manual of exalted power terrifying argent witches

203 Pages·2014·1.83 MB·English

MANUAL OF EXALTED POWER
TERRIFYING ARGENT WITCHES
DEVELOPERS: EARTHSCORPION, REVLID
WRITERS: EARTHSCORPION, ALEPH, REVLID, IMRIX, AND OMICRON
COMPILIED BY: IMRIX AND KYLAR
CONTENTS
History of the Lunar Exalted ........................................................................................................................................................5
Monsters in the Dark ...............................................................................................................................................................5
A Union of Sun and Moon ........................................................................................................................................................5
Uprising ....................................................................................................................................................................................7
The Breaking of the Pact ..........................................................................................................................................................8
Plague ....................................................................................................................................................................................10
Invasion ..................................................................................................................................................................................11
The Lunars .................................................................................................................................................................................13
First Age Crones .....................................................................................................................................................................13
Shogunate Mothers ...............................................................................................................................................................21
Realm Maidens ......................................................................................................................................................................27
Young Witches .......................................................................................................................................................................33
Lunar Characters ........................................................................................................................................................................43
Lunar Castes ...........................................................................................................................................................................43
Lunar Character Creation .......................................................................................................................................................44
The Madness of the Moon-Witches – Lunar Limit .................................................................................................................45
Charms .......................................................................................................................................................................................48
Shapeshifting .........................................................................................................................................................................48
The Second Line of Defence ..................................................................................................................................................49
Keywords ...............................................................................................................................................................................49
General ..................................................................................................................................................................................50
Strength .................................................................................................................................................................................51
Dexterity ................................................................................................................................................................................60
Stamina ..................................................................................................................................................................................74
Charisma ................................................................................................................................................................................87
Solar Bond ..............................................................................................................................................................................94
Manipulation .........................................................................................................................................................................99
Apperance ........................................................................................................................................................................... 108
Inteligance .......................................................................................................................................................................... 119
Wits ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 130
Perception........................................................................................................................................................................... 140
Argent Witch Style .............................................................................................................................................................. 148
Lunars and Sorcery ............................................................................................................................................................. 152
Lunars and Necromancy ..................................................................................................................................................... 152
Mutations And Genesis ........................................................................................................................................................... 156
Mutations Index .................................................................................................................................................................. 159
Physical Mutations .......................................................................................................................................................... 159
Mental Mutations ........................................................................................................................................................... 175
Spiritual Mutations ......................................................................................................................................................... 181
It Was The Monster Mash (the Genesis system) ................................................................................................................ 185
Even God Has a Sense of Humour (further mutations) ...................................................................................................... 189
The Whispers of Luna ............................................................................................................................................................. 190
Terrifying Argent Witches - an overview (EarthScorpion) .................................................................................................. 190
How Lunars Get Cake (EarthScorpion) ................................................................................................................................ 190
Caste Differences (EarthScorpion) ...................................................................................................................................... 191
Exaltation Criteria (EarthScorpion) ..................................................................................................................................... 192
Using (and Being Used By) The Terrifying Argent Elders (EarthScorpion) .......................................................................... 192
Limitation allows for greater creativity (Aleph) .................................................................................................................. 193
Nine character concepts each defined by one Attribute (Aleph) ....................................................................................... 195
You Have Two Cows, Argent Witch style (Aleph) ............................................................................................................... 197
Attribute Themes (Revlid) ................................................................................................................................................... 198
Writing TAW Charms (Revlid) ............................................................................................................................................. 199
Compiler Notes ....................................................................................................................................................................... 200
Manipulation ...................................................................................................................................................................... 200
Madness Deceived By Blood ........................................................................................................................................... 200
Inteligence .......................................................................................................................................................................... 202
Many-Minds Genius Prism .............................................................................................................................................. 202
Perception........................................................................................................................................................................... 203
Observation-Negates-Possibility ..................................................................................................................................... 203
HISTORY OF THE LUNAR EXALTED
There is much that could be said of the heroism of the
MONSTERS IN THE DARK
Lunars in this great war, and there are so many names
and deeds that could be said. But the names are lost in
It is traditional to start a history of the Exalted with some
the immensity, and the deeds in the scope. We could
romanticised description of how their patron crafted
sing the Epic of Juawn and the Three Moons and Two
them. Certainly, if one were to ask the Argent Madonna,
Suns. Xu Cha killed the traitor Night Maue, who had
one might get an answer from her, and it might even be
fallen in love with Ruvelia and would have betrayed the
true. But it is perhaps more instructive to look at Luna.
