Vael
First you encountered the symbol etched into an abandoned Temple far in the North. The temple was destroyed and deserted for centuries and the symbol was nearly fully eroded off the face of the upset stone. The question at the time was whether it posed some significance to Adorjan or whether something else entirely. It may have stayed a riddle for the ages if you had not found another such mark, scratched a new, in the face of a hidden shrine covered by ivy. It was not the cell that you were looking for but the sign appeared to have some significance, perhaps among the Demon Worshipper circle. Perhaps not. Questioning the people in the area about the symbol revealed little but perhaps other cities might reveal more. After finishing up your business, you moved to your next stop on your itinerary, Sijan, and questioned your network on this new symbol; this very old symbol. You had other business in the city and more important to be sure. Before you left, one in your network reported that the symbol was repeated in the city within the city; the Necropolis. The symbol was emblazoned prominently upon four tombs of the many tombs for the Heroes who fell in the Age of Legends, the War with the Primordials. Dawn, Zenith, Twilight and Zenith were in four of the five tombs. The tomb for the Night caste remained empty, but the others there was a eulogy of each of their deeds signed with the same symbol.
You dropped all inquiries on the symbol of The Black Sun.
The Practioner
Pressing deeper into the fold of chaos, the regions of noise beyond the quiet your presence forced on to the lands around, were filled with polka dotted cats jumping into the air and turning into a riot of birds with a colour pattern of paisley. The trees had enticing fruit that weighed the branches up into the air with promise of sweetness, but you trusted them not. Your staff you planted deep into the ground and activated it. Ten paces from it in five directions you placed similarly attuned rods. The demesne that you carved from the Wyld energies would be enough to contain what would come next. You stepped out into the Wyld beyond the quiet that the stakes provided. Your spell was grand and soon the area hummed. Single hole appeared over the staff and from that a slash rose high into the pink sky scattering doves, well something that might have been doves anywhere else. The verticle slash widened out to the limits of the rods and it slowly began to rotate in a large circleit would take an hour and that would be the crucial time. The attacks did come but you were able to thwart them and destroy the Rakasha that tried to intervene. The smart ones ran, the ones that had learned. The hour complete and the Reality engine had been retrieved from Elsewhere. Attuned to the demesne, it powered up, waves of reality spilled out. The process would take about two days to complete, but you hoped that your technique would win the prize in the competition and for that five more needed to be placed and then linked…
Nix…
There was a war coming, a big war. There has always been a war coming, but this war would be big. A foe that had not been tested in a long time was to join the battle with them. The Dawn Caste wanted to test their prowess, powers that had remained untried in a thousand years. There were competitions to be one. The Dawn was to destroy as many as they could before the end, three categories, the ancient masters who fought the Primordials, the millenials – over a thousand years and no experience and the New Dawns less than the others in age. There were other categories, the Twilight had a few for best weapons in their age categories, your entry was going to be spectacular a bomb that would turn Wyld energies into Jade, Moonsilver, Starmetal and Orichalcum, killing all within. Just a month left before the the Eastern walls of Creation would 'fail' and let the hosts of Rakasha into Creation and the Games would begin…
Arik
The trouble with Exaltation after the Great War was that all the great deeds had been done long before you were born. The stories of the combats and the dangers would have been thought by anyone else listening to be hyperbole, but you knew the truth, you hade memories of the dangers and the battles, one which had left your predecessor crippled and dying when the battles were over, a splash of vitriol from the death throes of one. Since then there had been no big fights, now huge wars, no way to prove that you deserved the exaltation you wore. Your surviving Cirlclemate from that time has not deigned to speak to any of you since the inauguration of their tombs those many centuries past. But the plan is a foot and all is ready, soon the walls of creation will be dropped and the Chaos of the Wyld will flood into the Eastern Lands. Lots have been chosen and you hope that you will be close enough to the front that in a thousand years it will be you that has the stories that the younger Dawn caste will be listening to…
Jaguar
The images of the Primordial War were like none you had ever seen and there is nothing that would force you to view the crystals that you had them stored away in. You know from the books at you wrote and set the crystals in that there were lakes that turned to acid at a wave of an appendage, dissolving fishermen and warships a like, there were rains of blood winds that made molten stone seem a respite; each breath broiled people from the inside out. Horrors removed from your mind forever. By comparison, your retreat to the Wyld lands has been a great relief. Oaths were easy to acquire from the Rakasha, their beings constantly in flux moving from one form to another. Unlike mortals they were easier to live with content to live in a miasma of chaos competing with each other for dominance of their reality. No contest to you, whose presence codifies your own stamp around you. They kept trying to envolve you in their plays for power. You have grown to learn that a curious sideeffect of their storied existence is that a simple promise given holds them as strongly as a sanctified Oath. As it was explained to you, their Word is their existence. Betrayal of their word is not possible, something that is not true of a Sanctified Oath; people—Solars, break those Oaths all the time…
And …
The Lands around Creation had changed, a lot. The disease that swept across the North had swallowed up cities, towns, villages, ricket and cots and added them to the Fell. The invasion that you had seen swept past the Fell as if it hurt them and further laid waste to the lands. But that had failed too. Nothing it appeared would end the torcherous existence. The plague of humanity still clung to the world like ship rats upon floating jetsome of a storm. You toured creation hoping against hope that something would give you a reason. The Terestrial Exalted few, but someone had used the Sword of Creation to beat back the Rakasha threats. Killing these survivors offered no challenges and they were shells. Sijan survived, the tombs of you friends intact along with the eulogy you inscribed on each. Your tomb still empty and warded by long dead guardians, Wyld shaped to nothing. The leaves in the south still bloomed their Wyld party fragrance that tore through the populace; that was fun, for about an hour. You summoned the essence to your will and landed on the Blessed Isle, causing your lessers to rush around in terror. The Chosen of Endings you saw did not suspect that it was her time, it was; the fight was over before it started: boring. Back at home there was nothing to amuse you but a quick fuck with the ghost of Marama and to peel her ghostly skin; not for the first time you wish that you kept her alive a few more years…
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