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brooksmoses) wrote2021-02-08 11:17 pm
brooksmoses) wrote2021-02-08 11:17 pm
(no subject)
When a roleplaying game goes on long enough, with a GM who is good at building worlds and at encouraging the players to create their own pieces of the world, other stories spin off. This one spun off a game of 13th Age, two or three years ago. I could see it spinning off into the distance when it happened, but just now got around to chasing it down.
For context, I should note that Cal was the character I was playing.
The Kingdoms of the Dwarves and the Elves had been at war with each other, or at peace with each other -- continuing the war by other means, as the saying goes -- for most of the 13 recorded ages. They know each others' habits and foibles, and which loopholes of tradition they can push with each other to steal a treasure or demand its return. They are also two halves of the same established order, and should the Crusader come from the West to scourge the world to bare rock in pursuit of demons, or the Orc Lord come from who-knows-where to scourge it of its valuables in pursuit of greed, they are quick to fight side-by-side to preserve that order.
It is this heritage that birthed and nursed the Dwarven Diplomatic Apparatus. As the chosen of the Gods, the Dwarf King ostensibly rules the Kingdom as surely as his treeroot staff with the Orb Of the Worldforge holds the power of that rule, and as surely as the Circlet of Stars on the head of the Elven Queen holds her power. The Elven Queen serves at the pleasure of the nobles in the Court of Stars, though, and her power is woven and turned and directed by them as visibly as vines and breezes shaping a forest canopy. It might appear that the Dwarf King is free of these entanglements, but tree roots grow vast and powerful in their hidden places under the ground, and so it is with the Diplomatic Apparatus.
The Bottommost-Secret Inner Collection Sanctum of the Apparatus's Diplomatic Pouch System is far removed from the Advisory Wing that determines what the information the Dwarf King will be briefed on and how and when, and even farther removed from the glamours and niceties of court intrique. It's a large cave, sunk into ancient rock that is barely warm even at depths below most of the Dwarven mines, reachable only by miles-long tunnels that officially do not exist. Some of the ancillary rooms have magical and geological laboratories, and another contains more gold and gems than are admitted to exist in the Royal Treasury, but the bulk of the sanctum complex is taken up with endless rows of filing cabinets. And in the middle of the room, suspended above the floor, is the Nexus mechanism that feeds all of this, except for the gold which is fed into it.
Everywhere in the world, Dwarven diplomats -- acknowledged and covert alike -- carry small leather pouches that provide their expense accounts and their means of making reports. When they reach into their pouch for coin to pay for a room or blade or a bribe, the coin comes from the treasure that is fed into the Nexus. And when they write a report or have something to send back and they seal it into their pouch, it comes out of one of the dendrite of chutes leading out of the Nexus. There, they are collected and cataloged and summarized and by dozens of Dwarven analysts.
Anorthite was one of the younger analysts. She'd finished a course in historical theory at the second-largest Dwarven academy two years ago, and barely had time to wonder what under the earth she was going to do for a career with that knowledge when the Diplomatic Apparatus quietly suggested an answer.
What the recruiter was able to tell Anorthite was interesting enough, but the Collection Sanctum was fascinating beyond her dreams. All of the secrets of the world fell through the pouches of the Nexus as tiny puzzle pieces, and their job was to fit them together. The Diplomatic Apparatus filters information heavily on need-to-know, but within the Sanctum, the policy is that the analysts needed to know everything, because anything might be the information that shows where a puzzle piece fits.
Most of the day-to-day puzzles, though, were more about why field agents were universally incapable of properly filing expense reports for the coins they withdrew -- and why the Apparatus nonetheless continued to maintain an insistence on them. The human Empire's capitol city had two hundred and forty three inns registered to pay lodging taxes, and twice as many pubs or other houses that would rent rooms to travelers, and the Diplomatic Apparatus had considerably better tabs on their number and rates than anyone in the Imperial government. They needed to, because often the only record of where an agent was staying was the amount of coin they'd spent.
