Dissolvegirl/SiderealSpoilers

Behind the scenes

This is where I'm going to be talking about upcoming elements of my Sidereal game, and discussing things the PCs have yet to figure out. Whee!

= Miscellaneous NPCs

She Who Calls the Crying Wind (Windcaller), a Midnight Abyssal working directly for the Yozi She Who Lives In Her Name, and is now "working" for Mask Of Winters;\\ Ravenous Skies, Bitter Dust of the Whispering Wastelands, a Day Caste whose specialty is softening up Exalts (socially) for his liege, Mask of Winters.

Who is the Legion of Silence, anyway?

The Legion of Silence is a circle of elder Bronze Faction Sidereals close to Kejak. During one of their missions shortly after the Usurpation, they discovered hard evidence of the Great Curse. Finding the news disheartening, they decided that the only way to use this information would be to use the curse against the Solars and their opposing Sidereal brethren. They bound themselves together in brotherhood using Celestial-Circle sorcery and swore never to reveal the Great Curse to anyone, and to stop anyone else from discovering the Curse-- at all costs. They decided never to reveal the Curse in fear that some of their Bronze brothers would want to attempt to lift the Malfean curse-- at the very least, Heaven would be in an uproar, and all the battle lines would be redrawn. No other Exalts know about the curse besides the Legion-- not even Kejak.

Members of the Legion (NPCs):

Taran Pach, Chosen of Battles (Deceased)\\ Hakan Dyami, Chosen of Endings\\ Aia Lidra, also known as The Green Lady, Chosen of Secrets\\ Stone Lotus, Chosen of Serenity\\ Saffron Wind, Chosen of Journeys\\

What's in store for the PCs?

Minor plot elements

Blood Ruby is now remembering that she had both a Lunar mate and a Sidereal lover, Chosen of Serenity. This lover will be the one who killed her during the Usurpation. She will become agitated and find the PCs untrustworthy, eventually running off and becoming Abyssal-- changing her name to Love Lies Bleeding, and working either for Mask of Winters or directly for She Who Lives. If the PCs can regain her trust, she will be an invaluable asset, especially when it comes time for them to seek evidence of the Great curse.

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Triumphant Jade Phoenix is the wood-aspected outcaste/bastard child of a V'neef noble. He snuck out of the Realm to seek his fortune, and eventually plans to get his own kingdom and thumb his nose at the Realm. The PCs plan on making him the new Emperor. How? Not a damn clue.

Major plot elements

When Kejak dies (yes, he dies), control of the Bronze Faction will go to Hakan Dyami, a terse man who believes that there is only one way to end the schism between the factions-- by ending the Gold Faction all together. He will incite war in the Heavens-- that is, if the PCs cannot stop him from being named Kejak's successor. He will openly slay Ayesha Ura at Kejak's memorial.

At the moment, there are already murmurs of war between the factions, as the Bronze Faction believes that the Gold faction murdered Taran Pach as some sort of blind retribution for Biam's death. Bronze Faction sifus have been given the top-secret directive to become "suddenly busy" when Gold Faction students request training time. In Kejak's own words, "Let the traitors train their own assassins. We will not allow our highest secrets to be used in order to destroy us."

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Oh, yeah. Biam's not dead. He's Infernal, and Zhou Fang is going to be the first Abyssidereal (I need a better name for those!), and read the sickly green stars of the Underworld. Biam's working directly for She Who Lives, who's looking for another shard to experiment on and turn Abyssal. Then she'll be showing him off to the Deathlords in an attempt to curry favor with them-- holding the secret of corrupting Sidereals over their heads in the hopes that they will work on freeing her of her prison so that she may bring order to Creation once more.

That's why the demons and Deathlords and She Who lives seem to all know so much about Zhou Fang: he and Biam were good friends, and Zhou was his bodyguard. Biam (and perhaps eventually Love Lies Bleeding) will feed his mistress all of the information he can on the party, their likes, their weaknesses. It should make things intriguing indeed.