Hsha camps to the chief soul of the Holy Tyrant. The
For she is a monster, a horror, a freak, a terror. She is an
deaths of Uai and Posa would be famous throughout the
unnatural being bought into the world from the dreams
ages on many worlds, but such a great romance in a time
of the Dragon Beyond the World by the Divine Ignition.
of war was commonplace in the Primordial War. The
She is a weapon, the knife in the dark, the poison on the
Deva Prince Graymalkin and how he was seduced away
lips, the unforgettable word in the ear and the explosion
from Mardukth is still told in a twisted version by
of sudden brute force in a quiet place.
children in the South today, but the names of Oask,
And she crafted the Lunar Exalted in her own image. Let Nssam, Iasla and Baska are forgotten even from the
that be the real truth that is taken from the origins of the archives of Heaven, and exist only on the remains of the
Lunar Exalted. Luna made them in her own image, with Baian monument, located at the bottom of the Northern
secrets given to her by Autocthon, with mysteries she Inner Sea. And so on, and so forth. Heroes were scythed
seduced out of her father-progenitor Oramus, with down in their multitudes by the terrifying might of the
wonders she stole from the bosom of the Mother of makers of the world, and yet they returned again and
Creation and with the love she bore for bountiful Gaia. again while their foes were winnowed down by brutal,
grinding attrition only made possible by terrifying
She knew what she wrought. Do not ask what she did to
bravery and heroism.
cast her essence into three hundred murder weapons.
So what we must say is this; Luna made her Exalted in
It is probably better not to know.
her image, and the Exalted won.
And in the great war for which she made them, they
A UNION OF SUN AND MOON
served their role. In the armies of the Exalted, they were
murderers and terrorists even among the Primordial-
killers. Their false visages were the last things Lintha From their triumph, the Incarnate forces took possession
children saw before the Witches stole their eyes and of Creation. The gods issued the Mandate of Heaven and
nailed the children to the ships of their parents the day
from there withdrew to their seized palaces in Yu Shan,
before battle. Their arrows arced down upon the great
to take their luxury and for the highest among them to
encampments of the lords of the deva to slay key souls.
indulge in the Games that they had long lusted after.
They were the poisonous worms hidden within alaun
Some have wondered why the gods did such a thing, and
prayer-lines who corrupted the words and left the bird-
like beings convulsing with silver parasites in their brains. it must be said that at least one part of the calculus of
They were the false-faced strike forces who murdered their decisions was the knowledge that the Exalted had
deva and took their skins, and they were the bounding just cast down the Primordials. The gods would have
horrors who were the hammer to the Terrestrial anvil.
been as chaff before the unified Host as it stood had it
They took on the minds of their foes to see how they
come to war; even if one does not subscribe to the belief
thought and how they fought, and they hunted the other
that the Incarna had higher motives, mere common
spawn of the Dragon Beyond the World when the eldest
of the Primordials opened his mind to the world and it sense dictated that they should hold to their promises.
fell upon the Chosen of Luna to drive off impossibilities.
And perhaps Luna smiled at the trickster-monsters she And at times, that was not so bad. Lunars were artists,
had chosen, for now the Primordials were cast out from scholars, theorists and socialites. They broke paradigms
Creation and were Outsiders too. Should their spawn and forged new ones, only to violate them too in the
escape, her favoured children were perfectly able to take constant pursuit of improvement. They opened new
her old role as guardian of borders and the night. For ways for the Solar planners and crafters, and though
their part, it was the Lunar Exalted who, guided by some stewed in the lack of recognition as some Twilight
Sidereal wisdom, helped mop up the remnants of the old wonder used their theories on the Beyond to make the
regime. Their war-tactics were not retired by the newest thaumaturgical wonder, others were feted as the
Primordial surrender, and it took perhaps fifty years for coworkers who had made everything possible. Lunar
the vicious butchery by the victorious to move from genesis architects designed the living cleaner-creatures
industry to sport. The last of the alaun was impaled upon from their own flesh, and handed them over to Lawgivers
all five Elemental Poles at once; the last cache of beuran who standardised and mass-produced them. Others, who
eggs were cast into the Beyond save for one, which was dubbed themselves genesis artists refined and modified
fried and served with steaks from its mother. Woe to the the lifeforms of Creation, repopulating and expanding
conquered, for they were shown no mercy in this new the genepool to rebirth the holes in the ecosystem left
era of man. by the Primordial War. The archives of Heaven would
show an inquisitive young Exalt just how much of the
Even as the bloodshed continued, a new civilisation was
modern “natural” ecosystem of Creation was redesigned
arising. Led by the glorious Solar Exalted and backed up
or repopulated after the devastation of the Incarnate
by Terrestrial armies, the Ochre Fountain proclaimed its
Rebellion.
capital in Rathess and spread its wings across the South.