Anorthite had a suspicion that she'd been assigned to handle Calcite as a sort of hazing of a new employee. It wasn't the expense reports; though they tended to be terse and sometimes delayed, they were at least consistent. No, the thing was that he had a knack for getting into the weirdest situations. When he had time in the evenings, he'd write long letters with details that she initially thought had to be half made-up until she learned that they all checked out. Or he'd mention things that happened years ago, and send her digging in the archives to find the context. When he was busy, though, his reports became cryptically brief; at best dashed-off half-sentences that left her puzzling out what theory he was chasing.
The upcoming Imperial Wedding promised to be one of the largest historical events of the decade. The Diplomatic Apparatus had long been concerned about the Emperor; he was young when he'd taken the throne, and still somewhat naive though he was learning. Unfortunately, he wasn't learning especially fast, and with the storm clouds that were gathering -- the Crusader was gathering armies, the Archmage and the Lich King seemed to be making preparations, and the immense underground monster known as the Stone Thief had swallowed two cities whole -- came swirling doubts about his strength. There were even rumors of people suspecting that he had lost the Mandate of Heaven, though nobody was admitting to having those suspicions themselves. The wedding was an opportunity for him to shore up his power and regain esteem by making an alliance, or an opportunity to muck it up completely.
Remarkably, the identity of his bride was a complete secret. Speculation abounded. (The Sanctum had running tabs on the odds in the various betting pools, of course, and also had an informal competition as to who could make the most fictional money by engaging in fantasy arbitrage between them.) Almost certainly she would be one of the Icons, like the Emperor himself. The obvious front runners were the Elven Queen, the High Druid from the wild southern forests, the Priestess from the temple of the Gods of Light. Some also suspected that it could be the Diabolist, a mysterious Icon who controls demons, or even one of The Three -- three dragons who were here at the world's dawn, and are aspects of a combined draconic power.
Room rates in the capitol were running at least six times above normal.
Calcite somehow ended up in the middle of things, to Anorthite's complete lack of surprise. A few weeks prior, he'd been assigned to accompany a small group of adventurers who had somehow discovered a tremendous diamond that housed an old spirit who once guarded a now-lost Dwarven city. They were traveling to bring the spirit to another Dwarven city in need of a guardian, and Cal's job was to ensure that no harm came to the diamond or the spirit on the journey. It soon transpired that these adventurers were close associates of the Emperor's Prime Minister, and they felt it necessary to detour through the capitol city to assist with the wedding.
On the day of the wedding, the analysts in the Sanctum had mostly given up on debating who they thought would be the Emperor's bride. The Priestess's temple was doing much of the ceremonial preparation, as she was the obvious choice for officiant if she were not the bride. The Elven Queen was in the city with many of the Court of Stars. There was also some evidence that the Blue Dragon and the Black Dragon were in the city, although their whereabouts were almost always difficult to substantiate. Nobody was at all sure about the Diabolist, though the Sanctum had for years strongly suspected that she was the Prime Minister's wife.
In the Sanctum, it was a morning of quiet anxious bustle. Even the analysts who were off-duty that day had gathered to see the news of the proceedings. Messages were coming in rapidly, but most of them had little new information. The center of the city around the cathedral was completely packed with people, and various processions were making their way through the crowds. Most reports were that the crowd was cheerful and excited. Pickpockets and food vendors were doing brisk business. Rumors spread quickly. Occasionally some were even mostly true.
Remarkably, Cal and the party he was accompanying were among the guests inside the cathedral -- the Prime Minister had arranged for them to be there to provide additional undercover security for the Emperor. His only report had been a brief note that morning saying he would be busy with the security and would send details of the ceremony later, and a token he dropped in the pouch as a pre-arranged signal that he had made it to the cathedral.
Eventually all of the processions made it to where they were going, and everyone who was going to be inside the cathedral for the ceremony was inside it, though it still wasn't entirely clear who all that was. The Sanctum's analysts settled in to wait for news.
A few minutes later, it became clear that something had gone terribly wrong. Notes came in quickly in a flood, and it soon became clear they were all from agents far away from the cathedral. There were earthquakes, people panicking and running, reports of loud rumbles from the direction of the city center and a rising dust cloud.
And then something came in from Cal.
It wasn't a note. It was a delicate silver circlet, gently lighting up the cave around it with its glow.
The hubbub in the room stopped. Nobody spoke, save for a few quiet expletives.
