TenThousandBrokenDreams/Session04

Mother Cypress speaks:

“Hello, my children. Back you’ve come for more of my tales of times long past. So, what story would you have tonight? Will it be the tale of Nanashi the gambler and how he outlived his own death, and the five ways he eluded Heaven when the Maidens came to claim his soul? Or perhaps the tale of Captain Jala of Janapur, who sailed beyond the western tide, and what perils met her and her crew as they passed the edge of the world?

“No? Would you hear more of last night’s tale, my children? ... Then come closer, my children, and spread ears like elephants, that I might tell you the tale of the Sun’s bright children, and how they traveled into the East.

“The children of the Sun cloaked themselves as mortal travelers, and shared a barge that sailed eastward along the Yellow River. They rode the river in secret, trusting to Fortune to safeguard their intentions. But their passage did not go entirely unnoticed. The black-scaled raiton birds, circling upon the chill of the lower air, watched them as they went; and each bird perched in turn upon the black-mailed shoulder of a small, lonely figure who rode a pale horse, and each whispered to her their secrets. And far to the south and west, beyond the bleak and barren lands where rose the citadel of He-who-Walks-in-Darkness, beyond the wind-swept plains of the horse lords, a dark power marshaled his captains to council in the corpse-choked ruin of the city of Thorns.

“He styled himself the Mask of Winters, and bore such regalia as fitted the name. So too did that name fit the manner of his inmost nature, for his heart was as black and secret and cold as the ice upon the stones in the uttermost hidden places of Hell. His throne was built of children’s skulls, his crown a halo of blackest Essence drawn whole from Oblivion’s maw. Gray ice dripped over the arms of his throne and spread out across the floor in a carpet of frost.

“Six of his deathknights stood before him. All in a row they stood, these fine dark captains did, these lords of shadow, these black angels of Oblivion’s sweet caress. The Mask of Winters commanded many deathknights, but of those that could be gathered at this time, these were the ablest, the wisest, and the most loyal. And yet, as to measuring their loyalty, even the keenest of eyes could not easily discern which of his captains were true, and which were false.

“First among his captains was a tall man, old beyond his years, his thin pale hair held back by a circlet of shining black metal; his robes were sewn of silver thread, and a scarlet cloth concealed the ruin of his eyes. This was the one named Red Iron Rebuke, who was once a prince among men, and his was the mastery of the city of Thorns.

“Next was one with eyes like emeralds, hair like falling fire, and a complexion that glowed like moonlight upon unbroken snow. Her green jade armor gleamed like summer leaves made liquid, and her smile held the promise of secrets to be revealed. She was called the Green Lady, and she stood at her lord’s right hand.

“Next a small and wiry man: silent, weathered by pain and time, his plain robe and tied-back hair all of the same shade of gray. He stood with the simple grace of a dancer or a swordsman, and he clasped a monk’s staff of black ash wood between his callused hands. They called him the Leaping Dragon’s Shadow, and his gift lay in the knowing of the ways a man might die.

“Next a dark woman wrapped in shadow; skin, hair, and eyes, all dark as the empty moon, all one with the shadow that clung to her like a lover’s kiss. Black was her cloak, her gloves, and all other garb. Her name was Midnight’s Daughter, and she moved like a shadow at her master’s behest.

“Next an old man with eyes full of whispers, his ragged robe adorned with a thousand talismans of death. Upon his fingers he wore many rings, and each ring held a soul that had been hammered into steel. He had many names: the Confessioner Unshriven, the Abbot of Blood and Dust, the Litany of Gods Below; and in the house of the Dead Gods he called the ghosts to prayer.

“Last came an ancient woman in black silk and gold, a toothless creature of wrinkles and spite with a face like a spider’s web, whose eyes burned with a terrible power that could not be quenched or assuaged. They named her Grandmother Dust, for her heart was dust; her barren womb held only cruelty and hate, and she only found joy in blackest sorcery as it coiled through her veins like mating serpents.

“These captains knelt in that dread hall, amidst cold and shadow and silence, as their master rose from his icy throne to take his captains’ counsel. 'My children,' said the Mask of Winters in a voice like a crow of frost that perched upon the heart. 'My most loyal servant informs me that the Sun-touched ones have traveled into the East, where the Walker and the Dowager and the Wisdom dwell. Tell me, my captains, how we shall reclaim these errant travelers and bring them under our sway?'

“And the six captains rose, to address their lord in council; and words were spoken, and plans were laid that would bring the four bright heroes into the clutches of the Mask, to call them to court in his citadel of shadow in the ruin of the house of Thorns.”

