Casta Explains It All
Casta has flipped back to the Nameless by the power of L-word and explains everything she knows about the meta-plot.
To make a long story short, the gang has been semi-accidentally set up to be the inciting parties for a theistic rebellion against the Immortal Emperor. They have the blood of one of his Chosen on their hands, and are already a collection of rebels, misfits, ne’er-do-wells, and cultists. The Namelesss will soon need to decide if they want to work very hard to cover this up, or lean into trying to topple the Emperor.
[Technically this is a roleplay thread on the Discord rather than a play session, but the info is still very important & should be citable!!]
Confessions
Her voice remains steady and her eyes are clear throughout her recitation. Only the constant staccato tapping of her foot betrays any inner turmoil.
“So . . . the Emperor ain’t doing good. Like, emotionally and shit.
“My family an’ most o’ my friends’ve known him f’r centuries now. Hell, my parents broke faith with their gods to follow him. Y’all’ve heard about how the Immortal Emperor led a rebellion against the gods, shattered their empires, stole their Chosen, all that? Well, my ma and dad used ta work for one of those Chosen, so they were right there at the start of it all. They were there when the Emperor stole the Chosen, and they were right at the front lines when the gods died and the Empire was formed. Talk to any of my parents an’ their friends, and they’ll tell ya that was the best day of their life.
“Thing is, then you’ve got an empire to run an’ make work, an’ that’s HARD. More’n that, it’s boring as shit. An’ when you’ve got almost a thousand years between you an’ the best day of your life, an’ maybe an eternity of stuff that’s boring as shit to look forward to . . . Well, ya get bored. An’ none of us really know what happens when a god-killing immortal superhuman gets bored with running the world.
“Most o’ my family are in denial about it, of course. Like, ya can’t tell them that the man they pledged everythin’ to is gettin ennui or whatever. An’ even if they didn’t have him up on a pedestal, they’re . . . kinda catty bitches, honestly. Everyone loves the Emperor, but all of ‘em think they deserve to be a little higher up in the hierarchy than the others. Like, the Emperor had nine Chosen at his back. Right now, there’re . . . maybe three left? Two an’ a half if ya count Blighter. Everyone’s too busy adoring the Emperor and backstabbin’ one another to actually see what’s happenin’.
“So, Scurlock an’ Breaker put together a plan that’d maybe liven things up a little.
“Started out as Breaker’s idea. For all that she was big into shattering the old world, she was actually a real sucker for keeping memories alive. So, the way she figured it, best way to keep him interested’d be ta give him a hit of nostalgia. Bring back the days of the rebellion, except THIS time, the rebellion’d be against him, by the gods.
“She an’ Scurlock settled here, at Duskwall, an’ started putting things together. One of the biggest battles of the Rebellion happened here, an’ the Emperor had sealed three of the god’s Chosen in a stone tomb as punishment for their crimes. They figured these Chosen’d be great figureheads for the rebellion, but the trick was gettin’ ‘em out in the first place. The tomb’s a real piece of work, apparently, an’ they couldn’t figure it out themselves. They needed some expert thieves, bound to them by money and magic but completely deniable in case the Emperor or someone caught wind of what they were doin’.
“So, y’know, that’s where y’all came in.
“It went good, for a bit. Y’all’re stupid good at what you do, an’ most of you didn’t really seem to care what the job was as long as y’all got paid. But then Scurlock got aced by those Cult of Vazara fucks an’ it all went to hell. Total luck that the Dimmer Sisters picked his spirit up, and even more luck that y’all were able to break him out of Blighter’s body when I hired y’all that one time. But the binding was fucked now, an’ those Vazara shits had more juice than they should’ve had. Figured this meant the Chosen were starting to get free on their own and we might ACTUALLY have a god rebellion coming, so Scurlock an’ me kinda . . . pivoted.
“An’, y’know, didn’t go EXACTLY as intended, but at the end of it all, Breaker was dead an’ there was Chosen magic all over her apartment. Render’ll sniff that out as soon as he comes looking, an’ then we were gonna figure out how to kill him too. If we could do THAT, and get the Chosen out . . . Well, that’s a real rebellion!