Anorthite recognized it immediately, but it was not possible that it was here, in the hands of the Dwarves. In her hands, if she got past her shock and picked it up.
It was the Elven Queen's Circlet of Stars.
It was the most precious treasure of the people that the Dwarves had been at odds with since time immemorial. The real and immanent magical source of Elven power. A thing that would mark a complete and total conquest if they were to take it, that they half-jokingly dreamed of taking in battle or stealing in improbable subterfuge, though neither had ever been truly plausible.
Something had gone terribly, terribly wrong indeed.
For context, I should note that Cal was the character I was playing.
The Kingdoms of the Dwarves and the Elves had been at war with each other, or at peace with each other -- continuing the war by other means, as the saying goes -- for most of the 13 recorded ages. They know each others' habits and foibles, and which loopholes of tradition they can push with each other to steal a treasure or demand its return. They are also two halves of the same established order, and should the Crusader come from the West to scourge the world to bare rock in pursuit of demons, or the Orc Lord come from who-knows-where to scourge it of its valuables in pursuit of greed, they are quick to fight side-by-side to preserve that order.
It is this heritage that birthed and nursed the Dwarven Diplomatic Apparatus. As the chosen of the Gods, the Dwarf King ostensibly rules the Kingdom as surely as his treeroot staff with the Orb Of the Worldforge holds the power of that rule, and as surely as the Circlet of Stars on the head of the Elven Queen holds her power. The Elven Queen serves at the pleasure of the nobles in the Court of Stars, though, and her power is woven and turned and directed by them as visibly as vines and breezes shaping a forest canopy. It might appear that the Dwarf King is free of these entanglements, but tree roots grow vast and powerful in their hidden places under the ground, and so it is with the Diplomatic Apparatus.
The Bottommost-Secret Inner Collection Sanctum of the Apparatus's Diplomatic Pouch System is far removed from the Advisory Wing that determines what the information the Dwarf King will be briefed on and how and when, and even farther removed from the glamours and niceties of court intrique. It's a large cave, sunk into ancient rock that is barely warm even at depths below most of the Dwarven mines, reachable only by miles-long tunnels that officially do not exist. Some of the ancillary rooms have magical and geological laboratories, and another contains more gold and gems than are admitted to exist in the Royal Treasury, but the bulk of the sanctum complex is taken up with endless rows of filing cabinets. And in the middle of the room, suspended above the floor, is the Nexus mechanism that feeds all of this, except for the gold which is fed into it.
Everywhere in the world, Dwarven diplomats -- acknowledged and covert alike -- carry small leather pouches that provide their expense accounts and their means of making reports. When they reach into their pouch for coin to pay for a room or blade or a bribe, the coin comes from the treasure that is fed into the Nexus. And when they write a report or have something to send back and they seal it into their pouch, it comes out of one of the dendrite of chutes leading out of the Nexus. There, they are collected and cataloged and summarized and by dozens of Dwarven analysts.
Anorthite was one of the younger analysts. She'd finished a course in historical theory at the second-largest Dwarven academy two years ago, and barely had time to wonder what under the earth she was going to do for a career with that knowledge when the Diplomatic Apparatus quietly suggested an answer.
What the recruiter was able to tell Anorthite was interesting enough, but the Collection Sanctum was fascinating beyond her dreams. All of the secrets of the world fell through the pouches of the Nexus as tiny puzzle pieces, and their job was to fit them together. The Diplomatic Apparatus filters information heavily on need-to-know, but within the Sanctum, the policy is that the analysts needed to know everything, because anything might be the information that shows where a puzzle piece fits.
Most of the day-to-day puzzles, though, were more about why field agents were universally incapable of properly filing expense reports for the coins they withdrew -- and why the Apparatus nonetheless continued to maintain an insistence on them. The human Empire's capitol city had two hundred and forty three inns registered to pay lodging taxes, and twice as many pubs or other houses that would rent rooms to travelers, and the Diplomatic Apparatus had considerably better tabs on their number and rates than anyone in the Imperial government. They needed to, because often the only record of where an agent was staying was the amount of coin they'd spent.
