K-ly-te-m-ne-s-tra
First Age Bearer: Terrible Bloody Rose
Original Image #2
Total Attributes: 29
Strength 2
Dexterity 2
Stamina: 4
Charisma 3
Manipulation 3
Appearance 5
Perception 3
Intelligence 4
Wits 3
Things of Note
- Orichalcum Solar Battle Armor (From the Solar Armory on the Unconquered Sun’s many properties in Yu-Shan)
- Rightful Owner of the Thunderbolt Shield Balan been using
- Enchanted Feature (4): Statuesque
- Leader of the Gold Faction Solars
The Domain of Stately Order
In the middle of the Southern coastal plains, between the Penitent and Chairoscuro lies the most unusual and most hotly debated of the lands of the South. Created 260 years ago as a social experiment, the Domain of Stately Order is a small tributary governed by the Solar Exalt Terrible Bloody Rose and her Lunar consort Shining Ocelot. The principality is a circle exactly 800 miles across. It contains the central city, known as Dari of the Mists, which is beautiful, perfectly circular metropolis precisely 40 miles in diameter with seven million inhabitants.
Dari is located in a bowl-shaped valley and is an ancient city built in the early days of the rule of Primordials. Although smaller than many modern cities, it is exceptionally beautiful. All of the towers and other large buildings are made from an opalescent alloy that even the finest savants of the Deliberative cannot make in the vast quantities necessary to build a large city from them.
When exposed to sunlight, this alloy shines like white opal, and it glows softly with the same sparking color at night. It also attracts ambient mist that briefly swirls with similar color when it touches these towers. These mists have long been known to make mortals who inhale them both slightly happier and less inclined to excessive violence. Mortals living here are treated as if they have a minimum of two dots in both Compassion and Temperance, even if their actual scores are lower. This effect fades within 3 days of leaving Dari. The effects of these mists gave Terrible Bloody Rose and Shining Ocelot the idea for creating the Scepter and Orb of Peace and Order. Their efforts, however, have also made the city far less popular to both immigrants and tourists.
Before it became part of the Domain of Stately Order, Dari was widely acclaimed as the most pleasant city in the south, and mortals regularly flocked here to visit. Many Southern mortals attempted to save sufficient amounts of money to be able to go on their honeymoons in Dari. This custom persists, and newlyweds remain an important source of tourism, but all tourism has significantly declined since the city’s rulers completed the Scepter and the Orb.
The remainder of this principality houses an additional 93 million people, the vast majority of whom work in various RPCs that specialize in growing and spinning linen and in tending Essence spiders and transforming their silk into sails, armor and similar goods.
This incomparable wonder consists of a five-foot shaft of orichalcum, ending in a ring adorned with various spurs, crescents and Essence-focusing crystals. Attuning to the Scepter requires a commitment of eight motes. The artifact confers several powers on the Perfect:
- The Scepter grants its owner one additional dot each of Stamina, Charisma, Manipulation, Perception, Intelligence and Wits as long as it is attuned, a maximum of 5. (This is no longer meaningful for the Perfect. In his long life, he has raised all these traits to 5.)
- The Scepter’s owner becomes immune to all Emerald and Sapphire Circle sorcery, all Charms that affect perception and all forms of unnatural mental influence.
- The owner soaks both lethal and aggravated damage with his full Stamina.
- An enlightened mortal attuned to the Scepter can access his entire Essence pool without the necessity of spending Willpower.
- All oaths a person makes while touching the Scepter become forever binding. A complex eye-shaped sigil appears on the palm of the oath-swearer, like a faintly scarlet tattoo. No power short of Adamant Circle Countermagic can remove the sigil. If the person hacks off the entire limb that bears the sigil, it reappears on her stump.
- The Scepter does not remove a person’s free will, but it rigidly enforces the oath the person swore. Severe pains radiate from the sigil to wrack the person who broke any of the oaths she swore upon the Scepter. The Scepter’s master can calibrate the pain’s severity for different oaths and offenses. For minor violations of the oath, the agony ends when the foresworn person confesses her crime to a designated, legitimate authority (in Paragon, a magistrate). For the most serious oaths, however, a foresworn person suffers death. At the moment of the crime, the eye-sigil closes to show her and everyone else that she is doomed. The agony begins in moments, and does not relent until the person dies a few hours later.
