The only way to talk to these people.
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RMH
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@weldun
The only way to talk to these people.
PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT
The House of Two Curtains
In a Kintargo still tasting the first sharp sweetness of freedom, the House of Two Curtains stands open again.
Its facade is modest by design. No silver trim, no grandiose Chelish heraldry, no gleaming invitation for suspicion. The building wears painted timber, warm lantern glass, and a sign of two heavy stage curtains, one drawn back and one still closed. Locals had long joked that the first curtain was for the censors, and the second was for everyone with taste.
During Thrune’s rule, it looked respectable enough to pass a patrol’s bored glance. Now, in liberated Kintargo, that same restraint feels less like fear and more like a private joke that has survived the hangman.
Inside, the playhouse is larger than it first appears. The foyer smells of polished wood, candlewax, old velvet, ink, perfume, and spiced wine. Playbills cover one wall, some newly printed, others carefully preserved from before Barzilai Thrune’s boot came down on the city’s music. A few are still marked with censor’s stamps, now left visible as trophies. The main hall is built around a shared stage, broad enough for opera, debate, farce, masked dance, and the sort of political satire that now draws laughter instead of arrests. Two curtains frame it. The first is the public curtain: bright, theatrical, welcoming. The second hangs farther back, darker and finer, promising that some performances are not meant for every pair of eyes.
Terzo Porcinus is often found near the front of the house, glass in hand, voice already halfway into a story. A human bard of Shelyn and a master of oratory, he treats conversation as an art form and silence as a material to be sculpted. His salon, The Seven-Feather Cup, is filled with good wine, lively argument, and small signs of devotion hidden in plain sight: painted songbirds, prismatic glass, a miniature glaive above a private mirror, and music threaded through speech even when no instrument is playing.
Rajira Ononda moves through the other half of the house with quieter gravity. A vishkanya singer of exquisite control, she makes even casual words feel rehearsed by candlelight. Her salon, The Honeyed Sting, is more intimate: low lamps, gold-black embroidery, perfumed air, and wasp motifs worked so delicately into the decor that most guests notice only beauty. Those with sharper instincts notice the exits, the mirrors, and the way every servant seems to remember names.
Now that Barzilai is gone, the House no longer has to whisper every truth. Still, old habits linger in the architecture. There are doors that do not announce themselves. Corridors bend in ways that confuse strangers. Storerooms contain more than props and costumes. Beneath the laughter and music lies the memory of a place that once protected artists, dissidents, lovers, informants, fugitives, and fools brave enough to speak beautifully while tyrants listened.
By day, it hosts rehearsals, lessons, wine tastings, fittings, poetry readings, and arguments about whether opera is improved or ruined by politics. By night, the House becomes one of freed Kintargo’s living hearts. Veterans of the rebellion sit beside nobles trying to look less nervous than they are. Students crowd the cheap seats. Former censors drink in corners and pretend not to understand the jokes. The applause often comes too hard, too sudden, as though the city is still surprised it is allowed to make noise.
The House of Two Curtains is not merely a playhouse. It is a survivor with fresh paint over old scars, a sanctuary for beauty with a knife tucked behind the scenery, and one of the places where Kintargo is learning how to breathe aloud again.
I can sometimes get a little creative on behalf of my fellow players...
The Reverent Exhumation
The Reverent Exhumation does not feel like a ship that was built and launched. It feels like something that was unearthed.
There are voidships that announce themselves with elegance, menace, or grandeur. The Reverent Exhumation wears a different sort of authority. It has the presence of a relic-prison, a cathedral excavated whole from beneath a dead world and somehow taught to breathe vacuum.
Even in flight it never quite loses the sense of buried weight. Its lines are stern and old-fashioned, its flanks broken by shrine-work, armoured galleries, and sensor vanes that look less like fittings and more like the petrified antlers of some ancient beast. Its upper structures still carry the architectural memory of the forge-colony that entombed it: basilica towers, processional buttresses, blind rose-windows plated over in iron, and lofty sensor spars that once jutted from vitrified ash like the broken crowns of a drowned city.
Long before the dynasty claimed it, whole generations lived in its shadow. When the ship lay buried beneath the crust of that dead forge-colony, only its highest cathedral-spires and auspex vanes were visible above the ash plains. The local descendants of failed colonists, salvage-scavengers, and shrine-keepers gathered around those protruding sanctified ruins. They built lean-to chapels against sealed armoured doors. They lit candles to dead machine saints. They passed down half-remembered rituals for hatches that never opened and bells that had not rung in millennia. Children were raised under the looming shadow of its upper works and learned to speak of the buried vessel not as a machine, but as a sleeping holy place. Those people, or rather their descendants, still serve aboard it.
That is the soul of The Reverent Exhumation : not merely its bridge, its engines, or its guns, but the fact that much of its crew was not recruited so much as inherited. The ship-clans aboard it are old, intermarried, stubborn, and profoundly loyal. They have the kind of loyalty that does not come from discipline manuals or prize shares, but from ancestral memory. Their forebears sheltered under the vessel’s sealed sanctums when it was still a half-buried mountain of iron. To them, serving aboard it is not employment. It is a return. A reclamation. An ascent into the body of the god-house their ancestors revered from outside. They are not the finest voidsmen in the Expanse. There are other crews who are slicker, faster, more polished in drill and ceremony. But few crews endure like these. They weather deprivation, casualties, and long passages with a kind of inherited stoicism. They think in generations rather than voyages. They quarrel, brood, pray, marry, and bury in the same steel warrens their grandparents helped clear when the ship was first exhumed. They do not break easily, because breaking would mean betraying something older than themselves.
