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jennafansWhen the Seal of Time broke, when the Second Age’s shattered motes took flight and seeded the entire Cosmic Tree, some went as far as the Weirding Wall. Most have then been stopped and calcined in Narsinha’s embrace. Most, but not all. Upon contact with the Not, some wayward shards acquired a sense of self. Silver ages in the silvered land, they realized the worst weakness of the world they contained: it was never earned. A golden, unchallenged paradise - with no clear blueprints on how to repeat it, or justify WHY it was more perfect than an alternative.
To that end, they corrected themselves. From disjointed fragments of a perfect Age, beautiful beyond realisation, they became blueprints: sets of quests, lists of steps, each cunningly devised to culminate into a singular, delineated utopia. And once all quests would be completed, they declared, those islands of perfection would all merge into a triumphal apotheosis: the return of the Second Age, now warded from the Void by the suffering it endured to produce itself. Born, not made.
The Not let them go back. (No one is sure why. Perhaps their clinging to time and space and Wards was deemed unworthy of assimilation. Perhaps the Void wanted to prove a point: that even this, the most concerted effort to perfect Creation perfect, was still flawed to the core.)
When Attaris spoke the Third Age into law, the Sureties were in her voice. They made this endless war an endless maze, laced with their endless choices and sidequests, with only a handful of them carrying the fine thread of silver, thinly connecting all these elements into the only configuration it's supposed to assume.
Sureties know they cracked the code that could make the Third Age perfect: and thus, Sureties are mostly incapable of feeling bad. This certitude prevents that no pain ever feels crippling, no rage ever feels blinding, no doubt ever feels paralyzing. They have to learn to fake it: to feign discomfort, disgust, disdain, dismay.
Sureties don’t have a bone to pick with the World because they think it’s false, or imperfect. They do ask themselves, however, why it’s still struggling so much. Like the way hadn't been lit. Like the path they've lead isn't obviously right. Imagine watching people die of a plague when the vaccine’s already found. Imagine your roleplaying pals, keeping up characters to trudge about a murky dungeon - and you’ve already beaten the boss, and there’s nothing important to loot, and guys, guys, this story is beautiful, I know, it's epic and tragic and all, but it's over, it's already over, and it'll only truly become a beautiful story if you let it reach the happy ending ~
Sureties’ Rites are meant to soothe the World into slumber, to resolve early any clutter storyline it has - meaning, every story line. They assist heroes and villains alike, accelerate the resolutions of all projects they deem stalling, any quest - several in one swoop, if they can -, simplifying causality until every case is set to rest, every wish granted, every war waged. Beings endowed with a fiber of the Not, whose mortality makes them susceptible to go beyond their personal Fate, are their favorite tools in that prospect. Victories pile up, less and less meaningful. Problems that should garner a response simply become part of the scenery.
If and when a Surety falls, their physical form collapses, revealing what kept them going : a piece of the Seal of Time, twisted and hooked around their heart. It exists now in Creation, from all eternity and for all eternity, a new kind of lack, a new way for it to wail and wallow, a new hole in the world. A new Abhorrent Weapon.
Sureties buy Ability at two points per level. As unto the Children of the Ash, theirs is the gift of utter symbiosis with the world, both mundane and miraculous - so much so, in fact, that the distinction between the two amounts is almost foregone in their view. (Magic, on the other hand… magic often leaves them pretty rattled).
This blurriness between mundane and miraculous deeds is furthered by their Allegorical nature. Like the Fallen or the Warmains, theirs is a tale that shakes the world: in their case, a cautionary tale, whose moral was fixed from all eternity, and whose example deeply moves beings and things that behold it. Tragically, the Surety is usually the last to realize as much: they believe their story is that of a catatrophe prevented, while anyone with eyes (of flesh or starlit void) can plainly all omens and signs around them speak of inevitable demise.
As living seals staving off a full fork of the Second Age, the Sureties are Gardeners: not of spatial domains, but to the isolated timelines they embody. Accessible through a wise use of serendipity and acausal travel usually, those Gardens are temporal loops of varying lengths, centered around a singular event or choice. Their Poison is their own rush, their impatience to complete their Grand Design.
There's a hook in their heart: a latent Weapon awaits. As it is a growing expansion of themselves, permanently present, ever ready to assimilate anything that could patch their inconsistencies, able to strike and nudge the world by fusing with the very fabric of the Second Age, it makes them into Symbolic beings.
When all else fail, they adopt the Visage they acquired in the Not, and look through aeons into the Hollyhock God's soul, and make their tongue stumble, and their phrases void.
To that end, they corrected themselves. From disjointed fragments of a perfect Age, beautiful beyond realisation, they became blueprints: sets of quests, lists of steps, each cunningly devised to culminate into a singular, delineated utopia. And once all quests would be completed, they declared, those islands of perfection would all merge into a triumphal apotheosis: the return of the Second Age, now warded from the Void by the suffering it endured to produce itself. Born, not made.