These early wars between it and other states saw the Some would whitewash the contributions of the Lunar
first true Exalt-on-Exalt violence. Just as they had been in Exalted to the sins of the High First Age. Certainly, among
the Primordial War, the Chosen of the Moon were those Witches who survived, there is a pernicious myth
terrifying monsters to their foes, and the Ochre Fountain that the Lunars tried to restrain the Solars, and that they
was well served by the murder of the circle which had led too were victims of Lawgiver excess. Reality is naturally
the Aural Exemplar in the West, their worm-eaten heads far more complicated. Yes, some Lunars tried to be a
delivered to Queen Merela by Buas Green Eyes. voice of reason to Curse-addled friends, and some were
caught up by the charms and Charms of shining heroes
The Deliberative which rose was a Solar Deliberative,
with madness in their eyes. But even if Lunars are
though, and that was for a very simple reason. In times
Outsiders, they are still products of their society. Upon
of war against a superior foe, the Lunar Exalted were the
Exaltation, they were taken from their mortal life and
equals of the Solars – indeed, the Lunar host as a whole
made Other, expected to be abnormal even among
was more potent, for the strange ways their talents
supermen. Cut from mortal ties, affected by the Curse in
expressed themselves meant that a socialite could order
their own right, was it any surprise they too became
the world to take blows for them and a scout could cast
indulgent, and some monstrous?
deva outside reality itself with a touch. But in peace, the
weaknesses of the Lunar Exalted revealed themselves. The Black Nadir Concordat was both the exemplar and
They could not lead armies or make nations love them, the purest example of the services that the moon-
not in the way the Lawgivers could. The genius of the witches provided in the First Age. It would not have been
Witches could devise radical new expansions of then- possible without Lunar brilliant-madness, without their
new sorcerous theories and artworks which blasted the reality-violating impossibilities and their knowledge of
constraints of normality from those who viewed them, the price to buy any being. And it was an example of how
but they could not systemise and they could not order some among the Sidereal Exalted worried that the
like the Solars could. They were the Dionysian edge to Witches were leading the Lawgivers down darker paths,
the Apollonian Deliberative. for Lunars were at the forefront of necromantic research
and were the equals of the Solars in that field. It was a and built monsters and abominations which they sought
Lunar who reached the Labyrinth Circle first, and with to put in prime positions in the legions of Creation. They
their capacity to become as the dead in the Underworld, had indulged and revelled in the decadence of the First
they were among its most enthusiastic proponents – a Age without compunction, and though their close
legacy which has held true to the present day. brotherhoods of Dragonblooded servants were bosom
companions, their personal touch could not reach out to
Likewise, for all that only the Solars had votes in the
the masses in the same way that the Solars were. They
Deliberative, the contributions of the Lunar Exalted to
were outsiders and monsters at the banquet, and so
the decision-making should not be underestimated. They
were to be removed. There was no place for witch-kings
may not have been able to sway the masses in the same
in a Terrestrial world, and the Sidereals took that as a
way that the Lawgivers could, but to those they
necessary consequence of getting the Chosen of the
personally care for – or hate – they can be most
Dragons on side for their great rebellion.
persuasive. Lunars were proponents of Operation
Wyldhand and launched backrooms petitioning Still, more Lunars managed to survive that initial ambush
campaigns to support it, even as others tried to stop it. and the simultaneous attacks across Creation that
Imirei Nagam drafted the Helotropic Reunification Bill, accompanied it. Sidereal attention was focussed on the
and her allies proposed it; the inhabitants of the Liaso Solar Exalted, and fewer Lunars had attended the great
province paid the price for it. Calibration Banquet than Solars; after all, the secrets of
the Adamant Circle were beyond them and no small
This much can be said; had things been otherwise, the
number of Lawgivers requested of their silver allies that
Chosen of the Moon could have restrained Solar excess.
they take best advantage of Calibration to summon
masses of Second Circle Demons for projects and
Instead, they contributed to it, backed it, enabled it. And
workschemes. The simple fact that the entirety of the
so the Deliberative era met its final tragic act.