That endurance is shaped not only by iron and ritual, but by places aboard the ship that should not, by all rights, feel as lived in as they do.
Deep within the vessel are the clan quarters, the shared kitchens, the shrine alcoves, the old communal halls, and the arboretum that has become one of the strangest lungs in the ship’s body. The arboretum was not planted fresh in some neat post-restoration scheme. It was adapted from the gardens that had grown in and around the vessel while it lay planet-bound. What began as windblown growth in cracked galleries, devotional planters tended by shrine-keepers, and stubborn pockets of green clinging to ash-fed moisture became, over generations, part of the culture of those who lived in the ship’s shadow. When the vessel rose again, cuttings, root-beds, and seed-stock were brought within. The result is not a decorative pleasure garden, but a living relic-space: part memorial grove, part air-warden, part monastic refuge. Some corners are clipped and ordered by deck-clans who treat them as ancestral inheritance. Others are half-wild, with black-leafed vines, pale fungus lanterns, and hardy shrubs descended from the growth that once crept over sacred iron under an open grey sky. Children are brought there to learn old stories. Oaths are sworn there. The dead are remembered there. It is one of the few places aboard where the ship seems to exhale.
Set among the clans, like iron nails driven through old wood, are the Mechanicus cabals.
The Adeptus Mechanicus never loved the whole ship equally. Their devotions have always had a hierarchy. Their true fascination lies in the ancient heart of the vessel: the bridge and the enginarium above all, then the auger systems, the grav-culverins, and the reclamation decks. Those places bear the clearest stamp of sacred design, of lost doctrinal artistry, of machine-rites too old and too exact to be mistaken for mere utility. The bridge in particular is the sort of place that makes even seasoned officers lower their voices. It is less a command center than a mausoleum of command. Brass columns rise like organ pipes. Hololithic projectors bloom in dusty light. Ancient command thrones sit in recesses like reliquaries. The machine-spirit there feels watchful, proud, and a little disdainful, as though it remembers captains whose names were carved in finer script than any living man’s.
The enginarium inspires a different sort of reverence. It is the domain of heat, chanting, and controlled terror. The great drive-cathedral does not merely power the ship. It dominates it. To walk those decks is to feel that the vessel’s true heart is not martial at all, but liturgical: a vast mechanical devotion expressed in turbine scream, incense haze, and reactor-light. Yet there is something less reassuring in it than in many Imperial vessels. Part of that comes from the warp engine itself, an ancient and faintly suspect thing by later standards, revered for the swiftness it can lend a passage and mistrusted for the same reason. The tech-priests who tend it behave less like engineers and more like hereditary clergy assigned to a dangerous miracle. Each cabal has its sacred jurisdiction. One maintains the bridge’s sleeping intelligence and the logic-choirs wired into its antique control stations. Another tends the drives and plasma regulators. Another keeps the rites of the Miloslav engine, watching its seals, harmonics, and sanctified housings with an intensity that borders on suspicion. Another oversees the auger vaults, where the ship’s senses are interpreted through rites of filtration and omen-reading. Others care for the grav-culverins, whose broadside chambers thrum with the heavy, elegant brutality of Martian doctrine.
Some of these cabals are true priesthoods. Others are half-clan, half-order arrangements: adsecularii and servitors bound to a presiding magos or enginseer, living in component-shrines and speaking of “their” systems with proprietary ferocity. They are ship-clans too, in their own fashion, though colder and more doctrinal than the blood-kin warrens that fill the habitation decks. Where the void-clans speak of ancestors, the cabals speak of prior custodians. Where the void-clans tell stories, the cabals maintain liturgies. The two ways of life do not always harmonize, but they have learned to interlock.
That interlocking is visible in the ship’s manufactorum. To an outsider it appears simply as another industrial deck, another grim necessity among many. Aboard The Reverent Exhumation it is something more intimate than that. The manufactorum is where the ship’s practical life becomes visible as a continuous act of maintenance, adaptation, and stubborn self-renewal. The Mechanicus oversee its machine-spaces, sacred templates, and sanctioned production rites, but the clans live close to its rhythm. Its furnaces cast a dull red weather through nearby passageways. Its presses hammer time into the ship’s bones. Small necessities for daily life, repair pieces for deck machinery, devotional fittings, replacement tools, coffin-plates, shrine grilles, garden frames for the arboretum, and a thousand other humble essentials all emerge from its smoke and clangor. It makes the ship feel less like a finite stockpile drifting in the void and more like a closed world that can, to a degree, keep remaking itself. It is one reason the clans endure privation so well.
The Reverent Exhumation does not merely carry supplies. It breeds continuity.
If the manufactorum is the ship’s working hand, the auto-temple is its outward-facing soul. It is not merely a chapel for the crew, though it serves that purpose every day. While aboard, it tends to the spiritual needs of the clans, the officers, the servitors’ overseers, and the countless laboring hands that keep the ship alive. Its priests hear confessions, bless births and unions, preside over funerals, lead feast-day observances, and keep the vessel’s devotional life from collapsing into private superstition and inherited half-memory. For the void-clans especially, its presence matters. It gives their ancestral reverence a properly Imperial shape. It reminds them that however old their bond with the ship may be, that bond remains within the Emperor’s light.
