It Is the Tide, Act 1

[Shining Lotus Sage]

An Teng


Once, there was a dream.


Once, in fact, there was nothing but Dream, no article, no discreet borders, no spinning chain of interdependent Logos distinguishing the Self from the Other. Just Dream. And because dreamers could be, the dream featured Dreamers. And because dreamers dream dreams, they cannot be dreams, and there was division. And because there was division, there was war. This is the first lesson.


Twice, there were new beginnings.


The Dreamers commanded dreams, but they erred by dreaming dreamers, and lost control. Now, half of them are dead, and the survivors are mutilated beyond recognition, their original stories retold into broken mockeries of grandeur. The dreams-of-dreams could not all dream well—in fact quite few at all—and this led naturally to division. And the world learned the first lesson again. And again.


If you were expecting three events here, ask yourself why you are so easy to lead.


Only men and women, and terribly few of those, among all the peoples of the world could grasp the power to reshape the dream around them. Look around you, and ask yourself when you last saw a kumiho. Or a goshun. Or even a rapace, and they once owned these forests, before the satrap's road. Power makes you a mad dog, who always has to bite first, until finally someone puts you down. Time might be coming that someone puts down the big red dog. That's a rumor I hear, lately.


The satrapy of An-Teng, between the Fire Mountains and the Great Western Ocean, suffered greatly in the Usurpation because of its loyalty to the Solar Exalted. Then it suffered again in the Great Contagion. An-Teng now seems like a model satrapy: prosperous, placid, utterly subservient to the Realm. And so it is, if you overlook small deviations such as a secret Yozi cult, the people’s continued worship of the Golden Lord and the Pale Mistress, and Lintha pirates selling their loot with hardly a pretense of being honest merchants.


The Dynasty does not realize that this soft, submissive country holds many secrets. In the Time of Tumult, the hour approaches when An-Teng reveals its power. How An-Teng will use that power, no one can say, but it is not likely to


benefit the Realm.

An Teng


Destiny Cost: 0
​

Status 3+: Perhaps you are a well-loved folk hero. Perhaps you are an agent of the Satrap. Perhaps you are a cousin of the royal line. Regardless of the specifics, the Tengese are sure to show you deference, at least to your face. They are well-accustomed to yielding when they must.


-3: The public respect masks private (and conspiratorial) rebellion. Your authority extends only as far as you can enforce it, and you should probably be careful when choosing who guards your sleep.


Victory 5: The Tengese do not dare invest in open revolt - yet - but you have won their trust. The underground network of spies, saboteurs, and remote relic-minders has been placed at your disposal. The people have shown you great faith. Why?


Victory 13+: You have expelled the Realm legions from An Teng! It is only a matter of time before the satrapy system crumbles and the last dynast is shipped home in seven separate crates. If the battles that brought you to this point were not enough to guarantee your legacy, the final success surely will be. The kings of An Teng are likely considering your official adoption, and you can count on a parade escort wherever you go in the country.


-5: Of course, any such triumph carries the risk of making powerful enemies. The Realm might be licking its wounds, but it seems that another powerful figure, or organization, was not pleased by your disruption of the status quo.


Fortune 3+: You have discovered the secret shame of one of the leading Dragon-blooded occupiers, or incontrovertible evidence of the royal family's cooperation with rogue splinter states. Or perhaps you have even managed to track a Lintha ship back to Blue Heaven. Work with your Sage to resolve the details of the secret you know, what you risked to discover it, and who would kill to keep it. Regardless, Jupiter smiles on you. Make her proud.


Disadvantage 0/5: The Realm legions have learned of your identity and location, possibly with the aid of their hidden advisors. Whatever the source of their information, they have no interest in letting you move freely through the satrapy. Expect assassins to harry you right into encampments of infantry, if you're not careful. If this is your first or second Disadvantage, you may take it for free.


Secret 5: Many Anathema met their ends at the hands of the shogun's legions, in what is now called An Teng. Most of those were given heroes' funerals and lavish tombs by the very soldiers whose treason slew them. One must sacrifice principles to keep ghosts quiet, sometimes. You have discovered the location of one of these tombs! Work with the Sage to determine what sort of treasures lie buried inside, but beware the traps and guardians that have kept scavengers at bay for millennia.

