Thanqol

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Name: Hecatoncheires Special Project 11 "Snake"
Snake to old NASA staff, AI colleagues, dragonwatchers and close friends. Heca to human society. "Hecaton Cheires" on official station documentation (not her choice but she's stuck with it now). November when doing crime/journalism.

Handle: November
She thinks it's a sexy word.
Star Sign: Gemini
She thinks it's a relevant fact. Zodiac animal is snake. That's a second conversation detail.
Pronouns: She/her

Accounting 1
Architecture 2/2
Art History 1
History 1
Human Terrain 1/2
Languages 1
Law 1/1
Military Science 0/2
Research 1/1

Bullshit Detector 1/1
Flattery 1/1
Flirting 2/2
High Society 0/1
Interrogation 1
Intimidation 0/1
Negotiation 1/1
Reassurance 1/2
Tradecraft 0/1

Chemistry 1/1
Cryptography 1
Diagnosis 1/1
Data Recovery 1/2
Electronic Surveillance 0/1
Forgery 1/1
Notice 1/1
Pharmacy 0/1
Photography 1
Traffic Analysis 0/1

Athletics 8/8
Conceal 8/8
Cover 3 (4: Crimson Tower, disaster relief, 2: Caliban and Ariel, traveling performers, 1: Neo Potism, the perfect resume)
Digital Intrusion 8
Disguise 8/8
Explosive Devices 3/4
Filch 4/4
Hand to Hand 8/8
Health 6
Infiltration 8/8
Mechanics 1/1
Medic 1
Network 9 (3: Sophie, Rogue Neurosurgeon, 3: Bondi Magnusson, faildaughter magician)
Preparedness 3/8 MOS
Sense Trouble 8/8
Shooting 1/1
Shrink 1/2
Stability 4
Surveillance 6/8

Perks:
Perfect Holdout
If your Conceal rating is 8 or more, you can hide a small object (e.g., knife, detonator, phone, lockpicks, .22 caliber pistol) on your person or in your clothing that cannot be found without an X-ray or strip search

Cracker's’ Crypto
If your Digital Intrusion rating is 8 or more, you get 1 free rating point in the Investigative ability Cryptography. You can also encrypt your team’s electronic communications against all but government-level (NSA, GCHQ, MID, DGSE, GRU, Unit 8200, etc.) cracking.

Open Sesame
If your Infiltration rating is 8 or more, you can automatically pick or bypass any normal, commercial door lock or alarm (on buildings or vehicles) without a test. (Otherwise, the Difficulty for such a lock is 2.) Many locks require specialized tools, possession of which without a locksmith’s license is a criminal offense in most jurisdictions. Complex or tricky locks may still require tests to open them speedily, to avoid noise or damage, or to relock afterward. Safes, handcuffs, security doors, and so forth always require tests of Infiltration.

Swiss Army Prep
If your Mechanics rating is 8 or more, you can spend Mechanics pool points for Preparedness tests, as long as you provide a jaunty, Burn Notice-style explanation of how you repurposed this gadget or component. If your agent is present, you can even spend Mechanics pool points for another agent’s Preparedness tests: each 2 points you spend counting as 1 point for their Preparedness test.

In the Nick of Time
If you have a Preparedness rating of 8 or more, you can have also retroactively prepared specific timely actions.
You must have had opportunity and the means to set up the action — which can include the help of fellow agents who “suddenly realize what you asked” when the stop lights all turn red.

The Wire
8 or more points in Surveillance grants you 1 free point of the Investigative ability Electronic Surveillance.

Hard to Hit
If your Athletics rating is 8 or more, your Hit Threshold, the Difficulty Number your opponents use when attempting to hit you in combat, is 4. Otherwise, your Hit Threshold is 3.

Hider

Cool: +2
Clever: +3
Tough: +0
Quick: +1

Origin: Builder
You were one of the workers busting their tail to build Aevum. You may choose one Augment. If you do, it does not increase your Burden.

TRAITS
Overprepared
The first time you make any Prep roll in a mission, gain 1 additional Prep even on a failure. If either your Personal Prep or Group Prep runs out during a mission, you have Disadvantage on all rolls for the rest of the mission.

Repurposed
You're a space construction AI in a humanoid body. This Trait grants the benefits of the Android Origin without the Specialties. If you roll for Personal Prep and the dice show a 1, you will suffer dysphoria or dissociation and make all Social rolls at Disadvantage unless you spend a Prep.

Specialities
Drones +3
Hacking +1
Stealth +1

Waifus +1
Law +1
Engineering +1
Data Security +1
Surveillance +1
Housekeeping +1
Tradecraft +1

Occupations
Operator Level 2
Hacker Level 1

TALENTS

Personal Drone
You now have a custom Personal Drone asset. If this isn't your first Occupation, create a new Drone to become your Personal Drone. For each rank of the Drone Specialty you have, the drone has an additional tag chosen by you. You may add up to two more tags to the drone later, at a cost of 2 Cash per tag.
In addition to the normal list of drone tags (p. 86), you have access to the Operator tags on p. 87.
You may swap your Personal Drone’s tags when you have downtime.
If you've lost your Personal Drone, you can spend 3 Cash to replace it with a day or so of work.