But the auto-temple is more than a shipboard consolation. It is a weapon of faith in its own right. When the need arises, the temple can be cast down from orbit to the surface of a world: a complete, staffed, self-contained church descending from the heavens with priests, relics, icons, devotional infrastructure, and the full theatrical certainty of Imperial truth. On a benighted frontier world, the sight of it must be terrifying and magnificent in equal measure. One day the sky is empty. The next, a temple has fallen from the void and planted itself in the dust like a divine verdict. From there the missionaries of The Reverent Exhumation can preach, organize, judge, succor, and convert with an authority no mere portable shrine could ever hope to match. It is not subtle. It is not meant to be. It is faith delivered as an event.
This gives the ship a peculiar spiritual gravity. The crew do not merely live with religion humming through the walls. They live with the knowledge that part of their vessel can descend whole to a planet’s surface and become the Emperor’s foothold there. To the clans, that makes the ship feel even more like a wandering sacred precinct. To the Mechanicus, it is an interesting but secondary miracle, a sanctioned ecclesiastic organism grafted onto an older and sterner sacred machine. To the missionaries attached to the vessel, it is proof that The Reverent Exhumation is not just a relic of the past, but an engine of future compliance.
That function changes the culture aboard in subtle ways. The ship’s devotional life is stronger, more disciplined, and more public because the temple’s priests are not ornamental. They are an active presence among the people, tending the flock in the ordinary days between crises and conquests. They bless the arboretum’s memorial groves. They walk the clan-decks. They preside beside the manufactorum’s heat and clangor. They offer comfort after the reclamation decks have taken their due. Their ministry does not make the ship gentler, exactly, but it does make it steadier. It gives grief somewhere to go besides silence.
Nowhere is tension clearer than around the lance battery.
The prow lance is infamous aboard the ship. It is old, temperamental, and given to moods that the Mechanicus cabals describe with suspiciously personal language. It is said to whine at some hands and answer eagerly to others. It has a reputation for petty balking, for taking offense at rushed invocation, for running hot when insulted and cold when neglected. Around it has grown a distinct social body aboard ship: the lance-clan, a knot of hereditary gunners, loaders, wardens, and shrine-servants who speak of the weapon almost as if it were a blooded ancestor. They polish its housings with obsessive care. They resent outside tampering. They claim, in low voices, that the lance knows its own people.
The Mechanicus cabals, naturally, find this intolerable. Not openly. Not enough to provoke a true breach. But there is a long, subtle, needling feud between the lance-clan and the priesthoods assigned to the prow sanctums. The cabals insist the weapon belongs to the Omnissiah’s order. The clan insists that without generations of familial service the battery would have sulked itself into silence centuries ago. Between them has grown a dense layer of ritual compromise, territorial grudges, and carefully veiled contempt. It is one reason the dorsal mount remains empty. Officially, the ship does not need more spiritual disharmony in its upper spine.
Unofficially, no one aboard truly wishes to discover how the lance’s machine-spirit would react to a rival weapon enthroned above it.
Then there is the reclamation facility, which tells outsiders more about the ship than any heraldry ever could. On many vessels, casualty and depletion are misfortunes. On The Reverent Exhumation, they are also logistics. The reclamation decks are run with cold, exacting efficiency by Mechanicus functionaries who see no virtue in waste. Broken bodies, damaged labour, spent flesh, exhausted stock: all are assessed, sorted, and put to use. To an outsider this can make the ship seem ghoulish, even monstrous, especially because it sits alongside the fierce familial culture of the void-clans. But aboard the vessel there is less contradiction than one might expect. The clans do not love the reclamation decks, but they endure them in the same way they endure vacuum, hunger, and warp-sickness: as part of the law of living inside a sacred machine older than any one life. The ship protects its people with the same blunt logic it uses to consume them. It wastes little. It remembers enough.
That contradiction shapes the mood of the whole crew. The Reverent Exhumation is not cheerful, but it is not hopeless either. Its people are loyal because they belong. They are hard because they have always had to be. Their world is made of compartments, shrines, inherited obligations, garden-walks under lumen light, forge heat, prayer, and family rights carved into steel. Its tragedies are intimate. Its endurance is communal. When the ship suffers, the clans close ranks and the cabals tighten rites. The vessel carries itself through misfortune by converting grief into duty with terrible, practiced grace.
To command The Reverent Exhumation is to rule less like a naval officer and more like a sovereign balancing priesthoods, houses, and old ghosts. The bridge does not invite improvisation. It imposes ceremony. Orders given there seem to enter the ship through layers of remembrance, translated by antique relay-thrones, echoed by vox-choirs, and carried outward into decks that are part monastery, part foundry, part garden-sanctuary, and part family crypt. A captain who is impatient with ritual will feel resisted, if not by mutiny then by atmosphere itself.
