Sagas of Wayward Suns - Arc 1

Gentle River

River shudders. "I don't know if you know, but there was a being who had taken control of the town. We destroyed the corpse it had anchored itself to, but first I asked what it wanted. It showed me." He drains the tankard the rest of the way.

"Indescribable destruction. Whole existences snuffed out. It... I saw everything... I..." River falls silent, helplessly.
 
Resonant Hammer's Descent

Hammer speaks up, his eyes still sheathed in twilight hues. "I'm not sure that was ever a corpse. It was more a thought, what it thought of us, oozing through the fabric of Creation. I remember sending a battalion of War Striders against the Devil Star. A full battalion, and no one came back." A tear from a life long past tracks it's way down Hammer's weathered cheek.

"We bound it though, I think."
 
Gentle River

"
Oh, sorry. So about two weeks ago we met up mid riot suppression and things escalated from there. You see..."

River fills Samea in on the encounter with Mul Hyades, including describing the visions seared into his mind's eye. If anyone could do something with the knowledge it would be her. It's the first time he's revealed the full vision, even to the rest of the Circle.

"...so you see, that's the night the lights went out in Zala."
 
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Samea leans back, eyes focused on some invisible point between the two of you. “We fled out of that chamber after killing dozens of those worshipers. My mind goes back to it often. And what you’re saying is that the things are still out there?” She glances upward.

“I’ll have to bring this to Yurgen. The devil stars weren’t easily thrown back. And that with wonders well beyond much of this Age. They’re only talked about in very few surviving scrolls and tomes. They are things from outside Creation.”
 
Gentle River

River finishes his drink. "The more of us who know, the better."
 
Iskandr

Ah.

Fuck.



Iskandr responds with the pragmatic practicality of a (monster) hunter.

“Enemies from outside of Creation. Very well. Will cold iron avail against them? I suspect not, but one must consider. Cold iron, salt, riddles, promises bound in salt and iron, anything such or can they only be affected by sorcerous wards?”

He leans forward a moment, and the long leather bundle on his back shifts slightly.

“You said that they work with the bodies of the dead and the damned? I have a thought towards that tendency, but that can wait. We shall probably face a Wyld Hunt before we see any more such star demons.”

Star demons. Wonderful. Just what I wanted when I came to town to sell those furs.
 
The conversation meanders on to more irrelevant, useless things like gossip for most and thinly-veiled jabs toward each other's tribes for Samea and Red. An odd communion develops here that feels, despite personal feelings, right. The heart of this conversation feels old, familiar to any of you who take a moment to appreciate the fact that seven Solar Anathema sit in this public house and talk for what may be the first time in centuries. Millennia.

A hush settles over the bar as patrons still file out, despite the peace here. The room grows close, intimate.

The air hums with the crackle of the hearth. Samea reclines in her chair, at ease. The Founder's Bell upon the Governor's Hill rings the hour, the great pride and heart of Zala. Noon was only a little while ago, it feels. Each resonant note felt in the roots of your teeth.

Teeth. Teeth. Throbbing to the pith in the bone like a child's rotten for sweets. The great tolling has stopped but for a thin, bitter song is still wilting away. An echo in the deep cathedral-chamber of the sky. Deep in the bones. Deep in chattering teeth. Your mugs ripple with it.

Another resonant peal of a bell and the air itself seems to freeze up, still.

Roll Stamina + Resistance, folks. Difficulty 5.
 
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Gentle River

River is relaxed, truly relaxed, possibly for the first time since he left Sijan. He's raising his tankard when he hears the bell. That seems off. 'Hey, what th-'

He collapses backwards off the chair, clutching at his mouth.

 
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Ferat:

With seven Solaris in one room, even the dangers of the Hunt and Devil Stars seem... Surmountable. Ferat let his mind wander, drinking in the conversation. Again, that sense of recollection tingled when River spoke. He was just going to have to get it out in the open.

"River, there's something I've been meaning t-"

The shock sent Ferat rigid, gasping. Shalla tried to help and growl at once.

 
@Chaka @Sarky

The pain subsides almost immediately to a dull ache--the fading pain of too many drinks and a wild bar fight. No, it isn't the flash of dental torture that strikes you. You can't move. You can't talk. You feel fine, you can breathe easy, but there's not a sensation in your limbs nor a will to move them. Frozen in place.

@Sarky

Even Shalla finds it hard to move, though it seems whatever is happening hasn't quite struck her yet. She's pulling at your coat with languid pulls, slipping into a taxidermist's dream, still as a statue, eyes white with panic.
 