- To minimize social problems and disruptions of daily life, the Scepter’s punishments largely happen out of the public eye. All pain suffered by oath-breakers begins at sunset of the day of the offense. Also, oath-breakers who condemned themselves to death through their actions die only after dark while inside a building. A few oath-breakers try to stay outdoors every night to avoid their fate. Between the pain caused by the sigil and the stresses of life on the streets, these wretched individuals rarely last long. Paragon citizens who see them crouching in doorways and sleeping in gutters shun them.
- The short-lived pain for a minor violation of an oath acts as a -1 wound penalty that lasts a few hours. The pain for severe violations inflicts a -2 wound penalty. The pain for a terminal violation inflicts a -4 wound penalty, while it lasts. The victim lives for a number of hours equal to his Stamina. These are Crippling effects. Charms that protect against Crippling effects can protect the person, but for Charm vs. Charm purposes, treat the Scepter enforced oath as backed by Essence 8 and a dice pool of 16. Punishment is only delayed, however, not cured.
- While holding the Scepter, its master can borrow the senses of anyone marked with its sigil, located anywhere in Creation. This function has no Essence cost and requires no dice rolls. Sigil-bearers, even those who are Exalted, can neither sense nor resist this power. The Scepter’s bearer can experience all of a sigil-bearer’s senses without the sigil-bearer’s knowledge or consent.
- For three motes of Essence, the Scepter’s bearer can strengthen this connection and actually take over the body of any mortal sigil-bearer, including enlightened mortals (but not Exalted), for up to a scene. The Perfect can possess or tap the senses of only one person at a time, but he can use this borrowed body as easily as his own. The subject of this possession has no memory or awareness of these events.
- While holding the Scepter, its owner can also spend one mote to induce severe pain in any single person who bears the sigil, including Exalted. Jagged black lines radiate from the sigil. This Crippling effect acts as a wound penalty of -2. It lasts a scene, or until the Scepter’s owner relents and cancels the effect.
- As long as at least 200 people bear sigils, the person attuned to the Scepter becomes completely immune to all diseases and does not age. He heals one level of lethal damage every three hours and one level of aggravated damage every day.
All of these powers are granted to any Essence-user attuned to the Scepter. A Celestial Exalt who attunes to the Scepter gains even greater powers (see Dreams of the First Age: Book One—Lands of Creation, pp. 94-95).
Dream of the First Age: Book One – Lands of Creation, p. 94-95
This tributary was created to test and demonstrate the promise of a pair of exceptionally powerful artifacts called the Instruments of Peace and Order. The Scepter of Peace and Order is large orichalcum scepter with a five-foot-long shaft, topped with a complex crook decorated with a variety of crystals that focus and channel Essence. The complementary Orb of Peace and Order is a moonsilver sphere the size of a large grapefruit, incised with grooves to allow it to be held in one hand and decorated with crystals identical to those on the scepter.
When a Celestial Exalt holds the scepter, it allows the bearer to have a general sense of everyone within 400 miles. The bearer can sense general concentrations and movements of population, as well as being able to instantly identify any Exalts, gods, elementals or demons inside his domain. The bearer can also broadcast messages to everyone inside the radius and can produce a scarlet eye-like sigil on the flesh of every adult or adolescent inside the domain. The target must accept the sigil willingly, but the scepter allows a Celestial bearer to cause anyone who refuses the sigil to be overcome with the urge to leave he domain within the next week. This compulsion is impossible for anyone but another Exalted to resist.
The scepter also allows its bearer to automatically distinguish between individuals who have lived in the domain for more than a month and visitors or new arrivals. Terrible Bloody Rose leaves visitors alone, but every month, she forces her sigil on anyone who has been in the domain longer. All mortals who refuse must leave. Exalts who refuse need not leave the domain, but if they accept the sigil, they are as bound by its power as any mortal would be. Other than allowing the bearer to sense them, neither the Scepter or the Orb of Peace and Order has any effect on gods, elementals or demons.