 

[Shining Lotus Sage]

Sunlight Rain


Destiny cost: 0


Officially named Sweet Rest Hilltop by the founding patrician, Sunlight Rain squats in the isolated reaches of the Forest of Compassion, abutting the foothills of the Fire Mountains. The lands of the Serpents who Walk as Men end at a riverbank more than a week's trudge to the west, and the Silver-Crowned never descend from their mountain home to the east. One group or the other might have eventually claimed the area, had explorers from the Scarlet Empire not stumbled across the ruins of an ancient, crumbling manse nearly smothered by the jungle's advance. The wood demesne it once capped rendered the local teak particularly fragrant, and the mulberry terraces that were planted to replace it benefited from unnaturally quick growth. The available land was minimal, just a single dome-shaped hill, but the plantation's production was enough to merit a small standing garrison and an imported labor force. Landless Tengese families looking for relief from their stigma were granted vouchers for plots in exchange for some of the highest production quotas in the Midlands. Thanks to the blessings of Sextes Jiylis, they never fell behind.


Civil and religious life rapidly coalesced around the Immaculate chapel erected over the ruins and the "secret" shrine to the Golden Lord constructed in the village below. Over the next half-century or so, the workforce settled into nativity and respectability, an opportunity they have never forgotten. Now, the distant hamlet is likely the most loyal in all of An Teng.


Secrets of Destiny


Involvement 1+: Few people pass through Sunlight Rain, and even fewer are more than mortal laborers. The presence of the Mighty cannot help but change this isolated town—how is your story interwoven with those already being told here?


I don't know why I can't avoid post-merging. halp me senpai

"Bow down, bow down bound down

down is the face of submission

down is the fɶtor falling up

down is Ligier reflected in brass.

You can never look away."

—traditional 16th hell belcarol, ca. Gemel 4-12

​

The Yozi Hells


Destiny Cost: 3


In the long past, beyond the memory of mountains, there were geniuses in the most specific possible sense. Their substance was a projection of their manner, and so great were the wills that wrought them that everything undeniably Real is, at the most exceedingly generous, their manifested daydream. When humanity was created, it was as a slave race. The chains of Maya were laid heavy on them, because pulling at those chains turned the great prayer mills in Yu-shan and powered the leisure pursuits of the Before-the-Gods. Spiritual chattel–labor.


The First War changed all that. Ancient heroes, whose names are now blasphemies even to know, fought against the Before-the-Gods for a hundred years. The violence of their passions, and the force of their convictions, rent the fabric of What Is. They laid bare the places Beyond the World, places that did not exist until the living essence of Creation bled out into the conceptual space beyond and rendered impossibility fact. This was not the infinite potential that always bordered beyond the limits of Creation, but actual Should Not Must Not forced to become truth by its contact with Being. The heroes, in victory, mutilated the losers and forced them through the tears, then sewed Possible closed behind them. So, they imagined, their prisoners were sealed away for eternity. This shows how little they understood of eternity, even then.


In the dark where the sun refuses to shine, the Yozi Kings crafted a new sun. Where place and form were lies that could not be trusted, they built structure from their own world–bodies, became the landscape of a new world, exactly as mutilated and ruined as the exalted ones had made them. Under the harsh green light of burning Hatred, breathing poisoned air and drinking water so impure it could sluice its way out through your bubbling throat, new races were born screaming for vengeance. In the eternity of silvery waste that separates our world from theirs, the things that lurk in corners learned to lurk in the angles of time, and maneuver through riddle-traps of Law and Oath.

There are vantage points, within high towers mostly, from which the Demon City looks almost beautiful. Its utter chaos comes together, occasionally, to ebb and flow, to compose in space, and sound, color and time, the most beautiful performance of Something Important taking place. This is the light the Deep Thing dangles before its mouthful of knives. This is the only warning you get, and it only lasts a moment. There is no way to never be entranced by the alienness of Malfeas, whether you grasp for the purpose in its geomancy or in its urban planning. But in the moment you do, immediately step left, but look right. Cough politely, and apologize for doing so. That will keep it away. That should buy you time.

In practical terms, unless you are exceptionally—suspiciously, dangerously, indictably—learned in the ways of demons, Malfeas is a diseased otherworld where impiety perverts the natural order. Hideous beasts do unspeakable things to whatever they can crush into paste of the right consistency. Foul spirits boil over with hatred, deceit, and every vile impulse, and clamor endlessly to be let into our world. They claw at the veil, and we must carefully avoid ripping it. Every culture carries some taboo, however faded or misguided, meant to keep demons from escaping to trouble mortals. For the learned, the situation is little different, but their taboos are probably more effective.


