Between The Lights, Session 25: Descent

[liquidcitrus]

This is an actual-play writeup of a game I am running on the Jenna Moran fanclub on Discord.

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"I thought," he shouted to the sky above, "that you made a promise!"

"I did," the sky said, as it began to rain. "Pity you weren't there to receive it."

-- Sunstories, by Carol Paresi

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Today, everyone falls.

Okay, so this week's format needs some explanation. I modified the form of a Ritual, from Chuubo's, to give more structure to what would otherwise be a free-for-all. This concept, of using a Ritual rather than regular Nobilis play for the most consequential fight in the game, is stolen from that time geostatonary did an ending-ritual for a Nobilis game I was in; I really liked the result, so I did it myself.

Here's the instructions for my ending-ritual. I don't expect it to be directly usable in anyone else's game, but go ahead and borrow as much stuff as you want from it.

Anyway, enough words. Time to end this all.

Vien (Reprise)

<HG> It is dawn.
<HG> Well, it is probably dawn. Mist and clouds drift across the face of the Earth, and there's nothing underneath them but you and yours.
<HG> Where you thought Anze was, there is only Vien.
<Maddie> Maddie leaps down from the elephant's back. "Where is she?"
<HG> The fog swirls out from around you as it flees Maddie's presence.
<HG> Fog inspires you to be better than you were.
<HG> "I did exactly what you told me to do," Vien says, quietly, from across the heather. "I told everyone. Some people accepted it. Some people plotted revenge with me."
<HG> Diane turns, and looks back at you. "I - "
<HG> Vien is shouting, now. "I did everything you said! What do you want me to do now?"

Anze Torquil does not appear. Vien, Diane's former Anchor, does.

Vien never did bother to free herself from the influence of how Diane once conditioned her, and nobody else tracked her down for it either. She was unflaggingly loyal: she took Diane's speculation about what the Society would do next, to try to stop the Revolution, and made it a reality. And now she wants Diane back.

Maddie demands to know where Anze Torquil is, and someone behind her taps her on the shoulder. And here: Anze Torquil.

<Maddie> Maddie whirls, Vien forgotten. She's expecting Anze.
<Sasha> Sasha swings her sword at her immediately.
<HG> The face of a porcelain doll. A jauntily tilted fascinator of black ribbons and veil-mesh. A cravat ragged-edged from age, boots polished and scuffed and polished and scuffed again.
<HG> She catches Sasha's sword on a buckler. "You rang?"

Vien was brought here because Anze Torquil wanted Diane out of the fight, and knew that Diane's lingering emotional entanglement would prevent her from acting for a few crucial seconds. This purpose now served, Anze kills Vien, tells Diane that she is utterly alone now, and draws her sword.

The Emptiness of the Heath

It is at this point, trying to write these summaries, that I realize I can't summarize what comes next. That I have to put it all here. If you've been reading this for this long, you probably care about these characters enough to read all of this. So.

I know in the past I've made every excerpt italicized and every commentary bit regular, but since like 90% of the rest of the post is going to be straight logs, I'm going to invert this, because otherwise it will be wall-to-wall italics. I'm also going to leave in the mechanics talk and side comments.

So, with that formatting note out of the way, here we go.