The vessel likes deliberation. It likes confidence. It likes commanders who understand that some orders are best delivered as pronouncements rather than shouted instructions. In open void it feels deliberate, measured, slightly aloof. In the warp, however, it feels different: quicker than something this old ought to be, but never entirely comfortable. Officers accustomed to steadier ships sometimes come away with the uneasy impression that The Reverent Exhumation makes its immaterial passages with clenched teeth and a fixed stare, as though forcing speed from a route it does not wholly trust. But near worlds, that tension changes. Around gravity wells, orbital debris, rings, and upper atmospheres, the ship grows uncannily sure-footed. It moves with the confidence of something remembering a former state, like a beast returning to familiar ground. Officers who know it well say that this is when the ship seems happiest, if such a word can be used for something so stern.
To outsiders, The Reverent Exhumation can be difficult to read. Traders see the cargo decks, the manufactorum output, and the lighter bays and conclude it is a pragmatic, workmanlike vessel, only to be unsettled by the cathedral spine and the prow weapon’s shrine-guarded sanctity. Naval officers see an old monitor-cruiser with respectable guns and disciplined lines, then discover a crew culture far more tribal and devotional than regulations would prefer. Pilgrims and missionaries stepping through its public aisles find a ship that can smell of loam, hot metal, and incense all in the same hour. Worlds below learn that it carries within itself a temple that can be lowered from orbit and raised upon alien soil. Navigators and other warp-sensitive souls often react most strongly of all, sensing that beneath the ship’s stately discipline lies an older, more uneasy relationship with immaterial travel than is comfortable to name aloud. The Mechanicus see one of their own designs and grow attentive, but not entirely at ease, because the ship belongs to the dynasty now, and because too much of its soul has been shaped by generations of non-priestly reverence to be fully claimed by Martian doctrine.
That, more than anything, is what makes The Reverent Exhumation memorable.
It is not merely a Mechanicus vessel. It is not merely a dynasty flagship. It is a sacred ruin that learned to voyage again. A buried shrine transformed into a voidship without ever ceasing to be a shrine. It carries gun-decks and cargo holds, priesthoods and bloodlines, scavenger-descended clans and iron-limbed servitors, workshops and processional aisles, remembered gardens and living worship: It carries, too, the faint and troubling prestige of a vessel that crosses the warp on an engine old enough to be admired, doubted, and feared in equal measure, all woven into one uneasy but enduring whole. It feels old in the way mountains feel old. It feels inhabited in the way tombs sometimes do. And wherever it goes, it brings with it the unsettling impression that some things were not built to be owned so much as inherited, feared, and obeyed.
(@weldun's write-up of our ship for the Rogue Trader campaign - he really is a much better writer than me)
First Homily of Father Vorn
Crew of The Reverent Exhumation, attend and remember.
There are moments in battle when the soul is tested more harshly than the flesh. Not when the enemy is distant and faceless, not when the guns speak across the void and judgment travels by lance-flash and macro-shell, but when danger wears a human face. When the hand raised against you is the hand of one who stood beside you at prayer. When the mouth that curses you is the mouth that yesterday recited the Catechism of Service. When one of our own comes upon us with madness in the eyes and violence in the limbs, driven not by his own clean hatred, but by powers seeking to make mockery of will, duty, and brotherhood.
In such an hour, fear makes a tempting argument.
Fear says: Kill quickly. Kill all. Risk nothing. Spend no time discerning whether the soul before you is traitor, victim, or both. Fear loves blunt answers. Fear wraps haste in the robes of righteousness and calls waste a virtue. But the Emperor did not appoint us stewards of His realm so that we might choose the easiest answer whenever judgement grows heavy. Hear me well: there are indeed those who must be burned out root and branch. The willing heretic. The soul that has embraced the unclean. The servant who kneels gladly to powers that hate mankind. Such corruption is a cancer, and mercy shown to it becomes cruelty shown to the faithful. This is truth, and none should weaken it.
But not every hand raised against us has been raised by free choice. Not every cry of blasphemy is born of allegiance. Not every servant struck by psychic force, witch-light, or profane intrusion has crossed willingly into damnation. Some are overmastered. Some are violated. Some are seized like tools in another’s grasp. They remain dangerous, yes. They may need to be beaten down, bound, sedated, examined, purified. But where there is hope of reclamation, there remains duty.
And duty does not end where inconvenience begins.
Waste is a sin, and the Emperor is poorly served by those who mistake expedience for judgment.
Remember what this ship is. Remember who we are. We are not wastrels drifting in the dark, free to cast off what frightens us. We are servants aboard a sacred inheritance. Every life aboard this vessel has already been tithed to the God-Emperor. Every hand belongs to His labour. Every soul belongs to His judgement, not our impatience.
To destroy what could have been saved is not always strength. Often, it is theft.
Yes, I say theft.
To throw away a crewman who might have been restrained, recovered, and returned to useful service is to rob the Emperor of what is His. To kill because it is easier than capturing. To execute because examination takes time. To destroy because fear would rather finish the matter than understand it. This is not the clean certainty of justice. It is the indolence of frightened authority.
Any brute can kill the endangered. That requires no wisdom. No discipline. No soul.
The harder labour, the more sacred labour, is to know when death is necessary and when it is merely convenient. Some among you have seen me minister to the broken. You know I do not preach softness. I do not tell you to embrace the corrupted, nor to dither while the witch works her ruin. When the line is crossed, I will be the first to command flame, bolt, and blade. But I tell you this now so that none may wrap cowardice in holy language: if a servant of the Throne can be subdued without imperilling the whole, then subdue him. If he can be bound, bind him. If he can be dragged back from violation and made whole enough to serve again, then that labour is righteous.
