The Rending, Part II
Render and Splighterlock (name subject to change) are engaged in a titanic (potentially city-wrecking) battle in the midst of the Nameless Arena. Crows, Black Knights, and Spirit Wardens aplenty (not all of them, but most) have gathered to watch the proceedings. Sam the Black Knight is currently bleeding out in a corner somewhere.
The rest of Render’s forces are engaged in, and I cannot stress this enough, a full-on fascist takeover of Duskwall. It’s 10 AM or so, and the plan is for the city to be completely under Render’s control by the time the day is out.
The crew has, thus far, seen to the “death” of Sven the Crow (who was going to be the Nameless’s Render-approved “handler”) (Jammer has replaced Sven by essentially wearing his skin thanks to her new Babadick powers), seeded evidence that the Nameless have actually been mega-patriotic despite being an organized crime syndicate, and expunged all record of the basement Lugos factory (effectively hiding it from official prying eyes.
With all of this . . . what’s next?
Session Recap
While Render ultimately destroyed Scurlock/Blighter/the Spider in a not-particularly-close contest, the Nameless only went and installed their own Bluecoat Commander (aka chief of police), got a BUNCH of cops and Crows killed, blew up/mega-haunted a police station, AND erased several records of their criminal wrongdoing!
Wow, how’d that happen??
Step one: Identify the existing Bluecoat Commander (Commander Michter, a drill sergeant promoted to Commander after Commander Clelland got crucified), and a likely second-in-command (Captain Vale, former quartermaster who represented the main point of contact between the Bluecoats and Render’s forces).
Step two: Using friendly Six Towers citizenry and an asston of specialized weaponry, stage a riot, murder a bunch of Crows, and then murder Captain Vale and the detachment of Bluecoats that come to investigate.
Feels like step two had a lot of sub-steps there . . .
Quiet.
Step three: Possess the dead body of Captain Vale with Caleb Hollow, ghost con-man extraordinaire. Rough up the body to make it look like he’d been in a real fracas. Optional: Don’t rough up the body so bad that it’s visibly incapacitated.
Step four: Captain Vale staggers into the precinct, with a Bluecoat medic (Sizzle) accompanying him. Make an urgent stink about the need to report a terrifying mishap in private to Commander Michter. Head to the infirmary, where another “mortally wounded” Bluecoat (Cruncho) is waiting.
Step five: At the appropriate signal, ghost-bomb the infirmary (Orianna). Follow this up by regular-bombing the front door of the City Watch central precinct (Clockmaker).
Step six: In the chaos, secretly dispatch Commander Michter and get a life-like Hull in as a badly-burned robotic pseudo-doppelganger, thus ensuring your grasp on Bluecoat command shoot Commander Michter through the noggin in plain view of the precinct.
Step seven: Using ghosts, bombs, and vampire strength, make enough bacon (euphemism) that none of the cops that witnessed Michter’s murder are left alive.
Step eight: Open up a ghost door to escape. Accidentally let out ur-Crow The Doktor. Beat The Doktor in the ensuing fight.
Step nine: Ghost door to evidence lockup. Trash the evidence lockup. Optional: Don’t allow your robot doppelganger body to be possessed and absconded with by another version of Elia Wickhamm (who is channeling a long-running sitcom that, in another world, would star Ray Romano).
Step ten: Ride out the fully-solidified Render takeover of Duskwall secure in the knowledge that the ground troops of fascism (the cops) have had their numbers SEVERELY depleted and are ripe for further subversion!
Who Mourns Splighterlock?
Render
He had not known himself to be capable of this feeling.
His blade sunders the air like a thunderclap, droplets of polluted blood and ichor scattering like rain. The figure parries with a bleeding forearm, and a smell of ozone cuts through the air.
The sensations are, of course, familiar. Not for him the slow dotage of Breaker, nor the violent spasms of Blighter. Nine hundred years of peace had been neither a welcome friend nor a ravaging of the ego, because Render had never permitted himself peace. There was always a war to fight. There were always things to kill.
The figure’s eyes are at his thumbs, even as he has them impaled. They are hissing curses at him in tripartite voice, and a sudden electroplasmic current jolts his hands away. By the time he has recovered, they have climbed their way up his blade and resumed fighting.
But sensations are merely notes in a grander piece, and the symphony that this figure weaves with them has left him breathless (both for the suddenness of emotion and for the actual exertion).
His low cut is met by a tremendous leap, and their kick to his temple briefly stuns him. They move to take advantage, and he tears their left leg off. There is no bone beneath, only metal and black goop. The figure cackles at this, and the severed leg combusts in his hand.
He saw them, then, not as a chimera of souls, but as a mosaic of surpassing detail and quality. There, the fiendish toxicity of his former comrade-in-arms. There, the insidious cunning of his old lackey. There, the brute skill of his newest, youngest foe.
Blighter, Scurlock, and the Spider. A spectacle to set his burning blood surging.
He is blackened and bruised, unbloodied but unbalanced. They are sawing at his throat with serrated knuckles and belching corrosive fluid onto his hands as he tears at their stomach, their chest, their neck, their face . . .
