Episode 1: Regicide

[Marullus]

Regicide

The gates of the Royal Palace of Ambaret have been breached. You are among the first to break ranks and seize the bounty that the ruling class seized for themselves. The realities of power are not what you expected. The palace is filled with treasure, but also with the sins and secrets of the monarchy. Monstrous relatives. Monarchists without a job protecting a pretender to the throne. Other revolutionaries competing for pillaging rights. What will you find when you finally have access to the inner lives of the nobility?

Toram, the rugged blacksmith. The only cultist of the Great Serpent to survive a recent purge of Naganeh. He seeks Power, that which he needs to win the heart of the heir of Naganeh and, through their union, make the cult of the Great Serpent the state religion. (Rituals: Enliven an effigy, sever and control a limb)
Endurance, Metal, Weapons, Deception. Ruin: 3 / 6

Desarim, an orphan of wood. Living wood come to life in Ambaret, the heart of the great city. He learned to mimic humanity, driven by his desire to restore the Caliginous Grove, bringing the Kalduhr Forest to the heart of the polis. (Rituals: transform into a tree, communicate with other trees, create a spring of water with a touch, alter or throw your voice.)
Alchemy, Rituals, Symbols, Mimicry. Ruin: 4 / 6

Nimah, a girl with whispers of the witch. An innocent lamb, this young noble girl of Levasti follows the steps of her Nonni, heeding the voice of the Witch in her dreams. (Rituals: draw a door and walk through it, conjure apples, force a spirit to be reborn in a new body.)
Innocence, Sacrifice, Rituals, Appraisal. Ruin: 4 / 6

Neven, a scout returned from war. Though war marks his soul, he wanders alone without a unit. Perhaps a survivor, or a deserter, this wandering refugee seeks the lost banner of The Nameless Legion to heal what was lost... or taken from him. (Rituals: None.)
Foraging, Hunting, Paths, Disguise. Ruin: 1 / 6

[Marullus]

This story is in Ambaret, with an uprising against the monarchy, the doors of the royal palace already sundered during this day. In this wildly, frighteningly, magical world, it is the King and his court whose powers create law and order. Who subjugate and bridle the raw power of the Kalduhr forest at the heart of the realm. Who structure the realm into roads, towns, and cities for the benefice of men.

...It is the King who ordered Toram's village destroyed in war. Who imprisons the heir of Naganeh within the palace.
...It is the royal magic which subjugates the Caliginous Grove, a preserved piece of the Kalduhr at the city's heart that allows subjugation of the greater forest through magical principles of sympathetic magic.
...It is the King who is the object of the seething hatred of the Witch of Nevask, raw emotion that Nimah feels in her soul each time she wakes, a wish for vengeance for a deep and personal wrong.

You stand in the Royal Park, a wide swath of mowed grass, a thin line of trees, serving to visually and physically separate the teaming city of Ambaret from the Royal Palace. An ostentatious piece of largess, to be sure, such a large field of empty ground in the heart of a city where land is such a premium, but it makes its statement about the gulf between the royals and the people, about the separation of the nobles from the unwashed, teaming streets.

As the closest any commoner would get to the noble edifices, the Royal Park is a charming location—it is beautiful under the moonlight, and dotted by artificial grottoes and cascades, transplanted ancient trees, and marbled belvederes. The idyllic paths lead to the central entrance of the Royal Palace—a sturdy white wall protects a purely decorative gate, the stone decorated with intricate tiles. Those foolish enough to study the patterns on the tiles are assaulted by headaches and terrors.

Prompts:

• Introduce and describe yourself as you meet your companions in the Royal Park.
• What did you do earlier today? Did you contribute to the sparks that became the flame of this insurrection, or were you a bystander now opportunistically here? Is this a culmination of your efforts and desires, did you desire something else and it is now out of hand, or did you not foresee this coming?
• What lies within the palace that you desire enough to risk yourself to acquire it? The ostentatious wealth of the nobility? Some specific form of power you can seize for yourself to achieve your real goal? Something else more personal?
• Whom among your companions is the one with which you have the strongest bond? What past event or experience leads you to this relationship? (Pick another PC)

[Enoch]

Prompts:

• Introduce and describe yourself as you meet your companions in the Royal Park.
• What did you do earlier today? Did you contribute to the sparks that became the flame of this insurrection, or were you a bystander now opportunistically here? Is this a culmination of your efforts and desires, did you desire something else and it is now out of hand, or did you not foresee this coming?
• What lies within the palace that you desire enough to risk yourself to acquire it? The ostentatious wealth of the nobility? Some specific form of power you can seize for yourself to achieve your real goal? Something else more personal?
• Whom among your companions is the one with which you have the strongest bond? What past event or experience leads you to this relationship? (Pick another PC)

Nimah sits quietly on a bench in a well-apportioned gazebo, dressed in a gown rather too formal and expensive for traipsing through a park, even a royal one. She is a rather attractive young woman, with raven-dark hair with a single lock of white that tends to slip down over her brow. Her face is narrow, but not displeasingly so; and her aquiline nose is raised in a slightly haughty manner as if there is something displeasing about the odor of the rabble that streams through the park this day. She seems calm, although she occasionally rubs her hands together as if washing them.