Lunar host had the potential to evade their chasers in a
way that only a few Solars could through their
UPRISING
shapechanging should not be underestimated either. But
as the arsenal of the Deliberative was turned against
The Usurpation, the Great Uprising snuck up on the
Meru by its Dragonblooded technicians and living
Lunar Exalted with the same stealth and treachery as it
Lament-class skyships released their elemental payloads
did on the Solars. And just as the Solars, they died. The
from their seedpods washing over entire districts, even
Usurpation banquet was a killing field of a level unseen
concealment through obscurity often failed.
since the Primordial War, and those Witches who had
never seen the terrible might of the Terrestrial Host
It was a much-lessened Lunar host which managed to
acting as one dropped like flies, assumed forms riddled
regroup, such as it could. Sorcerous messages bought
with yard-long jade arrows and cut asunder by blades
them back into contact, and a few hidden bases – the
which sung hymns of doom.
product of various paranoias – bought their own
rewards. Fewer than a third of their number had survived
This is perhaps one example where the conflicting
the Usurpation, and the attrition rate of young Witches
interests of the Dragonblooded and the Sidereal Exalted
was truly horrifying as silver anima flares saw
are evident. In the name of their prophecies, the Sidereal
Dragonblooded strike forces dropped on them. To flare
Exalted merely determined that the Solar Exalted must
one’s anima was death when one ran and hid, and the
be slain, and there was more latitude for the treatment
tragic fact was this; the Terrestrial Exalted outnumbered
of their fellow Celestials. The Terrestrial Exalted, by
them such that the newly formed Shogunate could task a
contrast, knew the Lunars were equally behind the break
hundred Dragonblooded full time to be able to respond
of the social contract which the First Age had seen. The
to each individual Lunar Exalt, and their absence would
Lunars in acts of nepotism put their inferior half-caste
not be noted. The Solars were – impossibly, horrifically,
children into positions that should have been Terrestrial,
terrifyingly – not returning, and something had and the desiccated, undying husks of those gods who she
happened to the Sidereal Exalted which seemed to even bought the spite of the Endless Desert lie stacked like
erase them from data records. firewood in slum hospitals of Yu Shan. And this was but
one of the wars which individual Lunar generals or cabals
The tactic they would use would be simple. The Lunar
launched. The Raze of Naha, the Illyan Manse Cascade,
Exalted were not dependent upon infrastructure in the
the murders which lead to the Mnema-Amillar feud and
same way that Solars, Sidereals and Dragonblooded
the destruction of the Amas dam… atrocity after murder
were. They were forces of entropy, wreckers and
after sabotage listed themselves until each event was
saboteurs and murderers, the monster in the woods. The
lost in the immensity.
Dragonblooded sort to hunt them like animals? They
would show the Terrestrials that they were not animals, Such tactics were an all too common recourse of the
they were terrors. They would smash the First Age Silver Pact. The social order of Malfeas saw a slow
infrastructure which empowered the Dragonblooded, creeping regrowth of First Circle influence – after the
and once the stolen civilisation had fallen, they would reaping towards the end of the Deliberative of that era’s
seize Creation itself. sodalities – as the Lunar Exalted bound vast numbers of
Second Circle demons (some of whom had only just
So was born the Silver Pact.
escaped Deliberative servitude) away from their domains
for use as weapons. Necromancy saw its first real
THE BREAKING OF THE PACT
blossoming, for in the First Age it had always been
sorcery’s poor, inferior cousin; a curiosity, little more.
The Shogunate wore on, though, and as the years passed
Now it was the art at which the Chosen of Luna – able,
the needle-blade of Lunar intent began to fracture and
unlike the Sidereal Exalted, to reach the Onyx Circle –
fray. Attrition took its toll on the front-line leaders and
threw their effort behind, and it was now that the first
fighters of the Silver Pact, and raw misfortune – who
hordes of the dead descended upon towns to consume
could have guessed that the local daimyo and his crack
the living, and the Greater Dead were drawn from the
guard would be visiting that factory on that date? –
Labyrinth. Other Lunars set themselves up as lords of the
claimed more than its fair share of heads. The active
Raksha – the eastern Witch Raksi most infamously.
