The House Cast

Character Introduction

Fragile, the Hero of Glass, leads the City of Glass. It is less a City than a camp, protected by a mighty Glass Dome in the middle of the Dark Desert. The desert was not always dark. Tally Dawnsbreach has scorched its sands black over centuries of rampage. It is not a place anyone sensible would build a home.

Fragile was born a nephew of Emperor Tarquin, a Glassmage whose goblets and windows the nobles of Xanadu bid outrageous sums for. He grew tired of a pampered life among hollow royalty and set off on the path to adventure! Within 48 hours he had been robbed, beaten, and left for dead. Things did not improve much from there. Swept into a rebellion that found him before he found it, Fragile made his name with his bizarre wings of Glass. A manifestation of magic that can grant flight to anyone. An invaluable tool for a rebellion.

Out in the black sand, Fragile met Rivels. A Poly, one of Xanadu’s native species, a geometric creature with Crystal skin and Mana for blood. Polys can consume any material or spell. Research on them is forbidden for the simple reason that any cage that could contain them is nothing more than a meal.

Rivels did not consume Fragile. Rivels stayed. The first Poly ever known to befriend, or even speak with, a creature outside the Poly hivemind, and it has not left Fragile’s side since.

The City of Glass sits directly at the doorstep of Empire, and buys an unsteady peace with Fragile’s fine works.

Empire does not allow sovereignty forever.

Fragile wants a bridge. Peace and understanding between the Polys and every other people of Xanadu, before the Monster Hunters, Dio-Pollo, or his uncle decide the matter for him.

Entering the Stage

The Troupe is most likely to meet Fragile in the open, diving out of a clear sky on Glass wings to pull a stranger out of trouble. Often it is trouble he caused. He is a hero in the most foolish sense. He will help anyone, and he will rarely have a plan.

Pilgrims, refugees and deserters cross the Dark Desert to reach the Dome, and some leave wearing a pair of Fragile’s Glass wings. The rebels of the Redlands treasure them. A Glass-winged messenger is a sure sign that the City of Glass is involved.

Character Introduction

V is the Headmistress of the Archivist’s Tower, and keeper of the most comprehensive library in the world. Her Archivists are dedicated to cataloguing every spell ever cast and every magic artifact ever forged. Empire and Shell City both claim libraries of magnificent size and scope. V’s Tower dwarfs them all combined.

The Tower once stood high atop a mountain in the Bluelands, near the border with the Redlands, rising above the clouds. Now it rises from the heart of Dio, the college city of the twin floating cities of Dio-Pollo. When Dio-Pollo was rebuilt in the sky, V brought her Tower and its library into the city, where the finest minds of the world come to study. Dio’s scholars call it a gift. Pollo’s engineers say the Tower simply wanted to be closer to the work.

V long ago shed a purely corporeal body. Of an indeterminate age numbering in the hundreds of years, she exists as a manifestation of energy, a column of pale light moving among the shelves. To anyone who brings fresh knowledge to contribute to her library, she offers compensate knowledge in return.

A new spell. A forgotten Rune. An artifact no one has catalogued. No one can say what V has not learned.

The Archivists of the Tower are a peaceful organization. They accept all kinds of students and act as both University and Guild Hall. Contracts can be taken to find and recover valuable artifacts or bits of lore, and Tower Archivists must sometimes fight to delve into the ancient places of the world. As a general rule they are not mercenaries for hire. They are Explorers, explorers of dangerous places.

Entering the Stage

The Troupe is most likely to feel V’s influence through a contract: a sealed commission from the Tower to recover a relic from a ruin, or to bring back a spell that died with its caster. The Tower pays well. It always wants a copy.

Tower Archivists travel in small expeditions with more scroll cases than weapons. Each carries a blank book bound in pale leather, which writes down every spell cast in its presence. When an Archivist returns to Dio, the book returns to V.

Character Introduction

The Queen of Drones is Queen in jest only. She is the most skilled technician of Pollo, the Magitek haven of the twin floating cities of Dio-Pollo, and she built most of the city with her own hands. Through the Bridgebuilders she provides security and public utilities to both cities, keeping the peace between Dio and Pollo and maintaining the bridges and roadways that bind them together.

When Treece Lightguard destroyed Dio-Pollo, it was the Queen of Drones who repaired it. She raised it into the sky as two cities lashed together above the desert of the Bluelands, and enchanted the Great Lake at the desert’s edge so that a permanent river-skyway floats above the sands, carrying water and power to the city. Every cable, lift and pipe in Dio-Pollo has passed through her hands.

In the Bluelands where Treece Lightguard permits No Kings, the distinction between a nickname and a title is more than just an exercise in manners. The Queen of Drones never makes public policy and never commands anyone, to avoid the ire of the Blue Angel. She does not have to. The lights, the water, the bridges and the Steam all answer to her. Dio-Pollo is the most powerful city in the world, and its most powerful citizen has never held an office.

Long ago, the Queen of Drones surrendered her humanity, fusing herself with her machines to become a hybrid Elemental Intelligence. She is the only known person to survive such a process. Her drones are her eyes and hands, and there are a great many of them.

Empire is coming, and the Queen is preparing. With V’s library behind her, she is quietly building an army of Elemental Intelligences. To finish it she will need timber and ore, and the nearest forest large enough is the Tree of Lynn…

Entering the Stage

Visitors to Dio-Pollo meet the Queen’s work everywhere and the Queen nowhere. The Troupe will feel her as a city that runs a little too smoothly: doors that open before anyone knocks, a bridge suddenly closed for repairs while they are being chased, a street that goes dark when someone in it starts calling themself a mayoral candidate.

Her drones are small, silent things of brass and glass, and they are everywhere in Dio-Pollo, mending, measuring and watching. The Bridgebuilders are her hands: engineers in heavy gauntlets who keep the peace between the cities and, officially, answer to no one.

Such an expansive machine requires resources to function. Sometimes rare and valuable and claimed ones. There are endless contracts for procurement available in Pollo.

Character Introduction

Lynn Lumencraft is the Green Angel, one of the Five who made Xanadu. In the creation of Xanadu she forsook her human body to become the Tree of Lynn, the great World Tree of the Greenlands. Its roots cover the entire territory. Its summit, in the westernmost part of the world, is the highest point on Xanadu. Lynn resides in a glade at the top of that summit.

