Year Two: Coming To Grips
You feel blindsided.
This past year...it's just been crisis after crisis. You don't know the terrain, you don't know the players in the game, you don't know where you need to point...you just don't know.
Still, a year later you think you've managed to get a grip on things. You at least know where to look now.
You're not quite sure what to feel about some of the revelations you've been through, though. In particular...Jaffur. You have
no idea what to think about the strange vision of him that you had. First and foremost, you know that the whole situation just got a lot more complicated. Jaron is
real. A part of you hates Lady Vegeta -- not any more, that wouldn't be possible, but it's certainly reaffirmed your feelings on her. Another part doubts that it was intentional on her part. After all, when they say "When the human sleeps, the Saiyan wakes," they don't actually mean that every Saiyan alive is constantly trading off between two personalities, they just mean your human physical form gets the benefits of as much sleep as the time you spend as a Saiyan. Something like Jaffur's scenario is probably just him being weird,
again. Or him being Sealed as a Super Saiyan.
Again, you're not sure.
A part of you is wondering whether or not you should hold off on removing Jaffur's Seal. It seems like he's aware that Jaron thinks of him as his big brother, and he wants to live up to that, at least a little. Maybe it would do him good?
And then your brain spins off down a tangent about Oozaru, the god forms and maybe somehow combining them. All theoretical, of course. That kind of training is
super forbidden.
In general, you don't know exactly what to do...but at least you now know where to start.
It's enough.
News of the year!
Hello, folks, and welcome to Saiyan Radio. I'm Papata Fren, your host, here to bring you the breakdown on what all went down last year. We've brought you the news all year long, and now it's time to break down the biggest events for all us lonely Exiles.
As a reminder to all you folks, this channel is
encrypted, and the local humans don't even know that this frequency works, so please do clear your surroundings before tuning in. If you're hearing indecipherable static, that's good! On the other hand, it means you're trying to tune in from a non-networked radio, so you should feel very silly.
Folks, I'm afraid this year hasn't exactly seen much improvement from last. We've waited a year for things to settle, and unfortunately, it's all more turbulent than ever.
Clan Vegeta is seething under Lady Dandeer's reign, and the continued silence from Clan Goku's Lord and Scion on the subject hasn't helped. Everybody in the Clan hates the situation, but given the lack of any talking from the top, nobody can really do
anything about it. Our Lord is Sealed, our Scion is Sealed, and the ex-Lord is nowhere to be found. All we have is the leadership of Clan Goku, and they're not stepping up.
Oh, I suppose you could say that we have Lady Vegeta, and of course she does have the power of Regent given that she- NOBODY CARES.
She caused this problem, and nobody feels particularly great about letting her benefit from it. The order of law has broken down completely in Clan Vegeta. Heads fight each other or settle things between themselves rather than go to Lady Dandeer, and it's flying apart at the seams. Our unity as a Clan has always been based on the fact that we respect our Lords as royalty.
They aren't just mediators like in Clan Goku; they are our Princes.
Lady Dandeer has no claim to the Clan's leadership by our traditions.
...I'm sorry, that was unprofessional. I'm supposed to be impartial, ho hum. Okay.
Ex-Lord Yammar Vegeta has gone into seclusion, actively chasing away any visitors to his home. His stance on the Sealing remains unknown.
Ex-Lady Apra Goku has gone into similar seclusion. Her stance on the Sealing remains unknown.
Scion Kakara has been seen in public, but has kept a wide berth from any Saiyans, despite rumors that she's been stepping up her involvement in the human world. Combine that with her strange meeting with Lady Vegeta, and nobody is sure what's going on. Some believe she is having second thoughts and are doubting the official story of what happened at Jaffur's Sealing, but her stance on the Sealing remains unknown.
House Senzu remains hidden and unreachable, but some have claimed to have sensed Head Raditz a few times. Without evidence, the truth of these is unclear. Their current intentions are unknown.
Lord Goku continues to defend his choice in public. His own Clan makes no organized protest, but he has learned to avoid large groups of Vegetans for fear of public mockery.
The Ancestor Cult has risen into activity lately, with High Priest Celeran coming forth demanding that Dandeer Vegeta come to the Training Hall this summer to answer to the Cult for her actions. He has declared this as a part of his announcement of the Second Garenhuld Ancestral Council, drawing eyes from the secular world as well. For background, the First Garenhuld Ancestral Council took place during the reign of the first Lady, Lady Garla Vegeta. Her husband, the current High Priest's namesake Lord Celeran, was a member of the earliest, unorganized versions of the Ancestor Cult. He called the First Council to establish the formal structure of the Cult as it stands today, riding on his wife's successes in establishing the Clan system to set up a loose, if formal, hierarchy of authority. Given the groundbreaking nature of Garenhuld I, some wonder what on earth the current High Priest Celeran could have in mind.