Lunar host became younger and younger, as the
Deliberative-era veterans perished and the survivors This was also the era when the threat of Chimerism rose
were those cautious enough to not risk their own lives. its head. The Lunar Exaltation had always been
somewhat mutable, it had been long known, and its
Once might have been coincidence, but twice was
bearers somewhat prone to what could only be called
suspicious and in time it became clear that the
mental abnormality. When one could expand one’s
Shogunate had a strangely altered Five Score Fellowship
consciousness to the Beyond and think in many minds, it
watching over it. The War of Heaven’s Reach (as its
could become somewhat hard to remember how to think
instigator, the Full Moon general Ia Iaboa dubbed it) was
in a more limited frame of reference. The Chimerae, by
a bloody, monstrous and somewhat unseen conflict of
contrast, did not come from the strength of a too-altered
the Late First Age and saw full theological warfare where
mind; they were somehow both more than, and less than
entire divine cults were exterminated as punishment as
other Witches, as they pushed the very limits of what
part of a wholesale effort to starve Yu Shan of prayer and
their humanity could support and fractured it. The most
cause Fate errors to draw Sidereals out of hiding. Ays
infamous, and most prominent form of Chimera were the
Amon burned as its manse networks detonated and the
so-called Formless; those Lunars who had lost track of
prayer-lines of eastern Mamosk were linked up to the
their anchors to their self. Luna may have consumed the
horrors of the White Lilly shadowland to taint the
Other Moons to become one from many, but the
ambrosia wells of Heaven itself. The demon prince
Chimerae became many from one, fracturing and
Telleme was released as the product of a ten-year
breaking. They were to their fellows unpredictable and
carefully engineered ploy to trip her release conditions,
mad, shedding the human mindset to become alien horde of Deliberative-era wonders he kept than for his
horrors – and it was a dirty secret of some of the elders actions.
in the Silver Pact that the raving, wildly once-human
This new generation of Lunars had never known the
things which some of their fellows became were more
Deliberative. Neither had they, by and large, seen the
objectionable for the fact that they no longer cared
sharpest decline, as the impossible wonders of the Solars
about the Dragonblooded than for their lost sense of
were bought offline. They were children of a Jade Age, a
who they were.
world ruled by millions of Terrestrial Exalted who built
To be quite frank, the face shown by the Lunar Exalted their wonders and warred against each other. That their
towards Creation during this period was the same face ‘wonders’ were prosaic mechanisms compared to a now-
they had worn during the Primordial War. They were lost era, and that the world was once unified was not a
nightmares, horrors, lords of the dead and demons. They rallying call. They sometimes Exalted in service to
tore down First Age infrastructure willy-nilly, and when Terrestrial lords, and if their lords then hunted them,
the Shogunate rebuilt its own inferior replacements – that did not cut their ties to the world and to their
made of jade and hardened such that they could be families and friends. Their attachments were not to a
repaired with the native parts of Creation, manned by long-dead Deliberative, and when they hated the
men rather than demons and automata – they were torn Dragonblooded, they hated them for personal reasons,
down too. Yu Shan was disturbed and the old terrors of not because of some vast shared trauma. And their hate
the Exalted murder-weapons aimed at divine throats left could – and did – extend to the Deliberative-era survivors
gods shivering. who used them as disposable weapons and who viewed
any number of mortal casualties as an acceptable cost for
And in this, the Silver Pact miscalculated. They presumed
their revenge.
that all Lunars would agree with them, that the
wrongdoings inflicted against them would always be “You tried to treat us as if we were your Dragonblooded
compelling to new Witches born hundreds of years after soldiers,” said Mikata Misoro, one of the original so-
the Usurpation. They presumed that they could guide the called Moonkillers, before telling Ma Ha Suchi exactly
younger ones to agree with them and fellow Outsiders what he could do with his orders. It would have been
would sway to their views. They presumed that the new anatomically impossible for anyone apart from a Lunar.
Chosen of the Moon would view the Dragonblooded
This was the last time the Lunar host could have been
traitors, not them, as the greatest threat to Creation.
said to act as a unified group at all. The Silver Pact could
They were very, very wrong. not be said to speak for the Lunar Exalted from this point
on. The old monsters who led it kept up their crusade,
The breaking of the Silver Pact is generally agreed to
but they no longer had the ‘expendable’ young Lunars in
have occurred 203 years after the Calibration Feast,
the same numbers and their numbers were growing slim
when six young Lunar Exalted killed the married couple
indeed. The Silver Pact’s war continued and they
Iakir Uindo and Iakir Gui, moving onto butcher Amana
continued to recruit new Lunars, but the low hanging
Ché under the guise of bringing news of their deaths.
