was this really that hand that touched your chin so gently a moment before? - grabs you by the shoulders and drags you forwards. Hyra's red eyes are locked on Princess Yin like she can't look at anything else. You're pulled up far too close to the Princess, far too roughly, far too like a captive. And Princess Yin is no easier to look at this close.

"Princess Yin," the shadows hiss again, all around you. "Princess Yin. Princess Yin. She'll catch your dreams, if you dare."

"And what," she asks, voice heavy with contempt, "makes you so important, I wonder?"

Sunshards

Chen and Rose!

The Scales of Meaning is a creature who knows a thing or two about opportunity.

She transmutes from embarrassed ferocity to control in a moment. She raises her horned head, and oh, the perfect balance of her bearing! You could balance a teacup atop her head, such is her poise and dignity as she calculates. New markets, new buyers, new risks - plenty of raw material for her to work with.

"Princess Chen of the Northern Wind - or is that with the Northern Wind?" she purrs, as velvet as snakeskin. "How lucky I am to find you! I am being positively tormented by this, the Hunter. Abomination of ancient days, she has somehow become even more odious in this day and age, ambushing me in my bath, destroying my guards and entrapping me upon the tip of her blade. Oh, won't you save me~, noble princess~?"

The Scales of Meaning manages to find a moment to flash you a smirk so bratty it almost makes you envious, Rose.

[Offering a universal string to Chen: Get into a sword fight with Rose from the River and mark an XP]

Yue!

"Of course I don't," said Hyra in a voice far too soft to have once wielded such confidence. "Not one princess does. Perhaps not even one girl does. Perhaps not even Princess Qiu, perhaps not even the moon herself, can truly know that they are beautiful without being told. That's why..."

The sun, in a flash of gold, descends across the horizon in a celestial sprint. The twilight vanishes in an instant and the world plunges into darkness. Across the lake lanterns ignite and across the hills fireflies rise and across the tree-tops bioluminescent caterpillars unwrap themselves from their hidden places. The lights come back on but ragged, chaotic, soft, in a craze of blues and greens and soft violets. For a moment it's magical.

And in another moment it's dangerous. There are twists in the shadows where things that had been creeping in darkness find themselves illuminated by different light sources. And as fast as the sun's free-fall, Hyra is standing, blade in hand, once again sharp lines and pointed ears and eerie curse-light. Whatever it is that rises inside her rises to the surface in the darkness, and the way she's smiling and the way she licks her lips in anticipation don't seem entirely her own.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

One does not imagine a bear can move. They are ponderous things, inevitable - dangerous, but safe. One does not imagine one might snatch a leaping salmon from the very air until it is too late.

Robena has turned so she looms over you. Her hands are up, sweeping her wild and untidy hair brown back behind her, binding it into a functional ponytail. As her hands descend down her body they adjust straps with rehearsed precision. Her axe no longer hangs loose, her shoulder plates are more rigid, the faint layer of rust that dimmed the edges of her lady's crest is knocked clean with a flick of armoured mail. But more than the corrections her face has hardened and her eyes are ablaze. This is no soft and gentle cub any more, no traveling naturalist knight with a nightinggale voice.

This is a crusader. A warrior of righteousness, a will that would no more suffer evil in this land than she would suffer it in any other. As the lines in her face harden so too do her scars.

When she asks you, Constance, it is not because she is in any way unaware of the answer. When she asks you it is not as a friend asking for information. The words are ritual, the precursors to violence and devastation, each one filled with fire.

"Who has done this?" said Sir Coilleghille, the finest weapon of war crafted by the land of England.

Breathless Dead

Vasilia!

"My father told me something once," said Aphrodite, spectacles on as he quietly tapped away on his archaic typewriter in the corner. "To move copy, add a dash of unrequited love."

The Hermetician, rather bizarrely, reached out to pat Dolce's head in a there-there gesture. "There, there," he added in an uncharacteristic tone of voice. "It will all work out."

His hand had a gentle coating of spotted grey and black fur. He quickly withdrew it and hid it back inside his robes.

"These marriages," he said, "must be salvaged. Any combination of components, personnel, or life lessons that can be extracted from them will undoubtedly prove essential to our journey. Navigating the Tear will require as much divine support as possible, and if even one god is displeased with us then the task will truly be impossible."

The Tear - you've heard stories. The great storming rift at the centre of the galaxy. A weapon of Molech? A curse from the gods? It is far, far away from anywhere you have traveled, but only the most distant stories of its nature have reached you here. It is, to say the least, not the sort of thing that people go in and out of.

Bella!

The Empress Nero, in her wisdom, had declared new codes of war. The primacy of surrender was key amongst them - rituals for how violence was to conclude. Overmatched like this, it is not to Big Bone Lick's credit that she keeps fighting - it is a prideful blindness that believes that even now she can pull victory from the jaws of defeat. You see Athena turn her face away in disgust right as you tear open the cockpit and that may as well be the end of things right there.

As the metal comes away you see a gleaming serpent eye in the shadows and then - she lunges! Coiled like a snake, knife gripped in her hand, she flies at you with blade in hand - and jolts short. Amidst the crash and chaos she forgot to unbuckle her piloting harness and just as that blade is about to reach you the pirate queen jolts to a halt against her restraints. The only thing that touches you is her involuntarily expelled breath.

Information flows into you as the serpent-servitor struggles with her harness. You can smell her fears - ghosts, primarily, the data drawn from the click of bone dice on her half-dozen bracelets, charms to Hades. You can taste her preferences in food from the stains on her shirt and hands - marrow stock soup, oily and garnished with spring onion. You can hear her sins from where Apollo has marked them - sloth chief amongst them, so proud of her creativity and skill that she would stab a man who told her she could do better. You can see the chemical formulae of the poison in her fangs and again on her fingernails, enough to let a gentle caress inflict hideous suffering. You can feel her past in the luster of her scales - no child of necessity this, she has the strength and suppleness of a woman who has never missed a spa day her life.

She manages to find a trick amidst it all - pulling on the cord of her ejector seat. Her chair erupts from the wreckage of the Plover and sends her, spinning, half-way down the corridor. It buys her enough time to unbuckle herself, struggle to a vertical position, angle her knife correctly, and say a few words to dig her in even deeper to the war goddess' contempt. "This is fucked up. War is about stuff. My stuff was better, you didn't even have any stuff. I should be winning! What the fuck!"