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This may or may not happen: if it does, it will probably be if the Great Curse is revealed in Yu-Shan; if that's not the case, maybe MoSec and Lytek finally told the UCS what's up. At any rate, there will be 13 new Solar shards, all of the same caste-- I'm thinking Dawn, but Zenith might work as well. They will be designed for a specific purpose, but if anyone outside of Sol Invictus knows what that is, they're not talking. (This is the new part I'd love some feedback on.)

Random thoughts for the next session

• When everyone got quiet at Alhat's party because Autumn Rain showed up with Ayesha Ura on his arm, Rain quipped, "Wow, it's like a legion of silence in here. Better break that real quick!" There HAS to be some kind of backlash for basically taking responsibility for breaking into the second-in-command of the Bronze Faction's manse and stealing important documents. Dyami doesn't know that Rain heard him with the Mask of Winters, but he can only assume that he was either double-crossed by the Deathlord, or that Rain is just too good for words when it comes to investigation. Which would it be? What would the consequences be?
  • Dyami would probably go for the whole "I will show my power to hurt you" route. Maybe hire some muscle to chop off one of the hands of the Twilight who is supposed to build the armor? Maybe maim Blood Ruby and leave her for dead, only to have her transformation into Love Lies Bleeding become complete?
    • Dyami maims the Twilight-- cuts out her tongue. This pisses off Sunspeaker, Dawn's ex, who wants to do the same to Dyami in return. If the PCs don't allow him to, he'll get pissed off at them and have a dramatic argument.

Opening scene: the morning light streams into Autumn Rain's room; there's a note on the pillow. Zhou Fang has abandoned his station to search for Biam, or at least, Biam's killers. He says he's been having strange dreams lately, and cannot shake the idea that Biam may still live; the shard never came back, and a body was never found. He will try to get the group any information he can discover.

Plot of the session: Autumn Rain needs Fair Folk blood for the Crimson Armor. He plans to go to the Sirens. I should look those up. I want this to be a bit of an arc with a twist, not too large because I know how I want the session to end, and it's not while dealing with the sirens.

When the party goes to find Shadowy Dawn and give her the rest of the exotic components, she has a black eye and has been heavily beaten. Her tongue has been cut out, and there's a note written in carefully obscured handwriting, much like Autumn Rain did with the note he left Dyami. All it says is, "..Or will the silence break you?"

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The sirens are going to want a blood pact-- to exchange it freely, otherwise it'll leave their bodies as butterflies or mist or something. You know, in our other game we've spent a decent amount of time in the Wyld, but our ST never really played up the.. Wyldness.. of the Wyld. I'll have to do that.

I think Autumn Rain is planning to have wax in his ears or something, so he can't hear the sirens. They'll write in the sand with gossamer staves. ---

Comments?

Falcon - Nice work. I love a game with a chewy plot. You could call them Dark Sidereals - this came from a late-night discussion with my flatmate about 'are sidereals overpowered and if so how do you run them over?'

Or you could take advantage of the frequent mispronunciation of the name, and call them "Sidefakes" <*g*> - RichardX1

I'd call void tainted Sidereals Anareta. It's an astrological term that mean a heavenly body in opposition to life and longevity. The Anareta, Surveyors of Black Stars and Weavers of No Fate. Sounds good to me. redconsensus

I have been using "Calendricals" for Sidereals attuned to the Ashen Calendar of Setesh rather than the Loom of Destiny. - willows

For what it's worth, I've been thinking about them as Calendric Exalts for months now and couldn't remember why, until I checked out this page. ;-) Balthasar

willows-- I love the Ashen Calendar of Setesh style, I'm offering it to the play-by-email supervillain, Biam, and Zhou Fang will probably know it too. But I like Anareta, because it stays closer to the Celestial naming system by using an astrological term. --dissolvegirl