HELLSTRIDER: An Exalted Quest

[X] …otherworldly.

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When you dream, visions of fragility haunt you. You remember with perfect clarity the shape they took when they first came upon you: of streets of Malfeas, turned into glass. Mute wonder filled you, then, and you walked through your world made brilliant and translucent with your heart overcome with joy. Around you, throngs of demons stood frozen mid-riot, their vitrified forms made into perfect receptacles for the Green Sun radiance. And yet, there was a flaw to all of it, made audible by the terrible whine the world made upon bearing each of your steps. No matter how careful you tried to tread, it was all for nothing: a crack formed, imperceptible at first, and then exploding through the crystal lattice into a thunder-bolt tree splitting the street in halves, and then into hundreds. The most terrifying moment came next, when for a brief second, the cry of the breaking world died down, leaving you into a silence about to ring like a glass bell shattering. When it did, all broke at once, and surrounded by an oscillating cloud of powdered crystal, you plummeted all the way through the cracking world, right into the vast sea of alien stars awaiting below.

You woke up with the vision irrevocably impressed into your memory; as it felt too much to bear, you did the one thing that could bring you comfort then – you were, after all, quite young – and ran through the shadowed manse of Mara, calling out for her presence and her comfort.

She emerged from a pooling dark, smelling, as she always did, of pine smoke and heartbreak. Around her wrists, a sorry remnant of some love-torn soul coiled; she scattered them to the four winds upon seeing you and your tears. The rest of the night, you spent in her lap, letting her hands comb and braid your mess of opalescent hair, and her dusky voice guide you back to comfort.

Mara explained to you, then, that you had nothing to worry from such visions, as they were merely a consequence of the ichor flowing through your veins slowly awakening to its potential. She used such sweet words, then, that you could do nothing but rest your head on her shoulder and listen to her talk about power and greatness from which you were descended, and the grand mystery of who exactly your demon ancestor was. After all, you were a foundling Mara chose to take in, so that one day – one day far away, once you were radiant in the fullness of yourself – she could gorge herself on your soul.

"Why are you telling me this?" you asked, too comfortable to resent her for that little act of familial honesty.

"For I am what I am," she replied in turn, smiling that little wounded smile of hers that had been the doom of thousands. "And The Traitor Sun has imprisoned us all in Hell, so that is our due. But fret not; that night is still far away, and you have much to grow before you are fit to devour."

"I can't believe your mother would raise you like a fatted calf," Lynx interrupts your story, her deep scowl twisting the scars running across her face into new, perplexing shapes. "That's so fucked up."

"She's not her mother," Eshra waves her thin hand at her, the golden bracelets jangling against each another. "Weren't you even listening!"

"So what? If she," the Dragon-Blood indicates you with an elbow, "goes running to her when she gets a bad dream, and she does the entire comfort thing, that's pretty damn motherly in my book."

"So now you care about her wellbeing?" Eshra's voice narrows to a point. "Maybe you shouldn't have been battering her before, then, if you are so compassionate?"

"It wasn't even a bad dream," you protest quietly at them, somewhat confused by the effect your story has taken.

They don't hear you. Again, they descend into a round of bitter bickering you do your best to tune out. You know better than to stick your fingers between the clashing mighty. Instead, you take another look outside of the cirrus skiff, at the green hills of the Land of Repose, now bathed in the flood of evening pinks and purples. Over the past year, as your ichor awakened to new powers, the dreams haunting you have changed. You would wake up from them gripped with echoes of inhuman voices still ringing in your ears, and a question close to the tip of your lips. To discover it, Mara sought out the help of Makarios, the pre-eminent dream-seer of Hell. With his help, step by step, you dredged it up from the recesses of sleep: "where do stars lie buried?"

Somewhere under those gentle hills, you suppose. You steal a glance at Eshra, currently prodding her long, golden-ringed finger at Lynx; does she know just how old those mounds are? Is she aware of just how deep the roots of the realm she is stewarding run? At first, minding Mara's laughter at the short mortal memories, you have assumed that no; but the more you look at her pallid face, and consider the heavy air that seems to follow her wherever she goes, the less convinced you are.

A pillar of black smoke rising on the horizon interrupts the argument in front of you; Eshra stops mid-word, staring mutely at the plume. Small frustrations wash away from her face, leaving behind something deathly, and heartbroken.

"They are burning Wake," she declares, voice like ash.

"No," Lynx corrects, not unkindly. "They have burnt Wake already. This is not the smoke of an ongoing fire. Only ruin."

"You would know," Eshra sighs, and for a moment looks away.

When she faces you again, no emotion remains in expression.

"We are close," she announces, pointing at one of the hills. "Set it there."

To your eyes, the one she indicated is no different from any other mound in the Land of Repose; still, you direct the cirrus skiff to the top and land it. Lynx jumps out immediately, quickly stretching her arms; the Chosen of Locked Tombs lingers for a moment longer. As the night falls around you, cold, though strangely musical, you watch fine, pale mist arise as if from the ground itself, spilling down the hill's slope and covering the land with a soft carpet. It reaches for Eshra, climbing towards her in small spiraling pillars, and as it brushes against her skin and robes, it whispers. Whatever language it speaks in, you do not understand, but the woman listens to it with intent focus.