Anyone who accepts the sigil is marked for life. Only Solar Circle sorcery performed by someone who’s Essence is at least as high as the scepter bearer’s can remove this sigil. The scepter-bearer can borrow the sense of any sigil-bearer at will and with no rolls or Essence cost, no matter where the person with the sigil is in Creation. By spending three motes of Essence, the scepter-bearer can also take over the body of a sigil-bearer for up to one scene. Finally, as the scepter-bearer places the sigil on a target, she also impresses the laws of her domain into the target’s mind. Sigil-bearer knows that accepting this sigil means they also swear a solemn oath to obey all these laws. This oath remains in place as long as t he scepter is attuned. If, however, it is ever unattuned or the wielder dies, all sigils vanish within 24 hours, unless someone else attunes to the scepter during this time.
The device does not remove a sigil-bearer’s free will, but it does force him to pay a price for any and all transgressions. Pain wracks the body of anyone who disobeys the laws he swore to obey. For major offenses, this agony ends when the criminal confesses his sin to a local magistrate. For minor offenses, the pain last for only a few hours if the offender resist the urge to confess. Breaking the most serious oaths, however, such as never attempting to harm one of the Celestial Exalted, is inevitably punished by death. Sigil-bearers who break one of these capital oaths die a painful, writhing death a few hours after the oath is broken. As soon as they commit this transgression, the eye on their sigil closes. Every punishment imposed by the sigil takes place indoors and during the night. If an offender attempts to remain outdoors at night, his presence becomes obvious to Terrible Bloody Rose, who commands him to go home, whereupon he will immediately pay for his crime.
The power of the Orb of Peace and Order are far more subtle and insidious. Any Celestial Exalted who carries the orb can both sense and alter the emotion of all sigil bearers, either en masse or individually. Also, as long as it remains attuned, any sigil-bearer who performs any action that either actively encourages others to obey the laws or goes beyond the expected minimal obedience to the law is automatically rewarded with vividly enjoyable dreams. Also, characters who regularly obtain these dreams also reduce the difficulty of all rolls to recover from infections or disease by 2 (to a minimum of 1) and live one third again as long as they otherwise would.
No individual can attune herself to both the Scepter and the Orb of Peace and Order. The attunement cost of each artifact is 5 motes. As long as at least 200 people bear sigils, anyone attuned to either object is completely immune to all diseases and infections. He also does not age, and he heals one level of lethal damage every 3 hours and one level of aggravated damage every day.
The instruments of Peace and Order offer Terrible Bloody Rose and Shining Ocelot an unprecedented amount of control of the populace of their principality. In the 260 years that this experiment has been running there has been only one riot and one worker’s strike that lasted only one day. In addition, citizens are exceptionally polite and courteous to visitors and each other. Even very minor offenses such as littering, which are typically punished only by a headache that last a few hours, are almost nonexistent.
In short, this tributary is clearly the most law-abiding and polite place in all Creation, although it has a higher than average suicide rate. Terrible Bloody Rose and Shining Ocelot regularly assert that similar measures should be adopted throughout Creation, but debate continues in the Deliberative. Many Celestial Exalted and most Dragon-Blooded strongly oppose this idea because they find the results to be deeply disturbing. Also, most Celestial Exalted forbid sigil-bearers from entering their domains, and they object to the idea of other Celestial rulers transforming their entire populace into what potentially amounts to an army of spies and possibly even assassins.
Terrible Bloody Rose and Shining Ocelot both claim that the Scepter of Peace and Order cannot be used to place a sigil on one of the Celestial Exalted and that all forms of Exaltation automatically burns away the sigil. The first statement has never been tested, because none of the Celestial Exalted are willing to test their immunity. A few dozen adolescent bearing the sigil have undergone Terrestrial Exaltation, however, and all of them have lost their sigil, so the second claim has been accepted as fact. The truth, though, is that any Exalt can be given the sigil, and Exaltation removes the sigil only if the bearer wishes it removed. If either of these facts were discovered, the small amount of sympathy for this tributary and its rulers would evaporate, and several dozen Celestial Exalted would call for the immediate destruction of the Instruments of Peace and Order.
%5B3%5D.jpg "Portrait, Abyssal - Irreproachable and Flawless Golden Tyrant, The 02 (Deceased)")