Some speculate that the Cult intends to condemn her and cast her from the faith. To date, excommunication has not been a right given to the High Priests of the Ancestor Cult, but given the holy status of Lords and Scions in the eyes of the Cult, some wonder if the Sealing has provoked the High Priest to attempt to gain that right, and then use it. Celeran himself has remained adamantly silent to outside inquiries, insisting that it is a, "matter of the Faith."
Demands have been made of the Seers as of late to take a side in the matter of the Sealing. Carrick Balor, a noted Gokun Seer, issued this statement in response: "Get the hell off my lawn and quit bothering me. We're not a conspiracy
. If you want a prediction, I do rates by the vision. Now buzz off!" To date, that is the most comment received from any Seer on the matter.
The Sorcerers are no better organized, and no statement has been received from them as a group.
In short?
Things are flying apart at the seams, and all of the big players are big question marks.
So yeah. That's the year. I'm Papata Fren, and this has been the news of the year. I'm going to drink myself into a stupor. Humans do that on the new year, right? Yeah. That's why.
* * *
Actions Available! [12 (10 Base, 1 from Driven, 1 from A Cause]
Opportunities Available!
Masquerade: Maintaining the appearance of being a human is exhausting, but in the event of somebody investigating Earth, potentially vital. This is your part in it.
[X]Attend School (Mandatory, choose one of the following): Time-consuming, tiring, and the part that you're most likely to be discovered doing. Unfortunately, you really have no choice. Current grades: trending A-. Effect: Attend school.
-[ ] Slack (1 action): You have better things to do! Slack off on schoolwork to focus on other pursuits. Effect: Possible grade loss. You're smart and this is primary school, you you have a decent chance of not dropping a grade.
-[ ] Maintain Grades (2 actions): You're good where you are. Let's just get the effort in to stick it out and then focus on other things. Effect: Maintain grades.
-[ ] Raise Grades (3 actions): These grades are good...but they could be better. Effect: Hit the books for a possible grade gain. You are very smart, and thus should almost certainly succeed.
[ ] Strange Peg For a Strange Hole (1 action): The Misfits are, oddly enough, the place you fit into the most. So you'll make sure to put in the time to really fit in with them. Friends are nice, and they demand the extra effort. Effect: Go above and beyond the effort needed to merely
maintain your new friendships, and try to strengthen your new bonds. You will almost certainly succeed.
[ ] My Best Friend (1 action, may be taken more than once): In particular, there's one person you want to spend more time with this year. Effect: Take the time to improve your relationship with one person in particular, gaining a special trust and affection for and with them. Success is guaranteed.
[ ] Queen of the School (1 action): No better Masque than blending in! Effect: Socialize as a human and expand your current social circle. You'd do very well here, most likely.
[ ] The Power of Learning (1 action): Quite aside from school, the human world has always fascinated you. Maybe you can learn something from them? Effect: Become a bookworm in (insert field of study) or just read as widely as possible if nothing specific catches your eye. This is something you'd be good at.
[ ] Improve Masque Affinity (1 action): The human world of Garenhuld offers many intriguing possibilities, but when you're Masqued, you're well aware that you're always just a little bit...off. You've never made the rookie mistake of trying to grab a chair with your tail, but it's been close. If you wish to involve yourself deeper in the human world, you'll need to improve your comfort in your Masque first. Effect: Grind your Masque Affinity, reducing your "tells" in human form and unlocking more involved options. Success in this is guaranteed with any amount of time investment; the only thing in question is how much you'll improve by.
-[ ] For bonuses, write in how specifically you'll accomplish this. In general the answer will be, "endurance training," but more specifically it'll be things that let you get more used to the differences between your two bodies. Physical activity, in other words.
Saiyan: While the Masquerade is important, you
are nobility. You really do need to pay attention to this stuff.
[X] Training (Mandatory, 1 action): You have mastered the transformation, and now all that's left is to finally reach your limits.
-[X] Train Base Strength: 375 million units...it was just last year that that felt like an unreachable pinnacle of strength. Now you look ready to hit it by the end of the year. Effect: Raise your base form's strength by conventional training. WILL COMPLETE THIS YEAR.
[ ] A Warrior's Path: being a warrior is about more than brute strength. Master the art of combat to gain your people's respect. Your mindset will hold you back in all aspects, though.
-[ ] Train Hand-To-Hand (2 actions): Jaffur showed you exactly how far you have to go. You've learned your lessons from him in dueling, and can't really improve it much farther besides, but you can improve other forms of combat as well. Effect: Train your skill in hand-to-hand combat, and thereby your facility in its involved talents.