“And maybe that’ll be wild enough, interesting enough, that the Immortal Emperor won’t get bored and break the world all over again.”
She takes a deep breath, having emptied her lungs on her recitation.
“But . . . yeah, now Scurlock’s in the box. And Render’s in Duskwall. And I dunno what comes next, really, but . . . y’all killed Breaker, y’all’ve been marked plenty by ghosts of the gods and their believers, and y’all have kind of a rap sheet. If they find you, an’ find out what you’ve done . . . Well, they’re gonna make some assumptions about who’s doing the rebelling around here.”
Arkin is quiet for a bit, leaning against the far wall from Casta. The scar on his neck aches. Finally he speaks, badly hiding his interest and anger. “Two questions. First, what is the box?”
“So . . . Ya know Blighter? Maybe ya met one’ve her ghosts walkin’ around the place. Anyway, when the rebellion ended an’ the Empire was founded, it got clear really quick that Blighter wasn’t gonna be happy standin’ still and lettin’ things run. She’s too finicky, ya know? Can’t see a thing without wantin’ to pull it apart. So, after a while, Breaker got some people together an’ took her apart. The Emperor wouldn’t let ‘em kill her, cuzza what she did for him, but she’s in pieces now. The box is a big piece. The Dimmers make sure that piece gets a chaperone and gets ta go out an’ see things, kinda. Keeps her happy, in a way, ya know?”
Dr. Yekaterina Volkova selected one of the few places to sit in the Nameless lair, an armchair that had seen better days. A nicer person likely would have given up her seat to the elderly (Linmer was right over there), but that would have come at the consequence of denying her the drama of putting her hands on her knees and rubbing her face. “And now Scurlock is… with her? In her? I suppose they will not hold hands and braid each other’s hair in there.”
“I . . . am gonna be real with you, I got no fuckin’ idea. Blighter’s Blighter, but Scurlock ain’t like most eidolons anymore. I ain’t a ghostologist or whatever but it’s probably messy in there.”
Sizzle looks up from the spread of sandwiches on the buffet table, brow furrowed. “– and what the hell’s an eye-dolin?”
“Oh, yeah! Uh, sorta like a big bag of spirits. Ya hook enough of ‘em up in the right way, give ‘em a body, and some really interesting things start to happen. Back in the day, Breaker’s Shadow Witches used to pool their power like that. Nowadays, most eidolons’re the spirits of the people that fought for the Immortal Emperor back in the day. Like, not everyone ended up immortal after everything was said and done, ya know? So, at first it was a reward f’r service, but after a while it was just Breaker doin’ it. Never got why.”
“We should… probably not use the box as a drum kit anymore.” Katya’s eyes flash towards Arkin for the first time since she locked him in a sound booth the night prior. Whoops.
“Agreed. We should dump it in the deepest part of the ocean. It’s too dangerous to have it around.” Arkin locks eyes with Katya. Of all the people he’s angry at right now, she is surprisingly not one of them. He knows how smart she is and he also knows how much of an idiot she is. Honestly, he’s grateful that it wasn’t worse.
“Oh! Now there’s an idea.” Cruncho was leaned up against a far wall, arms crossed, head titled up. He bore the marks of his most recent body modification: namelly, heavy bandaging covering his eyes, and a big doofy smile plastered across his face that reflected how he was feeling about it. “Might get ta’ see if she can latch onto a Leviathan. Been wonderin’ myself if it’s possible to get away with. Proof of concept.” The unconventional Whisper had not even an ounce of sarcasm or insincerity in his voice.
At the mention of dumping things in the ocean, Orianna, until now distracted in thought, stirred for a moment, waiting for silence to fall again before speaking.
“I suppose if that works for the emperor there’s no reason it couldn’t work for us– only every adversary or ancient ghost on the continent seems to know about the prison in the ocean. If we simply, swapped? the box for the gods, perhaps that would be duplicity enough? No, maybe–” she shakes her head.
“the fucking vampire needs to come with us out there, that much is certain. He’s done enough… meddling” something feels empty about the way she says this, as if she wants to say more but has forgotten it.
“What do we need to open the prison? Did they get that far?”