Unlike their siblings, the Yama, the Yozi do not depend on charnel houses, abattoirs, mass graves, and concentration camps to reach into the true world. Their corruption is held in place by oaths of surrender, not the finality of death. And oaths can always be writhed free of, given enough millennia. Legend says the Yozi were sealed away just shy of five thousand years ago. It is a portentous number. Their cults multiply across the south, and the secrets of beckoning their demon spawn into the world are beginning to spread. The Immaculate Order has mobilized teams of investigators and exorcists, but they cannot blanket the entire desert with their wards. In An Teng, well, there's history.


Malfeas


2 Involvement: Your life will be tied to the Demon City, whether you are a frequent visitor, an escapee from the slave pits, a monster hunter who stared too long into the abyss, or a scion of the Yozi Kings themselfs.

+7 Treasure: Among the demons are the greatest crafters in history, for their first emanations crafted history itself. You have somehow obtained one of the legendary Helltech devices, living weapons forged from the souls of unwilling demons, distilled in pain and loathing. This can be anything from a puzzle box that opens doorways into the Hell of Joyous Suffering, to a fifteen-meter-tall battle-colossus with a brothel in its chest, but it will always have its own sinister agenda. Work with the Sage to develop a Legendary Artifact Weapon to represent this... thing.



-2: Your Helltech device is Cursed! I mean, what were you expecting, honestly? Maybe it weeps for the taste of bile whenever you meet someone new, or perhaps it offers local parasites a warm home and three square meals in your flesh. Maybe every time you draw your monstrous sword, it devours your favorite remaining memory. Odds are, the demons who made it think of the curse as a design feature. Work with your Sage to determine the inconveniences, emotional traumas, or unclean prophecy that follows the weapon's bearer.





+2 Bonus: You are as good as native to this awful place, and can navigate its infinite dangers with ease. Acid seas, psalms of blame-deflection, and gizzard etiquette in blood sports are considerations you navigate with practiced ease, and you can generally find your way around the back alleys of Noplace so long as they're not being actively reconfigured to spite you. So at least half the time. Gain a +5 bonus on any Survival, Politics, Wu Wei, or Learning roll where this familiarity matters. Other skills may benefit with a good explanation.


+4 Status: You have achieved the status of Unquestionable. Mere citizens of the Demon City will submit to your demands, or your suggestions, or what they think you might desire, or what they would want in your place, or what they hope they can get away with calling a service to your magnificence. Anywhere you go in the ten-thousand hells, all doors are open to you, even the ones you didn't want to see behind.



0 Bonus: You are attended continuously by a serf of Malfeas, such as a Demjen, a Chrysogona, or a Sesselja. Gain a +5 to any skill roll your demon companion has the opportunity to aid you with, within its areas of expertise.




+4 Technique: You have been blessed with a special dispensation from one of the Yozi Kings, in recognition of your service. This may be a sorcerous initiation, an inhuman shintai, or something even stranger. Work with the sage to develop a Transcendent Style to represent your obscene revelation.





-2: Naturally, such an exalted position bears concomitant responsibilities. Your patron may issue edicts at any time, and the punishment for failure is especially harsh, because you reflect so strongly on them. The exact punishment for defying your blasphemous Urges depends on exactly whose demands they represent.



3+ Fortune: You discover that an existing NPC has strong ties to the Demon City. They might be a secret demon cultist, bound up in a Faustian bargain, sworn to avenge the ransack of their hometown by tarmaginoi, or a secret half-breed with motivations more secret yet. Work with the Sage to determine the details.


5 Technique: You have learned the art of inviting the least grotesqueries of that realm into yours. The Things That Lurk In Corners emerge from behind your footsteps, and the shimmering Tear Jellies float free of their moorings at your call to tangle your enemies in hallucinogenic fronds. This Extraordinary Occult Technique requires you to spend one point of Malicious Joss and make a Moderate Learning roll using one of the Priest's tools. On a success, a unit of fifth-rank minions—whatever fauna of the Demon City the Sage agrees is reasonable—completes their five-day journey across the Endless Desert in time to emerge before you. Their skills are generally minimal, but many are composed of entirely different stuff than mortal beasts, and can perform wonders suitable to their nature. For each 10 points above the difficulty, the summoner may increase the quality of their Minions by one rank, but not above their own Rank.