Earlier That Day...

The young woman watches nervously around the bole of a majestic oak as her two servants--bodyguards, really--engage the guards at the sally port in a heated conversation. She draws a deep breath, then releases it in a huff. She scurries off through the park, approaching the palace wall. The guards are still in sight, but distracted, as she sketches a small, narrow arc on the wall with a bit of chalk, only slightly taller than she is. She discards the chalk and pulls the doll from her purse, chanting the rhyme her grandmother taught her. She stabs the doll through the heart with the sharpened sprig--hawthorn, for emotional healing--and sets the last gift her grandfather gave her at the foot of the door-drawing.

One last glance at the guards, now shooing away her servants. It was now or never. She pushes on the wall and it swings open with a soft grinding sound, and a few moments later she's opening the sally port from within, momentarily stunned at the sight of the now-dead guardsmen. She never knew that people could bleed so much.

One of her servants grasps her gently by the elbow and leads her back into the park, as rough men and women already elbow their way past, through the sally port and into the palace of the hated king.

[buddha]

Now…

Desarim staggers as he returns to his carved form, the branches of the oak he had spent the last few days in the form of shivering and retreating into his smaller ligneous Manikin body, the air tinged with the scent of loam and ozone as he releases the power that held him in the heart of the oak. As the green leaves settled around his whittled limbs and become a verdurous hooded robe from which peers what looks like the empty-eyed mahogany mask of an ornately bearded man, he moves forward to the palace wall.

Then…

For months he had petitioned the Royal Palace for an audience with the King or one of his magistrates, only to be rebuffed time and again. He had retreated to the park outside the palace gates to, in his slow way, think through this setback. He had been so sure that if he could just speak to the King and present his case that they would see that keeping the Caliginous Grove separated from the Khaldur Forest would only lead to stagnation and rot, that the power that kept the Grove would be tainted and feed back into the royal court itself… Foolish, he had thought, but I am patient and can wait. Eventually they must speak to me. Eventually they must see the truth. But even with his credentials from the Undeemous Academy, he had been refused any audience. And then today! A human youngling had rested herself against his trunk, and then approached the palace wall to make markings upon it. Then in a flare of that bright spark that humans use for magic, she had vanished through the wall itself.

Now…

Curious, Desarim now resumes his carved form and hies after her. He kneels down by the wall, gently touching the doll the youngling left behind, pierced by a twig of thornapple. A sacrifice for her magic? he wonders. He traces the arc of white she had drawn upon the wall. A lingering sense of her magic is upon the wall. Can Desarim use it to slip through the wall as well?

Rolls Dice (Rolls Light 3, I don’t think there’s real risk, but just in case, I rolled Dark 2. Result = You fail, and things get worse. The gm describes how, which may or may not be connected to one of the ideas offered when you asked what could go wrong. The gm may also allow you to succeed, but things will get worse in some other way.)

He pushes lightly upon the wall, all his senses, both mundane and magical focused on the task of following the youngling’s magic. Oblivious to the outside world, he doesn’t even see the youngling led back to the park, or the gathering mobs converging on the nearby sally port…

[mightywombat]

• Introduce and describe yourself as you meet your companions in the Royal Park.
• What did you do earlier today? Did you contribute to the sparks that became the flame of this insurrection, or were you a bystander now opportunistically here? Is this a culmination of your efforts and desires, did you desire something else and it is now out of hand, or did you not foresee this coming?
• What lies within the palace that you desire enough to risk yourself to acquire it? The ostentatious wealth of the nobility? Some specific form of power you can seize for yourself to achieve your real goal? Something else more personal?
• Whom among your companions is the one with which you have the strongest bond? What past event or experience leads you to this relationship? (Pick another PC)

Toram glances up from his work, hammer coming to rest on the steel face of the anvil with a rattle. He rolls his tight shoulders as he watches the agitated throng of commoners flow with purpose past his shop. He runs his calloused hand through his thicket of graying beard, lost in consideration for a moment, then thrusts the horseshoe still grasped in his tongs into a barrel of sand--better for the metal to cool slowly. He thinks to himself, Why bother with that? It's doubtful you're coming back here.

