From the outside, a duel between psionics isn't particularly interesting. Two parties on separate continents furrow their brows, spend a few minutes in a deep and frantic sleep, until one or both of them drops dead.
The nature of the injury is unimportant. What is important is that the two of you can no longer coexist, and so one must eliminate the other. When wizards fight, the countryside is usually left a smoking crater haunted by screaming dead. We psionics prefer our battles to involve much less collateral(although no less violence).
Our battlegrounds are dreams and memories. Or weapons are ideas and emotions and arguments, manifested in metaphor. When wounded, we bleed conviction and memories. We live in the Dreaming, the unconscious sea that all reality rose from. Our battles are abstract, but the stakes are no less dire than those fought in trenches and tanks.
The rules of war are thus:
1. The battle is to the death. Once we begin, neither will stop until the other's Self is completely and utterly destroyed.
[ ] Write-in| What is the appearance of your Self? This is how you look, your self-image. It could just be a person, or it could be something very exotic. Images are welcome, but a textual description will also suffice. Your opponent will compliment you.
2. We meet at a pre-determined place in the Dreaming. Somewhere we both know intimately, so neither has an advantage.
Where is the battleground?
[ ] A Spring Memory
A field of flowers and grass, and sunlight(with no need for a sun). A gestalt of good times and warm afternoons. It will look very different by the time we are done.
[ ] The Fallen City
A once-great city, fallen to rubble. Vague memories of collapsed empires and besieged boulevards, mixed together into a jumbled soup of architecture.
[ ] Glacier of Abandoned Dreams
All in the name, really. Cold and mournful, a frozen graveyard for what could have been.
[ ] Nightmare Warren
A termite mound for bogeymen and night terrors. The place they return to after collecting their nightly harvest of adrenalin and cold sweat. You'll half as much time fighting them as each other, but that's part of the fun.
[ ] The Clocktower
A sprawling infinity of giant nonsense-clockwork. The repository where wasted time is collected, for potential recycling. If you cause too much damage here, it will have rather catastrophic consequences to the human perception of time.
[ ] The World-stage
The ongoing stage-play of the Thespian(who has generously allowed us to use his Demense for the duration of the duel(one has to wonder why). At any time, the scene could change, and we'll have to adapt our battle to the new genre. Psionic warfare requires improvisation, but never so literally as here.
[ ] Write-in
Quite literally whatever you can imagine. Looney Toons, roller coasters, college classrooms and giant teacups. Any venue is fair game(I reserve the right to veto).
3. According to the most stringent rules, we should involve an unbiased third party to act as Judge. A Judge ensures that both parties are playing fairly and abiding by the rules(and will join the fight against the rule-breaker, if the violation is stringent enough). Of course, you might argue that cheating makes the game more fun. Besides, we've known each other for so long. Can't we trust ourselves to kill each other with honor?
Bring a Judge?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
If no, do you cheat? (if you do, your opponent is more likely to cheat as well)
[ ] Perish the thought
[ ] Of course
-[ ] Bring poison
Something to numb your opponents nerves, slow their thoughts, give you that small edge. -[ ] Bring an ally
Another psionic(or something stranger) who can strike your opponent at just the right time. -[ ] Bring a memento
A memory of something they lost. Psychological warfare of the worse kind. Banned in Duels, for the same reason that mustard gas is banned in the Wake. This crosses the line from mild dishonor into actual evil. -[ ] Write-in
Use your imagination.
4. No punches below the belt, but anything else goes. These Duels are limited only by the imagination, and the strength of our Principles.
What are your Principles? In the Wake, your limitations are determined by things like strength and agility. In the Dreaming, the limits of our power have less to do with measurement and more do with poetry.
Pick three, listed in order of how they define you. Your opponent will be built to counter you.
[ ] Knock| The Knock permits no seal and no isolation. It thrusts us gleefully out of the safety of ignorance. [The Knock is the principle that opens doors and unseams barriers.]
[ ] Lantern| Lantern is the light that despises all shadows. It is the truth that pierces deception, the glare that defuses from the future, and knowledge so pure it sears the mind that holds it.
[ ] Moth| A moth's wings are dappled with dreams and lies. It yearns for the light, yet finds its way in the dark. It slips through the fingers of it's hunters, cofounds them with clever illusions, and reminds the foolish that all things came from the Dreaming.