If Casta notices Orianna’s jerky back-and-forth, she gives no sign. “So, that’s, like, y’all’s area of expertise, you know? The tomb’s got some juice in it ta make sure that nothin’ immortal can open it, BUT only mortals with donated power can do it. Idea was ta make sure that none o’ the Emperor’s lackeys could flip the board if they wanted the gods back.
“Also? Traps, apparently. Lots of ‘em. Some mention of ‘guardians’ too.”
Orianna nods. “Hmm, something tells me we’ll have worse to face than eidolons, but, that does give me some ideas…”
Arkin chimes back in. “Second question. Where does Vittoria Karhowl fit into this? Who is she building her army for? And why did the dimmer sisters let her go after all these years?”
“Ha! ‘Let her go’, fuck. I fuckin’ sprung her. If we were gonna fight Render, we needed some fuckin’ robot badasses, an’ she’s the queen of robot badasses (no offense). Figured we’d get Lugos’ head offa you eventually, an’ she’d be able to reprogram him to be a sleeper agent or some shit.”
Casta eyes up Arkin speculatively. “Y’all should . . . I dunno. Go for drinks or somethin’. Whatever it is y’all nerds do.”
“I don’t know. Katya, what do nerds like us do?”
Katya shrugs a bit at Arkin’s question. “In my experience, drink. Punch things. Occasionally something else.” Which pulls her attention back to their… let’s call her a keynote speaker. “It was not that long ago you tried to kill us and fucked off without a note. What changed… and how do we know we can trust you now?”
Casta sighs at this. One might assume the sigh is regretful, were it not for the repressed eye-roll. “Well . . . First off, Scurlock told me I needed to cut off distractions an’ focus on the important stuff. And I trusted him on that. He’s . . . Important to me, ya know? Or, he was, anyway.” Those who know Casta will be able to spot how half-heartedly she’d tacked on that coda.
“Secondly, Breaker dying was supposed to be on us. Figured if I cut y’all off, the rest of the stuff we were gonna do would bring the heat our way, where it belonged.
“Like, doesn’t matter WHY we were doin’ it, what we did was treason. Death sentence if we’re caught. So, yknow . . . Didn’t want that for y’all. For like, reasons and shit.” The blush here is palpable.
Orianna thinks for a moment and eyes the doors to the room. “Have you met Render? how are we supposed to defeat one of the saints? does it have a way to find us? to find you?”
“Yeahhh, he’s my parents’, like, commander an’ shit. He’s intense. They’ve mostly been assigned to keeping the Deadlands and the frontiers under control just to keep him occupied. Guy’s a fuckin’ murder machine.”
Cruncho had been patiently waiting, soaking up all the info. Bored Emperor. New rebellion. Eidolons. All throughout, bobbing his head gently side-to-side. And then the topic of the hour dropped. “I’ve been plugged into that monster for a tick or two, now. Can feel his presence burning in my blood. I think ‘intense’ is selling him a bit short.”
Casta continues. “Realistically, I dunno how we were gonna kill him, exactly. Breaker’d let herself go soft, plus y’all had that hit o’ Chosen power in the chamber. Render’s gonna be surrounded by . . . Well, my family, an’ the Crows, and the Dimmers, an’ a bunch of other nasty pieces of shit. An’ he’s still razor-sharp. Scurlock had some kinda idea but now . . . Yeah, I dunno.”
There’s something almost lupine about the way Katya’s head cocks and her eyes narrow. “The same way wolves and lions kill larger prey. We separate our target from the herd. We weaken – wound with traps, tire it out. Then, when we are the stronger ones, when the numbers are on our side… go in for the kill.”
“Well put, Katerina,” says a mechanical voice from the rafters. One of the Clockmaker’s mechanical spiders crawls forward. “I am certain that they underestimate the Nameless. You have proven quite… capable over these last months. They anticipate fools play-acting at rebellion. They will not see you for who you are until it is too late.”
One might almost think the spider had begun to smile, if it had a face. “And if you need some help from a competent mechanic, you need only ask me politely.”
“Dude, don’t make me regret inviting you.” The irritation in Arkin’s voice is palable.