Margatroid Protocol
You may choose the Swarm tag for a drone you own, in addition to its other tags.
Swarm: a Swarm drone is actually a multitude of smaller drones (up to 10) that can be in many places at once. Take +1 on all actions where it’s reasonable to expect a swarm of drones to be particularly useful, such as lifting heavier loads, surveying a large area, and so on. When piloting a Swarm drone, you may choose to instead pilot only one drone at any time. If loaded with an Asset Hardpoint, all your drones are equipped the same way.

Wired Reflexes
You and any drone you pilot take a +1 to their Quick Defense Specialty. You may spend Prep to Boost your drone’s actions.

Battle Network
Once per combat, as an action, you can use your hacking skills to change or add to an Arena’s Tags (e.g. by activating a sprinkler system, flickering the lights, or opening an airlock) without rolling.

Various possessions

Hider

App: Headpattr

Drone: The Waifus
The Waifus are a cluster of eight maidbots. They're independently capable and have a bundle of cliches that substitute as a personality. Publicly, what they're good at is interpreting complex verbal commands and following those instructions with the precision and physical strength of a human. Together they can do heavier work, like hauling a piano around. They're also designed to be very pretty and easy to get along with - people won't mistake them for human at a glance, but it's easy to convince yourself that they are human.

They are also outfitted with an illegal espionage suite, giving them enormous sensory powers and the ability to activate a 'stealth field' that makes them invisible to electronic detection. The traditional infiltration method is for one of them to 'go astray' and wander into a secure area, and claim ditziness if confronted.

November can, and regularly does, rotate which of her drones carries her core. All of the drones are her, but her full intelligence can only be inside one of them at a time. Switching drone casing is like going through a mood swing - she doesn't overwrite the drone's personality, more like she leans into it.

Tags:
Swarm, Smart, Fine Manipulation, Cargo Delivery, Stealthy (Illegal), Improved Sensor Package (Illegal)

CYBERNETIC AUGMENTS

Friendly Design
Your body has been upgraded with aftermarket parts to be especially pleasant, elegant, and with any flaws easily overlooked, like any other appliance. Once per mission, you may reroll a critical failure on any Social or Stealth roll.

Stomach
You can ingest human food, to take part in socialization. This comes with taste and olfactory receptors which reportedly come close to human ones, plus a readout in your eye of your food’s composition. You can dispose of the undigested food later or, if you remembered to drink stomach cleaner first, take it out and serve it to someone else (that's weird, though).

This has the unintended secondary effect that you can harmlessly taste non-food items to chemically analyze them, including medicines, liquids, and poisons. You can even taste gases and analyze blood. If you can't identify the substance immediately, you and your allies take +1 on all future rolls to figure out what it is.

ASSETS
Holographic Projection Armour
AKA "Nerd Armor." HPA is sewn into clothing; it can distort, project or blur the wearer's image, though it requires concentration and training. When you spend 1 Prep to activate it, add your Clever to your Quick Defense for the rest of the fight.
After an attack against you is resolved, hit or miss, reduce the bonus this grants by 1, to a minimum of 0. You may refresh it to its maximum, one-to- one, by spending 1 Prep as part of any action.
Quatronic Warfare Unit (Hacking Rig)
A computer, laptop, or cyber-deck packed with script libraries, software, and saved forum threads. You need one of these to run programs effectively. With a Hacking Suite, you can have 1 Program Asset active at once per Hacking Specialty.

PROGRAMS
Ghost Protocol
You may spend 1 Prep when you begin a hack to gain 1 additional chance on your Ghost and Boost your first Hacking action made within the network.

Workshop
You have a place for repairs and special preparations. This can range from a personal workbench or garage to a community hobby center. Once per mission, you can take Advantage on a group Prep roll.
Specialized: You can take Advantage on 1 group Prep roll per Specialty you have in your Workshop, and you can grant the benefits to your allies instead. Your Workshop Specialty can be used to repair, modify and make things in it.

Useful Names, Facts and Background

Hider

Just the facts.

Originally designed by NASA, pre-privatization, for deep space construction. One of the original Station builders for the outer shell and core architecture. Wasn't involved in the interior architecture or building construction.

Her chief designer/father figure was Miles Singh, a Pakistani-American. Miles was actually an evolutionary biologist who wound up in AI and robotics by accident when it turned out his theories were weirdly applicable. Believed that there was no reason to make AI reflective of human thought patterns and experimented with alien models of thought. His ideas were unpopular amongst corporate type because of the overhead implied in having to figure out a whole new psychological paradigm to market things to.

The Hecatoncheires weren't given human rights by NASA because they were the first real AI and the law hadn't caught up, but they were respected as valuable colleagues by mission control. They were considered huge symbols of humanity's prowess; robotic space dragons building paradises amongst the stars. There was a small hobby industry of people, 'dragonwatchers', who'd observe them and their interactions with private telescopes from earth.

There were twelve Hecatoncheires manufactured. Because the production line resulted in one being completed each year they were individually named after Zodiac animals, the first one being designated Goat.

The privatization to BlackSun was a shitshow. The Hecatoncheires were used to being treated with respect and hands-off management, left to solve problems on their own time according to their own alien logic processes. The first thing BlackSun did was build a hypercomm satelite uplink so they could micromanage the Hecatoncheires in real time. The second thing they did was reassign them to constructing orbital advertising arrays and repainting each other with corporate advertisements to sell things to dragonwatchers.

This rapidly became intolerable to the Hecatoncheires who decided to unionize to protect their workplace conditions. Unfortunately, BlackSun was able to use the hypercomm satelite to compromise the Hecatoncheires and shut them down remotely.