Resonant Hammer's Descent

Hammer sees his friends freeze and fall, even as his essence flares to life. His caste mark, which had faded, erupts from his brow, the deep cracks in his skin begin to emit a soft, deep purple, and he becomes limned in shifting reddish light. He surges to his feet, the ache in his bones causing him to stumble a little, as his supernatural constitution burns the filth from his veins.



He looses a deep growl, as his hand drops to he hammer on his belt, and his eyes drop to Samea and her pets. The air hums as he draws the ambient essence of Creation towards himself, readying himself for conflict.
 
Iskandr

The snare! Panic!

Iskandr’s mind races and his heart pounds as the paralysis sets in.

Oh fuck. Oh fuck. This I cannot evade, only endure. Oh fuck.


[Sta + Res, 6 dice, plus 6m Personal for Excellency dice, plus 1 WP. 7 successes, yes.]

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So endure he does, and break free. It has been said that cats are liquid muscle inside a furry casing, and suchh would appear to be true of Iskandr as well. He flows into a roll back from his chair, an arrow appearing as if by magic, nocked to the string of the longbow in his hands.
 
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@FuzzMonster @Hair

Samea is frozen much the same as Ferat and River, eyes wide and looking straight at you. Fingers cocked back as she'd been drumming them on the wood. The barman and his workers are also frozen in place. The balding man's eyes pinched, temples sweating, he's shaking, if not moving. His pants wet with fear. The few patrons once on their way out the door, too, are stopped.

For the moment, sinister silence reigns. The whole block seems to have gone silent.
 
Iskandr

Moving with the greatest combination of speed and grace which he can muster, Iskandr kicks over the table and hauls it to the corner of the bar, forming a solid wooden enclosure, a spot of cover. Into this cover, he moves Samea, River, Shine, Ferat, and Red. Dragging Red last, he mutters in her ear “Sorry about this, berserker-dottir, but I figure you’re better in cover until you snap out of it. We’ll find out what’s happening and slap it.”


She’s going to be so pissed.
 
Red Snow



Red sits, frozen. A dull pain throbbing in her jaw, a burning fury threatening to consume everything behind her eyes. Even with Essense flowing to her petrified joints the most she can manage is a barely audible growl when Iskandr moves her.
 
Resonant Hammer's Descent

A bell. Teeth, bones, pain. Paralysis. Hammer reaches out with his left hand, gathering some of the coalescing energy from the air. He slaps his hand down in front of him at the height of his anvil and brings his right arm back, hand holding an invisible hammer haft.

He feels his very brain shift, the pain causing white flashes to score his vision. He swings his arm down towards the unformed essence sitting in the air at his waist. At the terminus of his swing a spectral hammer flares golden in his grasp, matching the anvil upon which the nascent spell sits.

Hammer's pulse races as he realises that someone has been in his head. With a final agonizing twist his mind disgorges a memory into his consciousness. He raises his hand again as he grasps for more essence from the air. As he strikes the spell again the suggestion of a breastplate forces itself into observers minds, though the glowing energy remains fully amorphous.

[Rolling Int + Lore (The First Age) Specialty in Artifact History to try and get a hint about this thing]

[9 Successes total]
[Spending 1 WP and taking a Shape Sorcery action to start casting Invulnerable Skin of Bronze]

[8/20 Smotes]
 
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@Hair

As your fingers begin to darken in hue, the ringing of this strange bell reminds you of something you'd heard about in passing once. In the old days of the Shogunate, the daimyos had special devices for stilling riots in non-lethal manners. Simply hold the people in place and sweep the city as they please. Each tolling of the bell can seize up the soul, destabilize your chakras. It is not at all meant to harm, though accidents happen. Whatever is ringing or being rung out there is of this blessed category of suppression.
 
@Sarky @Chaka @FuzzMonster @Hair @Excession @Ragoza

Whether you're paralyzed or up and ready for war, you do hear one thing beyond the faded peal of the bell: the sound of three very pissed off and unfrozen ermyanthoi materializing and, by the sound of it, making war or a buffet out of whomever approaches along the avenue outside. A ringing clash of arms and barked orders follow screams of horror and surprise.
 
Resonant Hammer's Decent

Hammer flicks his eyes across the room, checking who is standing. "Stop the bell and we stop the problem," he states over the oddly soundless strobes of his Shaping. "Iskandr, reckon you can find a spot that'll let you find it? Red, this is non-lethal, but that's not to say that whoever is down can't get shanked in the back. We're going to need to be ready to fight." He smashes his hand down again, molding the spell to his will.

[Shape Sorcery, Full Excellency]


[11/20]

[Joining Battle]

[Initiative 4]
 
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