[ ] Grail| That which you seek. Grail subverts, entices, seduces. It knows your desires, and wishes you to indulge. Mortals drink from cups, but the Grail drinks from you, and teaches us how to drink from others.
[ ] Heart| Joy, in the face of pain. Life in the face of silence. The heart beats, keeps beating, stays beating. It resists poison and despair in equal measure. [The heart is the principle that continues and preserves.]
[ ] Winter| There is a beauty known only to the dead. There are words that can only be spoken by the mouthless. The world started in fire, and it's been growing colder ever since.
Winter is endings, and patient, and everything which has not quite concluded.
[ ] Edge| Rage is the sharpest weapon, in this land below your bed. Edge destroys, and resists destruction, and struggles eternally against others and itself. Edge excises weakness, more's the pity.
[ ] Forge| When we build, we destroy. When we destroy, we create. Forge reshapes and renews, and consumes, and consumes. Sometimes when we want to become gods, we have to be our own funeral pyre.
[ ] Secret Histories| There is one future. But there are many histories. Histories are the frayed edges and the liminal spaces, the paradoxical outcomes, the conflicting reports and impossible oversights. The past is uncertain, and sometimes it can be uncertain in our favor.
5. A Duel, like a chess game, has stages. In the early game, we will fence with each other, slowly chipping away at the others defenses. Eventually, one of us will get the upper hand, and other will retreat to their Mind Palace. Your Mind Palace is your personal Demense, your sanctum, but also your greatest weakness. It is your connection to your Earthly form, and if it is destroyed you will merely be a bundle of psionic energy, adrift in the Dreaming, and at the mercy of your opponent.
What is your Mind Palace?
[ ] A Pirate Ship
[ ] A Fairy Tale Castle
[ ] A Moonbase
[ ] A Concrete Bunker
[ ] A Cottage, with Chicken's Legs
[ ] Worn Discretely, in your hat(powerful, but risky).
[ ] Write-in
Now, we know the rules. Now, the game is set. You cannot step back from this, even if you wanted to. Death or murder awaits you.
[X] Plan The Last Duel
-[X] A man about eighty years old in full dress uniform, with medals attached to his coat. He wears a long manicured beard and walks with a cane.
-[X] The Fallen City
-[X] Yes
-[X] Heart
-[X] Winter
-[X] Lantern
-[X] A Concrete Bunker
It's time to end a story of a soldier who fought and suffered for his homeland.
Does his country stand strong? Is it suffering under the yoke of invaders? Is it slowly dying, taken by the rot from inside?
It no longer matters, for this duel is his last battle. The soldier has given everything for his homeland — even the last beat of his heart will be for it.
The sun is just setting, casting the plaza in that last golden glow before the street lights turn on. It's empty, of course, but only recently. Cups of coffee still steam on the cafe tables, a bicycle's wheels are still turning from where it's been left in the street.
You inhale a puff from a cigarette, trying to remember the taste. You shouldn't be smoking, with your lungs, but then again it's not a cigarette, is it? You're not really here, you're dying in a hospital bed. If you concentrate, you can hear the beeping of the little machines.
This city, the one you were born in, and this plaza haven't looked like this for a long time. Not enough banners.
"You were my hero, you know." Says a man(a boy, really) in the seat across from you. He's wearing the dark overcoat that signifies his rank, and the badge over his heart that shows his allegiance. "You were for all of us. All those boys who joined the army to follow your example. I bought every comic they printed with your face on it. Sometimes I wished you were my father."
That's a mistake, right there. You shouldn't reveal your weaknesses, here. Not that he doesn't know all of yours, of course.
"Why." He actually sounds betrayed. "Why would you turn away from your country."
You close your eyes, exhaling one last cloud of nicotine. There used to be music here, in the plaza. A band would come every so often and play for coins. If you strain your ears, you can almost hear it.
"This." you say, finally. "is the first time, in my entire life, that I have ever been loyal to my country. To my people. I wish I had realized that a long time ago."
His gloved hands are clenched into fists. He has the gall to look hurt. Gods above, he's a child. Is he even old enough to drink? Not that it stopped you, when you were his age.
"You still have time." he says through his teeth. "You can come to your senses. Turn off the radio, and you can die a hero."
Somewhere, far away from this plaza that isn't real, is a bunker that also isn't real. In that bunker, beneath layers of cold grey concrete, lies a radio that is real in the sense that an idea is real. It is not broadcasting a signal so much as a life. Your life, every blood and shit stained memory, every scrap of intelligence that could possibly be militarily useful to the Enemies, is ringing throughout the Dreaming. You only hope it'll be enough.