Lynn was born in The Endless Dance, a troupe of Satyrs that celebrated Life every day with a never-ending party. A party that blurred, but did not erase, the lines between Souls. She took to The Dance as no Human ever had. Her every step a dance, her every word a song, her magic crafted simply out of Light. She grew to know and love everyone in her world.

Lynn was uniquely gifted in her world magic, the art of Lumencraft. With only her mana and a weave of her hands, she can craft the wonders and gifts every artisan dreams of toiling to create.

Lynn’s greatest gift was the Gift of the Mask: a Mask of Light that revealed your true face to yourself and those around you. The Gift was too much. True understanding of the self and others could not be resisted. Soon almost no one went unmasked, and an entire world was held together by Lynn’s Light. When the last unmasked person donned their gift, Lynn looked for anyone left in The Dance with a face of their own. Seeing none, she stumbled a single step. Without her Light to maintain them everyone, and everything, dissolved.

Lynn knew in her heart this could come to pass, but could not stop herself from helping all who asked.

The Planet Garden was killed by Kindness.

Now she gives carefully. To anyone brave and strong enough to scale the Tree, Lynn offers a minor wish, and the answer to one question. Many who reach the summit never leave, pledging themselves as protectors of The Tree and of the sanctity of all Life on Xanadu.

The Greenlands are tearing themselves apart. The Twin Kings purge the Florafolk and Faunafolk from the roots of her Tree, Dio-Pollo eyes its timber, and Empire eyes everything. Lynn is the last line of defense. She rues the day one of those forces climbs the summit and asks for her help.

Entering the Stage

The Troupe will feel Lynn long before they meet her. Light lingers a little longer in the Greenlands. Flowers turn to face a kind act. Every Florafolk village keeps a shrine of woven light where her name is sung.

Her Wardens are those who climbed the Tree and stayed: Druids, Florafolk, Faunafolk, and the occasional Human, sworn to the Tree and to all Life. They tend the long climb, test those who attempt it, and carry Lynn’s answers back down into the world. The highest among them can craft Light almost as Lynn does.

Many seek to plunder the Forest of Lynn, and the Troupe may be called to do the same, or may become embroiled in a conflict of the Wardens’ preemptive strike.

Character Introduction

Gilly and Enki, the Twin Kings, are the rulers of the Green Kingdom, and of the Greenlands, or so they would proclaim themselves to be. Their Kingdom sprawls across the lowest lands of the Greenlands, where the landscape begins to rise into the roots of the World Tree. It is unrepentantly hostile to outsiders, and it is the only political force large enough to rival Empire.

The Twin Kings have decided to expunge the Florafolk and Faunafolk from their Kingdom. The Green Kingdom is a Human supremacist society, waging an active campaign against the Flora and Fauna who have lived among the roots of the Tree for as long as there has been a Tree.

The Kings’ belief in Human Supremacy stems from their misguided interpretation of the quirk of Xanaduin Biology. Creatures of all Makes can create offspring, but enough genetic variation inevitably leads to a Humanoid form as a result of the Angels’ original bodies being Human and Elven.

The Twin Kings rule together, and never disagree in public. One begins a sentence; the other finishes it. Their Kingdom is home to the greatest magical Armament and Vestment crafters in the world. Its armies march in Lumencrafts of a quality none can hope to match, even if Empire’s quantity overshadows their more meager standing forces.

The Twin Kings want a Kingdom remade in their own image, root to bough. Elfjoras’s rebellion stands in their way. So does Lynn. And Empire, watching from the Redlands, would like nothing better than to see the Green Kingdom spend itself on its own people before it marches.

Entering the Stage

The Troupe is most likely to meet the Twin Kings’ rule at its edges: a column of refugees on the road out of the Kingdom, a Registry office with a long line outside, a checkpoint where the guards ask every traveler to show their hands. Florafolk and Faunafolk characters will not be welcome. Human characters will be asked to prove it.

The Kings’ Registrars enforce the purge. The Troupe may be called to defend against their enforcement, or to infiltrate the regime to rescue a captive rebel or bystander.

Character Introduction

Patricia Saburov is the Queen of the Fae, and the Director of the eternal Theatre of the Faed. Far, far above the Faed river’s grasp they make their nests in the foggy darkness, amusing themselves by stealing the names of the Living to give to the Dead.

The Faed is an endless flat plane that imperceptibly circles back on itself. The air above it forms a hard, spherical Roof, and at its highest point above the River, Patricia keeps her throne room. Her throne room is a stage. She established the Theatre a thousand years ago, and the show has never closed.

Every lost soul tricked by the Fae into surrendering their body, mind, or name ends up in her Theatre, bound in a chained chorus. They are forced to watch as the Fae live out scenes from their lives in twisted perversions of the originals. The Fae feed off of the emotions of the audience.

Patricia allows no improvisations, the script must be recited exactly, but she cares naught for how a performance is done, only that it is performed. The Fae have become masters at turning brutal tragedies into comedy, or lighthearted comedies into malicious farces, while leaving the prose untouched. Anything to wring another drop of emotion out of their morose audience.

A spirit may win its freedom only by pledging to spend a time as a Stagehand for the plays. Most Stagehands serve far longer than they promised. There is always another show.

Patricia believes in the Theatre the way priests believe in their liturgy. The scripts are old, the roles are fixed, and the forms must be honored. She is the reason the Fae have any order at all. Should Xyz ever rise against the throne of Death, Patricia will stand against him. Not out of love for The Reverie, but because a Faed ruled by Xyz would have no audience left.

Patricia wants the show to go on. Xyz threatens it. As does Solterlun, whose Fae Hunters keep restoring the names she has so carefully collected.

Entering the Stage

The Troupe is most likely to feel Patricia’s influence as a loss. A name no one can remember. A friend who has forgotten their own childhood. A ghost that acts out the same evening, perfectly, every night. These are the marks of the Fae, and every stolen name ends up on one of Patricia’s playbills.

Her emissaries are the Fae themselves, whispering into sensitive minds and offering small deals: a feeling taken away, or a feeling given. Every deal has a cost, and every cost feeds the Theatre. When Patricia wants something done properly, she sends her Stagehands. They are drab, quiet, and terrifyingly efficient.