Cruncho’s head bobs up, shooting a casual acknowledgement to the mechanical spider as it joined the group. Certainty not friends but…amicable acquiantances?
Orianna paces, unsteady still, then grabs a leviathan sandwich, surely meant to be cut into pieces to share, and takes a huge bite, chews, then pipes up again.
“Alright, we get numbers on our side, take out some of Renders allies, then, draw it out to sea? Surely we can do something with all the tools we’ve amassed?” She looks at Arkin and the spider, unsure which one she truly wants to address. Then, with eyes narrowed at Cruncho, “I’d like to know more about what you mean about the Saint. I know you’ve been building…. something with all these fragments, but if you mean that Render might use you against us, perhaps we should look more closely at how we can bring that to bear against it instead.”
“What do you know? I was ahead of the curve with all this ‘Eidolon’ shit”. Cruncho cracked another sly grin before wistfully pursing his lips. “…well, behind the curve, really. By a couple thousand years…but at least I came up with the same idea myself! Although it’s, uhh…not quite to my liking, turns out…”
His head hangs down and rolls a couple times, as if deeply considering a thought, before snapping back up.
“Right. Render. Had a deal with Breaker, once. Service for power, but she up and died before I could do anything about it. Seems the deal defaulted to the big boy. Occasionally sends me visions to communicate. The kind of visions where you can feel his boot at your throat. And, fuck, is the sky bright. Haven’t heard from ‘im since Sizzle and I let the Crows and Black Knights in, but I’ve been keepin’ tabs on the Black Knights and the big boy himself. Not particularly fond of him. Rather scared shitless of ‘im, actually. But I could find ‘em all in a pinch, need be.”
He pauses, taking stock of everything that he had said. And, more importantly, everything left unsaid. “In particular, Orianna, you & me…er, WE…have a lot to talk about.”
Orianna eyes a door and gestures for the whisper to follow so that they can converse on more esoteric matters than are appropriate for the company currently in room.
“So… how was this all s’posed to end, exactly?” Sizzle fixes Casta with a shrewd gaze from her seat on the floor. “The Emperor gets to play ‘crush the rebellion’ for a bit, then he’d… what, go back to politikin’? Learn to knit? Start a band?” She draws her knees into her chest. Her voice becomes sharper, more accusatory. “How long til he gets bored again? Which city are ya’ll gonna tear apart the next time he needs to be entertained?
Casta fixes Sizzle with a glare. “I mean, I guess it buys us another 800 years or so? Look, I ain’t sayin’ it’s perfect but . . . Like, if we need to heat things up every few hundred years ta keep fuckin’ society going, then, yknow, it’s worth it!”
“Yeah, or, it just reminds him how much he enjoyed breakin’ the world the first time, and makes him eager to try again.”
Casta replies only with an exasperated shrug and gesture towards Sizzle, as though to say “This fuckin’ lady, am I right?” Sizzle gives her an exaggerated eye roll, but otherwise lapses into silence. Her chin settles onto her left knee, her gaze becoming distant and contemplative.
Arkin has been quiet, listening to Casta explain how his new life’s purpose was engineered to be a plaything for the Immortal Emperor. He’s taking it about as well as you’d expect.
When Sizzle speaks up again, her voice is softer, more hesitant. “An’ Lugos? Cassiopeia Beasby?”
A split-second pause. “. . . Seventh Tower? Where do they fall in all of this?”
Casta’s mockery fades as she stares with uncomfortable intentness at Sizzle. When she speaks, her tone is determinedly casual. “So . . . in no real order . . . Seventh Tower’s its own thing. Lotta hooks in the Empire’s bureaucracy, I guess. Gettin’ contracts an’ stuff, filling orders, whatever. I’m not a money person, but . . . yeah, they’re their own thing. Not part of our plans, I promise you that . . . Not that, like, you’d care.