"The doctors turned off my life support five minutes ago." you say, grinding your last smoke against an ashtray. "We have about thirty minutes before my little radio shuts off for good, along with the rest of me. Don't bother looking for my real body, I've hidden it well. Well enough not to matter, at least."
"Is this truly your final act? Betraying us to our enemies? Allowing your countrymen to suffer under the yoke of invasion-"
"My countrymen are being slaughtered." You growl out with a surprising amount of venom. You didn't think you had it in you. "By little fascist shits like you. My country was rotted from the inside a long time ago."
"I suppose you should never meet your heroes." He says, standing up and adjusting his tie. "Shall we begin, then?"
In the Dreaming, a pipe is never a pipe, and a cigar is never just a cigar. Anything can be a weapon, or can be made into one. The street, the tables, the tobacco smoke, even the sky can be twisted, recruited.
You've been doing it for so long, it's more natural than breathing, to look around and make your move.
Use your Imagination. The more actions you take, the more your enemy can respond.
[ ] Smash
The Heart is relentless, even a failing one like yours. Push that relentlessness, that refusal to die, into your arms, your muscles. Hulk out and rip this bastard limb from limb. [Heart. 3d6. Vulnerable to Grail]
[ ] Heartbeat
All things are alive, or remember it. Remind the ground under his feet that it used to be a star. Push enough life into it that it'll start fighting for you. [Heart. 3d6. Vulnerable to Grail]
[ ] Shut up
Invoke Winter's silence on him, for a second, long enough to prevent whatever trick he'll try to pull. [Winter. 2d6. Vulnerable to Heart]
[ ] Autumn's frost
A subtle, creeping cold that'll settle into his bones and slow him down, eventually. Not very useful right now, but it'll give you an edge later on. [Winter. 2d6. Vulnerable to Heart]
[ ] Sunburn
Narrow the setting sunbeams into one narrow lance of blinding pain. It won't do much more than disorient him, but it'll give you a window. [Lantern. 1d6. Vulnerable to Forge]
[ ] Prescience
Lantern illumines the future and everything above it. Look a few seconds ahead, to see what this bastard does next and hopefully counter it. [Lantern. 1d6. Vulnerable to Forge]
[ ] Write-in
Anything goes, but you'll have to roll for it. Say what you do, and the principle you do it with.
Stress| Sometimes you want to give an attack/move a little extra oomph, at the cost of yourself.
Current Stress: 9/9
[ ] Spend Stress
-[ ] 1
-[ ] 2
-[ ] 3
What do you spend it on? Each Stress spent increases the result by an order of Magnitude. You cannot spend more than 3 at once. -[ ] Area
-[ ] Scale
(number of targets)
-[ ] Duration
-[ ] Range
-[ ] Quality
(how difficult it is to counter)
-[ ] Force
(how much Harm is inflicted)
[X] Plan: Take Down
-[X] Step 1: Shut Up - Invoke Winter's silence on him, for a second, long enough to prevent whatever trick he'll try to pull. [Winter. 2d6. Vulnerable to Heart]
-[X] Step 2: Heartbeat - All things are alive, or remember it. Remind the ground under his feet that it used to be a star. Push enough life into it that it'll start fighting for you. [Heart. 3d6. Vulnerable to Grail]
-[X] Step 3: Prescience - Lantern illumines the future and everything above it. Look a few seconds ahead, to see what this bastard does next and hopefully counter it. [Lantern. 1d6. Vulnerable to Forge]
-[X] Spend Stress
--[X] 1
---[X] Quality of Shut Up
[X] Plan: Take Down
-[X] Step 1: Shut Up - Invoke Winter's silence on him, for a second, long enough to prevent whatever trick he'll try to pull. [Winter. 2d6. Vulnerable to Heart]
-[X] Spend Stress
--[X] 1
---[X] Quality of Shut Up
-[X] Step 2: Heartbeat - All things are alive, or remember it. Remind the ground under his feet that it used to be a star. Push enough life into it that it'll start fighting for you. [Heart. 3d6. Vulnerable to Grail]
-[X] Step 3: Prescience - Lantern illumines the future and everything above it. Look a few seconds ahead, to see what this bastard does next and hopefully counter it. [Lantern. 1d6. Vulnerable to Forge]
When you were young, like him, you favored big and flashy designs. Spells that ripped the world apart. You thought that to be truly devastating, you had to look the part. Grandiose gestures and cutting remarks. Now you know better, so you simply reach up and rip his mouth off.
