HalfTangible
Only half sane (it's less cringe)
- Location
- Valkyrie, Primus
So, we did standard character gen, which means E1. Several charms needed for this final build are E2, and so far all we've done is our Exaltations, but here's how it's gone so far, with my sheet here.
Now... the charms I be targetting:
-Piercing gaze of the unmaker (Awareness)
-Mysterious emissary mythos (Sail)
-Shade-summoning conscription (Bureaucracy)
-Summon Ghost (Occult)
The charm spread here is pretty alright, gives a lot of angles to work with. These abilities all fall under Daybreak and I'm already playing a Night Caste in another game so I went with a Daybreak.
First off, to get Piercing Gaze of the Unmaker without waiting several years to get through all the required sessions, we gotta go Awareness Apocalyptic, which means either Day or Daybreak. I also think Awareness makes for a unique charmset to go off of rather than say Melee or Stealth (both of which I've done with my Solars). Getting PGotU unfortunately ate up the vast majority of my charms, but it also created a very clear aesthetic choice: Evil all-seeing overlord, the eye of Sauron given flesh.
Second charm of note: Shade-Summoning Conscription. Essence 2, but I was able to grab its prereqs at E1 and Bureaucracy 5, so it's only a matter of time.
Summoning ghosts means that I need to be a necromancer, but Summon Ghost doesn't have a control effect so I can't select it as my first spell. Given I'm already doing the evil overlord bit, I decided on Seat of Deadly Splendor, because holy shit this spell is cool. Our GM also said this is going to be a very social game in Stygia for the most part, so a control effect that improves my ability to influence others is great.
Mysterious Emissary Mythos requires E3, so that's down the line quite a ways. But it's there, waiting to be taken, and before then I'll have to grab Scandalous Seafarer Debut as well. Which is nice.
-Piercing gaze of the unmaker (Awareness)
-Mysterious emissary mythos (Sail)
-Shade-summoning conscription (Bureaucracy)
-Summon Ghost (Occult)
The charm spread here is pretty alright, gives a lot of angles to work with. These abilities all fall under Daybreak and I'm already playing a Night Caste in another game so I went with a Daybreak.
First off, to get Piercing Gaze of the Unmaker without waiting several years to get through all the required sessions, we gotta go Awareness Apocalyptic, which means either Day or Daybreak. I also think Awareness makes for a unique charmset to go off of rather than say Melee or Stealth (both of which I've done with my Solars). Getting PGotU unfortunately ate up the vast majority of my charms, but it also created a very clear aesthetic choice: Evil all-seeing overlord, the eye of Sauron given flesh.
Second charm of note: Shade-Summoning Conscription. Essence 2, but I was able to grab its prereqs at E1 and Bureaucracy 5, so it's only a matter of time.
Summoning ghosts means that I need to be a necromancer, but Summon Ghost doesn't have a control effect so I can't select it as my first spell. Given I'm already doing the evil overlord bit, I decided on Seat of Deadly Splendor, because holy shit this spell is cool. Our GM also said this is going to be a very social game in Stygia for the most part, so a control effect that improves my ability to influence others is great.
Mysterious Emissary Mythos requires E3, so that's down the line quite a ways. But it's there, waiting to be taken, and before then I'll have to grab Scandalous Seafarer Debut as well. Which is nice.
---
Nara was once a prince of the lake-dotted kingdom of Spandrel, and while he was handsome and renowned, he was also an immensely paranoid man who tended to drive potential friends away. This paranoia eventually caught up to him. His uncle Isstep had privately objected to the king of Spandrel's growing relations with Rake, seeing Queen Lapis' overtures as a threat to the kingdom. Nara took this to mean that Isstep would soon kill the king and seize power for himself. This would not be the first time Nara hired assassins to
However, Nara made two critical errors: the first was that he went through unofficial channels, and the Forrester Guild (Spandrel's legally sanctioned assassin guild) caught wind of the attempt, captured the would-be-assassin, and convinced him to turn Nara in to save his own skin. The second was that Isstep was a high-ranking member of the Forrester guild, and one of his father's favorite relatives.
Nara did not even attempt to defend himself at trial, seeing that it would do him little good and writing himself off as a lost cause. His sentence was execution by drowning, and so he was brought to prison. No one but his governor visited him (and then only to offer the mercy of a poison-induced stupor) before he was drowned in his cell.
Darkness took him, and he floated motionless in darkness for what felt like days. Drowning was a particularly painful way to go, and before long he couldn't even move. The pain only grew, and his energy only fled further, a motionless agony in which he could not even scream.
Then from the darkness a great dead eye opened beneath him, revealing seven stone coffins the size of mountains, and terror such as he'd never known gripped his soul. But a woman was there, and she spoke to him. She called herself the Black Heron, and him a singular gem. She had come to offer him a choice she'd never had. His pains vanished, and she made her offer: be Chosen, arise from this death into life everlasting, and become the first trumpt that heralded Creation's fall.