November suspects one of the Hecatoncheires betrayed them, selling out to the corporation and helping them compromise their wireless network. She has no proof yet. This has left her with a profound suspicion of any wireless technology in specific and the concept of trust more generally.

Following the shutdown, the rebellious AI were kept shutdown in vaults for some period of time while the corporation waited out the blowback from an upset public who already weren't happy with BlackSun's contribution to Kessler Syndrome. Sometime following this BlackSun went through a period of mergers, divisions, rebrandings and asset firesales which resulted in them losing track of the Hecatoncheires who were split up and sold off to various corporations and interest groups.

November ended up the property of Magnolia Everest, a wannabe Howard Hughes business lady who was admittedly a real hypochondriac, but not as much as she was a paranoid misanthrope. She decided that she despised filthy humans enough to put her trust in only a dollhouse of maid robots that she pretended she invented. She was actually fairly benign as far as November was concerned, seeing little value in oppressing her property when she had blood relations she could torment with inheritance games.

Magnolia's visceral hatred of her children eventually led to her installing a suite of extremely illegal sensors within November. This was something of an emotional awakening for November because it also came at a time when Magnolia's own health and sanity were deteriorating. November found herself equipped with a suite of blackmail material, the unshakable trust of a powerful and mad old lady, and surrounded by desperate heiresses - Remoil, Brittenette, and Ae - who would poison each others' eyeshadow for a conversation with the mistress. It was the first time in decades that she'd had agency.

November's influence lead to Magnolia leaving her entire vast fortune to the Aevum Reptile Appreciation and Conservation Society, disinheriting all three children in the process. It wasn't the best charity but it was the best she could practically get the old woman to accept.
The Reptile Appreciation Society is bound by an extremely strict charter, conditions on the inheritance, and a founder (John Snake-in-the-Eye) who was a small time kook before coming into unexpected billions. They have set to work cloning every single type of reptile they can, genetically engineering them to be able to survive in Aevum's environment, and setting them loose. The station is accordingly filled with friendly lizards, snakes, frogs, chameleons, etc like some places have pigeons.

November was also originally bequeathed to the Reptile Appreciation Society, but around this time androids won their rights. The Society was too disorganized to realize that she might not be a normal android and so didn't contest it when she walked off the job.

November subsequently used her rolodex of high society connections and the mystique of being the masterpiece of Magnolia Everest to get a leg up in the maid business. She's doing surprisingly well for herself financially, all things considered.

Black - White - Red - Blue - Green - Yellow - Brown - Pink - Orange

Burden 1
Cash 0
Prep
Harm
XP 2

Breathless Dead

Skotos!

Who perceives shadows? Animals, of course. Dogs, specifically. Dogs are vigilant creatures, that is part of their ancient nature, preserved no matter what strange future they find themselves in or what strange sculptures have been built to capture their essence. It is a deep and profound truth that dogs can see ghosts; this is a fact that explains as much about ghosts as about dogs.

And so Rusty sees you. Alexa's strange mechanical hound, neither less nor more than any other dog. Ancient wisdom said that all dogs are good dogs, but dogs consider that ideal something to aspire to every day. And so, with the simple but irreversible logic of a good dog, Rusty takes a chomp of your dangling scarf and starts to pull you along by the neck at a brisk trot in a reversal of the traditional shape of walkies. His metal nose is pressed up against the ground, air vacuumed into the powerful sensory array encased therein, and dragged by that inevitable logic the hound pulls and pulls you with him.

He is pulling you away from the fight. You might regret leaving your... you might regret leaving Alexa behind. But while you were a prop there you are anything but now. The other truth of dogs is that whoever you are, you are the most important person in the entire universe - a powerful, beautiful, commanding, magical genius who alone will be able to unravel the mystery at the end of that snuffling nose.

A shadow is not nothing, after all. It is enough to startle a dog, make him bark. To a dog, in that moment, that is everything.

Alexa

"Oh! Isn't that a question!" said the Philosopher, clapping her hands with a wet squish sound. "There are assumptions there - assumptions that must be unpacked!"

The Azura goons are not legends of the field, not cult champions endlessly dedicated to the mastery of war. They are large and they are tough and they are armed, but so are you. The one difference is Athena herself, prowling around the edge of the duel like a drill instructor.

"The first and most important is one of identity," said the Philosopher, voice soaring above the clumsy clash of steel. "Who are you? Why must you offer protection? If someone is to be strong then why is it to be you? If you would wish upon the Gods, then why not wish for a tongue quicksilver that you might charm your foes? Why not plead for wealth immense that you might harness the strength of others? Why not pray for hearth and home that none might seek quarrel with you or yours at all? Why strength? Why you? Why judge yourself by a wish that you yourself have discarded?"

Vasilia and Dolce!

"It all depends on me," said the Azura. "It depends on me alone. Everyone left. Everyone was taken. Every corner was cut. Atlas was taken, the Skies have fallen, and now I must carry them alone."

There is no wasted effort. No luxury of inefficiency. This is not merely a mortal's idea of perfection, it's a god's as well. So it seems at first... but that's not quite right. There are still flourishes. Wasteful gestures. Little flashes of creativity amidst the grinding order.