For a moment, he panics, clawing at the blemishless patch of skin below his face, and you take advantage by slamming your palm onto and into the stone cobbles. You are old, so old, and so tired, but for the first time in forever you're fighting for something beyond yourself. Something right. And that rightness shows, apparently. Your pulse ripples through the stones, and street below both your feet undulates with life.
With a scream, the child-soldier rips his jaw open again, regarding you with a gaze that literally burns. But you've already dipped ahead, just the slightest bit into the future. The living road bucks like a feral horse, launching him into the air, but he reverses with hellish momentum, driving his fist into the newborn ground glowing the heat and crude savagery of a blacksmith's hammer. Your new creation screams as it dies in agony.
The living road bucks like a feral horse, launching him into the air, but he reverses with hellish momentum, driving his fist into the newborn ground-
In a blow that would have killed it, if you hadn't pumped even more of your jack-hammering pulse outward through the now-warm ground. The blow still goes home, but it is merely agonizing, and you bear the pain with it, in sympathy.
A spider-web of cracks lance through the pulsating cobblestones, veins of flesh visible underneath. Most of the cafe tables have been sent flying, but you fear this only the beginning of the destruction. You opponent rises from his knees holding a jagged shard of paving stone, still glowing with the heat of the forge. It twists in his hand as he shapes it into something else.
"You still don't understand." he says, breathing heavily. "This isn't about your insipid radio. No one cares about outdated military secrets from the lips of a dying man. This is about what we put on your gravestone. It can still be heroes monument, if you're only willing to abandon this last act of terrorism."
You grin, as your new friend breaths under your feet. "If they didn't care, they wouldn't be sending you to stop me, would they? Heroism was always a lie, I just stopped buying it."
He snarls, and we go back to killing each other.
Use your Imagination. The more actions you take, the more your enemy can respond.
[ ] Music
This plaza was once full of music, and laughter. Bring it back, and remind him what you're fighting for. [Heart. 3d6. Vulnerable to Grail]
[ ] Armaments
Give Pulsing Cobblestones some proper limbs, the better to harry this asshole. [Heart. 3d6. Vulnerable to Grail]
[ ] Snowfall
It was never actually cold enough to snow here, but Dreams have no restrictions. Start a light snowfall, enough to disorient him. [Winter. 2d6. Vulnerable to Heart]
[ ] Autumn's frost
A subtle, creeping cold that'll settle into his bones and slow him down, eventually. Not very useful right now, but it'll give you an edge later on. [Winter. 2d6. Vulnerable to Heart]
[ ] Sunburn
Narrow the setting sunbeams into one narrow lance of blinding pain. It won't do much more than disorient him, but it'll give you a window. [Lantern. 1d6. Vulnerable to Forge]
[ ] Unwilling Truth
You saw the horrible, horrible truth of your government, and the role you played in it, only at the end of your life. Show him a piece of that truth. Who knows, he might learn something. [Lantern. 1d6. Vulnerable to Forge]
[ ] Write-in
Anything goes, but you'll have to roll for it. Say what you do, and the principle you do it with.
Stress| Sometimes you want to give an attack/move a little extra oomph, at the cost of yourself.
Current Stress: 9/9
[ ] Spend Stress
-[ ] 1
-[ ] 2
-[ ] 3
What do you spend it on? Each Stress spent increases the result by an order of Magnitude. You cannot spend more than 3 at once. -[ ] Area
-[ ] Scale
(number of targets)
-[ ] Duration
-[ ] Range
-[ ] Quality
(how difficult it is to counter)
-[ ] Force
(how much Harm is inflicted)
Churning Cobblestones| Your fondest memories took place on these cobblestones, and now it's fighting beside you. It gets it's own actions, and you very much cannot spend Stress on it. But it's here, and you can ask it for help if you like. [Harm Lv. 1(-1 Effect)]
[ ] Hurt That Bastard [Heart. 1d6. Vulnerable to Grail]
[ ] Help Me [Heart. 1d6. Vulnerable to Grail]
[ ] Do something else| Write-in [Heart. 1d6. Vulnerable to Grail]