Nara once might have objected; he'd heard of Thorns' fall, he knew what she was offering, but he was no immaculate. The people he'd cared about had let him die alone and unmarked. And he was too tired, in too much pain, too broken to be brave in the face of the death he had seen.
He owed no one anything.
And so, the Prince Forever Drowning Alone arose on the shores of one of Spandrel's great lakes. The Black Heron spoke to him again, bidding him to travel to Sijan, and from there to Stygia...
However, Nara made two critical errors: the first was that he went through unofficial channels, and the Forrester Guild (Spandrel's legally sanctioned assassin guild) caught wind of the attempt, captured the would-be-assassin, and convinced him to turn Nara in to save his own skin. The second was that Isstep was a high-ranking member of the Forrester guild, and one of his father's favorite relatives.
Nara did not even attempt to defend himself at trial, seeing that it would do him little good and writing himself off as a lost cause. His sentence was execution by drowning, and so he was brought to prison. No one but his governor visited him (and then only to offer the mercy of a poison-induced stupor) before he was drowned in his cell.
Darkness took him, and he floated motionless in darkness for what felt like days. Drowning was a particularly painful way to go, and before long he couldn't even move. The pain only grew, and his energy only fled further, a motionless agony in which he could not even scream.
Then from the darkness a great dead eye opened beneath him, revealing seven stone coffins the size of mountains, and terror such as he'd never known gripped his soul. But a woman was there, and she spoke to him. She called herself the Black Heron, and him a singular gem. She had come to offer him a choice she'd never had. His pains vanished, and she made her offer: be Chosen, arise from this death into life everlasting, and become the first trumpt that heralded Creation's fall.
Nara once might have objected; he'd heard of Thorns' fall, he knew what she was offering, but he was no immaculate. The people he'd cared about had let him die alone and unmarked. And he was too tired, in too much pain, too broken to be brave in the face of the death he had seen.
He owed no one anything.
And so, the Prince Forever Drowning Alone arose on the shores of one of Spandrel's great lakes. The Black Heron spoke to him again, bidding him to travel to Sijan, and from there to Stygia...
---
I wanted the Prince's big tragic flaw to be his paranoia that pushed others away because I thought it played well with an awareness apocalyptic. I also ended up changing his name from The Hunter of Forlorn Beauty to The Prince Drowning Alone because I thought that A) it was a more evocative image, and B) it both points to his death and the crippling isolation that ended up being what his character is built around.
In life, he was a prince, and so most people who tried to befriend him did so for personal, selfish reasons, and he would shun such people. It made him watchful for any potential betrayal. However, in the end, his paranoia did more harm for him than good: whatever genuine friendships he might have been able to form ultimately died because he was always looking out for those same betrayals no matter who he spoke to. He got caught in this self-fulfilling prophecy and slipped deeper and deeper into isolation, coming to believe that his 'real self' was repulsive.
In the Prince's mind, had his plan to kill Isstep gone off without a hitch, his treachery would've been revealed, and everything would've been fine. But he had to make do with some rando who betrayed his trust immediately.
Spandrel is mentioned in AT8D, but it's got almost nothing about it except that Rake is trying to ally with it and that it has several great lakes. When I told the GM I wanted the prince to be drowned, he was intrigued, because that implies quite a few things about the culture the Prince came from. The assassin guild was his idea, something he pulled from Morrowind. He also convinced me to make the crime that gets the Prince executed something he genuinely attempted himself (I originally wanted either for the Prince to be framed for regicide, or for a more minor crime to go wrong and balloon into something execution worthy)
In life, he was a prince, and so most people who tried to befriend him did so for personal, selfish reasons, and he would shun such people. It made him watchful for any potential betrayal. However, in the end, his paranoia did more harm for him than good: whatever genuine friendships he might have been able to form ultimately died because he was always looking out for those same betrayals no matter who he spoke to. He got caught in this self-fulfilling prophecy and slipped deeper and deeper into isolation, coming to believe that his 'real self' was repulsive.
In the Prince's mind, had his plan to kill Isstep gone off without a hitch, his treachery would've been revealed, and everything would've been fine. But he had to make do with some rando who betrayed his trust immediately.
Spandrel is mentioned in AT8D, but it's got almost nothing about it except that Rake is trying to ally with it and that it has several great lakes. When I told the GM I wanted the prince to be drowned, he was intrigued, because that implies quite a few things about the culture the Prince came from. The assassin guild was his idea, something he pulled from Morrowind. He also convinced me to make the crime that gets the Prince executed something he genuinely attempted himself (I originally wanted either for the Prince to be framed for regicide, or for a more minor crime to go wrong and balloon into something execution worthy)