The darkness profits when we forget this.
It profits first by seizing the weak. Then it profits again by teaching the strong to abandon them. It delights when fear persuades the faithful that all affliction is guilt, all compulsion is consent, and all damage is final. In that arithmetic, the foe steals not only the victim, but also our judgement.
Do not surrender your judgement.
Be merciless to true corruption. Be swift against the willing heretic. But where there is violation rather than allegiance, compulsion rather than surrender, remember that force and mercy are not enemies. Restraint is not weakness. Capture is not softness. Reclamation is not indulgence. These are also weapons of the righteous. And so let this be carried through the barracks, the gun decks, the temple aisles, the infirmary, and every watch station where men and women of this vessel stand against the night:
Kill what is truly lost. Save what has been stolen. And never let fear persuade you that the difference does not matter.
That difference is where duty lives.
The Emperor protects. But He also commands. And among His commands is this: do not waste what still may serve His light.
(a little piece @weldun wrote after the first session of Rogue Trader, as his character Father-Militant Halix Vorn)
Rogue Trader - Sessions Zero + One
+++Imperial Thought Of The Day +++ Only the insane have strength enough to prosper; only those that prosper truly judge what is sane+++
The Koronus Expanse, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Reverent Exhumation. Its five year mission - to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to steal everything that isn’t nailed down…..
………and then come back for the nails.
The Reverent Exhumation is the latest flagship of the von Kelleron Rogue Trader Dynasty, but spent several millennia buried in the surface of a planet, revered by the descendants of the crew, and only recovered when the current holder of the Warrant of Trade decided that the dynasty needed to stop lying around on their gigantic piles of cash, and go carve out a new fiefdom at the edge of the Imperium. Idiosyncrasies of the ship include a somewhat morbid ship-culture, the cloisters lined with plants that grew there while it was planetbound, and the lack of a dorsal weapon because no-one wants to see how the lance weapon will react to another weapon enthroned above it.
Whilst a list of navigational data for roughly 100 worlds in the Expanse and survey results for the same was unearthed from the data-vaults of the ship, none of the entries are correlated. Correcting and exploiting this will be a major undertaking.
We did not choose a good time to do so. Claiming a few worlds for the dynasty will soon become an immediate problem.
Our Heroes!
Falline Batataria Solar von Kelleron de Marcine y Rosas - heir to the von Kelleron fortune and Warrant of Trade, on board with her Great-Aunt the Lord-Captain of the ship, being shown some of the ropes and exactly how to plunder unknown worlds for the family. And the Imperium, of course.
Astropath Transcendent Morda Sol’ar - The only person on board who has been to Holy Terra, and in the presence of the God-Emperor on the Golden Throne no less. That, of course, is only because she was taken from her home fleet by the Black Ships and selected for Astropathic imprinting. The unkind insist the Emperor then flung her as far and fast as possible, which is how she ended up way out here on the fringe of the Segmentum Obscurus. Her psychic familiar - a raven named ‘Pudgy’ - serves in place of her burnt-out eyes, but her telepathic skills are more than enough to explore the secrets of the Expanse and of human minds.
Navigator Amberkind Voyantis - Raised in the House spire in Sibellius Hive, on the capital world Scintilla. Smugly aware that the Imperium would collapse without his mutant Navigator gene, and his peer group is all people who own entire worlds. Skull-obsessed to the point a champion of Khorne would say it's a bit much, but the skulls and other bones are for veneration of the illustrious dead, and Navigation ritual, not for piling up around a certain other Throne.
Morda’s player: Oh my god you weren’t kidding about skull-obsessed, you can barely see him behind the bones. Voyantis: Oh, don’t worry, this is just my formal outfit, my day-to-day wear is less… ostentatious. GM: “This is my formal skeleton” Voyantis: You kid, but…
Father-Militant Halix Vorn - Aboard the Reverent Exhumation, he serves as confessor, morale-stabilizer, healer of minds, and guardian against the slow decay by which despair becomes heresy. He believes every human life belongs to the Emperor, and that every salvageable soul must be restored to usefulness before it is abandoned to darkness.
Voyantis’ player: Essentially, Vorn’s function is to bestow benedictions and benzodiazepines as required.
Of course the confessor has his work cut out - Navigator Voyantis is already borderline insane.
Vorn’s Player: I can only treat insanity so much! And it only removes the symptoms! GM: It’s fine, you only have to keep Voyantis going for 10 years. Vorn’s Player: The Navigator House might disagree. Morda’s Player: “You break it, you bought it”
Vorn's knowledge of medicae matters better left to the Priesthood of Mars (or the Inquisition) is rather suspect, and just one reason our Magos-Explorator Rak’kun Vhal-Tor 9X (“The Brass Pilgrim”, Seeker of the Seventh Cog, Ordinate of the Lathe-Halo, Bearer of the 9X Mnemonic Seal ) is uncomfortable around the rest of the crew. The way the ship-clans worship the mechanisms of the Reverent Exhumation is weirding him out too, and this is a Techpriest we’re talking about.
Amberkind’s player: I was hoping to get Relic of Saint Drusus as the heirloom - one of the four hundred fingerbones that the Calixian Church has certified as genuine.