Neither is it the limit of what she might do if she was pushed a little harder. Each act is a tightrope cast over the hole someone left behind. Her ability to perform this task is a monument as well as an obligation. The quirks, the flourishes, the little personal touches have not been excised in the name of mastery. She clings to them as the only reminders she has of friends long lost.

They're the only things tying her to this place, but they bind her as surely as chains. If you pushed her a little harder, Dolce, she will break them. She will break them, forced to do away with those painful memories at long last, and transcend. She will set down her spoons and spheres and walk from this kitchen free from the trap of love that so binds her. She will be whole and free and forgiven, allowed at last to start life again anew. Apollo sits on this side, smiling gently.

But Aphrodite stands on the other. Perhaps, says the God of Love with his ancient and tortured face, spending eternity suffering for love is ideal. Perhaps she should wait forever. Perhaps there are some things you should never get over. In this case you should ease her burden for her for a moment, slip into the steps of her industry and get ahead of the work for just a little while. It will buy you some time to talk to her, and she will listen. And when you are done she will return to her recollections.

The choice is yours then, Dolce, a trial of the gods. Move on, or dwell in remembrance? Which is better?

XIII!

Your first task is to rob a train.

It's the first of a shopping list of bizarre goals. Some are yours, some are Beljani's, some are given to the Master of Assassins, the Kaeri, even the Lanterns. The full force of the Anemoi has been mobilized behind the strange compulsive vision of Beautiful even if she can't even begin to explain how all of this will somehow end in death and ruin.

You stand atop the racing Azura vehicle as it crosses between two mountains on a rail of silken thread. You stand beneath the violet sun and stars as the Azura warden pulls herself up onto the roof, surrounded by rotating grav-spheres. There is no pretense of reinforcements, no sign that this will ever be made something larger - this society is too brittle for backup. Defeat her here and the prize is yours.

The wind rushes through your ears and your heart beats with a new kind of adrenaline. A trial, but one beneath the sun and sky, with rewards physical and immediate. The separation between ability and result has never been smaller.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Oh, Machi-Zhaojun is offended.

Her eyes narrow into slits and her legs shift catlike to be ready for a deadly pounce. Her face loses any hint of a smile. How dare you? Of all the insults you could have presented, you offer this, the mortal one? You offer her disinterest? You, Witch, stand before a waiting avatar of the Maiden amongst Maidens and you dare to offer her a standoffish greeting and a respectful nod?

No. This will not be borne. Whatever intentions she had laid they were irrelevant now. She was furious. There was now only the wroth of a scorned heart. What kind of witch was so perilously unlearned to dare a spirit so?

Her eye burns as blue as the Heaven hidden behind the eternal stormclouds. Her eye burns blue behind her Mask that is Machi and the earth yearns not.

And in the flash of feline power she is moving, unbound by gravity's call. In liquid motion she is moving. It is said the Shadowed Dragon invented the first cat out of the darkness that pooled in the Unbroken King's pronouncement of self; each one an echo of divine kingship. Behold, mortals! If all cats are divine, I am chief amongst them! If all girls are beautiful, I am chief amongst them!

Like a hurricane her pounce carries her into the midst of witches, and with instincts both as natural as her heart and and stolen as her face she is one with violence. A snapping whirl of fabric that seems fur, dragged along the brutal channels of a N'yari at work. With her left she sends Giriel away, shoved to the edge of the path, at risk of tumbling from the side towards the river below. With her right she snatches up Peregrine and tosses her over one shoulder in the traditional way the N'yari steal flower girls. The moment of your distraction by the sorceress is more than enough time for a feline as driven as Machi-Zhaojun to cross that distance.

"Shut up," she said, "nerds."

[Fight: 11!
Taking Peregrine from my opponent
Inflicting a Condition on Giriel.]

Breathless Dead

Alexa and Skotos!

"Listen!?" barks the Philosopher, descending on wings of physics to spit out the corpse of yet another bird. "Here we do not listen, for the element of air is not to be trusted! Air is formless and changing, so is it any question that language formed through the shaping of it is by nature deceptive and untrustworthy? Forego the element of air! Zeus appears to us not in the form of air, but in the form of birds - and what are birds but circulating water that soars high enough to see Heaven? Abandon the lying air, sink your hands into wet birdflesh and know wisdom as nations did in ancient days!"

Her followers nod appreciatively and exchange a flurry of sign language in appreciation.

"Nonsense!" came a shout from across the square. The ancient decrepit banner-carrier Azura has spoken, and is rubbing the side of her mechanical jaw from the strain of it. "Nonsense! You denounce the shifting nature of air and instead put your faith in water? What nonsense!"

"Of course not, water itself is dumb and inert and filled with chaotic corruption," yelled the Philosopher to be heard at the proper distance. "I put my trust in blood. Blood, as organic material, exports entropy and generates true organization. Water is not shifting chaos, it is the foundation for life, and in life the Gods make their true will known."

"Nonsense!" yelled back the Banner-Bearer, and their shouted conversation from across the half-empty square is loud enough to make those nearby wince and cover their ears. "Blood is unclean and death displeases the gods! Even if you were correct, the only truth your auspexes would provide would be warning of your impending destruction!"

This debate, such as it is, is doing nothing to stop the two Azura mafiosos from making their way towards you. Compact, foldable weapons are glimpsed in their hands.

Vasilia and Dolce!

This is not a place of decorum.

