Greymane/BoilGame
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- - Back to A Dance of Angels
“They say it began with the fire.
Foundries weren’t meant to burn, but this one did. Big as a mountain, like some god had dropped a tower of flame onto the hillside. And when the heat began to rise, the whole city burned with it.”
- Quotation from the journal of Hans Derik, Investigator
Twenty years ago, Creation was a far different place. The Scarlet Empress still sat upon the throne of the Realm and her power was absolute. The might of the Imperial Legions crushed the enemies of the Realm and kept safe their allies from the threats of Fair Folk and Anathema. Indomitable in their might, the Dragon-Blooded were lords of all Creation, wielding blade and Essence to carve civilization out of chaos, and it seemed that night would never descend upon the glory of their empire.
But this is not a story about them.
Of Fire and Iron
Twenty years ago, the dirty northern industrial city known as the Boil stood on the verge of consuming itself in a blaze of its own insanity. Political and social changes were tearing the industrial city apart. The anarchist Michael Ielander held the people in a grip of terror, moving with seeming impunity through the city to destroy what he claimed was the infrastructure of a false, corrupt government.
Labor unions trembled on the verge of riot and marched the streets in protest to the oppression of the mining and factory owners, while different camps openly brawled with one another over the petty politics of the day. Men and women were dying in droves in the unsafe environments of the foundries and the mines, killed in cave-ins and roasted alive in the heat, while a corrupted foremen association turned a blind eye to the dangers in exchange for pay-offs from investors.
In the streets and alleys, the ranks of the gangs were swelling as the children born during population boom years ago began to reach maturity and found no doors open to them and no chance for life beyond the violence they knew. Bitter and angry young people ruled the night, growing beyond the control of the greater criminal underworld who manipulated them and of the patron goddess of the streets.
Mystical societies began to flourish and with them came new dangers of their own. Phony demon-cults and thaumaturgic mishaps hid greater threats lurking in the shadows.
Fighting battles on all fronts and within it's own ranks, the City Patrol struggled to curtail the rising tensions, while the newly appointed Captain of the city garrison waited in the wings to march her troops into town and seize a new avenue of power.
In the midst of all the chaos, a body was found on the steps of the newly anointed Shrine of the Black Feathered Enlightenment. Just one more corpse among others found on the streets in those days, but this one was different. The body was so badly mangled it was almost unrecognizable. No one knew what the elderly savant Graci Bright-loom had been doing on the streets at night, but they shrugged at the tragedy and carted her off to be buried with the others of the day. Too much was going on for anyone to give undue thought to one elderly woman…
… but more was involved in her murder than many would realize and a handful of people within the Boil, through one twist of fate or another, would find themselves drawn in to a mystery none of them had even dreamed of.
The Game
Set twenty-years before the events of A Dance of Angels, Of Fire and Iron tells the tale of several residents of Whiteshield’s industrial city caught up in a series of events that unfolded in the shadows of the larger struggles of the time.
Of Fire and Iron is intended for God-Blooded characters of intermediate power, though mortals may be allowed with discussion.
Character Creation – Rules, including house rules, for character creation.
The Characters
Cold Sky - A cold and tradgic assassin literally without a heart struggling with himself. (Played by GoldenCat)
Melantha - A fae-blooded courtisan-killer and tool for her mothers revenge, trapped in a path that may well lead to death. (Played by DarkSirenSally)
The Most Beloved Daughter - A Demon-blooded woman and officer of the City Patrol with a hidden agenda. (Played by Morrigu)
Sweet Hemlock - Clever and inspired mortal assassin. The man destined to one day create the Boil's Assassins Guild. (Played by Kazuki)
Thea - Amnesiac Demon-Blooded blacksmith. Disciple to Iron Tears, but daughter of Alveua. (Played by Kraken)
The World
Creation was a different place twenty years ago. Here is a brief outline of some of the major differences in the world at large.
- - The Scarlet Empress still sits on the throne of the Realm as one of the most powerful beings in Creation.
- - The Jade Prison has yet to be opened. Free Solar Essences are few at best, only a handful of pitiful souls cursed to an ever lasting cycle of re-birth and swift death at the hands of the still elite Wyld Hunt.
- - The schism between Gold and Bronze Faction Sidereal has not widened yet and the Celestial Bureaucracy is functioning reasonably well.
- - The Deathlords have yet to make their presence known to the greater portion of Creation.
- - Autochtonia has yet to attempt to make contact with Creation again and remains firmly planted within the un-realm of Elsewhere.
There are differences in local matters as well.
- - The events of A Dance of Angels have not even begun to play out, nor will for quite some time.
- - Jungen of the Thirty Ways, the Boils spirit of thaumaturgy, has yet to manifest, while the mining god Kodak has yet to actually leave for Yu-Shan.
- - Wary of the Hundred Gods Heresy, spirits such as Iron Tears and the Smiling Lover attempt to keep their direct involvement within the Boil less than what it will become in later years. While their shires are still numerous in the city, they prefer to act through the medium of their followers rather than on their own.
- - The City Patrol, described briefly in the Organizations Within the Boil section is still functional and has yet to be annexed by the garrison.
- - There are no known Exalts within the Boil at the moment.
- - Whiteshield and Winlandia are enjoying a time of relative peace and stability compared to what they will find in the years to come.