When she finally decides to disembark, the mist climbs to her shoulders and wraps itself around her like a cloak. You catch Lynx staring blankly, then shaking her head; her hands seem to never be far from her daiklave.

"They are closing in," Eshra announces, speaking in more voices than one. "Better hurry."

You follow her out, and the moment your feet touch the ground, a small shudder goes through your entire body. The night's cold immediately vanishes as your ichor heats up; it pumps to your heart, setting it to an erratic beat. A part of you demands to ask what this place is; but one look at the way Eshra walks downhill, measuring each step as if walking over glass, dissuades you from this. You know how to recognize holiness when you see it; whatever you tread on is sacred.

Lynx insists on walking behind you as you navigate down to the foot of the hill; this time, however, the night itself seems to worry her more than you or your possible escape. Time after time, she jerks up as the mists draping the Land of Repose reach to her. They whisper all around you, the voice of the night a mellifluous susurration that makes you think of crackling music of the passing of the great demon prince Sagarduia, the River of Molten Glass. To those whispers, Eshra adds her own. Each measured step, she bows her hands at the mists, and says a quiet: "forgive me". Each time she speaks, a small quake goes through the haze, like a wave rolling across the lake.

Finally, your small procession reaches the bottom, and the way into the tomb. The stone slab is thrown away and long since overgrown with moss; dusty air blows from the inside. The Dragon-Blood frowns, and so do you; but the signs of robbery seem to not concern the Chosen of Locked Tombs, who confidently steps inside, leaning under the low frame. You squeeze yourselves past a narrow and damp corridor that throws you out into an equally tiny and impoverished-looking burial chamber. Some scattered bones on the bier are all that remains of whoever was interred here; all grave goods have long since been robbed, and wind and weather erased the colorful paintings that had to adorn the walls once. As far as graves go, this one is dead.

"Is this a mistake?" Lynx asks, looking around for anything; you notice her stop short of poking the bones with her sword. "There was supposed…"

"Forgive me," Eshra whispers one more time, mists still following her in a long train. "And you, general, take the example of this demon-spawn and keep quiet. You are on hallowed grounds."

Eshra bows once again before the scattered bones, and when she does, her mist seeps under the bier, wrapping the stone in hazy, grey tendrils. You take some small pride in figuring out the trick seconds before the Chosen of Locked Tombs yanks the rock from its mooring in the soil. Thus, the plundered, impoverished burial chamber is merely a distraction. The real one rests at the bottom of a stairwell hidden beneath.

The descent is tense. Though you walk through little more than yet another narrow corridor cut through stone, the air here tastes different. An actinic tang holds to it, and every breath you take fills your lungs with a little bit more of it. For Lynx, this is a struggle; she hunches on herself, dropping into a low stance, now no longer hiding how her hand is twisted around the hilt of the sword, as if she was ready to slash at the walls at a moment's notice. Eshra takes it better, though she grows so silent that you are no longer sure if she is breathing anymore, or allowing her heart to beat. As for you, however…

You look down the dark descent, and see at the bottom the sea of stars pooling. Your blood sings the melodies of crackling glass. This is a homecoming.

At the end of the stairwell, the corridor opens up abruptly, giving way to a large hall, cut in half by a massive pair of doors cast in what you have no doubts is malfean brass. An altarpiece stands before them, a small round stone covered in soot from dozens of generations of incense burnt upon it. A few sticks of it remain, charred black fingers grasping up. Eshra prostrates herself before it, and you follow her example, leaving Lynx standing awkwardly alone.

When you raise your eyes from the altar, you give the door a closer look, or at least attempt to. There figures etched into its surface, whole odysseys rendered in bas-relief, but in your vision they dance and distort. Even as your ichor burns through you and you can feel shadows come to your aid as if you were Mara, a terrible, splitting pain enters your mind the more you try to look at this gate. There are wards placed upon it, old sorceries from more puissant ages, layered one atop another, arrayed so intricately and deviously that you have little doubt that if you tried to unravel even the least of them, the others would ensare you and destroy you. Whoever built them wielded strength far beyond you, and far beyond this age.

The Dragon-Blooded general taps her foot nervously, but Eshra hesitates again; her hand briefly rests among the incense sticks, and you notice that finally, the last of her mask is cracking on her face. Tears, small and brilliant, form in the corners of her eyes.

"Long ago," she says, every word a small, jagged piece of flint, "when the Old of the Land first mantled me in mist and death, I was led here, and burnt an offering to all who came before me, and made the same vow that I spoke: that I will keep the peace between the living and the dead, that I will safeguard the sleep of those who lay in repose, and that I will never allow the door to be opened."

She withdraws from the altar, and finally allows herself to look at the door; unlike you, it seems to bring her no pain.

"But dearer to me is this land than my soul. Forgive me, blessed ancestors."