These minions are maintained by a Major Wood Influence, and another thaumaturge can soothe that influence away with time to work. In combat, raising minions requires a Wave action, and the Influence fades at the end of the scene. Only one group of Minions may be commanded at one time, and the asummoner may freely lay one batch to rest in order to call forth more.


By spending an additional 3 Destiny, the summoner gains the ability to call up more potent servants; instead of a group of Minions, he may call forth a single first-circle demon! These Lesser Legends are almost always Warriors, and the Sage assigns them kung fu and loresheet secrets as appropriate for their nature. The summoner may have one Lesser Legend and one group of Minions at a time, but otherwise animating a Lesser Legend follows all the rules for animating Minions.

 

[Shining Lotus Sage]

The Heretics of Atelier

Destiny Cost 3


Dozens of splinter states have separated from An Teng over the centuries, generally with the tacit approval of the High Kings. After all, irrepressible bandit hordes have historically troubled the overlain satrapy far more than the kingdom it still fancies itself. And any excuse to short the tax payments is welcome.


The Phąn Công were different. They became different. When their rebellion failed, and the Realm legionnaires drove them into the mountains, it was assumed they would perish there. When raiders emerged from those same mountains, over a decade later, no one of import believed it could be the same rice farmers who were exterminated years ago. When heavy infantry in shining steel was sent to find the hideout of these new bandits and set it to the torch, no one expected the soldiers could be routed. No one thought of the gunzosha strike team that investigated later as a weapon and armor delivery service. The popular conception of raiders did not include gunzosha troops, screaming blades that could carve a man in half simply by falling on him, or siege engines that could fold down to fit on a single oxcart, then open back up still loaded and ready to fire. The Phąn Công are different.


3 Secret: You are a native Phąn, either one of the original rebels, or one of the children born under arc-lamps in the lost manse. Either way, the survival of your people depends on you not revealing this. If the secret of your impossible stand against the Realm became better known, well, mortals can only get so lucky for so long.

0 Bonus: The Phąn Công achieved their miracles courtesy of a forgotten titan, eternal industry, and impossible marvels. You receive a one-time discount of 2 destiny on the cost of an Artifact weapon, repurposed from the great mechanisms on the periphery of your home.


0 Bonus: You gain a free specialty in Craft from your time surrounded by - and dependent on - the most advanced workshops still in operation, anywhere in Creation.

3 Status: You represent the latest technomagical development to come out of the hidden manse Atelier, with surgical enhancements based on reverse-engineering gunzosha implants and integrated yasal matrices that can bind the elemental power of Creation to the service of mortal will. As the newest champion of your people, you have been supplied and trained to the absolute limits of your society's capabilities.


-2: Unfortunately, you also represent the most expensive failure in the history of a people whose survival relies on making the most of scarce resources. As the only recruit to emerge from the process alive, you're an investment they won't discard, but don't expect to be requisitioning anything further. And of course, failing to advance the rebellion could well lead to discovering whether the rumors of a remote killswitch are founded.

+5 Technique: Not even the Dragon-blooded can match the elemental mastery of an Alchemical exalt. Though their power is stolen and inelegant, its origin grants them superlative versatility. Their Essence conduits effortlessly project the power of their stolen charms into the radii of their spinning weapons.

• When you cause an Immediate Rippling Roll with a physical attack while fighting in the Thousand Wounds Gear stance, you may spend 2 motes to cause the condition associated with any energy attack you are able to use, instead of an injury condition.
  

4 Technique: The Phąn Công are famous, as nameless raiders, for the brutality of their attacks. The stories of weapons that cause grievous wounds without effort are true, but precision in the application of this violence can make for even more debilitating results.

• When you fight in the Thousand Wounds Gear stance using one of the Artifact weapons of Atelier, you may inflame Disrupts to any combat statistic, raising the penalty to - 10.
  

 

[Shining Lotus Sage]

White Veil Society

Destiny Cost: 3


The White Veil Society doesn't exist.


There. I said it.


But you know better. Maybe you're actually so gullible that you believe the true stories meant to sound like lies. Maybe you caught one of their failures and tortured out a confession. Maybe you thought you were joining a philosophical salon, but were approached for more when your unusual talents came to light. Maybe —


But however you stumbled across that truth, you know not to expect any more. Sure, the schism between Pro- and Anti-Imperial factions is a hot topic for gossip, which is almost like documented fact. But good luck sorting out which side a given member is on. It's not open war, not that kind of schism, not that kind of organization. Of course, that won't keep you from choking on Fire Beetle resin in your tea one fay, for guessing wrong. The Society has no time for numb-skulls who can't take a hint.


