BrokenCircles/GMNotes

Aug 14: Echoes and bygones

Driven by the beat of distant drums, darkness spreads across the land. The Sun is gone, and Luna sheds somber light across a city; a scarlet star shines brightly above it all, for this is Mars' night, and none can deny it.

There was a time for mercy before twilight came; there was a time for laughter the dawn before that. Now is a time for death, but not endings. Now is a time for war.

It is midnight. The drums beat louder, stronger, faster. A cry goes up, the shout of a thousand lost voices thirsting for vengeance. Hooves beat unseen upon the grassland; a sudden wave of light flares toward the city walls, a thousand suns rising within the hearts of the dead.

Another flash in the distance. The scream of shattering wards. The light rolls on, a sunlit tsunami of inexorable vengeance bursting through walls and taking form, a beautiful typhoon of violence spreading across a city of cowards.

They cry to Blind Tiger with every death, a hundred prayers for every year without you.

Kriss dies in your name.

---

The Upper Library

The door to the upper library seems a sturdy wood door, save that the trees from which it grew were tarnished silver. There is no handle or lock in evidence, and it stands slightly ajar; when pushed it swings smoothly open, though it is a considerable effort to move.

A single Old Realm pictogram leers down from above the door; it is the Face of Truth, carved into the stone and inlaid with the same tarnished silver.

Inside, the room is almost bare. There are no furnishings but a large stone altar in the center of the room. On the altar is a simple rectangle of white cloth, remarkably clean considering the environment outside, though it is marked with a pattern of jagged lines that break it into twenty-three segments of white.

In truth, there is a single book in the room, laying atop the cloth. Iron-bound and extremely weighty, the tome has a series of pictograms painted across its cover in Old Realm, indicating its title: "The Seventh Bridge of Knives"

Reading the book exerts a pull on the reader, something tugging at their essential nature. Those that resist go nowhere, and may continue to read the book without ill effect. Those that let go immediately begin to unravel into strands of inky text and the myriad unbound concepts that their nature embodies, and then vanish into the book.

Inside the book is The Warden, with whom the reader merges, entering into his sanctum; a vast library stretches out in all directions around them, limitless shelves running from foot level into the sky above and from horizon to horizon. Gaps between shelves are at once infinite and conveniently short, depending on the needs of the moment.

In the center of this library is a clearing of sorts, a study set up between the shelves. Neatly stacked books are piled everywhere, some in such a large block as to have formed a stable desk of sorts. Crouched by the desk...

... is a monster.

At first The Warden seems a man, and a sketch of a demon that hangs in the air.

Next, he seems a spider made of his own web, each strand a leg; he also seems a dragon, or perhaps a centipede.

Despite all this, it is clear he has twenty-five arms. Two hands hang limp, maimed almost beyond recognition. Three are empty, clenching and opening in anticipation. Twenty bear jagged knives, wickedly sharp and reflecting strangely in the dim light.

He sees you with a sketch of twenty eyes, and smiles with a chittering scribble of fangs and gaping maw. Five of his knives slash at his nature, and then there are as many of him as you.

---

On The Warden's death, a burning, shifting thrum of Essence shifts in the air. The mountain begins to rumble some minutes after that, growing in intensity over the next ten minutes as the demesne's Essence tries to reassert its natural flows. The flood of power pulsates and crackles across everything in the surroundings, warping everything like a Wyld Storm; it then swirls down inside the mountain's core, and things become ominously quiet for a second.

Then a deep, resonant boom sounds from far under the ground, and the earth quakes; ten seconds later, sharp ears detect a shifting rumble from the top of the mountain. A large block of the volcano's side has begun to slide away, and seconds later another thundering sound begins as a second joins it... and then still more, becoming a vast avalanche and thundering downward at over a hundred miles an hour to destroy the monastery.

An hour later, the land shudders violently, and a blast of displaced magma rocks the region as the volcano explodes. The resulting pyroclastic flow doesn't do the area much good, nor does the caldera as the region sinks several hundred yards, the expelled magma trying its best to refill the dent with fresh lava-flows... through Zhumayadan is miraculously untouched.

Feb 7 Last time, on Oathbreakers Anonymous

The group plans to go to Wandersend and buy building material and other supplies from the Guild caravan that's due to pass through in the next few days - Wandersend is the outermost point of a major Guild circuit, and the last major stop before it is Kriss, a town on the Varangian border. With the Varang fondness for astrology and geomancy, it isn't a far-fetched idea that the caravan will be carrying just what Coven needs.