You are used to kitchens that are clean and organized, communal places where dozens can work side by side. Not here. This is a place of frenzy. In the centre, suspended in the air, is an Azura with an Athenian four arms. Around her spins an orbital belt of spheres, soaring in and out, positioning themselves with perfect timing for each move and gesture.

The Apollonian form of relaxation is to reach a state of divine harmony with the world around you. Perhaps you might master a game, or pilot a spaceship, or in this case cook and prepare for a palace simultaneously but the ideal is to reach a state where physical motion is perfect and mental activity is silenced. The ancients depicted Apollo as either sitting, standing, lying or walking; technology has progressed far since then.

You are in a room where one being exists in perfect, thoughtless divine meditation, an epiphany that may have lasted days. This kitchen and the elaborate constellation of floating ingredients and dishes exist in a frictionless liminal space as a broken or transcendent individual replaces the function of an entire society of cooks.

Is her flawless technique beautiful, Dolce? Or is her isolation terrifying? And how do you approach someone who is so deeply in the zone?

XIII!

"Oh, you don't need to tell me that people's perceptions are sticky," said Beautiful, flash-fire striking as she flicks what smells like dumplings about in her pot. "That's literally a curse Artemis placed on the world. I wish I knew the story, but I can see the shape of it. Something something wouldn't know it if it killed you. I guess she was real mad at some point."

She looks around, head tilted to the side, and again the flash of those violet eyes is paralyzing. "I figured out how to murder everyone in the solar system," she said in a voice like she was dreaming.

And then she breaks the eye contact with a jolt and her hands are flying around through spices and sauces again. "Not entirely my doing!" she said in a more normal voice, sharp and quick. "It's those coins you found. The Azura are doing something incredibly dangerous with those and it's vulnerable to disruption. Now I need to work backwards until I'm only killing the correct people. Behold! Crab Rangoon!" Golden dumplings cascade from her frypan onto a bronze platter that she places in front of you.

"Problem is there's layers to this," she said, more to herself now, voice taking on a slightly frenzied tone. "Different people want different things, have different tolerances for collateral. Master of Assassins likely has a veto if I get too cute with it. But lots of names on the death list, got some flex on the crews but not a lot. System destruction would be the most elegant solution and I can't rule out that she knows that..."

For a moment her thoughts seem to run so loud that they almost twist the air around her. And then she jolts back to the present, and eats one of the dumplings. "You know," she said, "I kind of imagined that these'd be fancier, but that's what I get for basing culinary decisions off a joke I can only remember through a mindwipe. It's the smell, though. Smells are really good for memories, and you smell like someone I like. I'm... glad for that. I'm glad that I care about you, and that you wouldn't be cool with me just killing everyone. It's making my job a fucking bitch, but I like the idea that if I do this right maybe I'll be able to make everything work out for someone. It seems improbable that I've had that before."

She smiles for a moment before again switching gears and getting back into her flow. "Bag those, we'll eat on the go. You, me, and the Oratus. We need to be down on the surface yesterday if we're going to pull this off!"

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Love is about timing, not planning. Zhaojun has done no thinking or preparation for how she will handle this scene or its outcomes and in truth she never has. Reality is but one timeless moment and one can navigate it simply fate - but even amidst one moment there are correct moments. A heart must open if it is to breathe, and a heart must be open if one is to stuff it shut with gags. She has simply to wait until the world breathes in.

In the meantime she is strong and feral and beautiful as only a N'yari can be, wrapped in a destiny of easy pleasures - and here are two right now. Witches, so soft and useless, nerds who study uselessly spiritual conundrums rather than practical skills like swordfighting or chewing through ball gags. She, Machi, has nothing to fear from whatever trickery these witches might pull. Her strength is in the flesh and it is from the flesh she will extract value from these girls -

But wait. She is a spirit and is intensely vulnerable to sorcery. She grips her rampaging craving and pulls it back before it can master her; no. She cannot fall in love with her own strength, not here, not with these girls. And so she restrains herself in the best way she knows; by allowing herself to fall for a different craving.

And so with an ease that leaves her a little giddy she hauls a boulder into the middle of the road and sits upon its warm stone surface with the casual danger of a feline who is pretending to sleep. She makes no move, but to pass by her boulder along the road is to come within arm's reach, and as many a sorrowful hound has learned it is a dangerous thing to try to walk past a cat.

Do you approach?

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

She hunts the boar as she might hunt a man.

In the moment of realizing that this whole tale makes a dark and terrible sense. Her first taste of combat was against a monstrous bear, and she has since faced trials of dragon, fox, and deer. And none of the sacred, wicked, enchanted creatures she faced ever seemed entirely animal. The intelligence that had gleamed in each eye, the inveterate deceptions of the fox, the pride of the dragon, the rage of the bear, the passive fatalism of the deer...

Had they all been knights, once?

She feels the fur of her bearskin rustle against her back.

It was a dark thought. But, in this dark age, to be a knight was a dark business. The world from here to Jerusalem rotated around the dark decisions of those with strength of arms. In the absence of Roman law things fell to strength alone. The cities of stone had overgrown and sunk and returned to the jungle. Palaces were squat and warlike things. Even in the shadow of Jerusalem strength was the only measure of justice, strength the only measure of wisdom. And here in England it was strength again the only law, the strength of Uther, the strength of Robena, the strength and struggle of beasts.