Vorn’s Player: Like any good government the Imperium is run like the Mafia Morda’s Player: “Like”?
Rak’kun’s Player: Here’s the initial idea: leaning towards heretek. He is going to be “the kobold”. Or quite possibly “the Raccoon”. He has the one thing that the cult mechanicus abhors over all others - Curiosity. And probably also kleptomania. Vorn’s Player: So... you're an Explorator. GM : You have described a standard Magos Explorator Morda’s Player: It’s not kleptomania if you're sanctioned to steal s***
Vorn’s Player: We have 3 extra Ship Points to spend GM: Spinning rims. Morda’s Player: You joke, but…
Morda’s Player: Why is that 27 floating over the tabletop simulation? Falline’s Player: Because that is our Profit Factor, and it must be above everything else.
The Reverent Exhumation also has a Auto-temple - useful enough when Father Vorn is preaching to the crew, even more so when detached from the ship and landed as a fully automated cathedral on some benighted planet that hasn’t heard the good word about the God-Emperor yet.
Morda’s Player: And in an emergency you can use it as artillery.
Neither Falline nor Navigator Amberkind are actually in the top slots on board just yet - the Reverent Exhumation’s current Navigator is Amberkind’s great-uncle, and the Lord-Captain is Falline’s aunt. When things go completely wahoonie-shaped, the PCs are in the luxurious officers' mess, playing Regicide and variously spectating the game, criticising tactical stratagems in same, or conversing with the servo-skulls. The room even has a real fire, since only the plebs - people with less than a billion Thrones in ready cash - would get by with a merely hololithic fire. The von Kelleron dynasty sent us out into the Expanse with all the enormous resources we might expect. We’re about to lose access to those resources.
Amberkind OoC: So basically Abaddon the Despoiler is about to cut off our lines of credit.
Those of us familiar with void and warp travel are the first to notice that something has gone wrong, and tense up.
Falline: And I notice *that* because I’m Paranoid.
The ship’s Geller Field buckles as the wake of something huge brushes by us. The Cicatrix Maledictum, a warpstorm running the entire width of the galaxy, has just cut the Imperium in half, and lesser, pre-existing storms erupt into new violence. Alarms go off in other parts of the ship, and the mess clearly needs some maintenance, since alarms should be going off here too.
Rak’Kun: +++ What in the actual-? +++
No specific warnings come over our microbeads - just the standard [[Warp Incident - All Crew to Alert]]. In fact, we can’t raise anybody on the bridge. This is probably not good. The faintly glowing eyes and blank expressions on the first armsmen we encounter are probably not good either.
Falline: Take them down. Father Vorn: I’d prefer to take them alive, but if they die, they die. *shoots them center-mass* Oh dear. There’s my military training coming in.
Explorator Rak’kun rushes up to subdue the armsmen with direct application of kinetic energy.
Amberkind: *watching with casual interest - if the Navigator is in close combat things have gone VERY wrong* Father Vorn: Things have gone very wrong. Amberkind: How did the Magos get up there? Morda: Don’t ask me, I’ve never seen a Techpriest move so fast. Father Vorn: I have. I believe it uses something called the ‘Motive Force’, but I don’t understand technical things. Vorn and GM simultaneously: ‘He Lied’. Falline: Either way, does our Tech-priest friend seem a bit twitchy to you?
The armsmen open fire on Rak’kun.
Amberkind: I think we can assume they are under some kind of malign influence. GM: Well yes, your astropath just said they are under some kind of malign influence. Father Vorn: Confirmation is useful. Morda: I’m not stupid enough to try and read their minds. Falline: A mind is a terrible thing to taste.
Fortunately Rak’kun’s Displacer Field protects him from some of the attacks. His attempts to retaliate with his Power Axe are embarrassingly inept. The rest of the officers wince.
Amberkind: Do you require any assistance over there, Magos, or shall we just leave you to it? Rak’kun: +++I've got this!!!+++ Father Vorn: No he hasn’t!
Fortunately all of Rak’kun’s injuries have been to his fleshy components, as opposed to his precious metal bits.
Rak’kun: +++Are we still trying to take these organic ship resources alive?+++ Falline: I’m firing at them with a Plasma Pistol. What do you think?
We don’t take them alive. And we can’t get to the bridge, because the lift to the command-deck is plunging down the shaft, somewhat on fire.
Rak’kun: +++… I’m going to have to fix that.+++
Fortunately, as a voidborn native of starships, Vorn knows we can take the dumbwaiter elevator that delivers food to the officer decks. It’s a lesson he can probably incorporate into a homily, later. The kitchen decks are empty, but only because all the crew are at their ready stations. Empty except for the live Grox that’s broken out of the stockyard.
GM: They bring them up so they can kill them fresh. Only the best for the Rogue Trader.
The Grox really shouldn’t be that alert. They’re supposed to be lobotomised shortly after hatching. Not that any of us are overly familiar with livestock - half of us are voidborn and as far as Amberkind is concerned food comes from his personal caterers.
Morda: If the Emperor meant for us to live on planets He wouldn’t have sent us out into the Void.
Father Vorn: Looks like beef is back on the menu *revs his chainsword and charges* Amberkind: Father - don’t turn around. Father Vorn: Well now I have to use every ounce of willpower to NOT turn around.