As his foe’s body finally fails them, Render knows saudade in all of its mournful glory.
Blighter, again
In the cheap seats of the Unnamed Arena, amidst a raucous crowd, there sits a body with two minds.
The body is androgynous, and very nearly has no defining features to speak of. If the process of creating this body had gone as intended, its occupants could have vanished into any crowd and left witnesses incapable of giving a meaningful description. Unfortunately, the body’s creator (one of the present occupants) had slipped up and given it pronounced cheekbones and eyebrows. Pobody’s nerfect.
The minds are currently speaking aloud to one another by sharing the body’s mouth. This is Six Towers, so nobody is particularly weirded out.
“CAUSTICS? Blighter, you absolute jabronus, has the box addled your mind? It’s like she doesn’t even remember 700 years ago THANK YOU Viktoria! It makes me ashamed to call myself Blighter OOOH Explosives in the legs! Not bad. Should’ve shaped them, though. And the piston work UGH SHODDY! I - wait wait wait is that Solvent 73G? Coming from the fibulaaaAHHH IT IS! Excellent!!! And if they know what they’re doing, they’ll kick off an omniphrine surge now now NOW DO IT NOW YOU ASSHAT DO IT DAMN IT. DAMN. IT. YOU ABSOLUTE-“
The figure launches into a string of slightly anachronistic profanity and slumps back into their seat. They spin to the person sitting next to them, slapping them on the shoulder while gesturing to the battle in progress.
“Can you BELIEVE this amateur-hour horseshit, Donna? What are they doing out there?”
“Yeah, it’s fakkin crap!” screams back Donna, who has never met this person before “Fakkin, ya get fakkin Todd Houston innere, tellya what, not gonna see no fakkin around with no fakkin LEGS an shit-“
”THANK you, Donna! I’m glad YOU get it, Donna! Not saying it’s ALL bad, of course. Some good ideas from the amateurs, here Certainly, mistress! It’s not a TERRIBLE game plan It simply requires finesse! Better EXECUTION! It requires a SUPERIOR mechanist and a SUPERIOR Blighter, thank you my dear OH YOU COULD HAVE AVOIDED THAT WHY WOULD THEY USE A CORROSIVE THERE CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS SHIT DONNA DONNA WHAT IS THIS OPEN MIC NIGHT BULLSHIT”
“FAKKIN RIGHT AMATEUR HOUR I SWEAH TA TH’ EMP’ROR!”
“HA! Swear to the Emperor indeed! We’ll show HIM!”
And so they watched, and screamed, and cursed, and eventually, left.
THIS Blighter left knowing that she was superior to her long-boxed sibling.
Viktoria left with a sheaf of notes on mechanical endoskeletons and potential adjustments to hypothetical cybernetics.
Donna left blackout drunk, with nearly two hundred slugs worth of Shmeek merchandise that she would never wear outside the house.
Casta
Then
She is six. Her parents have allowed her to sit with company. She is behaving at her very best. Around her, knights and vampires and crows and witches chatter away, telling war stories that beggar belief. She is learning of the tyrant gods and the Cinder King’s salvation.
She is nineteen, and camping in the Deadlands. Her rage is quiet and corrosive, the brand of inadequacy freshly-applied by disappointed parents. She hears something creeping up, and she knows she will barely survive its attack. She is learning that she is not enough.
She is twenty, and her voice is hoarse from yelling. She is stumbling drunkenly down a side street, bag slung over her shoulder, its straps threaded around bruised knuckles. Jammer’s indifference burns in her torso and sharpens her teeth and brings tears to her eyes and none of it means anything to anyone but her. She is learning that she is alone.
She has learned to be manipulated.
She is sitting in a dusty Six Towers apartment. Two of her family’s friends, a mummified demigoddess and a puzzle-piece vampire, are speaking to her. They tell her the other side of her parents’ war stories. They are telling her that the Emperor is tired, is failing, is human. They are telling her they have a plan. She is learning that she can be useful.
She is crouched and sprinting, bullet holes dogging her every step. She is smashing through a glass window, knives drawn. She is planting them through the eyeballs of a howling low-life. She is blowing a kiss to the nearby rooftops, trusting that Sizzle will see it either through Velvet or through her scope. She is learning that she is good at something.
She is staring through a concussion, a crossbow bolt in her teeth. A wiry academic has just demolished her opponent. She is taking her hand. She is following her home. She is learning that she can be desired.
She has learned to be a tool in the hands of others.
Now
She is watching her mother, blade in hand, fight her lover. She is hearing her name wielded as a taunt, a duelist’s knife, a tool. She is thinking of disappointment, indifference, perfunctory affection, performative fondness. She is watching them try to kill each other, and feels numb. She is learning that she was always a pawn.
She is watching her mentor arise from a box, one part of a triumvirate demigod. She is watching her mentor fight another demigod, the fist of the Emperor. She is watching him fail. She is watching him be stuck to the side of an arena wall, a bloody pulp of a grotesque, a reminder of Render’s supremacy, of the Emperor’s eternal security. She is learning that she was always powerless to stop the inevitable.
She is staring at the body. She is staring at the body. She is staring at the body. She is-.