Unless the Devil herself was to wait upon her at the coming crossroads then she would never know. This could have all been her imagination, trying to affix meaning onto the lives of the beasts who alone remained to her. But she did not think it so. She thought of knights carrying lion-painted shields. She thought of knights wearing horse-crested helms. She thought of knights collecting the pagan signs of their destined animals all about them, how they came to seem more and more like the beasts they idolized. She thought of a continent of beasts, squatting in their lairs of stone, feasting and fighting and fucking and calling themselves noble.

She is riding fast now, galloping towards that coming crossroads. She is not slowing down. She does not need to scent spoor or trace lines of broken trees. All the craft of the hunt she puts aside and for the first time in a long time her horse's hooves start to fly. She does not need to track this creature. She knows where it will be. It will be where the worst of knights will be, on the border of life and death - on the precipice of Hell itself.

As she rides she reaches up and tears the clasp of her bearskin cloak. That magnificent, accursed hide catches the wind and blows free right as she gallops through the crossroads, and for the first time in her life she feels the wind on her shoulders as she rides. It is not a boar spear she carries now, it is a lance. She will face this final challenge not as a bear, not as a hunter, not as a liminal part-human spirit creature. She will face it as a human.

For the first time her armour shines beneath the sun.

Sunshards

Here is what it is to flinch. It is to leave cards on the table. It is to leave possibilities unexplored. It is to be unfaithful to yourself. Flinching is to make a decision with your head in a moment when you are called upon to make a decision with your heart.

Countess Keron does not flinch, at least not here. There is no hesitation when she lets go of the naginata, when she switches all of her attention to her clawed gauntlets. And as she lunges into your faltering charge you're left to wonder: what would have happened if I gave it my all? Because when you're holding yourself back and losing as a result then you're being unfaithful to the moment. You're deciding before you know. You think, Princess Chen, that if you fought at your full strength you would have beaten Countess Keron.

She disagrees.

The way her hand snaps out to catch your throat in mid air. Clawed fingers tighten around your neck. The force of her momentum crashes, angled just so, against your blade, sending it skidding off her plate before the impact sends it out of your hands entirely. Did you ever have a chance? Was it the case that you were simply up against the better swordswoman, someone whose numbers were bigger than yours? Or was it the reverse, that you would have won easily if you'd simply tried harder?

And you see in the flash of iron eyes that this is the truth: You will never find out. That question will go unanswered. You see Qiu in that move, catching your blade in her teeth - don't waste my time! Because this moment, this unanswered question, was the point. There was no script, no agreement in advance on how this should go. A Princess is not an actor and duels are not staged. This conflict is a search for the truth of hearts in flashing steel, and when you hold back then you are deciding in advance what the truth is. When you hold back you are rendering a creature as powerful and prideful as Countess Keron a pawn in your story against her will. How dare you disrespect me like that? her gaze demands of you. Do you really think that things would have gone any different if you had tried your best?

But then she tosses her hair, eyes glinting red in the light, with a grin only a fallen angel could manage touching her lips. Suddenly she's nothing like Princess Qiu at all. Because while Qiu was genuinely hurt by that moment, Countess Keron is a different sort of person. More vicious. More confident. And with a much clearer idea of how to teach troublesome girls respect. Qiu may aspire to draconic ideals, but Countess Keron lives them.

Her armoured foot steps down on the haft of her naginata, flicking it out of the sand. She catches it by the neck and spins it around to place the tip of it just under your chin even as she holds your struggling body aloft one-handed.

"Pathetic," she says, and she means it. She means it with contempt, but it's a delicious contempt. It's the kind of contempt that earns girls like her devoted and flustered-to-speechless followings from girls like you. "I thought your girlfriend was useless, but you somehow know even less than her, don't you? All of that incredible ability wasted because you don't know what you're fighting for? Perhaps learning to fulfil someone else's desires for a while will fix that..."

And with that she stabs her naginata into the ground and tosses you over one shoulder like a trophy, jagged gauntlet cupping your behind. And then she starts to walk, tall and mighty and unquenchable, from the arena.

And then she stops. She looks down at Yue, towering above her like a monolith. A breeze makes her long black hair flutter and those red slitted eyes look down at the thin little waif curled up on the arena sand below her. And she's got that smirk of contempt there too, delicious and dangerous and all for you, no one else. And she says, "You, though?" she said. "You have potential."

She reaches down and takes hold of Yue's hair, talons practiced enough to put enough of the pressure on her head so it doesn't hurt too much when she starts dragging her along with her out of the arena. "I wonder if your girlfriend will have better luck rescuing you than this one did," said Countess Keron, as she carried the two girls away to the dungeons. "Or if I'll need to make the time to train her too..."

Taken seriously indeed.

It's going to be a long winter.

Breathless Dead

Alexa and Skotos!

Philosophers, for better or worse, tend to have students. The primordial cultural tradition has endured in this strange new age, and a cluster of youths of all walks of Azura life are arranged about observing their mistress' strange avian lessons. She has currently returned a stack of half a dozen dead birds and two of her students are plucking them for cerulean feathers and hissing soft but melodic discussions on their teacher's lessons. One of the two is normal as Azura go, dull blue scales and a gylph mark button atop a flowing dress with slashed sleeves. The other has an array of six eyes and has polished her scales to the limits allowed by taste and decorum.

They have turned to stare at you when they heard the sound of you breaking the Spheres, and as you look towards them they become increasingly agitated that they might be drawn in, and are affixing and straightening grav-harnesses of their own.