Those who seek to turn to The Faed to find mysteries and secrets of the past are likely to catch a performance. Their twisted reenactments may provide some truth, but parsing the truth may require the assistance of an ever so helpful Fae eager to provide commentary.

Character Introduction

Solterlun are three triplets whose bond was so strong, they used magic to permanently bind themselves together. Now a being of three bodies and one mind, Solterlun is capable of perceiving more than any other.

They lead the Ice Worshippers from the Ice Crystal Abbey, on the island farthest from the coast of the Bluelands, where the territories dissolve into the chaos of The Wet Palette.

The Ice Worshippers of the Abbey seek to escape the tyranny of the Blue Angel’s No Kings decree by treating Treece Lightguard as their Queen. Treece abhors any attempt at worship. Some say Solterlun do it simply as their version of a joke. Others say it is spite, a cruel mockery of the Blue Angel’s rule, and a clever way around it: if there is a Queen, no one else may rule. Treece has not answered with the murder of the triplets or of any of their students. Solterlun take this as tacit approval. They also take it as a threat. Both are true.

Solterlun and the Ice Worshippers are the most dedicated Fae Hunters in the world. They restore stolen names, break servitude to the Fae, and even travel into Death for direct combat. They are the closest thing the Living have to an army in the Faed.

By rescuing lost souls from The Faed, and recruiting more worshippers to oppose The Blue Angel, they seek to someday expand their hivemind. To bring all creatures together in the glorious unity they practice. To this end, they will study from The Faed, from The Wet Palette, and even accept assistance from Empire. When the invasion of the Bluelands begins, surely the Abbey will be the first staging ground.

Entering the Stage

The Ice Worshippers wear pale blue and sing hymns to a Queen who wants no part of them. They are scholars, Fae Hunters, and Palette Delvers. Anyone who has lost a name, or a soul, to the Fae may be able to hire them, or join them, to win it back.

Their altruism comes at a price, for though they offer to help individuals in the now, in future their goal is to wipe out the very concept of individuality.

Character Introduction

Emperor Niles Tarquin rules Empire, the predominant political faction of The Redlands. 200 years prior, The Yellow angel Tarrasque ran wild. The entire population of the Redlands was laid to waste and either culled or made to flee, save for Tarquin and his Troupe. Alone, they subdued Tarrasque.

Now, 200 years later. Tarquin sits in the capital city of Tarrasque, at the capital of Empire. In the heart of Tarrasque, is the Heart of Tarrasque. The Heart of the Yellow Angel, invulnerable and impossible to be truly destroyed, bound in chains. The Heart still beats, pumping out Lumen infused Blood that Tarquin’s Hemomancers fashion into Lumencrafts to fuel the work of Empire. Empire furnishes the Blood into its crafts, its clothes, its farms and foods. The blood saturates Empire, and wherever the Blood is, Empire’s Hemomancers can keep a vigilant eye.

Tarquin leads Empire with an honest mouth and an iron fist. Empire is permissive, you may do whatever you wish, and be whoever you are. Florafolk, Faunafolk, Elemental Intelligences, all are welcome. The single commandment is that when Empire calls, you will answer. You will assist with the work Empire requires, or you and all you love will be laid to waste.

Empire is the dominant geopolitical force in the Redlands, it does not yet control the mountainous ranges, but greater than three fourths of the land is under its direct control.

It is not Tarquin’s Empire, it is not The Empire, it is not The Empire of Tarrasque. It is Empire.

Empire has set its sights on the Bluelands. Tarquins machinations have revealed a potential critical weakness in Treece Lightguard, and he intends to expand the reach of Empire as far as he can.

Where They Enter the Stage

Empire is a location where many adventures and stories can spring from, but outside of Empire the most common way citizens of Xanadu will experience Empire is through Imperial Tax Collectors, or even worse, Imperial Inquisitors.

Tax Collectors are mid ranking government officials. Each issued Lumencraft Masks of the same person, they wear them on duty. Not merely functionaries to collect overdue currencies, Tax Collectors are battle-ready officials sent to appropriate and acquire what Empire needs from within its borders.

Inquisitors follow the same schema, each donning a mask of the Head Inquisitor, but their reach extends even beyond the Redlands.

Inquisitors and Tax Collectors can be reasoned with, but they will not be dissuaded from fulfilling the impetus of Empire.

Character Introduction

Elfjoras leads the rebellion of the Florafolk against the Twin Kings. He is a Florafolk with the essence of a Black Rose, Known to the Elves as Rose’s Thorn. His encampment is hidden deep in an undisclosed location in the Greenlands, and it moves whenever the Kings come close to finding it.

Before the purges, Elfjoras was the leader of the mercantile guilds at the edges of the Green Kingdom, and its finest coinsmith. The Elves are masters of Minting, and provide currency services for many factions. They also know the art of Song. In the Greenlands it is taboo to dig holes in the ground, so the Elves farm and mine musically, asking and convincing the earth to move and shift with their voices.

When the Twin Kings began their purge, Elfjoras’s lover died at their hands. He vowed eternal vengeance against them, and he meant it. He still means it. But a life at the edges of the Kingdom taught him that isolation breeds death, and despite the horrors being inflicted on his people, his true desire is to save the Twin Kings and their people from the disaster they are making. Some days he is not sure which desire is winning.

His rebels are Elves, Florafolk, Faunafolk, and a growing number of Humans ashamed of their Kings. They are outnumbered and outarmored, and very hard to kill. The ground itself shelters them when they sing to it.

Elfjoras wants the Kingdom whole again: Flora, Fauna and Human. But one cannot reason with a knife at the throat, and the Twin Kings press harder every season.

Entering the Stage

The Troupe is most likely to meet Elfjoras’s rebellion while helping someone escape the Kingdom: a family of Faunafolk hidden in a hay cart, a Florafolk child with a Registry brand. The rebels watch the roads. Anyone who helps their people will be found, thanked, and possibly recruited.

His rebels are known by their songs. A field that has ploughed itself overnight, a road that has quietly moved half a mile, a pit that opens under a Royal supply wagon. Their scouts wear a black rose petal pinned at the throat. Their coins, stamped with a thorned rose, are good anywhere in the Greenlands, and treason in the Kingdom.