Early in the morning, as Li watched the sun rise, the swordswoman Rei of Nechara approached her with a proposition; she craved battle and had been cooped up too long without it, guarding the fat Guild merchant Darien Tal. In the end, they dueled with wooden oars, diverting the sailors and the early risers among the passengers as they moved back and forth upon the deck. For all of Li’s Sun-touched skill, Rei proved to be her equal. Li had no doubt that the battle would have been easy had she employed her Charms, but she refrained; a wise thing, given the unwanted notice that such a gesture would bring. Their duel concluded, the two warrior women spoke with greater candor and friendliness, at least until the merchant Tal called his guard back to her post.

As the sun rose higher into the sky, our heroes looked to the east as the barge approached the city of Great Forks. They gazed upon the city, with its shining temple roofs and its walls and harbor-towers, its fishing-boats followed by river-spirits, its threads of incense-laden smoke rising from a thousand altars, and spoke of gods and spirits as Thorwald expressed confusion and dismay over the whole notion of worship.

As this city was home to the captain and his wife and much of the crew, they declared a day and night of shore leave. Deedee remained to watch the barge, while Marac invited the heroes to join him as he visited the temples for prayer and feasting. They stopped at Madame Teng’s hostel to rent a room for the night, then moved on to the Temple Quarter for the holy feast of the Emerald Queen of the Maruto River. After more discussion of gods and spirits, Li and Zera wandered off, leaving Aekino to ask Marac about Ledaal Amaya and her mission. Marac answered frankly, indicating that she was a courier traveling to Tul Tuin in the Scavenger Lands to bring a message to her cousin, the Fire-Aspect Ledaal Vir, who ruled in that city by right of conquest. Marac then departed to leave offerings upon the altar of the Yellow River King, leaving Thorwald to drink himself silly and Aekino to ingratiate himself with certain handsome temple dancers...

Li sought out a temple of the Eight-Fold Path, but found none. Instead she found a tiny temple devoted to a god whose sign was an eye within a solar disk, tended by an ancient blind woman in brown and gold veils. She asked for the woman’s blessing, which proved to be the blessing of the Illuminated Ones, and departed.

The blessing of the Illuminated Ones:

"Praise to the enlightened ones, the illuminated ones, who dwell beyond the five quarters of the world. May they bring light into darkness, and form into chaos; and may they open the gates that all men and women may know truth and pass into Heaven. Let it be so."

Zera purchased a chain shirt, for his recent battles had proved the need for armor. Then he moved on to the many nightclubs and saloons of Great Forks to ask questions regarding their destination. He heard many rumors, which he dutifully collected: that demons ruled the city of Tul Tuin, or that the Fair Folk reigned there, or that a mighty Dragon-Blood had taken the throne; that the legions of the dead stalked the borders; and more prosaically, that the city was large and civilized as towns in the Hundred Kingdoms went, being a stable source of wheat for the river trade.

That night, the four children of the Sun convened at Madame Teng’s, where they shared the knowledge they had gathered. There they swore an oath to work together, then spent some more time arguing before they went to sleep.

Zera Thisse forms the oath:

"Come Dragon-Blood or Wyld Hunt, Fair Folk or the demon king himself, we are one. Where one goes, we all go."

The next day, Li and Aekino shopped for sundries in the city, while Zera and Thorwald returned directly to the barge… or attempted to, for they were brought up short when a spirit bowed to Zera in the middle of the street. Approaching, the liquid-eyed, petal-tongued spirit addressed Zera as “Kuro the Raven,” spoke of having met him before when Zera wore another body in another life, and mentioned that not all of the small gods had forgotten the old ways. The spirit wished them well and departed, leaving the bemused Zera and Thorwald to rejoin the others at the docks.

At the docks, they found the captain taking on two more passengers: a lovely green-haired woman, and one of the northern Fair Folk. Thorwald’s fellows had to persuade him not to attack the faerie, and Marac, once addressed on the matter, noted that the faerie had promised not to leave his quarters for the duration of the journey.

Weeks passed as the barge moved east along the Yellow River. Aekino meditated in the sun and studied sorcerous texts; Thorwald and Li practiced swordplay with Rei and worked with the sailors at times; and Zera watched everything, waiting for trouble to come. Eventually the barge reached Marita; they watched that city’s marble buildings slip past, including the great white Council dome, as the barge ponderously turned northward to follow the River of Willows, followed ever by a favorable wind.

One day, as the Dayshield’s Daughter made its way up the River of Willows, the captain’s wife observed that she sensed trouble coming once again; once again, it would strike at night, but this time she could not discern its nature. Troubled, the crew marshaled themselves to meet the danger. Likewise did our heroes prepare themselves, climbing up onto the deck or into the rigging to keep an eye out for such adversaries as might come.