<Saul> Saul grips his pen tightly, his knuckles pale. A familiar knife and spool of twine are strapped to his belt.
<Sasha> Sasha is hard-lined and furious. Her sword is an extension of herself. She and Revolution share the same heart.
<HG> Diane Spinnaker kneels on the ground, breathing heavily. She reaches for the sword on her belt, but only finds the sheath. She rips the sheath off the belt; holds it in both hands. "You're not going to -"
<HG> Anze Torquil waves a hand and cuts the sheath into pieces too.
<HG> The flash of light that follows is brighter than any lamp, brighter than lightning striking in front of you, brighter than the sun. And suddenly you don't know where you are.
<HG> A moorland stretches out in all directions, the edges too shrouded in mist to see.
<HG> You may now take one Ritual Action each.
<Maddie> Take an action of your own that cannot possibly be enough to stop her. Why did you try? How does it hurt her?
<Maddie> Maddie screams the scream of a child who can't accept what's going on but has no power to change it. She throws herself at Anze, two goals driving her Aspect 3 miracle of Kick Bite Wriggle Scream: take her sword and hold her down. Because this fight can't be won with just physical attacks, but taking her things and pinning her is the first step.
<Maddie> (1 AMP for the miracle)
<HG> You and she are bowled over, tumbling end over end while you struggle to prise the sword from her grip. She holds onto the sword until her knuckles are white, but you have her down. For a moment.
<Saul> Remember someone who isn’t here, and do something that you think they would have done. Why can’t you match them? Why do you try anyway?
<Saul> What would Sonja do here? Saul knows he could never replace her, not really. He couldn't hope to do what she could. Sonja would probably try to save Diane. That would be the good and heroic thing, right? The Heavenly thing? But Saul isn't Sonja. That's not going to stop him from trying. Anze is using some sort of destructive Miracle to destroy Diane and Saul knows that if he tries hard enough, he could write away that Miracle, at least for now. Saul opens the book of Anze's life and writes away whatever Anze is currently doing to Diane through using his Soul-Carving Pen. (2 TMP - one for the cost of the miracle and one for strike)
<Sasha> Defend others against what Anze Torquil is doing. What couldn't you shield them from in the past? What harm do you now take on their behalf?
<Sasha> Sasha is stalwart. She is a steel wall. That wasn't enough to save Sonja, was it? It might not be enough to save Diane.
<Sasha> But it might be.
<Sasha> She gathers the fragments of the Imperial. You will fight me, and you will leave them alone. This is a duel, and I will be your foe.
<Sasha> She focuses all of Anze's hate and rage onto herself. Fire swirls in her eyes. If Anze wants to get to her comrades, she will have to go through her first.
<Sasha> An Imperial Miracle of Revolution, 4 TMP.

The Binding of the Twine

<HG> Anze struggles to get out of Maddie's grip. She does not get out of Maddie's grip. What she does accomplish is to get up with Maddie still attached to her and kicking.
<HG> Diane closes her eyes. She opens them again a moment later, and this time there is the absolute iron of Aspect-maintained calm and determination behind them. "You're going to have to try a little harder than that," she says, getting up, slowly.
<HG> Anze Torquil stabs at Sasha - clumsily - again and again and again.
<HG> You may now agree on and invoke the help of an Ally.
<Sasha> Diane's wife.
<Sasha> If there's anyone who can demonstrate that she's not been abandoned, it's her.
<Saul> Yup I agree with that
<Maddie> :thumbsup:
<HG> There is a wind, for just a moment. It skims the brush, setting stalks and leaves to swaying gently.
<HG> "... Annie?" Diane asks.
<HG> The wind blows stronger this time, and she reaches her fingers up into it, and she smiles.
<HG> Anze Torquil is too focused on stabbing Sasha to realize what's happened. But she did cast a miracle slightly earlier, to at least partially blind you with the warped lights of her Incandescence, and you should probably deal with that.
<Sasha> Draw on the strength of one of your Anchors and do a great work. Why isn't it enough? How does it hurt or break your Anchor?
<Sasha> Sasha does her level best to keep Anze occupied. Blade finds flesh again and again. Fire leaks from the open wounds. She smiles, despite herself.
<Sasha> "A dear friend gave this to you. I'm taking it back."
<Sasha> The gem set in Revolution's forehead begins to glow. The shard of Sonja's Heaven draws this wrong, this stolen, this twisted light into itself. All of it. Sasha Konstanian, Robber, steals Incandescence back for Creation, with a Treasure 6 Miracle of Weaving Destiny: The Shard gives us our sight back.
<Sasha> It isn't enough. There is still fog and mud. Her vision blurs from the loss of her ichor. But maybe; maybe it's a start.
<Sasha> It isn't correct. This is a wrong and a twisted Incandescence, and it lacks the beauty of what it once was. The gem strains. Heaven weeps at this intrusion.
<Saul> Take an action of your own that cannot possibly be enough to stop her. Why did you try? How does it hurt her?
<Saul> Saul has Sonja's knife and spool of twine. With just the right work, the twine might be able to bind Anze to this world. There's no running from this. Sonja must be avenged and nothing can stop Saul. Not even death.
<Saul> This is a Treasure 6 miracle (Treasure 2 + 4 TMP) of Weaving Destiny: This twine is the rope that will bind Anze to Creation.
<Saul> (incidentally I only have 3 TMP at the moment, so I'll be Last Trumping 3 DMP into 1 TMP before I weave fate)
<Maddie> Maddie sees the shape of what is going on. Reality twisting them into shape, extracting tragedy from everyone in turn as its price for letting Anze into oblivion. She refuses.
<Maddie> At any time you can overcome an Auctoritas 3 or Obstacle 3 to act out-of-turn and/or actually succeed at hurting Anze mechanically.
<Maddie> Maddie is a Power of the Wild. She won't be bound by these rules. (+2 Strike: You can't tell me what to do! I dance to the Song of the Wild!)
<Maddie> She gathers her power. (+1 strike: 1 PMP)
<Maddie> With the strength of a bear, she closes her teeth around Anze's wrist and bites off her sword hand. (Level 5 aspect miracle, 2 AMP).
<HG> All right cool Anze doesn't have a sword hand anymore
<HG> lemme think about what to do next