The Not let them go back. (No one is sure why. Perhaps their clinging to time and space and Wards was deemed unworthy of assimilation. Perhaps the Void wanted to prove a point: that even this, the most concerted effort to perfect Creation perfect, was still flawed to the core.)
When Attaris spoke the Third Age into law, the Sureties were in her voice. They made this endless war an endless maze, laced with their endless choices and sidequests, with only a handful of them carrying the fine thread of silver, thinly connecting all these elements into the only configuration it's supposed to assume.
Sureties know they cracked the code that could make the Third Age perfect: and thus, Sureties are mostly incapable of feeling bad. This certitude prevents that no pain ever feels crippling, no rage ever feels blinding, no doubt ever feels paralyzing. They have to learn to fake it: to feign discomfort, disgust, disdain, dismay.
Sureties don’t have a bone to pick with the World because they think it’s false, or imperfect. They do ask themselves, however, why it’s still struggling so much. Like the way hadn't been lit. Like the path they've lead isn't obviously right. Imagine watching people die of a plague when the vaccine’s already found. Imagine your roleplaying pals, keeping up characters to trudge about a murky dungeon - and you’ve already beaten the boss, and there’s nothing important to loot, and guys, guys, this story is beautiful, I know, it's epic and tragic and all, but it's over, it's already over, and it'll only truly become a beautiful story if you let it reach the happy ending ~
Sureties’ Rites are meant to soothe the World into slumber, to resolve early any clutter storyline it has - meaning, every story line. They assist heroes and villains alike, accelerate the resolutions of all projects they deem stalling, any quest - several in one swoop, if they can -, simplifying causality until every case is set to rest, every wish granted, every war waged. Beings endowed with a fiber of the Not, whose mortality makes them susceptible to go beyond their personal Fate, are their favorite tools in that prospect. Victories pile up, less and less meaningful. Problems that should garner a response simply become part of the scenery.
If and when a Surety falls, their physical form collapses, revealing what kept them going : a piece of the Seal of Time, twisted and hooked around their heart. It exists now in Creation, from all eternity and for all eternity, a new kind of lack, a new way for it to wail and wallow, a new hole in the world. A new Abhorrent Weapon.
Sureties buy Ability at two points per level. As unto the Children of the Ash, theirs is the gift of utter symbiosis with the world, both mundane and miraculous - so much so, in fact, that the distinction between the two amounts is almost foregone in their view. (Magic, on the other hand… magic often leaves them pretty rattled).
This blurriness between mundane and miraculous deeds is furthered by their Allegorical nature. Like the Fallen or the Warmains, theirs is a tale that shakes the world: in their case, a cautionary tale, whose moral was fixed from all eternity, and whose example deeply moves beings and things that behold it. Tragically, the Surety is usually the last to realize as much: they believe their story is that of a catatrophe prevented, while anyone with eyes (of flesh or starlit void) can plainly all omens and signs around them speak of inevitable demise.
As living seals staving off a full fork of the Second Age, the Sureties are Gardeners: not of spatial domains, but to the isolated timelines they embody. Accessible through a wise use of serendipity and acausal travel usually, those Gardens are temporal loops of varying lengths, centered around a singular event or choice. Their Poison is their own rush, their impatience to complete their Grand Design.
There's a hook in their heart: a latent Weapon awaits. As it is a growing expansion of themselves, permanently present, ever ready to assimilate anything that could patch their inconsistencies, able to strike and nudge the world by fusing with the very fabric of the Second Age, it makes them into Symbolic beings.
When all else fail, they adopt the Visage they acquired in the Not, and look through aeons into the Hollyhock God's soul, and make their tongue stumble, and their phrases void.
oh hey this rules
Date: 2020-04-30 04:38 pm (UTC)Re: oh hey this rules
Date: 2020-05-05 07:19 pm (UTC)About the Wounded thing, I guess I didn't want them to be too resilient. A Fallen Angel can be fueled by its sufferings and imperfections because he recognizes them as such: while Sureties never thinks themselves, or the world, as imperfectible. They know for certain that at some point in time, when the Stars Are finally Right, THEY will reach perfection, and they try to coerce everything and everyone they meet into performing THEIR mission, so that all becomes THEM and has a shot of becoming perfect. (Really, they're Actuals masquerading as the quest-giving NPC at the beginning of every scenario.)
But if we consider that absorbing Wounds can reflect their tendency to absorb things and paint them as positive (e.g. a Surety embodying a political Utopia rebranding a massacre as a "necessary sacrifice", or worse, "a cleansing"), then perhaps Wounded is a better fit.
I'll think about it !