When danger came, it came from below. The children of the Sun were first to respond when the screams rose up through the decking, and they sprinted down the stairs before the sailors knew what had happened. Li smashed the door open, revealing the eldritch sight of a thousand silvery tendrils, slim as reeds, which had entangled Ledaal Amaya and her maid and were lashing out at the monk bodyguard, Joyous Songbird, as well.

Our heroes quickly spotted the silvery orb from which all the tendrils sprang and focused their efforts upon it. Zera’s arrows bounced off it and the tendrils turned Li’s steel blade aside. Pushing through the forest of silver thread, Thorwald seized the orb and held it in place so that the others might strike it, but the orb flung Amaya aside and wove a shield of its tendrils to protect itself. Amaya struck the wall with a sickening snap and crumpled to the ground, her neck snapped.

As Li hacked through the shield, spraying the cabin with shattered silver fibers, Aekino finally recollected the exact nature of the thing they were facing, for he had read of it in an ancient tome. Such devices were known as the Strangling Moon-Steel Tresses, and the Anathema had forged them in the First Age for their mortal assassins to deploy against rivals. Moreover, he recalled a command phrase that had been written in that tome. As he uttered that phrase, the orb quivered and withdrew its tendrils, becoming quiescent in Thorwald’s hands.

Marac and his men entered at that point, just in time to hear the monk accuse Aekino of murder. Songbird knew that Aekino, who still went by the name “Azure Tempest,” had carefully avoided his mistress for the entire journey; that his features bore the cast of Realm nobility; and that he had just commanded the very artifact that had slain his mistress. The captain and crew had to interpose themselves to avoid a fracas, a gesture that afforded Aekino the opportunity to seize the orb and conceal it within his pouch.

While this went on, Zera had gone down the passage to see whether any of the other passengers were up and lurking about behind their doors. The green-haired woman and her Fair Folk lover opened their door to see what had caused the ruckus, and everyone began to gather around that door as they conversed. Matters grew confusing as Joyous Songbird once again directed abuse at Aekino, only to be punched in the back of the head by Thorwald; and as Thorwald had used a Charm to make his fists hard as iron, the blow shattered the poor monk’s skull. Before anyone was quite aware of what had happened, Zera dragged the body away as he made noises of “letting him sleep it off,” while Thorwald threw accusations at the Fair Folk noble, Orlàm, until that worthy creature invoked its glamour to convince everyone that he could not possibly be responsible for the murder.

Li and Thorwald then went one way to discuss recent events, while Zera and Aekino had a discussion of their own on deck, with Zera threatening Aekino with various dire fates unless Aekino surrendered the orb, on the grounds that its discovery would culminate in some very unfortunate consequences for them all. Eventually the four gathered at the keel of the barge, and Aekino, convinced, tossed the orb into the river.

Thorwald, however, had surrendered himself to the Great Curse that lay upon the Exalted. All fear had abandoned him, swallowed by the Curse, and deeming the abandonment of the artifact cowardly, he leapt into the river to find it, channeling Essence through himself until his anima flared sun-bright beneath the water. The sailors all gathered to watch, forcing Aekino to spin a tale of communing with a strange spirit of water and light to distract them and calm their fears. Li, for her part, loosed the barge’s skiff to find the barbarian warrior. And Zera? He seized upon the distracted captain to request permission to search Amaya’s cabin for evidence pointing to the murderer. Swearing that neither he nor his companions were responsible, Zera won Marac’s agreement, then descended swiftly and silently.

In the cabin, he found he was not the first to enter; the merchant Darien Tal had slipped in before him to loot the Dynastic courier’s personal effects. Zera ambushed Tal, stunned him with the hilt of his dagger, then gagged the man and left him there while he systematically searched the place. His gaze sharpened by Essence, he saw the marks in the dust beneath the bed where a small hand had placed the assassin orb. He followed this up by picking the locks on all of Amaya’s boxes, including a securely sealed lacquered coffer which proved to hold all manner of occult parchments and an ornately tasseled scroll case of yellow jade and gold, sealed with the mark of House Ledaal.

Seeking amidst the waters and mud, Thorwald found the orb by the golden reflection of his anima upon the metal’s silvery surface, then surfaced to find Li waiting for him. Together, they poled the skiff after the barge, but they could not catch up until the Dayshield’s Daughter stopped the next day at a small village to bury the bodies of the dead.

... and as the sun rose in the story, so too did it rise in that swamp by the village where Mother Cypress told her tale. She faded into the swamp once more, and the children returned to the village to fall into an exhausted sleep.

(Note: all PCs received 3 XP for this session. Thorwald received an additional 4 XP for contributions. XP totals to date: Aekino 28, Li 33, Thorwald 30, Zera 26.)