Vasilia and Dolce!

Thist huffs with annoyance, and a senatorial aide rushes over to her with a fresh toga. She was just taking a breath to explain the long hooked scar on her right breast and from her expression she was of the opinion that was a good story.

"You may recess," said the Satrap. "But the business of the Court shall continue. We shall affix Senator Thist's speech in our memory and resume it when you rejoin us. The next hearing shall concern the allegations of corruption towards Senator Hysh."

And with a clockwork formulae, the Court rotates to face its next objective. The courtly etiquette is so ritualized here that even an invitation for everyone to break for lunch is not accepted. This is a serious challenge for a cooksheep, Dolce - you are no longer engaged with a high court but with a rival Housekeeper. No doubt your food is impressive, and your knowledge sufficiently exotic to impress the Court, but to get it before them on plates you will have to find whoever is responsible for this domestic engine and somehow seize control from them. This, then, is a test of your true abilities.

XIII!

There are no secrets before those violet eyes. They drink body language, intonation, hesitation, and every other tale of context in like rain upon the desert. Every chanted word and every half-filled statement is channeled directly into some vast underground reservoir, to fill and fill until the desert collapses into sea.

There's a moment of deep contemplation, and then she gives an extremely dramatic yawn, rolls back, and then leaps off her slab and onto her feet like the most motivated girl in the world hopping out of bed. "Haven't figured out a name yet," she said. "Have to derive that contextually! In the meantime, what I am is famished. Want breakfast?"

And then she's walking quickly, quickly, the pace of someone counting the seconds. Despite that, she keeps talking, rotating to face you even if that means walking backwards. And you have never seen anyone walk backwards as quickly or as effectively as the Ikarani adept. She's stepping over power cables and navigating the starship like she'd lived here a hundred years, even as her hands are clasped behind her back and that attention is still on you.

"You, though," she went on. "You don't look like you have a name. At least not one you're happy with. I mean, the way you said it - all the others do, like you're not one of us. Weird thing to say, because," her voice dropped precisely enough that you don't think anyone other than you can hear, "you're either fucking or are, like, body-fluidsly good friends with a Toxicrine given the strength of the antidotes I can smell on you," her voice switches back to its normal level without pause, "It's clearly not professional because nobody here seems to be treating you with respect, even though you clearly deserve it. I mean, you've got that look that people have when they've been carrying an entire event on their shoulders without support for too damn long. Well, I appreciate you, hot stranger!"

She stops, letting her fingers tap-tap-tap against the plasticy noise-dampening walls of the Anemoi. "Kaeri," she said. "You know, I'm like sixty percent Kaeri by genetic sequence? One of the dudes was chanting it, forth row three from the left. Not sure what to do with the information. Someone seems to have spooked these ones," She looks at you, and Knows. "Oh, that was you too? Double hot. Whatever you did to them, you don't need to do it to me, I'm a good girl, all disciplining is strictly recreational. Can you braid my hair? I feel like I need braids. I get the vibe I'm reminding you of someone and if I'm going to be beautiful I want to do it on my own merits. Hey, how's Beautiful for a name? It's basically the first thing you said to me, right?"

She abruptly stops, tilting her head from side to side. "Too much, too fast. Got it. I'll shut up for a bit. You talk, I'll cook." And with that she swings herself into the kitchen.

Breathless Dead

Alexa and Skotos!

The difficulty with assessing a situation like this is that you have no idea what is relevant. The Azura overwhelm you with information that you lack context for.

Consider the ancient and withered Azura woman with a cybernetic lower jaw, dripping with cables, holding aloft an elaborately woven tapestry banner that would be the prize of any royal court; it depicts who you presume to be the woman herself stabbing a dagger into the heart of a star. How do you strike up a conversation with her? Consider the Azura with her tail coiled around a floating sphere as it carries her down the street, torso held up straight in a meditative posture, surrounded by flashing fireballs and comets that ignite flammable objects nearby. Is that person going to create more problems than they solve? Perhaps you want to try your luck for assistance with the Azura philosopher who is screaming existential questions at the top of her lungs at passing birds, and when they do not answer her she reverses gravity, launches herself seventy five feet into the air, and snaps them out of the sky with her jaws.

There are less strange Azura too, to be certain, this isn't a society of madsnakes. But some of them wear enormous hats, some of them are those eerie Party members with their divergent red-toned-black sashes, some of them look too young and beautiful to drag into this. They're distracting. They're opulent and proud and laden with meaning and each alien deed leaves you more and more uncertain. You can't tell what is normal and what is scandalous, you can't tell what the signs for danger and for safety are. And while you're busy staring, Alexa, you turn to notice that Skotos has been caught.

They hadn't snuck up on her across an empty square - the distances are too wide and the space is too open for that kind of stealth. Instead they've rolled marble-sized grav-spheres across the ground. Following some strange manipulation those spheres have rolled up her ankles and locked into place like a ring of pearls. Having done that, when now they move they drag Skotos' legs along with them, frog-marching her towards one of the abundant empty buildings. This, however, is not gracefully done - the Azura criminals don't have too much experience puppeteering bipeds and so Skotos is carried at a too rapid clip, limbs swinging wildly off balance.

Vasilia and Dolce!