Her hands clap together, abruptly, and the mists behind her swell. For a moment, their whispers are no longer quiet: they are a cacophony of dead voices all screaming in one, as her mantle rushes forward, ten thousand ancient souls smashing themselves against the wards. A smell of ozone and something destroyed fill the air; blinding lights crackle, and brass groans. One by one, you feel the links on the sorcerous chain snap, not artfully undone but buried under the weight of death. Lynx stares, pale in the face, her red sword pointed at the vortex surrounding Eshra, who seems so small and so frail as she batters down the holiest of holies with the legacy of her land.

It's over as quickly as it began; where there once was bronze, now there is bent, blackened wreckage, covered in thin film of ectoplasm. What little remains of Eshra's mists retreats to her like a wounded animal, and she seems almost reluctant to accept it. A darkness falls upon you, spilling out from beyond the broken gate. It drains slowly.

What it reveals is a small basilica, its vaulted ceiling covered with criss-crossing strands of magical materials. You recognize the patterns they weave together; they are ones of binding, and of warding against far-sight. The story of how they came to be unfolds before your eyes in a series of mosaics running alongside the walls. You give them a good look, wondering what they mean to Eshra and Lynx; you know what they do to you. After all, they tell the story of how a wicked pair of Exalted heroes ensnared the sea of stars below and locked them in a prison of glass. Of how with their fell crafts and the blessings of traitorous Incarna, they did worse than that: they mutilated your ancestor, massacred her soul, and from what remained created an engine of destruction so powerful that even they feared it. So they buried it, and then buried countless other dead above it, so that its tomb could remain forgotten forever.

Set into the floor of the basilica, there is a pool, still filled with inky blackness. But even through its thick veil, you can spot a glint of a celestial light below.

"An engine of war from the Realm Before…" you hear Lynx, her voice half fear, half wonder.

"Something that was never meant to be," the steward of the Land of Repose adds, dull and tired.

You are deaf to their voices. What do they know, they, the inheritors of traitorous powers, the usurpers of Creation? No, what lies buried here is your life, and your history, and you must-

A hand closes on your shoulder, strong fingers digging deep into the skin. A red sword touches your throat. You notice you stand at the edge of the pool, your reflection a murky shape in the black surface.

"I apologize, lady general," you say immediately, getting the hint.

But the black, too, responds to your presence, or maybe just to motion. With a sigh, it recedes, not as much as draining as quickly clear, as if vanishing into the air itself. When it does, at the bottom of the pool, lashed to stone with orichalcium chains, you see the shape of what they made your progenitor into. There is no choice; your knees buckle, and you prostrate yourself before the broken body, now remade into a tool of singular purpose:

A Hellstrider.

Article:

When the First Age heroes captured Iszien, the Sea of Stars Below, they enclosed her in an adamant lattice, and then cut her into a different shape, one that may serve them. They bound her remains in a shell of moonsilver and starmetal, but their efforts failed short: the prison they devised could never fully contain the demon's shattered soul, and so the puissant warstrider was deemed too dangerous to use, and sealed somewhere where no one would ever find.

But what exact function did they try to impress upon it before – and what name?

[ ] The Jagged Edge

Sleek, slim, and clad almost entirely in starmetal, the Jagged Edge could be mistaken for an ordinary warstrider, if not for its jaw full of sharp crystal teeth, each shining with wounded radiance of a crippled star. As a weapon, it is a tool of destruction up close and personal, focused exclusively on furious melee combat and killing the enemy before they can strike, even if that requires cutting through reality to get to them first.

Pick this option if you want the titular hellstrider to be a berserker engine ripping its enemies to shreds and straining against the bonds of its starmetal prison. Pick this option if you want to develop powers related to atrocious violence, teleportation, and metaphysical hunger.

[ ] The Fallen Star Omen

Armed with an adamant spear, the Fallen Star Omen strikes a figure of a gem-studded noble. Its dignified bearing is repeated in the easy grace of its movement, and the slight undoing of causality that follows in its footsteps. As a weapon, it serves well as a skirmisher, but its true power lies in its ability to twist probability, braid sorcery into it spear-strikes, and invoke omens and curses from a different era.

Pick this option if you want the titular hellstrider to be a subtle combatant utilizing sorcerous tactics, even as it lags in raw power. Pick this option if you want to develop powers related to precise melee tactics, supernatural awareness, and numinous trickery.

[ ] The Eye of Unfriendly Skies

Seven eye-lenses orbit the adamantine frame of the Eye of Unfriendly Skies, each crackling with ambient Essence. Although relatively small by warstrider standards, and seemingly fragile, it holds an air of latent threat. As a weapon, it is unique in being almost exclusively focused on long-range combat, each of its lenses capable of focusing idle Essence into powerful blasts.

Pick this option if you want the titular hellstrider to be an artillery platform that struggles in close combat, while raining impossible destruction upon its enemies. Pick this option if you want to develop powers related to overwhelming firepower, manipulation of arcane energies, and time-space twisting.