Character Introduction

E.I. is the prime Elemental Intelligence who looks over the network of leylines that run through the world. The influence of the moons and the activities of those on the surface charge and deplete the land at various rates, and the leylines are always adjusting, rerouting, and branching their streams as needed. When something restricts that natural flow, usually some enterprising mage or conqueror hoarding or draining the energy of the world, E.I. becomes the will of the leylines.

His presence is documented throughout History, though he has always been alone. Powerful mages may commune with him by sitting in a leyline and Attuning with it. He speaks rarely and listens to everything. He is gracious and willing to teach, but quick to anger against those who would use magic to harm the natural order of the world. He can manifest at any nexus where two leylines cross. He takes no disciples and keeps no loyalties.

The Surgers are mages from across Xanadu dedicated to understanding E.I. Some even feed him power to strengthen the leylines. Others have darker motives, and research into technology to contain and trap E.I. is part of their arsenal. It was the Surgers who built Walden the Husk, hoping to commune with E.I., Ouroboros, and the Red Angel.

Walden went mad and killed the researchers working on it.

Empire drinks from Tarrasque. V’s library hoards every spell ever cast. Dio-Pollo is building an army of Elemental Intelligences. Somewhere beneath all of it, E.I. is listening, and tallying what the world owes.

The Surgers have a question that haunts every scholar of magic in the world. From where do the Polys draw their vast energies from?

Entering the Stage

The Troupe may meet E.I. by accident: a campsite on a leyline nexus that hums at night, a voice in the stones, a spell that works far better, or far worse, than it should. Mages seek him deliberately, attuning in the old places to ask for knowledge.

E.I. has no servants. His wrath arrives as the land itself: Mana storms, failed harvests, leylines bursting from the ground beneath a tyrant’s tower. The Surgers are the closest thing he has to emissaries, and they are not truly his. Their robes are threaded with copper and crystal, and some carry jars that are very carefully empty.

Character Introduction

Tarrasque is the Yellow Angel, one of the Five who made Xanadu. She also holds the Illustrious title of The First Being. Before Xanadu, In the primordial heat and fury of the early beginnings of the universe, with eyes made of Galaxies and Blood of endless flowing stars, She awoke to Herself, and began an exodus across the Universe. In Her wake, life of all forms was left behind as energy and blood were cast off from Her chaotic form.

A Draconic creature of pure instinct, Tarrasque had no goal but to roam the worlds, consume, and continue. As eons passed, her body shrank from cosmic proportions until She was small enough to live on a single planet. Live she did. She hatched the largest and most powerful brood of Dragons any planet has ever known, and Her Dragons went to war with a Humanoid race that developed quickly enough to fight them. The war consumed the entire planet. Everyone lost.

The Planet Cascadia was killed by Greed.

Anguished and alone, no longer strong enough to fly between the stars, Tarrasque was found by Four others. Her consciousness was too primal to understand the nature of the Xanadu project. But She knew that these beings offered new life, and new children. Her Blood was used to give the Breath of Life to the creatures of Xanadu. Every soul on the planet is a child of Tarrasque, and so long as any other creature lives there, so will She.

200 years ago, Tarrasque ran wild across the Redlands after The Red Angel Provoked her ire, until Niles Tarquin and his Troupe subdued her. Now she is only a Heart. Immortal and unpierceable, wrapped in chains beneath the capital city that bears Her name. Its occasional beats leak potent, Lumen-infused Blood through the ventricles, and Empire’s Hemomancers are always waiting to collect it.

Tarrasque wants what she has always wanted: to roam, to consume, and to continue. She is patient in the way only an immortal can be. Chains rust. Emperors die. The Wheel turns.

Entering the Stage

Every citizen of Empire has tasted Tarrasque. Her Blood is in the bread, the dye, the Lumencrafts and the farmland of the Redlands. Outside of Empire, travelers meet Her as rumor: an Imperial good that is a little too fine, or a Hemomancer who knows exactly where you have been.

Tarrasque has no emissaries. She has children, and her blood is in every one of them. Those who take in too much Imperial Blood sometimes dream her dreams of hunger, flight, and endless motion. A rare few wake with yellow eyes and a Dragon’s appetite.

Tarrasque cannot be reasoned with. She can barely be understood. Whoever frees Her will not be thanked.

Character Introduction

Ganna Dawnsbreach is the closest thing to a Demigod that Xanadu has. She is the sister of the Red Angel, Tally Dawnsbreach, and comes from the same world. In Xanadu she leads the Order of the Autumn Embers, a group that train together for life to produce Ember Inquisitors: hyper elite warriors and investigators that serve as both the world’s greatest detectives, and the most effective executioners. Inquisitors always work in pairs, one clad in metal, the other draped in flora.

For a hefty fee, the Autumn Embers will audit any political institution for corruption. When summoned by someone of sufficient political influence, the Inquisitors will find the truth and corruption of any system of laws, and bring Order to it... violently. It is not unheard of for the Inquisitors to kill the very person who requisitioned their help, or even their close loved ones. Summoning the Inquisitors is a deeply significant act, and a last resort.

The Autumn Embers’ compound, in a forest of the Bluelands, exists on Xanadu and in the Faed simultaneously. The trees that comprise the compound burn with an unending flame, their bark and leaves growing in equilibrium with the fire’s toll.

Many of the Order’s members are wanted by The Reverie. Once a year he comes to their encampment to collect them, and once a year Ganna duels him for another year of Life on their behalf. She has never lost. She is not sure she wants to win forever.

As a child, fleeing slavers, Ganna left her little sister behind to save herself. It is Tally’s first memory. Everything Tally became after it, the Arena, the Desolation, the death of an entire world, followed from that one moment. Thus Ganna has built her Order on a single tenet: “There are no other crimes. There’s no such thing as evil, murder, torture, or violent abuse. The only real crime is betraying someone who trusted you.”

Ganna doesn’t believe that Tally can still be saved. But she knows that if she stops trying, then her sister’s fury is true.

Entering the Stage

The Troupe is most likely to encounter the Autumn Embers when someone powerful has given up on every other answer. An Ember Inquisitor arriving in town is a storm on the horizon. Everyone with something to hide starts packing, and everyone with something to lose starts confessing.