He reaches under the forge and removes a leather-wrapped bundle, opening it to reveal a slender stiletto, the handle carved in the form of a twisted serpent, the blade growing from its gaping mouth like a single silver fang. Toram touches the wooden snake's head reverently and tucks the dagger into his boot. He takes up a long, broad-bladed knife and joins the crowd streaming towards the palace grounds. Neven had insisted the heir to Naganeh had been captured and was being held in the palace. Could the scout be trusted? Irrelevant. Toram would not get another chance like this. He had to have faith. The heir is the last, best chance for the cult of the Great Serpent to regain a foothold in Naganeh and rise to power again.

He moves with the crowd as they surge against the gate and overwhelm the poorly prepared contingent of guards. Now inside the palace grounds Toram breaks from the mob and assesses his options. With the palace surrounded by the rising tide of the disgruntled masses of Ambareth, the king and his guards were trapped, fighting a losing battle. Or would he scurry away through some hidden tunnel, into the sewers and then out beyond the city walls? No doubt the rat has a warren of secrets beneath the palace. But would he be keeping the royal heir of Naganeh there, or in more comfort, under house arrest in some posh suite of rooms, no less of a prison? He had to find someone in the know before they all got their heads bashed in by angry starving peasants...

[Marullus]

Nimah, a precocious girl with raven-dark hair and a single lock of white, wearing a noble's formal gown, sits in a gazebo with upturned nose as the commoners filter into the palace grounds. It was her use of grandmother's magic which allowed her to open the Sally Port from the inside... she both feels the power of her action and the distaste at the actors who now benefit. The hatred of the Witch pulses jubilantly within her heart, an external feeling which she has yet to fully distinguish from her own.

OOC:

Any use of a ritual requires a Risk Roll. Since this is solely within the flashback (she opened the Sally Port earlier in the day and so is actually responsible for the whole invasion) and doesn't modify the current scene, I won't make it be one. Instead, I'll just describe the process below for learning purposes...

Nimah gets 1 light die for either Rituals or Sacrifice in this moment. I will play off her sacrifice and offer the devil's bargain that her grandfather's livery on the doll is recognized and comes back up in a future scene. She must add a dark die for risking her soul because it is a ritual.
Light dice: [1d6]=5[1d6]=2 Dark dice: [1d6]=2
"4–5: You succeed, but there’s some kind of complication." If James wants to try for a 6 (total success), he can add a second dark die and reroll all four dice. If he gets the 6, he will evade detection, but if the 6 is black, it raises her Ruin.

Desarim, patient as an oak, finally sees opportunity to find and appeal to the King, that he might release his magics that separate the Caliginous Grove from the Khaldur forest. A mahogany mask of an ornately bearded man within a verdurous hooded robe, the manikin approaches the wall, curious about the magic of the chalk door. The effect of it, however is not long a mystery. Opened from the inside, the mutiny against the palace begins, the attack of the day and the slaughter of battle, blood saturating the roots of what grows within the wall. The girl is roughly tossed out into the park again and he recognizes her act in triggering to day's events, the rough ingratitude of those who benefited from it. As the dusk falls, he watches the rough and dangerous intent on the face of those who now approach or depart, the stream thinned and the battle waned that he might consider his entry.

The girl sees a mohagany manikin near the wall, watching her placidly as she sits on the bench, even as she spies Toram the blacksmith approaching up the paved walkway. She has liked the gruff smith, who while rough on the exterior still is kind to children.

Toram runs a calloused hand through his thicket of graying beard, clinging to hope that he can rescue the Heir of Naganeh from within before the crowd can befall her. He sees the precocious noble girl who visits his shop sitting in the bench... the girl who first gave him hope, talking weeks ago of a noblewoman haughty in spite of her chains that might have been the Heir.

The entrance through the wall into the outer palace courts stands before you, the bloody remains of the day's conflicts smeared upon the paving stones. Traffic is sparse now, those exhausted from the day's struggles departed with arm's full, only the occasional individual approaching as night falls. The three of you see hooded lanterns illuminating a a rag-tag group of townsfolk blocking the pathway through the outer couryard towards the palace. They each have improvised tools or the weapons of the fallen guardsmen as they cluster around a small campfire made of smashed furnishings on makeshift seating. They see Toram approaching on the pathway and wave to him, waving him over in good spirits.

Stated Hopes/Goals marked in italics. What draws Nimah back into the palace now?
How do you each respond to the militia?