-[ ] Train Ki Manipulation (2 actions): You already have something of a gift in this, although again Jaffur proved more skilled in the combat applications. Maybe you could close that gap. Effect: Train your skill in ki manipulation, and thereby your facility in its involved talents. You are enough of a prodigy that you would suffer no maluses to improvement here.
-[ ] Train Specific Skill (1 action, may be taken multiple times): As you train your skill in an overall field, your skill at individual techniques will rise to match it, but maybe you can focus on something in particular. Effect: Choose a specific Skill you wish to train or learn. Crowd fighting? Fighting in a team? Specific ki projection techniques like the Kikoho? Odder stuff, like the multiform? (ask your GM for an extended list of techniques if you're not sure) This would give a higher chance of success than simply training the whole related field.
-[ ] Command Training (1 action): You will be expected to lead your Clan if war comes. You may as well be good at it. Effect: Learn the art of battlefield command. Gain "Leadership" skill and set your starting skill level. Your mindset won't impact you
as badly here.
-[ ] Train Oozaru (1 action): You failed to figure this out last year, despite the very good odds in your favor. Despite that, you are determined to continue, your odd hunch growing only stronger. And with lessons learned, you
know you'll succeed this time. Effect: As the QM increasingly loses patience with the dice, automatically succeed in gaining control over the Oozaru form and gain a variable amount of strength in it.
-[ ] Maintain Your Skills (1 action): You're not really focused on training. Why is everybody so obsessed with strength, anyway? Effect: Focus only on maintaining your current standing in Combat and its component skills. Does not need to be taken if any of the above are
successfully taken. If you take some of the above but fail all of them, you still risk skill atrophy. I'll cop to it, this is for game balance over realism.
[ ] Style Training: The mark of a true warrior is one who unifies their various skills and abilities into a cohesive whole. You're not really suited to fighting, but this could help you.
-[ ] Train Style [Variable] (1 action): You've gained a comprehensive library of styles, and can now choose to pick one to begin training in if you please.
-[ ] Study Jaffur's Form (1 action): You know the first step here, but more will take time. Effect: Spend more time trying to figure out further requirements for Jaffur's form. With your brain and having made a breakthrough, you know progress to be a near-certainty.
-[ ] Create Style (2 actions): Your path is your own. You will build a style for yourself. Effect: Invest immense time and energy into building a form from the ground up. It won't be easy, and given your mindset you may fail, but the rewards are potentially enormous. Work closely with your QM to determine the mechanics.
[ ] The Mysteries: You are a Seer, an heir to the legacy of Bardock. This alone has radically changed your path in life. Yet despite this, you cannot ignore the impact of Sorcery on your life.
-[ ] Train With Sensei (1 action): Nothing for it but time. Effect: Grind your talent in Seer abilities. Sensei tells you that this will be
gruelingly hard, and take years to master no matter how much of a prodigy you are.
-[ ] Beg Sensei To Teach You [Write-In Specific Technique] (1 action): Waiting is boring. Effect: Make a hard Communication check to convince Sensei to deviate from his plan and then train the skill selected. I'll tell you if it's not a thing.
-[ ] Study Magic (1 action): You aren't a Sorcerer, and you're slightly relieved about that, to be honest. But it remains significant to you, and you want to study it. Effect: Begin scholarship into the ways of magic.
[ ] The Pulse of Life: You are a part of this society, and it's the people who make it tick.
-[ ] Socialize! (1 action, may be taken multiple times): These are the only people you can be truly honest with. You want to talk to them! But who...? Effect: Spend large amounts of time with existing friends or acquaintances to improve relationships (specify who at one person per action; presently restricted to your little brother Mato, your little sister Fasha, or your toddler brother Endivan).
-[ ] Making Friends (1 action): You kind of have a small social circle now. Let's fix that! Effect: Take advantage of social opportunities to meet new people and establish relationships.
-[ ] Family First (1 action): Your relationship with your Father has stopped actively collapsing, but the two of you are still distant from each other. You want to fix that, even though it'll never again be what it once was. Effect: Repair relationship with Dad.
-[ ] A Scion's Duties II (1 action): You've begun the first of your training and learned the basics of how your society works. Now it's time to really delve into it. Effect: Learn the art of diplomacy and Clan management at the feet of your father, improving your Communication Skill and learning about the practical side of managing hundreds upon thousands of Saiyans who all want a fight.
-[ ] Set the Record Straight (1 action): The official story is that you helped Seal Jaffur. It'll mean publicly opposing your Dad and making a definite enemy out of Lady Vegeta, but you could come forward and make your stance on the matter clear. Effect: Share the truth of the Sealing with your people. Increases societal unrest and earns you enemies.