Disguises are organised: Sinic is to masquerade as an outcaste Air-Aspected Dragon-Blood of some wealth, with Rain as his manservant and Darius as his Fire-Aspect bodyguard. Coven will give the impression of being Sinic's rather reserved consort, and River was to be her handmaiden. They don't decide on false names until they're near Wandersend itself.

For the rest of the day before they set off, Rain attempts to school River in the arts of wielding Essence, but her reserves are too low to make it particularly feasible at first. After some discussion of what Coven saw with her sorcerer's sight, Rain concludes that either pain or emotion may draw Essence into her, and brings Tarazed over to say his goodbyes. Both sides are understandably terse, and no Essence is gotten.

So Rain instead talks River into sparring with him for a while - if she learns to dodge, so much the better, if not, well, at least she might get some Essence from her bruises. She's instructed to fight back as well as she can, though her claws are taken away for the time being. She's still quite injured from being hit by Darius's axe after going at Tarazed previously, while Rain is uninjured, though she is armoured and he is not.

After only a few rounds of sparring, it becomes clear that not only does her being hurt give her enough focus to tear Essence from the world [purely for narrative purposes, really; Pain-Eating Focus'd be the charm for it], but that the very act of combat seems to help that as well [recovering Essence from stunting]. However, a few rounds of sparring is all she gets, as her first couple of strikes against Rain leave him seriously bruised [Ravaging Strike] despite his having activated charms to fortify himself, whereas she is still no worse off.

He tries to talk her through the theory of Essence-manipulation and does a fairly good job, and also tries to get her to open up more, worried that she's emotionally unstable and potentially dangerous (not that he says that directly to her, but she knows that's what the group think) but she manages to keep the conversation under control and actually learns more about him than he about her.

That night, the voices start again. Most of the group settle into rooms underground in the Dragon King tower basement levels, but River and Rain stay above ground near the tribe; it's creepy enough listening to the voices without sealing herself into a vast structure built by an extinct, alien race.

In the darkest hours of the night, tormented by the shadows in her soul as well as tricks of the moonlight, something snaps in her; or perhaps she is called. In either case, River slips away from the tribe, willing everyone not to notice her, and heads unseen for the river to the north. The next events have an almost dreamlike quality to them, but she knows she followed the riverside for a mile or so as the river dropped away into canyon. She must've fallen off the cliff at some point, or perhaps thrown herself off, and knocked her head on the way down, as her next memory is of being swept downriver into underground caverns. Half-drowned, she manages to pull herself out, but the rush of the river does not seem to end, as the world around her shakes and the earth rumbles.

A voice chants a dark invocation in the darkness beside her, and the scream of air being torn asunder echoes through the caverns, the darkness seeming to ripple around her.

And then all is silent. No earthquake, no chanting, no rushing water, just the sound of her breathing.

Sapphire Lament notes

Sapphire Lament

who once strode the world in three footsteps, and uprooted mountains with a song

is not bound by time or space as you are.

's words cannot be questioned, for he speaks in the First Tongue.

wears blasphemy as armour, to repulse the world.

walks on metaphor and strikes with concepts as easily as the physical.

wishes to redeem himself, and to take vengeance against those who have wronged him

and those he loves.

learnt the magic of boundaries from the Endless Desert

the principles of order from She Who Lives In Her Name

and of motion from the Silent Wind herself

but his wings came first from the Word Serpent.

Beginnings

Soft whimperings issue from the stairwell.

A man lays there, blood streaking his body; he claws incessantly at his flesh, tearing away strip after strip.

Each strip that falls away reveals his target; an inky taint creeps through his veins and flesh.

His eyes have rolled back in their sockets; one shows only bloodshot white, the other, an orb of ink-darkened blood.

Subplots and other bits

Chiaroscuro SE vermillion glass road spirit - kind, motherly, recognises Rain.

Orichalcum sun-and-flower sacrificial dagger - Shining Flower, Mistress of Hearts

Sinic's wife: "Sapphire Lament has escaped".

Viridian Sunset, the daiklaive that slew Malfeas.

Inari's fate.

The Yozi cults.

The vigilante.

Three suns eclipsed.

A whip that twists the sky, to mark Sapphire Lament's return.

Seven Rivers' rebellions. (River, Rain, Screams, ..., ..., ..., ...)

The cycle of betrayals.

Xian Hsin, and the ghosts of Tzatli.

The Hunting Grounds, and the Palace of Broken Mirrors.

Three wandering Kayabi, to show an inky taint within Coven's soul.

The Lambent Shadow Jester, and Qaban of the Blind Tiger D'hen.

Nomads riding to war, both living and dead united under a nameless khan.