Amberkind opens his Third Eye and attempts to melt the beast where it stands. To his complete mortification, this provokes nothing but a bellow of rage, before it returns its ire to the ship’s confessor.
GM: Inflicting horrors beyond comprehension requires some level of comprehension.
Morda telepathically stunlocks it, and we pour on enough firepower to blast holes in its armour, until Amberkind can fry its heart with a laspistol shot.
Rak’kun: +++Why do my olfactory sensors detect deliciousness?+++ GM: One of the few combats you’ve been in that smells better afterwards.
Father Vorn: Magos, could you please ensure the armsmen we slew earlier are properly registered for reclamation? It’s the duty of all crew to record the location and state of the fallen.
Amberkind: As long as their skulls are returned to their ship-clans to watch over their descendants. Vorn: Provided they died honourably. GM: We can’t guarantee that, the Reclamation Deck needs those skulls to fit all the mechanisms in. Amberkind: Being turned into a servo-skull is an honour - they are being rewarded for a long life of duty with more work. Vorn: Their service record will be examined to see if they are returned as servitor or as servo-skull. Amberkind: Acceptable.
Of course we still have no idea what has happened on the command deck - some rapid promotions might be in the offing.
Father-Militant Halix Vorn
Current Posting: The Reverent Exhumation Role: Missionary, confessor, and practitioner of mental medicae
Halix Vorn was born in the Calixis Sector among the void-populations that served the fleet anchorages and warships of Battlefleet Calixis. He was raised in a culture of hierarchy, prayer, discipline, and scarcity, where every life was measured by its service to the God-Emperor. From an early age he showed an unusual talent for recognizing fear, instability, and despair in others before those weaknesses became open failure.
He was educated through institutions tied to both the Ministorum and fleet service, receiving instruction in theology, rhetoric, doctrine, and the practical care of voidsmen exposed to trauma, exhaustion, and warp-strain. During his early service, Halix became convinced that the Imperium wasted too many lives by abandoning the mentally broken too quickly. He came to believe that madness, panic, and shattered morale were not only spiritual dangers, but failures of stewardship.
That conviction led him into forbidden study. In clandestine circles of unsanctioned medicae practitioners and chem-savants, Halix learned the use and lore of Chymistry, focusing on the treatment of damaged minds through compounds, discipline, and observation. It was in this period that he acquired the intimidating, non-standard Narthecium he still carries. When that circle slid from harsh medicine into blasphemous experimentation, Halix turned on them without hesitation. He exposed their work, helped destroy them, and confessed his own involvement fully when seized by Imperial authorities.
He was spared execution, but only through severe penance. Under close Ministorum scrutiny, Halix was broken down and remade into a servant of unquestioned orthodoxy. He retained his belief that the damaged should be treated, but placed that belief wholly under faith and obedience. He became an Ecclesiarchy priest whose sermons favored parables, homilies, and stern instruction over empty fire-and-brimstone theatrics. He does not reject the Emperor’s wrath, but reserves it for when all gentler remedies have failed.
His defining trial came during a disastrous Dark Voyage, when a warp passage collapsed into fear, hallucination, and violent spiritual corruption aboard ship. Halix ministered directly among the afflicted, treating those he could and destroying those too far gone. During that crisis he took up an ancient Angevin Crusade-era chainsword from sealed ship stores and used it in the Emperor’s service. He retained the weapon thereafter as both relic and reminder that mercy and judgment are equally sacred duties.
Halix joined the dynasty of The Reverent Exhumation only recently, after its fall from former glory had left the ship as its greatest remaining asset. He has settled quickly among the void clans, the lower decks, and the ship’s devotional life, where his calm presence, practical faith, and willingness to tend the broken have earned respect. He is especially effective among the grieving, unstable, and spiritually worn, and is already known as a priest who does not discard damaged souls too quickly.
He has not yet earned the trust of the Mechanicus cabals aboard ship. Halix fully recognizes the Cult of the Omnissiah as a lawful and necessary pillar of the Imperium, but he is keenly aware that its theology diverges sharply from that of the Ecclesiarchy. He respects the machine priests’ sacred duties, yet distrusts the coldness with which some of them weigh human worth against function. In turn, they regard him as competent, observant, and uncomfortably familiar with technical and medicae matters best left outside clerical hands.
Aboard The Reverent Exhumation, Halix serves as confessor, morale-stabilizer, healer of minds, and guardian against the slow decay by which despair becomes heresy. He believes every human life belongs to the Emperor, and that every salvageable soul must be restored to usefulness before it is abandoned to darkness.
Pathfinder : Hell's Rebels Pt.48 - Stormtrooper in Stilettos
Rajira’s player: The Barsoom technicians were repairing their ancient technology by rote. It's where they got the idea for the techpriests of Mars in 40K Terzo’s player: Gosh, GW stealing ideas? I can’t believe that would ever happen. Decius’ player: Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau is a completely original character not based on anybody.
The Ghosts of Kintargo have another reason to leave the comforts of the city - unnatural weather boiling out of the Ravounel Forest, a large expanse of oak, fir and pine to the south of Kintargo. It used to be the main source of timber for the city, but over the last few decades the Kitkastitka tribe of the winged Strix have established a presence there, and they barely tolerate the woodcutting villages on the outskirts. There are certainly Strix in Kintargo itself, but those are clipped-winged outcasts from the Kitkastitka. In fact we made a deal with some of them months ago, promising better treatment for their people if they joined the Rebellion.