Anorthite had a suspicion that she'd been assigned to handle Calcite as a sort of hazing of a new employee. It wasn't the expense reports; though they tended to be terse and sometimes delayed, they were at least consistent. No, the thing was that he had a knack for getting into the weirdest situations. When he had time in the evenings, he'd write long letters with details that she initially thought had to be half made-up until she learned that they all checked out. Or he'd mention things that happened years ago, and send her digging in the archives to find the context. When he was busy, though, his reports became cryptically brief; at best dashed-off half-sentences that left her puzzling out what theory he was chasing.
The upcoming Imperial Wedding promised to be one of the largest historical events of the decade. The Diplomatic Apparatus had long been concerned about the Emperor; he was young when he'd taken the throne, and still somewhat naive though he was learning. Unfortunately, he wasn't learning especially fast, and with the storm clouds that were gathering -- the Crusader was gathering armies, the Archmage and the Lich King seemed to be making preparations, and the immense underground monster known as the Stone Thief had swallowed two cities whole -- came swirling doubts about his strength. There were even rumors of people suspecting that he had lost the Mandate of Heaven, though nobody was admitting to having those suspicions themselves. The wedding was an opportunity for him to shore up his power and regain esteem by making an alliance, or an opportunity to muck it up completely.
Remarkably, the identity of his bride was a complete secret. Speculation abounded. (The Sanctum had running tabs on the odds in the various betting pools, of course, and also had an informal competition as to who could make the most fictional money by engaging in fantasy arbitrage between them.) Almost certainly she would be one of the Icons, like the Emperor himself. The obvious front runners were the Elven Queen, the High Druid from the wild southern forests, the Priestess from the temple of the Gods of Light. Some also suspected that it could be the Diabolist, a mysterious Icon who controls demons, or even one of The Three -- three dragons who were here at the world's dawn, and are aspects of a combined draconic power.
Room rates in the capitol were running at least six times above normal.
Calcite somehow ended up in the middle of things, to Anorthite's complete lack of surprise. A few weeks prior, he'd been assigned to accompany a small group of adventurers who had somehow discovered a tremendous diamond that housed an old spirit who once guarded a now-lost Dwarven city. They were traveling to bring the spirit to another Dwarven city in need of a guardian, and Cal's job was to ensure that no harm came to the diamond or the spirit on the journey. It soon transpired that these adventurers were close associates of the Emperor's Prime Minister, and they felt it necessary to detour through the capitol city to assist with the wedding.
On the day of the wedding, the analysts in the Sanctum had mostly given up on debating who they thought would be the Emperor's bride. The Priestess's temple was doing much of the ceremonial preparation, as she was the obvious choice for officiant if she were not the bride. The Elven Queen was in the city with many of the Court of Stars. There was also some evidence that the Blue Dragon and the Black Dragon were in the city, although their whereabouts were almost always difficult to substantiate. Nobody was at all sure about the Diabolist, though the Sanctum had for years strongly suspected that she was the Prime Minister's wife.
In the Sanctum, it was a morning of quiet anxious bustle. Even the analysts who were off-duty that day had gathered to see the news of the proceedings. Messages were coming in rapidly, but most of them had little new information. The center of the city around the cathedral was completely packed with people, and various processions were making their way through the crowds. Most reports were that the crowd was cheerful and excited. Pickpockets and food vendors were doing brisk business. Rumors spread quickly. Occasionally some were even mostly true.
Remarkably, Cal and the party he was accompanying were among the guests inside the cathedral -- the Prime Minister had arranged for them to be there to provide additional undercover security for the Emperor. His only report had been a brief note that morning saying he would be busy with the security and would send details of the ceremony later, and a token he dropped in the pouch as a pre-arranged signal that he had made it to the cathedral.
Eventually all of the processions made it to where they were going, and everyone who was going to be inside the cathedral for the ceremony was inside it, though it still wasn't entirely clear who all that was. The Sanctum's analysts settled in to wait for news.
A few minutes later, it became clear that something had gone terribly wrong. Notes came in quickly in a flood, and it soon became clear they were all from agents far away from the cathedral. There were earthquakes, people panicking and running, reports of loud rumbles from the direction of the city center and a rising dust cloud.
And then something came in from Cal.
It wasn't a note. It was a delicate silver circlet, gently lighting up the cave around it with its glow.
The hubbub in the room stopped. Nobody spoke, save for a few quiet expletives.
