Petals of Silver & Blood; a genre remix

"Honey"
Day Guard First Class,
Personal bodyguard and attendant to Her Highness, Ruby Nightbringer, Third Princess of the Macaria System

Background:
A Broken Thing: No one seems to know exactly who you are or what you came from, including you. Anyone who could say more than that perished in the attack. Whoever you were before, your training is unmistakable — you're absolutely lethal with any kind of a weapon in your hand.

Stats:
Blood: -2
Flame: 0
Ice: +1
Shadow: -1
Steel: +2

Powers:



Resources:
Experience: 0/4 (0 advances)

You gain one point of experience for every arc completed, and an additional point for every failed roll made.

Boosts: 0

A boost adds +1 to a roll. They are earned by taking dramatic actions or risks that significantly inconvenience or endanger yourself for the sake of your duty, convictions, and relationships.

City-station of Gloom, port district approach

Present day, two hundred fifty-two years since the arrival of the Black Ark, four years into your lady's exile...

By the time humans arrived in the Macaria system, it was already utterly hostile to life. It consisted of a scattering of desolate rocks and gas giants orbiting a star the better part of a billion years into its red giant phase. Enough mortal generations have passed that no one alive now remembers the reason for its original colonisation. It is simply taken as a given that livable space is something that has to be painstakingly clawed out of the irradiated void. These few spaces are maintained through constant labour and every bit of technological and sorcerous knowledge that humans and their undead masters can bring to bear.

Beryl is one such place. It began its existence as a large, oblong asteroid spinning cold and dead through space. Once its interior had been hollowed out through decades of mining, the resulting cavity could be shaped into a cylinder, sealed and pressurised. With great effort and expense, the entire massive rock had been set to spinning in the correct direction. Complex mirror arrays concentrate sunlight and bring them inside. The result is a densely packed mix of cityscape and carefully-cultivated greenery rolling across every curving side of the asteroid's interior. Layer upon layer of sorcerously-reinforced shielding protecting the little world's living contents from Macaria's lethal radiation.

From your current vantage point, it looks almost idyllic. With the city's sun-strips dimmed to their night setting, the towers of the city are rendered as dim shapes outlined by points of multi-coloured light, a reservoir-lake in one of the wealthier districts glittering like a black jewel. From a sufficient remove, you can't see evidence of the squalor and crime among the overcrowded slums. Neither can you see the petty corruption rampant in the city's ruling class of provincial nobles, all happy to take full advantage of Beryl's distance from the system's capital on faraway Nyx.

You stand in an elevator that steadily climbs one of the vast, flat walls capping either side of the city's cylinder, keeping a firm grip on a handhold as your body grows gradually but perceptibly lighter. The inertia from the entire colony's spin mimics gravity while standing on the surface down below, but the closer one gets to the centre of the cylinder, the less true that becomes.

"Are you certain this man is trustworthy?" your companion asks. She leans against the wall of the elevator compartment, one hand holding a long, dark case over her shoulder, looking at you with a shameless air of haughty contempt.

"No," you say, still looking out at the city. Your translucent reflection looks back at you from the glass of the elevator doors, blankly impassive. Hers does not.

When you don't elaborate, she outright glares, striking eyes narrowing into accusatory slits. "You think this is a trap, and we're still going?"

You do look at her this time. Amber is a tall, severe beauty clad in the pure black of a night guard uniform, her complexion dark but characteristically-bloodless. Her eyes are a hot, faintly luminous orange — you've always suspected they're what she's named for. You meet her gaze deliberately, despite the way this makes her bare her fangs at you. You need to remind her who has been put in charge. If you don't establish and re-establish a pecking order with a vampire, even a common-born one, she is very likely to simply assume you're at the bottom of it.

"Her Highness wished to hear him out. I am prepared to bear personal risk in her service," you say. You don't add are you?. It isn't necessary.

As the conversation has gone on, you've both continued your slow ascent into weightlessness. As you near your destination, your grip on the handle keeps you in place. By contrast, you watch Amber begin to float upward until she scrambles to grab one of her own with her free hand. She bristles even more at this latest affront from the laws of physics. "I don't need to be lectured by the princess's little wind-up chew toy. Duty only means something if you can actually think for yourself to begin with."

You don't immediately dignify that with a response. A moment later, the elevator slides up into a waiting bay, cutting the city off from sight. It locks in place with a slight jarring motion, the glass doors whispering opening up to a broad shaft, dim artificial lighting and industrial tile. It runs the length of the colony's entire docking complex, protruding out beyond the rock of the asteroid. "The risk is why you're here," you finally allow. It's been long enough that your belated reply catches her off guard.

The reminder obviously pleases her, even if she's still slightly miffed that you didn't rise to the bait of her outrageous provocation. Amber lets a smug smile break through the clouds of her expression. "I suppose you will be relying on me, won't you?" She pushes herself out of the elevator and into the shaft, hooking a nearby handhold with a foot to pull herself short. Several people in spacer's attire take great pains to divert themselves from her path — she isn't hiding what she is.

"That is the hope," you say, following at a more measured pace. You catch yourself on a handhold near to hers. "Please wait for the signal before you do anything rash."

"I remember what my job is," Amber says. She slips the strap of the case she still carries over her neck and shoulders before tightening it, slinging it securely across her back. "I'd tell you good luck with not being murdered, but you really are disgustingly bad at dying, for a mortal."

"I'll take it to heart," you say.

Amber scoffs, pushing herself down the shaft away from you. You watch her seize the edge of a passageway leading straight down, and then she's gone.

Without outward reaction, you follow suit, although you continue much further down the shaft. You don't draw quite the same alarm from the workers and petty port officials that you pass, but you don't go unnoticed. Your day guard uniform is every bit as distinctive as what Amber is wearing, and you cut an imposing figure in it — you have the kind of looks that turn heads and avert eyes, cold and unsmiling as you are. On top of that, there's the weapon you're openly armed with. Anyone who looks at you knows you serve the royal family, and in a particularly violent capacity.

You're fine with that — you are, after all, going to see some dangerous people, even if Her Highness is fond of their leader.

Article:

Apart from your lady's mark on your neck, what is your most visible scar?

[ ] [Look] A deep claw mark over your right jugular

It affects your speech, making it difficult to raise your voice.

[ ] [Look] A missing left eye

You've mostly learned to compensate over the years, although it doesn't stop people from trying to take advantage of your blind spot.

[ ] [Look] An ugly slash starting from the right of your mouth and curving up your cheek

Being expressive is difficult physically, not just by disposition.

---

What is the weapon you carry? In addition to a means of self defence, it is the mark of your personal service to a member of the royal family, the key to one of the dreaded handful of Royal War Armours.

[ ] [Weapon] An axe

An elegantly brutal, cruelly curved weapon with a sinister mein. It unlocks unyielding might and impenetrable armour.

[ ] [Weapon] A spear

Jet black synthwood marries metal of the same shade, intimidating in its length, beautiful in its simplicity. It unlocks lethal precision and death at a great distance.

[ ] [Weapon] A sword

A light, flexible blade of morbidly ostentatious design. It unlocks lightning speed and death by a thousand cuts.