The Falling of the Truth

<HG> So.
<HG> Anze Torquil cannot focus on anyone but Sasha. But she knew that something like this might happen - she knew what happened with her Doombot - and has planned for the machinery of her plans to come to fruition with or without her.
<HG> (Though, mechanically speaking, this is equivalent to a Wound to partially get out of Sasha's Imperial Miracle.)
<HG> It is at this point, then, that Acadia West wanders in, claps eyes on Anze Torquil, and suddenly crumples.
<HG> "Ah," Anze says, "the faker has arrived."
<HG> Diane rushes over to him. "Hey," she says, shaking him. "Hey!"
<HG> His eyes open. There's nothing within them but falling stars.
<HG> Anze pulls herself away from Sasha from a moment and slips the buckler onto her disabled arm. From her pocket she pulls another dagger.
<HG> "Always wanted to use this one -" she says, eyes bright with glee. "I am not left-handed."
<HG> She kicks Maddie off her, and Maddie goes bouncing off like a squeaky toy. Then she cuts the ability to interact with the ground out from underneath everyone.
<HG> You are falling.
<HG> Though I guess this time it isn't over the Siberian wilderness, so...
<HG> Okay now you get to do one action each
<Sasha> Reach for the person spinning helplessly in the vortex of the Tragedy. What makes you think you can save them? What part of themselves do they lose forever?
<Sasha> "Acadia!" Sasha shouts. She is falling but frankly she doesn't care-- she can fly, after all. (Or at least she thinks she can; her Raven-wings are missing, though it doesn't matter because they're all in free-fall.) So she focuses: Acadia West.
<Sasha> She can save him because she knows what it's like to have something wrong and awful stuffed into your soul. She knows what it's like to be premised on something that shouldn't be. She knows what it is like to hear the call of those far and sunless lands.
<Sasha> He will never be a normal Noble again. He'll never even be a human again. He is a Rider, or something very much like one. But that doesn't make him an enemy of the world.
<Sasha> "Take my hand!"
<Saul> Saul's going to Wound against the falling - he's still falling, and that's pretty scary, but I think it's not an obstacle to him. He can balance and take action.
<Saul> I'm guessing this is a normal wound?
<HG> Yeah
<Saul> Take an action of your own that cannot possibly be enough to stop her. Why did you try? How does it hurt her?
<Saul> Saul wields his pen and strikes Anze with it, stabbing it into her neck. "I must kill Anze Torquil", reads Saul's bond 5. This won't be enough, but it will help. Progress must be made.
<Saul> Aspect 0 + 4 AMP for Divine Force. He intends to kill her, and gains strike due to his Bond 5.
<Maddie> Defend others against what Anze Torquil is doing. What couldn't you shield them from in the past? What harm do you now take on their behalf?
<Maddie> Maddie had a plan, going into this. Take the last of her anchors. She's carefully saved just enough of her power to do exactly that. Now she has a new idea instead.
<Maddie> She's got something in her mouth, raw and bloody: the hand of Anze Torquil, Excrucian Strategist. The hand of one who breaks the world.
<Maddie> She's taken that hand and now it's hers.
<Maddie> (4 TMP: claim a wondrous anchor and invoke its power.)
<Maddie> Maddie doesn't have the kind of control over the power of unmaking that a strategist does. And this kind of power, the most fearsome weapon of the void, it hurts her to wield it. Maybe it's burning out a bit of herself too, even though she's doing the best she can to direct it at the enemy. But it's worth it.
<Maddie> She points the hand at Anze, and its fingers curl to point accusingly at her. Undo her plan, she implores it, and she hopes it listens.
<Maddie> (Deadly wound: I'm hollow and fading.)
<HG> ... well
<HG> you
<HG> have a
<HG> world-breaker's
<HG> hand??????
<Maddie> Notably, Maddie isn't actually using a big enough treasure miracle to direct her anchor's power here
<Maddie> Only to turn it on
<Maddie> So um, hopefully it makes things better and not worse
<Maddie> You can wield an anchor with aspect, but I don't think she has any applicable skills to do that with!
<HG> well
<Saul> what could possibly go wrong
<HG> good luck Maddie
<HG> let's see.
<HG> um.
<Maddie> Oh, actually -- I'm changing my wound affliction because I just realized this is going to be the thing that binds it to me as an anchor too
<Maddie> So Affliction 4: [Anze Torquil's hand will be my downfall]
<HG> ...
<HG> downfall
<HG> this just keeps getting better and better

