Ourna, Develan, and a young Lunar named Tonanti Amon recieve a vision of their former lives.
Date: The Gods' War
“Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.”
- Edgar Allan Poe, A Dream Within A Dream
Ourna, Develan, and a young Lunar named Tonanti Amon have a dream of the past, a vision from the dawn of the First Age granted by the Unconquered Sun. Therein, they experience events drawn from the memories of the lives of the First Age Exalted, Rozacia, the Rose Queen, Zenith commander of an entire dragon of Realm soldiers, and her fellow Celestials: Sethos the Night Caste, his apprentice Aniam, and Satu-nem Amu the No Moon Lunar.
On Rozacia's command platform, a one mile diameter floating crystalline city, the Celestials are having a grand ball, both in celebration of a recent victory in the war with the Primordials, and to welcome an emmissary from Autochthonia. The ballroom's crystal walls reveal the lightning from the storm outside being refracted into myriad rainbows, mimicing the colorful costumes of the guests.
A strange flying craft resembling a mechanical insect approaches the city and docks in a hangar. An assistant informs Rozacia that the ambassadors have arrived. A group of strange people are then escorted into the ballroom. They look strangely artifical, with a variety of unusual mechanisms attached to their bodies. With a deep but hollowly echoing voice, one of the males introduces himself as Rabur-D, Orichalcum caste leader of this Alchemical circle.
Rabur-D identifies his companions: The stately, robed figure whose skin is outlined in fine tracery is the advisor, Kaddon. The sleek silver-tinged female is Bisruki, the Lieutenant. The stocky woman with faintly translucent skin is Zama-ub, and the onyx-skinned, watchful woman is Jebela. After formal introductions are made, Rozacia and her seconds retire to a private chamber with the Alchemicals to discuss their purpose.
As it turns out, the Alchemicals have come bearing gifts and a warning. Their warning is of the approach of the Iron City of Dis, last of the major Primordials still active in the war, from the land of Rane-tah-serat in the southwest.
Their gift is of a new set of Warstriders for Rozacia and her lieutenants: Golden Nova, Devil Shadow, and Behemoth Hunter. Two of these Warstriders were equiped with devices known as Anima Lenses, which channeled the pilot's anima into a weapon or defense system. Golden Nova had Supernova, an omnidirectional disintegration weapon. Devil Shadow had the Cloak of Shadows, which rendered the strider invisible. Behemoth Hunter had a Proteus Device in place of the Anima Lens, which allowed the warstrider to assume the forms of its pilot. It also had a miniature drone called a Homonculus.
After delivering their warning and their gift, the Alchemicals depart, as the enemy is moving on their own locations as well. Rozacia and her army make preparations for the coming battle.
Eventually, Dis is dimly visible in the rain-mist, a giant floating citadel of iron marked with glowing runes of power. Then the enemy combatants become visible, marching out of the mist beneath their patron: A group of champions dressed in enormous, emerald armor, and a horde of lesser minions. The six champions are: Hebis (a knight with a bulbous head and glowing red eye slits), Karia the four-armed giant, Shaddon and Shammur (the twins), Tchori (an emerald, four-winged dragon), and Sin.
Battle is joined in the shadow of the Solar platform and Dis. One by one the champions fall to the Celestials, while the lesser minions are held at bay by Rozacia's army of dragon-blooded. Several of the minions are nuked by Rozacia's Supernova, while Satu-nem seems content to lay into them, and Sethos is fond of sneak attacks. Eventually, the Champions lie defeated, and Dis begins falling to the earth on the heads of the combatants. Rozacia escaped only because Satu-nem Amu used his strider to bodily pick up hers and fly out from under the Primordial. Sethos escaped using a Shadow-walking charm to transport himself underneath the Solar platform. Most of both armies are crushed when Dis hits the ground, and the shockwave knocks the Solar platform out of the sky as well (and, fortunately for Sethos, back).
As the rain clears the dust away, the now-flickering runes of Dis become visible … … and then a man standing just in front of the Primordial's gates, surrounded by a huge billowing green anima banner-like aura, quite unlike a Wood Aspect's. He starts walking directly towards them, past fallen soldiers and minions alike … who then begin whimpering and staring blindly without so much as glance on his part. As he gets close to the Solars, he stops, and they can see large eyes — not in his aura so much as through it, as if it is a filter that shows the eyes of Dis himself.
The Celestial Exalted thus face a new enemy: Sidon, the Green Bulwark, Fetich to the Iron City. This battle is much tougher, but even Sidon cannot stand before them for long due to his weakened state from the loss of his Champions. Sidon falls, tears in his eyes, but his green “anima” remains in place, Eyes of Dis and all. Dis deigns to speak to the Exalted directly, yielding to them as he begins to shift his nature. The Unconquered Sun and Luna put in an appearance and sentence the new Primordial to exile and imprisonment, sworn on his name, Malfeas, never to enter Creation again. The Solar Exalted are placed in charge of Creation, with the Lunars as their seconds.
As the dream begins to fade, Rozacia looks at the ruins of her platform (which is to be left as a memorial). Ourna wakes up with its name on her lips: Nathir
Date: The Dawn of the First Age
This session was more or less a total failure, although the concept was interesting to me at least. A lot of that was due to lack of proper planning on my part (ugh, this is becoming a theme. This time, christmas intervened, and I was sick most of the week.) A lot of the remainder was due to the nature of the session and the fact that I didn't tell most of the players what I was doing ahead of time (overestimating people's openness to my experiments YET AGAIN). The game was divided pretty much into two halves: a roleplaying half, and then the big epic battle half. In the roleplaying segment, people didn't have a strong enough sense of their First Age lives to play them on the fly, and my “not-entirely-temporally-consistent dream/vision” premise merely made the problem worse. I also didn't have enough of a plot or a sense of the NPCs worked out for the roleplaying segment for anyone to grab onto. After I sensed this was going nowhere, I decided to cut it short. That made the entire game seem to be about combat, which didn't make Jenna any happier.
In the combat half, nobody was really familiar with what their characters could do, and the enemy was not as interesting as it should have been. (Also, I've condensed a battle that should by all rights have been the subject of an entire story arc, if not a campaign, into the space of a single session. This means the enemies were massively underpowered for what they are, which means they're a bit anticlimactic.) Jenna and Chris didn't seem to enjoy the session at all. Probably the only reason Randy was OK with it is because he actually came to the house while I was planning and got to write a lot of his First Age character himself.
Then there's the matter of disparate tastes on the part of my players. The one person (Ray) that probably would have appreciated the massive warstrider battle was not present (which I knew beforehand, but still it shows how wrong my thinking was). Jenna apparently hates the very concept of Warstriders, and on top of that, is bored with combat in general. Chris is, I think, indifferent to warstriders. Randy seemed to like them well enough, but I also know he's seen Escaflowne. Jenna thinks I need to streamline the combat system more, while Chris is not happy with the fact that I'm changing the system at all (I've been making tweaks to the ability list).
Ah well.
Converted from older logs.