“Lugos . . . Y’all preserved the head, an’ I appreciate that. Lugos was one of Viktoria an’ Blighter’s first big collabs, back in the day. He’s . . . well, he’s fuckin’ terrifying, but he ain’t a flexible thinker. Wasn’t gonna be useful for killin’ Render unless we reprogrammed him. Scurlock had an idea ‘bout slowly turnin’ him by talkin’ ‘round his programming but then the Vazara shit happened an’ . . . yeah. Maybe Viktoria can fix him up soon so we can use him. But I got NO idea how he fell in with Beasby. That’s just . . . weird. Like, maybe his wires got screwy when a vampire who’s also got some Spirit Warden stuff in ‘em came through? I dunno. Robits. Fuckin’ weird man.”
“I don’t understand how this is gonna make us any money,” complains Jammer, who has stumbled in late (as usual). She is, for once, not wearing her leather jacket, revealing a veritable tapestry of tattoos on both arms. At a glance — the crest of the Dagger Isles Expeditionary Force on a bicep, a tight, precise script that looks like contractual language curling around the underarm, a large uppercase script CASTA that has been corrected to CASTAWAY, a leviathan swallowing a tall ship, and a stylized lobster cracking a harpoon in half between its claws. “Like, okay, we’re gonna get crushed by the Emperor, sure. We all die horribly, sure. But for free?”
Casta’s dander is immediately up the moment Jammer speaks. “I mean, sure, you ain’t gotta DO anything. If y’all wanna just hope an’ pray that Render doesn’t figure out y’all killed Breaker then fine by ME. I just figured y’all might wanna either cover your tracks or get ta suckin’ his . . . HA!”
She has noticed Jammer’s CASTAWAY tattoo and is momentarily overcome by giggles.
Sizzle tilts her head, a look of genuine bewilderment on her face. “Suck– ?”
The lights flicker once before dying completely, cutting Sizzle off mid-sentence. The silence that follows is short but eerie – four full heartbeats utterly devoid of the familiar hum of electroplasmic current ubiquitous throughout the city.
“Eeeeeehhhhhhhhhh….” Linmer shifts uneasliy.
A muffled and slightly panicked “FUCK!” emanates from the other room, where Orianna and Cruncho have been engaged in whispered conversation.
The mechanical spider wordlessly scurries back into the shadows.
“That can’t be good.” Arkin is pulled out of his existential brooding by the lapse and automatically begins to scan the room. He didn’t hear any voice but the silence and knowledge of what’s coming makes him very nervous.
When the lights come back up, Casta is looking at the nearest lamp. Her foot-tapping is done. She has a smirk on her face that is a hybrid grin and grimace. As she sees the reactions of the more supernaturally-inclined Nameless, she exhales slowly through her nose.
“. . . Aaaand there he is. Shit.”
She smiles weakly at anyone making eye contact. “. . . Guess it’s time to decide how real that rebellion’s gonna be!” She is EXTREMELY pale.
“If I thought sucking was enough to get us off this, I’d be all for it,” mutters Jammer, itching idly at a tattoo on the inside of her forearm. (This one is a small oval portrait of an angelic looking man with brown skin and flowing dark hair. He is clutching a dildo in his hands, and the frame is wrapped with the words JESUS FUCKS.) She seems not to have noticed the power flicker. “Don’t we need a god for a fake theist rebellion? Or at least some, like, priests?”
A soft grunt accompanies Quellyn as she makes herself known for the first time. “I believe perhaps you’ve missed something, then. It’s my fault, we’ve been helping Ori recover– you have all the makings of rebellion already. She’s different now. Chosen. The Vazarans are all conflicted about it– a girl off the Crow’s Foot streets and not one of their prized occultists?”
She chuckles a bit. “They’re coming around. But no, you don’t need a god. You merely have to embrace what is already transpiring all across this rotting city. It is as easy as slipping into the bath. Then the hard part comes. And I know she’s got these things in her mind she can’t shake. I believe the good doctor knows more than even I do,” she smirks.
“I’m sure you can scrounge up money for whatever affairs you need any day– but consider the alternative. Power, TRUE power. Punching above your weight and grabbing everything you can take. Doesn’t sound bad to me.”