The Breaking of the Branch

<HG> Diane Spinnaker has instinctively adopted the belly-down arms-out posture of a skydiver; Anze Torquil has done so much more deliberately.
<HG> Saul Ravid, author, stabs his pen into Anze. It gets stuck there. Blood and ink mix and dribble out into the air around them, staining them all with dark splatters.
<HG> Acadia, tears streaming from his eyes, reaches for Sasha. They make contact. He grips on for dear life. He's trying to say something, his mouth is open and his gorge is working, but nothing is coming out.
<HG> You all hit a branch of the Ash at a glancing angle.
<HG> There is a snap. (It's endgame, after all.)
<HG> Worlds fall all around you like overripe fruit, and you're sent careening across them at blinding speed. For a moment, you're tumbling across a desert, and then it tilts crazily and sends you flying off onto the side of the mountain in another world, and then you're underwater in an ocean full of surprised dolphins for a moment, and then -
<HG> Then there is nothing but air beneath you.
<HG> Pick an Ally. Bring them in.
<Maddie> Megan!
<Saul> Megan would be lovely
<Sasha> Megan.
<HG> Megan, using Aspect to force her pigeon-form into divebombing like a hawk's, is there.
<HG> And so: a great cloud of pigeons is underneath you, breaking your fall. Anze plummets right through them as if they weren't there, but the rest of you are brought to a rather safer stop.
<HG> You are on a spreading root of the Ash, only a few miles above the rich loams of hell. You can already smell the manure and blood from here.
<HG> A long, long way below you, on the next root over, there is a pigeon on Anze's face pecking her eyes out.
<HG> She succeeds, and then Anze crushes her.
<HG> So:
<HG> What do you do?
<Sasha> Reach for the person spinning helplessly in the vortex of the Tragedy. What makes you think you can save them? What part of themselves do they lose forever?
<Sasha> Sasha wants to help Megan so badly. Megan Kieros, who was the first person to be touched by Revolution's grace. Megan Kieros, who was bullied out of Society before she could do anything, before she even lived, in the days when Aliki of the Dark ruled the forces of social isolation.
<Sasha> She can't help Megan, right now. Maybe Saul can. Maybe Maddie can. But right here, she has someone she can help. Someone who might fall into despair, the way Megan did, if she doesn't help.
<Sasha> She leans in close to Acadia West. "I am here," she says. Her words are too important to silence. And then she listens for the echo, as they pass through Acadia's mind.
<Sasha> Will 8 + Eavesdropping 1 = Intention 9: Listen to Acadia.
<Maddie> Take an action of your own that cannot possibly be enough to stop her. Why did you try? How does it hurt her?
<Maddie> Maddie descends upon Anze again, leaping from the relative safety of her own Ash-root. She takes the bloody wrist in both of her little hands and lashes out with it like a tiny little hammer, still dripping with void-power.
<Maddie> This is not the way to defeat a strategist, especially not permanently. Maybe if Maddie could wield it with the same grace as a Rider, it would be enough. But not this way.
<Maddie> It feels good, though, to erase her in bits and pieces at a time.
<Saul> Reach for the person spinning helplessly in the vortex of the Tragedy. What makes you think you can save them? What part of themselves do they lose forever?
<Saul> Saul uses his Gift that allows for a Lesser Creation of Books. He conjures a book of Creation, a book of life itself (1 DMP) and begins to read from it. As he does so, he enchants it (1 PMP) so that the book Makes Us Human. This is who and what Acadia is, whatever his estate might be. Acadia is still a Human Person, and he can choose which side he is on.
<Sasha> At any time you can overcome an Auctoritas 3 or Obstacle 3 to act out-of-turn and/or actually succeed at hurting Anze mechanically.
<Sasha> Revolution shatters the bonds of the Ritual. She flies from Sasha's grip on wings of wire and glass and steel. She siphons from Sasha's spiritus dei to fuel her own intervention.
<Sasha> She is fighting Anze, now, wresting the broken bird from her grasp. A thin line on her hand drips with boiling mercury blood.
<Sasha> "I will not let you hurt her."
<Sasha> (1 TMP + Treasure 5 = Treasure 6 Weaving Destiny: Revolution will protect Megan Kieros + 3 TMP for Strike)
<HG> Once upon a time, there was a man who could not be emotionless. Every day he was called upon to uphold the code of laws that were written to favor some and ignore others, and there was nothing he could do about it. Every night, the man's family and friends told him that he needed to try harder to follow the example of the woman whose position he had inherited. Any time he tried to ask for things to change, he found that they could not be changed, that organizations were unmovable in the world in the same way that laws were etched on the marble walls of the courtroom.
<HG> He tried to make himself better for the role. He tried to learn how to be dispassionate. But no matter how hard he tried, he could not achieve it. Whatever he tried, it would work for a few hours, and then he'd find himself in his quarters the next day gasping and crying from the strain.
<HG> There was a woman who wore a raven upon one shoulder, and she pulled a sword from her heart and she offered it to him. She promised him revolution. It inspired him to try to ask for change again. But nobody else would let him. Not even when he drew on the other powers he had. They just hurt him back, in other ways.
<HG> Once upon a time, there was a man who realized that the principle that he'd been asked to uphold for the rest of time was a poison implanted within his heart.
<HG> The man in front of you is dying of the objective truth being impossible to find.