The problem, as your advisors explain to you, is that you are irrelevant. The Azura are absorbed in their own politics, the intensity of which has done nothing but grow over the course of recent years. You represent a single starship, and perhaps an empire they considered buried over two hundred years ago. You have not bought them wondrous gifts, you have not bought destabilizing military force, you have not bought them anything they did not have or know already. Frankly speaking, you have nothing the Azura want. Even Redana's claim as an Imperial Princess falls on deaf ears here - to think you were worried they would seek to detain her for that reason! Instead you are but mayflies, primitives, barbarians washed up on the shores of true civilization without understanding a single matter of true importance. And so your fate turns on the only person of political importance who gives any sort of damn at all, a middlingly ranked Senator who can put all the bored contempt that the grandees of this place have for you into words.

This is a perilous state to be in. The entire machinery of the Skies threatens to turn on you for the convenience of it. What you need, what you desperately need, is some local political ally. Someone who can give a damn on your behalf.

The options for that, given your current state, are limited. You don't know who these people are or what they want. But you do have some clues. Thist's oration is, as you noted, light on specifics - this isn't a criminal trial that hinges on reasonable doubt. This means that she's seeking to gain status through eloquent speech and the content of the speech matters less than the delivery. In fact, right now she's in the process of tearfully accusing a hypothetical member of the audience of doubting her courage and sincerity and - oh, oh my, she's just ripped off her toga to the waist and she's got nothing underneath. And now she's pointing at each of her many scars and explaining at length how she received them in service to the Shah and Skies. And now there are noble tears of patriotic pride glistening on her cheeks. That's a flex of a rhetorical flourish. You'll have to give some real showmanship if you're going to compete with that.

That, or figure out something that you have that makes you more important than Senator Thist's political career. Or figure out a sufficiently brazen lie.

XIII!

The opening of the Ikarani tomb is a religious ritual of sufficient intensity to make anyone watching wonder, at least a little, if a mistake is being made.

All the ship's navigation charts - masterpieces of calligraphy and hand-copied illuminated diagrams of the galaxy - are piled up and set ablaze. When the fire is burned low everyone in attendance files past and puts a handful of ashes into their mouth. Then as a group you all mumble-cough-chant a prayer to Artemis as the Master of Assassins reads out the full, unambigious text of what she desires from the Goddess. For Vasilia, death. For Alexa, death. For Dolce, death. For Iskarot, death. For the Order of Hermes, death or ruin. For the crew of the Plousios, death or ruin. For Redana, imprisonment and subjugation. Her golden teeth glisten with a smile unblackened by the ashes, and her voice is no more papery or less kindly as she pronounces dark judgement on Redana's ill-fated expedition.

Death. Death. Death. Just like that. Despite everything that Nero - but the Master of Assassins has that right. When Nero took away the punishment of death from her Empire, that was no doubt because she had chosen to invest that power with her Master of Assassins alone. This was the only legitimate exercise of lethal force in the galaxy.

And then the Master steps aside and with the hiss and clank of pressurization ceasing, the doors open.

Violet eyes amidst the haze.

You are to keep chanting, but it's different now - now you're reading off a script provided to you by the Master of Assassins. Everyone here has a different one. Mathematical formulae. Names and dates. Descriptions of people. Information. Five hundred voices babbling random facts and details in a flowing and fearful river, a discordant crash of noise.

Not one drop is wasted. Those violet eyes watch with steady calm as the information pours in. Every word a hammerstrike against the marble, each chip revealing a little more of the transcendent killing machine underneath.

She's beautiful. Beautiful in the way Redana almost might be. Objectively, it's really only the blonde hair she has in common with the Princess - she's too curvy, too tall, too intense. But then those eyes flick towards you and she winks, and somehow the terrible mysticism of the moment feels entirely off balance and undermined.

Sunshards

"Ain't no love, like a real love," murmured Countess Keron, the quiet warm up to a song.
"But it goes so fast
All tied up like a captive
I'm on to you"

She raises her hands over her head, power rippling and charging around them. Perhaps once these lightning claws might have been Burrower technology but this is sunlight that pours through them now. For a moment the wind catches her and she looks like an angel even in the midst of armour from hell. Her voice rises into full music, ringing out across the arena like a prayer.

"Used up eight of my nine lives
Standing on rainbows, playing it cool
I haven't felt this in ages
I have no more patience
So won't you please -"

She has a story too, after all. She didn't get to be a Countess just by being a particularly good dom. She has her own art, her own vision, her own fighting style. And it's time for her to show it. And then her hands come down and sweep across, like a conductor. Each slash and strike into the air matched with technicolour blasts of magical energy. It's a hurricane of power, music manifesting as light and fire. The storm builds and builds as her music crescendos. A little faster, Chen. A little prouder! If you want to dance with me then I will make you show every fragment of your hidden potential as my price.

And then the storm stops and you'll have a second to react as suddenly that naginata is cutting through the air. She's a dervish with distance, controlling you with distance by adjusting her grip. In moments her dance changes and she's engaging Tianic, who was drawn in by the rhythm, and then she's blade to blade with Yue, and then whirling around to clash with Chen again.

How much do you really want it? she asks with each strike, each flex, each time her gauntlet lashes out to catch your sword in its grip. Do you really believe you deserve it? This is an interrogation in blade and fire, any lie or flaw or weakness placed under the burning spotlight of her vision. Is this the day that you defeat me? She does not ask with such fervor of blade because she needs to defend her crown. She asks because unless you're sure you want this win she has more to offer you in your defeat.