”You must be Casta.”
The woman looks ancient, unwell. The bow strapped to her back is nearly her own height. Her perching upon so narrow a ledge feels ludicrous, impossible.
”Walk with me. We have things to discuss.”
She has learned to be a tool in the hands of others.
She is too tired to learn anything more.
Claire
Claire
As Render tears them apart, the Splighterlock triumvirate all die in their own ways.
Blighter (THIS instance, anyway) goes up like a road flare. Her soul, laced with the Cinder King’s power and aeons of existence, expires in a joyous conflagration. She revels in her own destruction, allowing Render to pull her soul apart for the sake of a few final, glancing blows.
Scurlock cannot be said to die, because what is death to a being made up of hundreds of souls? An eidolon does not die. An eidolon shatters, and Scurlock shatters like an enormous Fabergé Egg dropped from a six-story building. Whatever he was is gone. Only the pieces remain.
To anyone looking into the ghost field, these twin deaths are a spectacle on par with the fight that preceded it. To the dozens of assembled Spirit Wardens, these two expirations are a dazzling fireworks show.
To the soul of Claire Strangford, these deaths are a smoke bomb into which she vanishes.
Even disoriented by death, she knows she does not have long. Her ghost will fully form soon, and the moment’s respite will be undone as the death crows begin circling and the Spirit Wardens begin their hunt. She will have to move quickly. She will have to find a body or a hull, and soon. Duskwall is not a kind place for newly-minted ghosts, for souls without bodies.
Then again, her soul does not demand, and has never demanded, kindness. Lord and Lady Strangford saw to that throughout her youth. Old Wickhamm crystallized that in Makeout Mine. The Clockmaker refined that out of her by the dozenth time she went under the knife. Claire Strangford has no need for kindness, or mercy, and she has none left to give. All she needs is a body, a little luck, and some time to plan her next move.
I will not tell you where Claire Strangford’s soul has gone.
I will only say that nobody has caught it yet.
The Emperor
He sits, and he watches the show in its entirety. The letter lies on one of the arms of his throne. Its envelope, now discarded to the side, reads “To Be Opened Upon My Destruction”.
There is a slight smile playing across his face. The void calls to him, but it is easier to ignore for the moment (and his life is really just a series of moments these days).
Dear Exalted Grand Emperor Blah Blah Blah,
I hope you will forgive me for my delay in replying. For those of us who still love you, your idle desires carry the weight of command, and I am nothing if not assiduous in following commands.
Fie on you, lord, for such woolgathering! Let the Cinder King lie. You may long for those days of fire and devastation (as well you might, for they were glorious), but to disparage the Immortal Emperor is treasonous to Akaros AND the gravest disrespect to my liege and friend of these centuries past! As a gentleman of my standing, I cannot brook such disrespect.
As such, I, Lord Scurlock (formerly Ache, Black Rotting Gale, and a host of other warriors against the gods), challenge you, the Immortal Emperor (formerly the Cinder King, formerly the Chosen of a wretched god whose name holds no meaning) to a DUEL.
My weapons of choice are themed to your selfsame insults to yourself. You, after all, long for the days of old, of the scouring sun against your blessed darkness. You long for Chosen and warriors of light. You long, in short, to fight as the Cinder King once more.
I had been prepared to grant you such a request. With Breaker’s help, I had planned to unleash your imprisoned foes upon this unsuspecting world. It would have been a final flash of your much-mourned glory, but little more.
But! As time has gone on, I have found that my plan has stretched and changed in a myriad of unexpected ways. Chaos and mischief, chicanery and shenanigans, mayhem and murder! These have been my constant companions since your last missive. Every design is twisted, every machination befuddled. Naught expected comes to pass, and the impossible is commonplace. It is thrilling beyond measure.
This confusion is the fruit of this new world, which you are too quick to dismiss. I therefore challenge you, not with echoes of glory days past, but with new and vital forces of the present day. My weapons are nameless, unpredictable, unstoppable. You may know of them, but lord, permit me to assure you from oblivion that YOU DO NOT KNOW THEM.
Our duel shall begin at the moment of my destruction. I do not know when or how this will come to pass, but I know it will be at THEIR hands. I know my obliteration will be surrounded by the chaos that marks their work. I know you will seek to impose order upon that chaos, for that is what the Immortal Emperor must do.
Try, lord. Really try. Your old mechanisms, your dusty bureaucracy, your legions of dull conscripts . . . They will not suffice. You may send Render, you may reconstitute Blighter, you may call Breaker to her former glory (if she still lives), you may raise the dead and call your witches and roost your crows and horse your knights and NONE OF IT WILL BE ENOUGH.
I am destroyed, my lord, my Emperor, my friend. Mourn me not, for I am lost in your service. If you win, reconstitute me and we will laugh together at my vanity.
If you win.
Yours, fondly and obediently, Scurlock
P.S. Lugos is quite well, and has indeed been making up for lost time. I have commissioned several new bodies for him, and he is finding them admirably suited to his purposes. His artistry remains as cutting-edge (ha!) as ever, and his work at Deckherd Hall has made the papers already. His regards are enclosed with mine.