The Death of the Strategist

<HG> Anze picks herself up off the ground, swaying. She can't see who she's supposed to be fighting. She doesn't know where you are. She doesn't know where she is.
<HG> She does know how to do one thing.
<HG> She picks up the dagger and plunges it into her own heart.
<HG> In Revolution's hands, a broken pigeon's heart beats, fast and shallow and desperate, and then it stops.
<HG> Pick an Ally.
<Sasha> Nobody.
<Sasha> It is too much to ask anyone else to die here.
<Saul> I also vote for Nobody
<Saul> Nobody else must die at Anze's hands
<Saul> (in before a character named Nobody shows up)
<Maddie> No one
<HG> The air is still, and steamy, and damp, and Anze Torquil is struggling against your miracles, throwing attempt after attempt towards vanishing into the void.
<HG> Your action turn begins now.
<Saul> I presume the fate-weaving of the twine binding Anze to Creation is interfering here? Or is it something I need to specifically use?
<HG> Have you been Sustaining it?
<Saul> yeah
<HG> Okay. So far it holds, though she might be able to summon up the Strike to get out if nobody else does anything.
<Sasha> Defend others against what Anze Torquil is doing. What couldn't you shield them from in the past? What harm do you now take on their behalf?
<Sasha> Sasha did this, once before. It was for the right reasons then. It was only later, in the telling of the story, that it got all wrong and ugly.
<Sasha> There was light spilled on a carpet, once upon a time. And now there is a cold, dead bird.
<Sasha> Sasha reaches out to Megan Kieros and Anchors her. It scares her more than she can say to do this. The last time she did it, it was the worst thing she ever did in her entire life. But maybe she's better now. Maybe she's good enough to do this and have it not hurt.
<Sasha> (1 TMP to claim a Miraculous Anchor)
<Saul> Take an action of your own that cannot possibly be enough to stop her. Why did you try? How does it hurt her?
<Saul> Dropping the Soul-Carving Pen intention, Saul spends 4 PMP for a Greater Emulation: Saul makes us human. And humans can be killed. Using his Bond 5 for Strike, for this to do actual, meaningful damage to Anze.
<Saul> For Megan. For Aliki. For Sonja. For everyone that has been lost because of Anze.
<Maddie> Reach for the person spinning helplessly in the vortex of the Tragedy. What makes you think you can save them? What part of themselves do they lose forever?
<Maddie> As she sees Anze dying, Maddie remembers what she's here for. Erasing and hurting and killing her is not enough.
<Maddie> She calls on her estate and fog pours out of her body. It recoils from her so she makes more, more, more, and the fog is thick around her and Anze both and it swirls and rushes and hides the pain and horror of the world in a blanket of endless possibilities.
<Maddie> (1 DMP for a Creation and Animation of fog)
<Maddie> "Don't think you can walk away from me, Anze Torquil," Maddie says. "You have nowhere to go."
<Maddie> Whether it's possible, Maddie isn't sure, but she commands the fog to hide Anze Torquil's way back into the void. If she has her way, Anze will never find it again.