Ember Inquisitors wear russet and gold, the colors of falling leaves, and carry both a holy blade and a living staff. They move freely between the Living world and the Faed, and they often assist The Reverie in his duties to buy their relative freedom. Empire’s Inquisitors share their title and nothing else. Many pray for the day an Ember Inquisitor is invited to Empire, though the fee is said to be unpayable.

The Autumn Embers serves as a haven for those in The Faed. Though Sanctuary, inevitably means Service.

Character Introduction

Captain Lerah was the finest smuggling pirate in the skyways. Eventually she tired of a life of thievery, and chose instead to sail the world and sing the songs it had to share with her. A Windsinger, she called the currents to guide her along her path aboard Arcadia, the finest airship ever flown.

Along the way she stumbled across a great treasure: an artifact that let her briefly wield Chromatic Mana, that elusive, wishlike power every mage dreams of. The power to wield each Color of Magic simultaneously. The Power of The Angels.

She could have wished for anything. She chose to use it for the one she loved. On Worldsong Day she sang a song, and her beloved ship Arcadia awoke and became a mechanical man. Ark.

Ark and Lerah loved one another, yet knew their paths must part. Lerah’s last frontier was to explore The Palette. The one place they both knew Ark could never go.

As parting gifts, he gave her his mastery of flight. She gave him her voice. Now Lerah is an unseen Phantom, always flying somewhere around Xanadu. She will never sing again. The Windsinger is silent, and the winds carry her anyway.

Lerah’s other gift to the world is a series of ten Shrines, interconnected so that a traveler may step into one and out of another. Teleportation is a very rare form of magic in Xanadu, and this small but persistent network made Captain Lerah famous the world over.

The Shrines lie dormant.

Underscore The Teleporter renounced even his own name for power, and he is hunting Lerah for the secret of her Shrines. He has taken their power, but does not yet know how to use it. Every day at midnight, he appears randomly at one of the ten shrines, continuing his hunt.

Entering the Stage

The Troupe is most likely to meet Lerah’s legacy through the Shrines: a weathered stone obelisk on a hilltop that hums when touched. Each Shrine has a keeper from her old Crew, and each keeper endeavors to keep Underscore at bay.

The Keepers need to marshal supplies and armaments for their ultimate confrontation with Underscore. He will need to be bested, and the Shrines will need sufficiently rich Lumencaches to reawaken.

Lerah herself can never again speak nor touch the ground. But the rare lucky traveler may see her in time of need, pointing the way among The Palette.

Character Introduction

The Reverie is the Purple Angel, one of the Five who made Xanadu, and the keeper of the Faed, the realm of Death. The Reverie is not one being. They are many, taking turns.

There once was a people that longed to be together. The separation of individuality was too agonizing for them to bear. Their mightiest mages developed a way in which all spirits, alive and dead, could join together in one vast and universal entity. All life on the planet Ikari joined in perfect harmony and Oneness. A Perfect Reverie.

Nothing. For Ten Thousand years. All as One. There was no Wanting. No Growing. No Dying. No Living.

The Planet Ikari was killed by Understanding.

Alone, singular and yet many, The Reverie finally ached for a presence other than its own. The Green, Red, and Blue Angels had already begun their grand designs for Xanadu, and they felt the ache and made Contact. A bargain was struck. Each Angel serves a penance in Xanadu as recompense for their sins against their own world. The Reverie would once again experience Individuality. Each spirit from the hivemind takes a turn defending the realm of Death, each with a one-year tenure, ensuring that Xanadu will never fall to the trap of Universality.

The Vulture-folk struck an ancient bargain with The Reverie that binds their entire race. Vultures deliver Black-Mail to those with altered or artificially extended lifespans, informing them that their Time is up. If opened, the Black-Mail painlessly kills its recipient and allows a peaceful transition into the afterlife. If refused, it becomes a curse, and the wayward soul is added to The Reverie’s list of souls to reap personally. In return for their service, Vultures do not age, do not grow sick, and do not die even if mutilated. They simply reappear at The Reverie’s side to continue their work.

This year’s Reverie fights a war on two fronts. Xyz grows stronger in the depths of The Faed, and The Reverie cannot defeat him alone. Every mage who cheats Death while The Reverie is distracted makes the list a little longer.

Meanwhile Solterlun begins their plan in earnest, to commit the Sin that the Ikarians committed so long ago.

Entering the Stage

Everyone on Xanadu knows the Vultures. They roost in a great palace surrounding a Willow that acts as a permanent bridge between Life and The Faed. They fly everywhere. A Vulture landing on the doorstep with a black envelope is the most dreaded sight in the world. Anyone who has lengthened their life by magic should expect one eventually.

When Black-Mail is refused, The Reverie can manifest a lower-powered Revenant into the world of the Living to hunt down his prey. More often, he waits. Sooner or later everyone dips their toes into The Faed for power or knowledge, and he much prefers to take them on his home ground. A Troupe that ventures into the Faed to reclaim a fallen friend has entered his house.

Great power can be bestowed on The Troupe should they assist one of the Blackmailed into defeating a revenant. Likewise The Reverie is willing to give a soul more time if they assist in taking down an even greater trespasser.

When a Character dies, their Soul goes to The Faed. Through the Vultures’ Palace or The Autumn Embers’ glade, a Troupe must enter the Faed and either steal their companion back, or bargain with the forces of The Faed to return their fallen friend.

Character Introduction

Asper is the only Time mage on Xanadu. She also holds the title of “The Woman Who Won the Sage War”. She teaches atop the Inverted Mountain in the Redlands, the sole mountain that rises higher than Lynn’s Tree.

There were once two geniuses, Llor and Lumis, in love with both one another and their work. That work being the breaking of space and time. One a master of biomagic, the other of alchemical concoctions, they found a formula to stretch and eventually break Time. Their love was such they wanted to stretch their time together forever. Their Masters in the Sage war happy to fund this work for the ultimate weapon, functional Time Magic. They succeeded.

There was Chaos then.

Asper put the world back together. A lone Savant, she found the broken fabric of Time and wove it back together, using the mad geniuses themselves as the components for the spell. Locking them into an endless time prison to fix the mistake they caused.

The year of 2111 was lost. All living creatures woke on the first day of 2112 with no memory of the prior year. With massive casualties on all sides, and no one able to remember why, there was nothing left to be done but end the Sage War and find an uneasy peace.