fruits had been picked and if the Shogunate was no
One of the so-called “Moonkillers” had been from
longer the terrifying force of Dragonblooded unity it had
Yototree, destroyed by a Deliberative-era weapon which
once been, it was now hardened and battle-scarred, its
liquefied men; another had been Ché’s protégé and had
structure adapted to the idea that moon-witches might
seen everything the former Admiral of the Northern Sky
murder and infiltrate. They were an entropic force,
Fleet had her do. Three weeks later, the Butcher of Min
ruining districts and Gens, but they were now a more
Dwa was killed by her own student. Within a month, the
localised threat at the edges of the world. No longer
New Moon Illiman Silver was dead by the hands and
could they throw covens of young Witches at a daimyo,
claws of three young Witches, murdered more for the
and the ones who risked their own lives mostly fell in
time, leaving the cautious to slowly try to choke the Age too small. Only those who have seen what happens to
of Jade. areas of the Demon City when Ligier shines too brightly
on a poor area have seen the sickness that occurs when
In their place, the first of the Shogunate-era ‘elders’
every living being starts to die of magical contagion, but
began to act in their own right. Their efforts were
even the grotesqueries of Green Sun Wasting do not
hampered by the reputation of the Lunars and their
compare to the Contagion.
actions – they were things of fear, and had alienated
would-have-been allies in Heaven and in the Terrestrial
Do not think of the coughs and sneezes of the modern
Courts – but still they led their efforts. The death of the
age when one thinks about the spread of that terrible
bride of the second Taiyan Daimyo saved Creation from
the high-seated influence of a Cecelynian akuma. The plague. Think instead of fire, slowed down a
Silverwine Compact bought nine Eastern Air Courts into hundredfold. Look at a field, and watch the necrotic
alliance, and the prayer-lines which paid for their essence lick through the chakras of every blade of grass,
services patched a hole in the defence grids. It was this
propagating outwards in a wave of spreading disease.
generation of Lunars who made first contact with the
Watch a bird fly into the contaminated air that the
Sidereal Gold Faction, and certain of them began what
vegetation exhales, and watch the black taint infect the
might be described as subcontractor work for the Bureau
of Destiny. They were Lunars, and yet they were almost bird too. Then we change focus to the bird, and watch as
at home in the late Shogunate. in the few days left to it, it spreads the infection like a
burning ember carried off on the wind. The trees it
Oh, certainly, they were monsters feared in the dark. But
perches on are infected. The least gods who handle the
they were monsters in the dark of the streets, supermen
paperwork for the things the bird eats are infected. Its
hidden in the night, and the Shogunate no longer had the
faeces are incendiary proponents of infection, and
resources to casually throw a legion after a reported
anything which consumes them is inevitably infected.
sighting of a Witch. The ones who did not wish to rule
could find their own niche, whether in Creation, the Even the death of the bird does not end its lethal legacy,
Wyld, the Underworld, Hell, or (at least when invited) for its already-liquefying corpse contaminates the very
Heaven. They could not build up infrastructure or assets groundwater. And this bird is not alone. It is merely one
save on the small scale or the fringes of Creation, but among thousands, millions, billions of plague vectors.
these Shogunate-era Lunars were in their native terrain.
They were shapechangers and anymen, witches at the There are young Sidereals of the Gold Faction who speak
edge of a society which hated and feared them – and yet foolhardily of the power of the Solar Exalted and the way
would entreat with them when it wanted something. that they could have easily cured it if it had not been for
And in those cases… well, after all, does not anyone have the folly of the Usurpation. Those who lived through that
a price? terrible time do not make such remarks, even if they
disagree with the actions of the Five-Score Fellowship.
It was not a golden age, but perhaps it was a silver age Even the Deliberative at its height would have been
for these Chosen of the Moon. And it came to an all-too- severely challenged by the horror of a disease which
sudden end. could be spread by anything, which possessed such a
terribly long latent period, and which killed almost
PLAGUE everything it touched in a way which bought final death.
The Shogunate, broken by internal conflict, sabotaged
Those born after the Great Contagion cannot grasp the from without, stood no chance.
horror of that cataclysm. That is a simple statement of
fact. They imagine plagues like the plagues of the Time of Animals died. Insects died. Plants died. Fish died. Men
Tumult, diseases which sweep through the streets died. Elementals died. Gods died. The Exalted died.
leaving rotting corpses piled in the streets as men sicken
The Witches of Luna fared no better than the
and die and vermin squirming through the squalor. Their
Dragonblooded. Oh, certainly, at a personal level they
imagination is too limited and their frame of reference