This much is clear. No suspected members will say that the Realm should stay in An Teng unless a legionnaire is in earshot. And none of the Bookkeepers will take contracts from a Dynast. Change is in the air, and they can all take a hint. The conservatives and traditionalists know better than to keep arguing, now that the consensus has turned against them. Of course, that just leads to rumors of a splinter faction.


The courts of the Satrap and of the High Kings are very busy places, of late.


Concept: Well-placed socialites secretly influence politics on the Blessed Isle and beyond, through honeyed words and undetectable poisons.


Main Virtues: Loyalty, Ruthlessness


Secrets of Destiny: White Veil Society


2+ Involvement: Someone close to you is a member of this secretive cabal of high-society spies and assassins.

+2: ...and you know it.


+2 Fortune: They can pull you out of trouble with their political connections, but there is always a price to be paid for spending the goodwill of princes and shieks.

5 Disadvantage: Someone has decided you must die to further the aims of the Society! Can you really trust anyone now? Gain "Targeted for assassinaiton" as a Disadvantage. If this is your first or second Disadvantage, you may take it for free.


3+ Status: You might be a member at large of a White Veil cell, or perhaps a specialist with rare skills the Society contracts with for unusual jobs. Work out the details with your Sage.

3 Bonus: You gain +5 to all Politics, Performance, Stealth, or Finesse rolls related to hiding your deadly intentions behind a genteel mask.


2 Secret: Your connections grant you the Auspicious Navigation of Courts technique, even if you don't normally have access to the Extraordinary Courtier's Arts.


0 Bonus: You may choose a Medicine or Crafting specialty in Poisons for free.

3+ Fortune: While you are not a member of the Society, your talent for subtlety, misdirection, and flattery has caught the attention of one. They might view you as a potential ally, an enemy to remove, or even a prospective initiate. Spend Destiny depending on how relevant this character will be to the story. Work with your Sage to determine the details.


Secrets of Destiny: The Schism


5 Destiny: You have a major part to play in one of the Society's heterodox plots. Maybe you are being maneuvered into a position of power and commensurate debt, or perhaps you've been framed for sedition to intice more enforcement resources out of the Legion. Whatever the case, you will probably not know all the details until you are cornered and offered the choice between acceptance or suffering a fatal accident. Choose wisely!


3+ Fortune: You may declare that one NPC has been a member of the White Veil Society—and a Realm sympathizer to boot!—all along. If you can prove as much, you have substantial leverage over them. Work with the Sage to sort out the details of your discovery.


Secrets of Destiny: White Veil Society kung-fu


3 Secret: You have learned the Birdsong Over Blades technique, and can use your Stealthy Work and your Quick Work at the same time! Spend a point of Joss and make a minor Stealth action with your initiative roll. For the rest of the battle, anyone who has not beat your result with an Awareness or Wu Wei minor action on their defense against you suffers a -5 penalty to their Confidence when resisting your Courtier's Secret Art attacks. Successfully discovering your treachery once immunizes a target for the rest of the scene, and the effect ends for everyone if you make any overt physical attacks.


0 Bonus: As a member of the White Veil Society, you get a one-time 2-Destiny discount when buying one of Murderous Shadows or Buddha's Harmonious Garden as a secondary External Style.


0 Technique: Though it is more commonly known as the vulgar and obvious Thousand Venoms, the Ill Lily Style has been refined and cultivated by the White Veil style for longer than they will admit to. As a member, you can learn all the techniques of this Wood-element style, rather than the usual one per level.


5 Technique: You have learned the treacherous Dragon Dies in Bed approach. When you are in the Murderous Shadows stance and you use any technique from Ill Lily Style that allows you to make a secondary Poison attack, you may do so in lieu of a primary strike. This technique explicitly does not count as an "overt physical attack" for maintaining Birdsong Over Blades.


5 Technique: Dragon Dies Screaming: When you fight in Buddha's Harmonious Garden stance and use the Devil-Flower Essence technique, add +5 to the Strike of your attack. As a loresheet bonus, this can stack with kung-fu. When you use the Miasma of Long Suffering technique, tainted essence does not heal naturally.