Anorthite recognized it immediately, but it was not possible that it was here, in the hands of the Dwarves. In her hands, if she got past her shock and picked it up.
It was the Elven Queen's Circlet of Stars.
It was the most precious treasure of the people that the Dwarves had been at odds with since time immemorial. The real and immanent magical source of Elven power. A thing that would mark a complete and total conquest if they were to take it, that they half-jokingly dreamed of taking in battle or stealing in improbable subterfuge, though neither had ever been truly plausible.
Something had gone terribly, terribly wrong indeed.
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Part of this came from who the Elven Queen was. We found out later, in another side-quest part of the overall plot, that she had been far older than anyone had thought, at a somewhat horrifying cost. Several ages ago, she had found a way to extend a magical tree into an alternate universe, and constructed a device in that alternate universe that would destroy a star in order to rejuvenate her life. When we found the tree and made it to the top, we found a completely starless sky.
She was the chosen bride.
The cluster of FUBAR at the wedding involved at least three different assassination plots, and I don't think we ever figured out whether they were separate or coordinated. It was the sort of event that involved Cal surreptitiously peeking around a room-dividing curtain from one side only to come face-to-face with the Orc Lord's best assassin as he was peeking around it from the other side.
I think the initial chaos may have been the Blue Dragon (in human form) -- a legendary sorcerer and possibly the creator of sorcery or an avatar of the power of sorcery itself -- standing up to curse the Elven Queen and attack her with a blast of magic in the middle of the wedding. I don't remember how much of this was the Blue Dragon claiming that she should have been chosen, and how much was about other ancient feuds and sleights.
On the other hand, the initial chaos might have been the sudden appearance of an army of goblins breaking into the cathedral to join the ones already hiding inside, along with the Orc assassin and other allies. That happened at about the same time, and was rather more in Cal's pay grade.
The result was a heated magical fight of I think five or six demigod-level Icons (I think the Black Dragon, and at least one other Icon, were involved as well) in the middle of the massive chaos of everyone else either being an Orcish invader or trying to fight off the Orcish invaders and possibly influence the magical Icon fight. Neither fight was going at all well for our heroes, and within about two rounds of battle the Elven Queen had turned into what looked like a fuzzy black hole in the universe, and most of Cal's fellow PCs were dead or had disappeared.
Somewhere in the middle of that, the third plot became apparent. Sometime before the ceremony, someone (we think the Lich King was involved) had meddled with the iconic runes in the caves under the city that protected it from the Stone Thief. The magical power concentrated in the wedding gathering was a powerful lure for the Stone Thief, and so basically what happened from Cal's perspective was that the floor started to fall out of the world at the end of the second round of the battle, as the Stone Thief swallowed most of the city.
It was clear to Cal at this point that the situation had gone totally, entirely, and completely pear-shaped, well beyond any hope of salvage or even of having a plan.
I confirmed with the GM that the Circlet of Stars was still on top of where the Elven Queen's head had been.
Cal made a wild flying leap (with a passably good result on the 20-sided-die roll; this didn't need a critical success), grabbed the Circlet, took some amount of damage from his arm passing through the black void, and threw the Circlet into his diplomatic pouch as his last conscious action before he and everything else fell into the Stone Thief's maw, and the end of the Age began.
...
He and the rest of the party woke up, some unknown time later, healed of their injuries, sleeping in niches in catacombs deep in the underside of the architectural madhouse that was the inside of the stone thief. They had no memories of the day of the wedding at all. In out-of-game time, we played out the waking up in the catacombs and the time forward from there in the session immediately after the one where we'd played through the preparations for the wedding, and we only played out the wedding-day scene a couple of months later when our characters had recovered their memories.
In the side quest where we discovered the history of the Elven Queen some months after that, we had also first gone to visit the site of the capitol city -- now a barren blasted crater surrounded by desert, with the black fuzzy hole-in-the-universe void still in the same place although now far above the crater floor. I can only imagine that this was backlash from all the sorcery the Elven Queen had used to extend her life and her power, as well as whatever curse the Blue Dragon had thrown at her.
I do not know what happened to the Circlet of Stars after that, but I do know that the Elven Court was far diminished in power in the 14th Age.