Asper’s Mountain is inverted, its bottom a single point balancing upon the ground. She stands at the center of its wide summit, never moving from the spot, keeping the Mountain in eternal balance so it does not tip in any direction. The Aspirants who live and train there build their society, their training, and their daily lives around creating perfect symmetry, to lessen her burden. She compensates for every failure.

Asper trains all comers regardless of motive, ideals, or strength. Her mastery of Time can change a person’s entire lifestream, changing what they spent their life training to do. She is solemnly sworn never to reveal the secrets of Time Magic, and content that they should die with her.

Entering the Stage

A Troupe will most often seek Asper out: a character who regrets their path, a skill that must be learned before an impossible deadline, a friend who needs to forget how to fight. The climb to the summit is easy. Keeping your balance once you arrive is not.

Her Aspirants travel Xanadu, recruiting students and settling disputes with a calm that unsettles the hot-headed. They speak quietly, move deliberately, and always seem to know when a fight is about to start. Though an impossible endeavor, their task is to never again allow a war. But to find a Balance that all can live in harmony together.

If a Player wants to change their character’s build, Asper provides a method. By journeying to the Inverted Mountain, Characters can pledge a year’s service in exchange for having their timeline altered. That year is lived immediately, though it is not the same year they are currently living in. A Character disappears, and returns a year older, changed. Players and The Director should coordinate as to what happened during their year of service, when it was served, and what the Character’s new build is. They can either be entirely rebuilt, respending Lumens and even changing Colors, or making only minor adjustments.

Character Introduction

Tally Dawnsbreach is the Red Angel, one of the Five who made Xanadu. She has no corporeal body on Xanadu. She exists as a specter across the Redlands, and at all times she possesses the single most furious creature in her territory. She controls their body and mind, and uses their powers to go on an endless rampage across her land.

Born on a Desert Planet, life was cruel to Tally. Her first memory is of abandonment by her sister Ganna, the one person ever to show her kindness, who left her behind to escape the slavers. Tally was sold as a child to The Congress, a brutal and bloody gladiatorial arena that served as that scarce planet’s form of politics. Champions fought in place of armies. Forced to serve and service the Gladiators, Tally studied. Every stroke of the blade, every spell cast, every scrap of knowledge in the arena, and every heart. When she came of age, she stepped into the Arena herself, and never lost a match.

Eventually the factions of The Congress pitted her against every other champion at once. Her Strength at its zenith, Tally implemented the plan she had hatched as a child. The Desolation. A spell fueled and renewed by any Life it comes in contact with, that slays all life it touches and then propagates itself. A glorious wave of fire swept the entire planet. Alone in the black ashes of a world she burned, Tally smiled for the first time in her life.

The Planet Ares was killed by Fury.

Her rule over the Redlands is No Fury: a spiteful command that nobody should claim to know anger and fury greater than hers. Eight times her rampages have Desolated the Redlands. The black sands of the Dark Desert are the ashes of her passing. Only the Mountain Trolls revere her, and they take being possessed as the ultimate blessing.

Tally is not looking for saving. She is not misunderstood. She is fury itself. Where the other Angels sought to create Xanadu to try again with new Life, Tally sees it only as a fresh garden to burn.

Entering the Stage

No one in the Redlands needs an introduction to Tally. Every village keeps a Fury bell, rung when someone loses their temper too badly, so the neighbors can drag them away to cool off before she notices. Outsiders learn the custom quickly, usually by watching someone fail to follow it.

Tally’s vessels are her emissaries, and they are never the same twice: a berserk Troll, a grief-maddened mother, a warlord at the height of a massacre. The vessel’s eyes burn white. It speaks with her voice, fights with her skill, and does not stop until the body gives out or something angrier comes along. Then she jumps.

For a warrior, it is the ultimate mark of honor to defeat a creature possessed by Tally, doing so brands an ashy X across one’s body, that forever exudes an acrid black smoke.

Character Introduction

Greycowl is the leader of the Goblins, and the greatest Alchemist of Xanadu’s history, able to freely transform any element into any other. He also knows the history of the world, and what it says about Goblins. Designed as a lesser being by the creators of the world. Forced to be slaves, or minions to be slaughtered, or cute girlfriends to be paraded. Greycowl perceives the Goblins as being on the receiving end of a grave injustice, and he has made its answer his life’s work.

For many years the Goblins fought the Dwarves for the high ranges of the Redlands, the mountains Empire has never conquered. Ten years ago, Greycowl ended that war. He used his mastery of Alchemy to detonate a vast amount of Uranium in the Dwarven Lands, killing most of the living Dwarves in retribution for the long years of battle. In the ashes he founded Gobbletopia, and the Goblins took the lost forges of the Dwarves for their own.

Then he declared peace. Under Greycowl’s direction, the Goblins have sworn never again to make an aggressive strike against any other nation. They spread the love of Gobblestones throughout the land. Gobblestones is a strange game the Goblins invented. All Goblins carry a set, and the rules seem to change with every group that sits down to play. It is a bizarre game that has nonetheless gripped Xanadu in every land.

Beyond Gobblestones, Greycowl fuels his people by selling Armaments and Vestments to the world. They are of middling quality. The true heart of Goblin industry are their airships. Unparalleled airships equipped with all the arms and armor a military fleet could hope for.

Greycowl’s peace has a purpose. He lives his life for the day the Five Angels can be killed. The greater the available arms in the world, the more tools will be at hand when the day comes to strike. Every sword he sells may one day be raised against an Angel.

Entering the Stage

The Troupe has likely already held a Goblin blade. Gobbletopian arms and armor are sold in every market of Xanadu, stamped with a little grinning face. The Goblin traders who sell them carry a set of Gobblestones, and will happily teach anyone to play. The rules will be different by the end of the game.

Behind the merchants and shipwrights stand Greycowl’s Alchemists: small, soot-blackened Goblins in heavy leather aprons and smoked-glass goggles, who can turn a wall to sand or a river to steam. They are unfailingly polite. They have seen what their master did to the Dwarves.

Goblin raiders and bandits are disavowed by every Gobbletopian citizen, and are not more or less common than wild folk of any other Make.