Jammer looks disgusted at this line of reasoning, but subsides for the time being, muttering something under her breath in Daggerite: “Save me from true believers … fuck me, they’re always like this …”
Arkin is nodding at Quellyn’s comments. Shortly thereafter, he turns down a quiet hallway. An observer would witness him, body language clearly upset, speaking with the robotic spider that withdrew earlier. Crisis can form the unlikeliest of alliances.
“…..eeeeeEEEEEHHHHHHHHH–” Linmer’s voice catches in his throat, as if he only just realized that that noise was coming from him. His knuckles are white, hand gripping a vial from his bandolier. Another hand holds an arcane implement, a ward of some sort. Seeing that no one else is acting, though, he visibly calms himself, forcing deep, regular breaths. He puts the vial back in the bandolier and the ward back in his cloak.
“Casta… Not to say we should do this, but… ehhhh… what’s to stop us from just cutting and running?” He shrinks a bit into himself, clearly ashamed for bringing it up. “We could just f–” His eyes dart to Arkin. “Eh, that is, we’ve got the resources at this point that if we wanted to, we could steal a ship and just… float out of Duskvol.”
Having gotten it out, he relaxes a bit. “…I guess that’s a question for everybody, not just Casta.”
“Ah! Well . . . I mean, it w- but like, I . . . hmm . . . Nah, but like, then why . . . HMMM.” Linmer’s suggestion appears to have short-circuited Casta momentarily. Color returns to her cheeks, and she eyes him up speculatively.
“I mean . . . yeah, runnin’s about the same as guilt, so Render’d try ta hunt ya down, an’ I GUESS that’s sorta like havin’ a rebellion ta focus on . . . Yeah . . . Yeah, that could work! I mean, y’all’d have ta leave everythin’ behind but, y’know, take it from me, it ain’t like ya NEED as much as ya think ya do . . . Yeah . . . Yeah, that might actually work!”
As she speaks, she becomes more animated as she talks herself into the idea. A modicum of hope appears to filter back into her body language as the prospect of running takes hold of her imagination. Linmer rotates through expressions of confusion, guilt, worry, surprise, pride.
“Yeah, maybe you should run, Casta.” Sizzle stands up, re-holstering the revolver she had reflexively drawn in the darkness. Her next words are spoken in a carefully measured tone. “Draw the heat your way, just like ya planned, right? Y’all can play your games with th’ Immortal Emperor an’ Render somewhere else, an’ leave the rest of us alone.”
She stalks to one of the windows, pulling back the tattered curtain slightly to peek out over Six Towers. “I ain’t leavin’, though,” she says softly. “I like this city. An’ I don’t travel as light ‘s I used to.”
In the distance, a careful listener would hear large waves starting to crash on the bank of the Dusk River.
“I’m not going either. Not yet at least.” Arkin has returned to the larger group. The spider is nowhere to be seen but is likely still around.
“Look, we might have to cut and run someday. And if we do, I have a few ideas. But not yet. Running is admitting our guilt. And nobody knows that we’re the guilty party. Yet. Until we actually have a plan to take Render out, we need to buy time and resources. Which means casting the blame elsewhere.”
Arkin turns to face the rest of the group. His eyes are unusually animated for discussing something non-robotic in nature.
“Render is the strongest single entity we’ve ever faced. He could kill us all easily in a fair fight. But there is no way in hell that we’re going to give him one. He has no idea how this city works. He’s a general of an age of legends. He’s been living in bureaucratic hell for centuries. And we’re the mother-fucking Nameless. We run Six Towers. We’re a respectable entertainment company with ties to the community. Why would we ever commit treason?”
“No, we need to stay, biding our time until Render’s attention and energy is consumed elsewhere. And then, then we strike.”
“I…” Linmer hesitates, looking pensive. “I need to think about this. I don’t think we should all hop in life boats before the ship is even sinking, but…” He wrings his hands and cringes in on himself. After a moment, he firms up, straightening his back and raising his eyes.
“As long as I can be of help to the crew, I will. I don’t know how we can possibly stand a chance against this Render or the Immortal Fool, but we aren’t going to find out on the sea.”
Under his breath, he wheezes, “ …as much as I wish we could.”
“That’s the spirit, Linmer. We can’t do it without you!” Arkin pats Linmer on the shoulder, probably slightly too hard.