Late

The Ritual has ended. But there's still a thing or two to address.

<HG> There is a sled and vultures above you, and Claudia jumps from it lightly onto your branch. A moment later, Punctuation skids to a stop nearby.
<HG> "I see we are a bit late," says Claudia. "Nice work. Usually takes more than this to... stop a..."
<HG> Her eyes fall on the bird.
<HG> "I'm sorry."
<HG> Diane is holding a whimpering Acadia. "All right," she says, businesslike. "Acadia needs to be taken to see Lana in case she can help him, the kids here need to be brought back to Earth before the tides of Hell-miasma crest, and a Strategist corpse needs to be disposed of. Also, I probably actually need medical attention for once in my life."
<HG> This is when you notice that her legs are both broken.
<Sasha> Sasha Konstanian coughs fire onto the roots of the World Ash. She is burning. She is consumed by her own divinity. A moment of destiny quick approaches.
<Sasha> She looks at the bird in her hands. She weeps. She is a Power of this world, maybe even something more than that, and here she is as helpless as a child. All she can do is hope. Hope that even with the lights of Colbrand guttered by the Not, even in this world where Attaris is the Age, even in this world where Alienation is as sacred and inviolable as Fog or Illumination or Metaphors, where Truth had been a lie for who-knows-how-long:
<Sasha> Even this world, wretched and sad as it might be, might be worth something.
<Sasha> A pigeon coos in her hands and she makes an ugly, wrenching noise of relief.
<HG> Punctuation is herding everyone onto the sled. There's enough room on it, if everyone is careful to stay in place. And they lift off.
<Saul> Saul stands silently over Anze's corpse. There's probably dried blood on him, but he's indifferent. Sonja was finally avenged. But what is there left for him to do now? He hasn't thought that far ahead. Part of his heart aches with a certain emptiness. What now? How can he go back to a normal life?
<HG> "Hey," Claudia says, suddenly, looking at Sasha. "How difficult is it for you to speak Imperial Miracles?"
<Sasha> "Once easily. Thrice if I exhaust myself. Four, five times if I am willing to break myself in the process."
<Sasha> "Or more, if I am in a place of power."
<Sasha> Sasha's lips don't actually move to convey this information. Her words just issue forth, miraculously, while she breaks down.
<HG> "The way to completely destroy and neutralize an Excrucian is to immure them within the laws of the world, so that they have nothing of the void left to grasp. And usually we ask an Imperator to dispose of them, but it'll be a lot easier to get an Imperator that has a moment to tell you what to do than find an Imperator who's got the spare energy right now."
<HG> "What say you?"
<Sasha> "...I think," Sasha says, this time with her actual human mouth. "I think this what this whole sad story was leading up to."
<Sasha> "The body of a Ymera."
<Sasha> "The power to speak Imperial Miracles into the world."
<Sasha> "The power to take the Nobilis as underlings."
<Sasha> "Immortality, as the Sun, the wind, as hope is immortal."
<Sasha> She sits down at the feet of the corpse. "A story to tell to the world."
<HG> "Are you absolutely sure this is what you want?" Diane asks. "Weaving her death into the power to tell your story is an exceptionally good way to make sure that she cannot ever be reconstituted. But it will also fix you permanently to the world. You will trap yourself within the story, you will weave yourself into the foundations, and you will never have another choice again. There is no going back to a human's mind. There will no longer be spare moments to merely enjoy life. There will only be the struggle to overpower the voices of the Excrucians with your own."
<Sasha> She exhales white fire.
<Sasha> "When you put it that way, it sounds rather awful."
<Sasha> She smiles. "But I don't want to put it that way."
<Sasha> "The way I'd put it is; what would Aliki do? What would little Sasha Konstanian of New York, New York want?"
<Sasha> "What would Sonja Aronsdottir have done if she had the same chance?"