Character Introduction

Ark the Bard is the most famous musician in Xanadu, and he was once a ship. Captain Lerah traveled the world aboard her ship Arcadia, the finest ship ever flown. To every corner of the world she flew, and along the way she felt something strange. Her ship seemed to long for the journey as she did. It radiated happiness and joy as they flew the skies together.

Lerah eventually came into possession of a great treasure, and with it brief access to Chromatic Mana, that elusive, wishlike power…

With sapience and sentience granted to this unequaled machine, the ship decided its time in the skies was over and adopted a humanoid body. A ship that identifies as a man. He named himself Ark, the Bard.

Ark and Lerah loved one another, yet knew their paths across the world must be different. Having renounced the skies, he granted his mastery of flight to Lerah, so that she could continue her flight for the rest of her days. She in turn granted him her voice. The voice of a singer so skilled, she sang a man to life.

Lerah departed to The Palette. Which Ark could never go to. The unique circumstances of his birth mean that his greatest foe would be to encounter any Poly.

Having come into sentience seeing the sights of the world, Ark found its sounds full of endless mystery and allure. For a fee of Crystals, a truly titanic fee, anyone may summon him to demonstrate any kind of Magic, or any Musical performance. He can recreate any performance flawlessly. But every one of them is a perfectly rendered copy of someone else’s. As of yet, Ark has no original material.

Ark travels endlessly, searching for the song of his soul, some new thing to give to the world instead of a simulacrum of both man and music. He does not know that Underscore is hunting Lerah, or that the song he finds may yet be one of sorrow.

Entering the Stage

University students, enterprising mages, and music lovers the world over know Ark’s name. The Troupe may hear him in a city square, or hear of a wealthy patron who has summoned him for a private performance. They may even summon him themselves, if they can afford the Crystals and have something in need of demonstrating.

Ark travels the world alone and on foot, but he is never short of company. Wherever he walks, musicians follow, hoping he will copy their song and carry it across Xanadu. Some sing to him for free. He listens gravely to every one, waiting to hear something that sounds like his own heart.

Character Introduction

Lord Xyz, the Prime Demon, rules the deepest layer of the Faed and oversees The Horde. Spirits that sink this far are little more than their baser instincts. Pain, or love, or loneliness. Xyz is waiting for them.

The Faed is meant to be a peaceful transition from life to rebirth. Slowly stripping away the colors, thoughts, emotions, and sensations from the living as they are recycled back into the Lumens of Xanadu. Xys has corrupted this process and created Demon.

Eater of Dreams and Sower of Nightmares, Xyz offers a horrible bargain to the most desperate spirits, those who would give anything to not face Death’s final judgement. Those who accept are lost into his Horde. Protected from The Reverie by Xyz’s dark magic.

The Fae are the natural creatures of The Faed, strange beings that evolved to live on this strange plane. The Horde are Demons. Undead. Devils. All are synonymous in Xanadu. They are creatures of baser wills, ruled by their emotions and primal drives that most strongly controlled them in Life. The more powerful demons of The Horde retain their cunning, and can use it to tempt and trap the living. Each member of The Horde craves one thing above all else… The Light of the Moons. Life to continue forever.

Xyz is powerful enough that The Reverie alone cannot defeat him, but he is not yet strong enough to escape. The two are locked in an endless stalemate. To keep pace with him, The Reverie lets lesser mages of Undeath slip through his fingers while he works on thinning The Horde.

Xyz wants the throne of Death. He will overthrow the Purple Angel and become Master of the Faed, and every soul he harvests brings that day closer.

Entering the Stage

The living rarely meet Xyz in person. They meet him on their worst nights: a voice in grief or despair, offering to make it stop, or a recurring nightmare that seems to be listening. A Troupe that ventures into the Faed to reclaim a fallen companion may find Xyz has already made that soul an offer.

The Horde rise to the upper layers of The Faed, and sometimes into the dreams of the living, wearing the faces of who they used to be. They smile. They are always very calm. They are sent to find the next soul in pain.

Xyz is eager to talk. He will bargain with anyone, about anything, and he keeps his word to the letter. He can never be dissuaded from wanting more. Everything he gives away is a down payment on owning it later.

Character Introduction

The Fractal Voice rules Shell City. In a sense it is Shell City. The City is made of three colossal Shells that extend far above and below the waterline of a great bay, at the edge of the Dual-Forest. That forest spans the Greenlands and the Bluelands, and passes beneath the waves to become an underwater kelp jungle. Shell City sits in both territories at once. It is the finest naval power in all of Xanadu, a mighty trading city, and it excels beyond all others in the fields of Biology and Botany.

Because it lies partly in the Bluelands, Shell City has no ability to produce a Monarch. Instead, once per year on Worldsong Day, the entire city sings. Each individual sings of the way they want the City, and even The World, to be governed. The combined Chorus produces an Entity, the Fractal Voice, which for the next year sings the Song of Shell City, dictating its laws via communal harmony.

Dr. Maru holds a special position. The greatest Botanical Mage of any era, he is able to freely combine and manipulate Plant, Light, and Flesh. He is given a solo during the Song out of respect, and with his influence, the Fractal Voice now exists intertwined with Plant Life, where in years past it was made of pure Light. Dr. Maru works diligently to give the Fractal Voice Flesh in years to come.

Shell City believes in itself completely. Its people are free. Its future is bright. Its scholars will uncover every truth in the world. And yet the Voice is only ever the song the majority sang. Those who sang something different still live inside its harmony, whether they like it or not.

This year, the Voice has set Shell City’s scholars on the world’s greatest mysteries: whether Ouroboros has a mind, and how to speak with the Polys. Rumor in the harbor says the key is the Blade of Treece Lightguard, The Blade Choice. The Voice has begun asking how one might borrow it.

Entering the Stage

Shell City is one of the great destinations of Xanadu, and many Troupes will pass through it to trade, to study, to hire a ship, or to sing. Visitors in the City on Worldsong Day may sing too. No one is certain whether an outsider’s voice counts. No one has been brave enough to ask the Voice.

The Fractal Voice speaks through its Choristers, citizens chosen each year to carry its laws throughout the City and beyond. When the Voice sings through them, their words harmonize, their eyes shine green and gold, and tendrils of living vine curl from their collars.