-[ ] Garenhuld II (1 action): Society is buzzing with news of the news of the Cult demanding Lady Dandeer's presence at the Training Hall over the summer as part of a conference to address the status of the Cult in the modern world. You definitely haven't been invited, and your Dad tells you that High Priest Celeran already had the Hall booked for the day, so you doubt your presence is welcome. But this could be
important. Effect: Sneak through all of the security surrounding the Training Hall on the night of the Council, and try to listen in on what's going on.
[ ] Breaking the Seal: You know some of the details of Jaffur's Seal, and have an ally in your Grandma Apra. What else is there to do?
-[ ] Investigate Clan Vegeta (1 action): You want to know what's going on over there, and that would be a step towards breaking Jaffur's Sealing. But you're...not exactly welcome over there, at the moment. Effect: At great risk, sneak around Clan and House Vegeta to find out more about the situation there, including specifics about its ruling House. If caught, enormous repercussions would ensue.
-[ ] Investigate Clan Goku (1 action): It would be rather easier to sound out your own Clan. Nobody would question that. Effect: At no risk, poll your Clan to find out the specifics of any tensions regarding Jaffur's Sealing.
-[ ] Contact House Senzu (1 action): House Senzu has withdrawn from society at large with all members, including their Sorcerer, and their Senzu Beans in tow, but when last you met you were allies. Perhaps if you find them...somehow...you can be again. Effect: Search for House Senzu, and if possible bring them in on the plot.
-[ ] Contact Yammar Vegeta (1 action): The Butcher of House Talt has a history dripping with blood, all in the defense of his House and Clan. You doubt he appreciates what's happened. Effect: Sound out Yammar Vegeta, and if possible bring him in on the plot.
-[ ] Sound Out Sensei (1 action): Your Sensei is a Seer, like you, and seems sensible. You think he should understand why you're working to reverse this. But...depending on how aware he's being of the future, even deciding to talk to him will tip him off to your intentions. Effect: Take a risk. Chance your Sensei blowing your newborn conspiracy wide open, and try to sound out his opinion. If possible, bring him in on the plot.
-[ ] Smash the Seal (1 action): You have waited long enough, and know all you need to, in your estimation. Go. Gather what you have, and go. Effect: War conference with present allies and assets to throw together a plan for the final destruction of Jaffur's Seal. Then, make the call on whether or not it's time to go.
[ ] Personal: Sometimes, you just want to do things on your own time.
-[ ] Ki (1 action, may be taken multiple times): Despite your disinterest in fighting, you really do like using your Ki, and you're good at it! Effect: In your spare time, improve Ki Talents (1 per action).
-[ ] New Tricks (1 action): You are a prodigy in ki use. Surely you should be able to figure out some new techniques. Effect: Discover new ki talents, if applicable.
-[ ] The Examined Life (1 action): You are made up of many small facets. After your revelation with your sense of pacifism, you want to reflect on another, and delve into its secrets. Effect: Select one trait to reflect on and develop,
excluding Pacifist, which must be further developed through play.
* * *
The First and Second Vatican Ecumenical Councils were meetings called by the Pope in the Vatican City in 1869 and 1962 among leaders of the Catholic Church, each with the intention of determining the Church's direction amongst the changes occurring in the world of the time. They are informally referred to among Catholics as "Vatican I" and "Vatican II," and represented sea changes in the policies and doctrines of the church of the day. One illustrative example: Vatican I formally adopted the popular (within the Church of the time, across the whole of the world) concept of Papal Infallibility. It also laid out the guidelines of when the concept applied. Previous such councils had been held, but outside the Vatican. The rulings of these councils are famously controversial; Infallibility, while largely popular, had been the subject of flat-out denials from the entirety of the bishops of Ireland in the years before Vatican I and prompted further denials and a minor schism among some German, Austrian, and Swiss parishes once it was dogmatized. Rulings from Vatican II retain their controversy today, over fifty years later. While these controversies are ultimately insignificant in the face of the fact that the vast majority of Catholics accepted the rulings of the Councils immediately, they nonetheless are loud controversies.
This is the scope and impact I have chosen to borrow for the Second Garenhuld Ancestral Council.
Now, before everybody rushes to throw it into their votes, consider: you're not welcome there. What's the fallout going to be if you sneak in, and get caught, at something of such significance?
I'd like to freeze voting on this for a bit to encourage discussion; no votes within twelve hours of this update going up will be counted. Enjoy, and have fun figuring out what you'd like to do! I am still considering write-ins, so if you have an idea, feel free to mention it.
And, finally:
THIS VOTE IS NOW CLOSED.