The Last Miracle

<Sasha> She stands up. She calls her sword. She takes a deep, deep breath.
<Sasha> "Anyone have anything to say to me before I do something stupid?"
<HG> You are in the blue sky and the sun of Earth again. You are next to a lake.
<HG> The others are there.
<Saul> Saul looks her in the face. "I seem to recall us having a similar conversation once, before I was ennobled. I can hardly tell you to turn back."
<HG> Punctuation dismounts. Toby Houston approaches; recoils; points at Acadia. Punctuation says something to him. He shakes his head, then steps back. Someone else carries Acadia away.
<HG> Diane lets herself be strapped into some sort of stretcher, but raises her hand when they try to pick her up. She turns her face towards Sasha, expectantly.
<HG> Someone else has a thermos of some sort of hot drink, spiced in a way that is almost familiar but not quite, and pours out mugs of it for the three of you.
<HG> Maddie's mother intercepts the mug and puts a scoop of ice cream on top of it before handing it to her.
<Maddie> Maddie smiles
<Sasha> (Completing a Destiny circle: This place will become a new Heaven.)
<Sasha> Sasha Konstanian burries her sword in Anze Torquil's chest. At the base of the sword, there is a shard of Heaven.
<Sasha> Sword and Heaven bloom together, a tangle of metal and light and flower. The whole thing unfolds like a lotus. Petals encase the lake, the shore, the grass, the forest. This place is exalted above what it once was. It isn't Heaven, not quite yet, but it is a quiet, healing place, and it brims with potential. Perhaps when Ananda is the Age, perhaps sooner, this will be a place worthy of Sonja Aronsdottir. It is a Chancel, without an Imperator to claim it.
<Sasha> Sasha feels a tugging at her heart. She smiles. There is one last thing tying her to humanity. She takes her phone out, taps out a message. And instead of hitting [send], she fills it with the force of the Imperial.
<Sasha> (Treasure 5 + 4TMP = Imperial Miracle of Cell Phone: Rhonda Caseworth will hear my last message, someday.)
<Sasha> The phone vanishes. It is a thing of narrative and will, now, almost unfettered from her. And then there is nothing left to do but--
<Sasha> Sasha can't not give a speech before this, actually.
<Sasha> "When I got made a Noble, I thought it was a cruel joke when I found out I was Immortal," she says. "I get picked by the Song of human suicide and I can't even kill myself. What a miserable f--king thing to do, Aliki."
<Sasha> She smiles jackal-like, for maybe the last time as a human. "And then, when I started trying to burn down everything, I thought 'a perfect loophole'! I thought I could kill myself and get off scot free by just throwing myself at Society, over and over, until I broke. I fantasized that I'd just jump into Misenchronic Engine, gum up the gears with my bones and skin and guts."
<Sasha> "Cneph, I was an asshole," she says. White-fire tears dust her lashes. She sips that drink, slowly, savoring it. "I can't believe any of you put up with me. I can't believe half of you liked me, even. But, uh--"
<Sasha> "Well, the measure of goodness isn't in dying for the right cause, right? It's in living for it. And that's exactly what I'm going to do."
<Sasha> (Treasure 5 + 4TMP = Imperial Miracle of Revolution: I will usurp the Imperial and challenge the mos maiorum of Creation.)
<Saul> Saul stands up straight and salutes her. "Godspeed, soldier."
<HG> And there is light.

On The Next Episode...

An epilogue.

Comments

[l33tminion]

Bravo!

(By the way, I did read this post first, though I left the comment on your retrospective post earlier.)

I was on the edge of my seat the whole time just reading this. What a way to structure an endgame conflict! Epic, cinematic, great pacing! And your players seem to have taken that admonition about taking an extra three to strike at their foe effectively seriously, giving those strikes real weight and consequence. Really great storytelling by everyone.