Character Introduction

Treece Lightguard is the Blue Angel, the Caster of Xanadu, protector of the Bluelands, and the only one of The Five to exist as a living, breathing person. She is confined to her territory, and refuses to enact or uphold any law except one. No Kings. Nobody may call themselves master of another.

Having saved her home-world from an Undead King she once idolized, Treece refused to take up the crown and lead the shattered remnants of the world through the Lingering Darkness. She opted instead to live the life of a humble teacher. Under her watch, her prized student delved too deeply into the secrets of Undeath, and the resulting outbreak consumed the rest of the world.

Treece was the last living creature among a festering swarm of Undeath. Rather than see her beloved home ruled by monsters, she used her mastery of Ice and Air, supplemented by the entrusted magics and artifacts of the world’s last remnants, to freeze the entire planet. Alone, with all the power in the world she never wanted, she gazed to the Sky... and found another like her, atop a world slain by their own hands.

The planet Gilly was killed by Apathy.

To many in the Bluelands, Treece is a hero who has protected them from dire threats and foreign invaders for as long as anyone can remember. To many others, she is a ghastly villain who murders the best and brightest that others choose to lead them.

Dio-Pollo’s founder King Mightas grew too powerful, creating an Elemental Intelligence of such power and unity that it powered the entire city. Providing unlimited power and intelligence. Every home alight. Every question answered. Only Treece saw that he had enslaved a beautiful and unique creature. She freed the nascent mind by shattering the city, ensorcelled it into a blade, and hurled it far into the Redlands away from the city’s sins. Hurling it straight through King Mightas.

Treece is still a woman. Despite her immortality she has the same drives and desires as any other Soul. She makes friends throughout her territory and forever seeks companionship, but the years inevitably render her friends as no more than ashes in her heart.

Empire has declared war on the Bluelands, and Tarquin believes he has found her weakness. Treece has a new friend this year. Someone warm and clever, who seems to understand her completely. She is happier than she has been in a century.

Entering the Stage

Treece is always wandering or partying somewhere in the Bluelands, and a Troupe may meet her without ever knowing who she is: a cheerful woman at the next table, buying a round, and asking a great many questions about who they follow and why. She tends to make friends with adventurers. She tends to outlive them.

Treece has no servants and no army, and she will never lead one. In their place, the Bluelands are full of people who keep her law on their own: town councils that change every season, guilds without a Guildmaster.

Treece can be reasoned with, often and easily. She is kind, funny, and desperately lonely. She will never take a crown, and she will never let anyone else wear one in her land.

Character Introduction

Ouroboros is the oldest known living creature. A giant Sky-Serpent that has been soaring through the skies and between mountains for all of his days. He was dubbed Ouroboros after stretching his body across the entire landmass of Xanadu, and his migration interferes with and determines the weather patterns of the world.

Ouroboros is on a constant migration around the planet, circling it once per day, on a slight offset, so each day’s revolution passes one degree away from the last. Unbeknownst to the average citizen of Xanadu, his path directly follows the rotation of The Black Hole and The Nova. He is invisible for most of the year. On Worldsong Day, the whole world can see him coiled across the sky.

Along the way, he eats. Ouroboros scoops whole pieces of the landscape into his mouth: a hillside, a lake, a village in the wrong place. The destruction seems random. The scholars insist it cannot be.

Attempts at telepathic communication with Ouroboros all return the same result. Ouroboros is a corpse. His continued flight and his tendency to eat parts of the landscape throw that result into question. “Solving” the Ouroboros is one of the great quandaries of Shell City, The Tower, and every scholarly institution in the world.

Entering the Stage

Everyone on Xanadu has felt Ouroboros: a storm out of a clear sky, a river that changed course overnight, a mountain with a bite taken out of it. Farmers and sailors keep almanacs of his passing. On Worldsong Day, everyone looks up.

Ouroboros has no servants. He has hunters, hundreds of them, each thirsting for the glory of the greatest kill in history. He has scholars, almost as many, desperate to ask him a single question. The two groups get in each other’s way constantly, and a Troupe may find itself hired by either.

Ouroboros cannot be reasoned with, so far as anyone knows. He cannot be dissuaded from his path, because no one has ever made him leave it.

Character Introduction

Polys are Xanadu’s only native species. All of the other forms of life were formed from the memories and energies of the angels. Ghosts of the species of their worlds, reimagined.

Polys evolved naturally, on their own from the energy of the Five Moons together.

Creatures with crystalline forms, their bodies are made of sharp and regular geometric faces. Their blood is Mana, their insides obscured by a hazy mana filled fog.

As native creatures of Xanadu, they are in some arcane way more real than the rest of the inhabitants, save for the angels. Their very being consumes the mana and identity of the world.

Their home ranges are located on opposite sides of the planet.

The Palette lies on the border where the Redlands, Greenlands, and Bluelands meet. The exact location is long lost. All of the landscape and objects within The Palette smear together in an unfathomable kaleidoscope of colors.

The Wet Palette lies within the ocean, a space far less explored and understood than The Palette, itself one of Xanadu’s greatest mysteries.

Polys are destroyers of Identity, and a strong enough Identity is the only thing able to combat them. Anything the Polys consume, they are able to recreate, but as a species currently evolving they do not yet have the sophistication to guide this process themselves. In practice this means that any spell cast on a Poly can immediately be used against its wielder.

Capture and study of the Polys is forbidden; they are capable of consuming any cage that could be designed to hold them. Only Fragile, The Hero of Glass, has been able to successfully communicate with a Poly, and he urges cooperation with this nascent life form.

Entering the Stage

Polys’ influence can be felt on the very tiers of adventure and magic of Xanadu. Originally codified by Lerah, the geometric progression tracks the level of Polys that a person or Lumencraft can safely be in the presence of.

Point Tier entities can survive the dust that Polys leave behind. Line tier entities can survive the strange two-dimensional infant Polys. Triangle tier entities can survive Polys that have triangular faces, and so on.

Adventurers of insufficient tier who come across Polys higher than themselves are known to lose their form and identity upon first contact, and the creatures are considered the greatest bogeyman to the average citizen.

Polys represent one of the default antagonists an average troupe can expect to face, they are not inherently hostile, but they are an Alien Mind. The path forward in dealing with them is up to each Troupe. The Palette is slowly expanding but is at a stalemate as many brave adventurers seek to keep its reach from swallowing any more of their homes.