Rajira: We’ve kind of neglected that. Ayva: We’ve been BUSY.
Assuming it isn’t some unprecedented Strix Druid messing with the meteorology, the storms might be the work of coven of hags, or some attempt by Queen Abrogail to circumvent the terms of the Kintargo Contract by using destabilised weather to destabilise our rebel province. Whatever the cause, establishing friendly relations with the Kitkastitka is a good idea.
And flying our boat into the storm is a bad one.
On the other hand, flying in does avoid most of the wandering monsters. Even the nastiest generally can’t fly, or if they can, would be reluctant to approach something as large as a ship.
But there’s always an exception. Like the pair of blue flying horses galloping around in the stormclouds.
Decius: *eyes the flagon he’s been drinking from suspiciously*
Apparently they’re aerial fae, called Zephyrs. At least they’re intelligent.
Zephyr: What ho, brother! See! Adventurers! Zephyr 2: They seem to have enchanted a boat!
The fae can’t give us an exact cause for the storms, but can point us towards their origin point.
Zephyr 2: At least try to give us some warning before you stop them happening, they are such fun. Ayva: We kind of have to. Zephyr 1: Hmm. Brother, how far is the Eye of Abendego from here? Civilla: You’re on the wrong continent.
We offer to Teleport them to the aforementioned permanent cyclone.
Zephyr: Very kind! How about we spar while my brother scouts out your problem for you? Bertuscio: I doubt my whip would be appreciated.
The focus of the more immeadiate storm does, indeed, appear to be a coven of hags. There’s no other reason three apparently innocent elderly old women would be standing around a cauldron out in the middle of a storm, especially with a robust building nearby. At least they aren’t looking up as we circle overhead.
We land behind trees nearby, and send Civilla ahead. She is naturally cautious, alert for anything that feels like a familial connection. After all, her own ancestry might get involved here.
Hag: Greetings, sister! I didn’t expect one of our kind to be anywhere nearby. Civilla: Oh, oh, good mother. I am not one of your kind, I am one of your kind’s children. Hag: Well, there’s always time for hospitality. Pixie soup? *offers a bowl of whatever is in the cauldron* Civilla: I must decline, good mothers. I am here on specific business, regarding the storms. Would you know anything about that? Hag 2: Of course! That’s us! It’s not like we’re hurting anybody. Hag 3: Apart from those evil Strixs. Hag 1: Very evil. They’re planning to conquer that city to the north, don’t you know.
Civilla objects to this, and drops the glamour on her armour. Revealing the three chattering hag heads around her neck. This is the first time Decius has seen them, too.
Hag 1: Diplomacy has failed, sisters! Civilla OoC: To initiative!
Civilla hits the trio with a Fireball so intense it half-melts their cauldron.
GM: The air is filled with the scent of burnt pixie. Terzo: Caramelised.
Decius, Mahat, Rajira, Bert, and Civilla’s Movanic Deva friend descend en masse to apply corrective pain. In abundance. One of the coven attempts to cast Dimension Door.
Civilla: Reaction: Counterspell. Ayva: I was half-expecting her to point a finger and say ‘No.’ Terzo: DENIED. Civilla: That’s essentially what I did. I am not a witch, I am an ARCANIST Ayva: She denied her witch heritage and decided to become a bookworm.
Hag 3 trips Rajira with a hex - not that it makes much difference, since Rajiira was going for her ankles anyway. She won’t be hobbling far with her Achilles tendons severed. Of course, since they’re clearly storm hags, we can’t REALLY be surprised when they call down an Ice Storm on half the party.
Ayva hits them with a wave of water.
Ayva: It worked well on hags in the past and I felt like a repeat. Terzo: Plus they’re hags, maybe they’re allergic to a bath.
They’re certainly allergic to Civilla’s second Fireball. Although it does destroy any resale value on the cauldron, except as scrap metal. Decius and the Movanic Deva follow up with some wrath of God.
Ayva: Thou shalt not suffer the witch to live. Mahat might not be as religious - or at least his religion is more fun-orientated - but that doesn’t stop him blending the first hag into chunky salsa. Surviving Hag: I’ll get you! I’LL GET YOU!!! *attempts to Dimension Door out* Civilla: Counterspell. After you all get your Attacks of Opportunity on her. Mahat: Ladies First.
Ayva skewers the last hag with a magically created iron stake.
Civilla: Luster, bring the ship in. Ayva: She's wearing a little pirate’s hat, isn’t she. Luster: Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me.
The hag’s familiars - bats - flee the house. If they can’t find some nascent witch to attach to they’ll lose their intelligence and spell knowledge, which is a bit sad.
Terzo: Some future witch on the outskirts of the Forest is going to get a real surprise when three bats swarm in through her window and try to get her attention. Nascent Witch: *beating them with a broom* Out! Out! I’ll not be having with any of that!
A sculpture in the house, apparently made from bone, is even more disturbing with Deadsight.
Civilla: *grabbing Decius’ shoulder* That’s ah, neither alive nor dead. And you were about to walk up and poke it. Decius: I’ll walk up and poke it really hard, then. *hefts sword*
It’s a Bone Golem. This is bad, not least because they are mostly immune to magic, and can throw their own component ossicles to encage their enemies.
Ayva: Reverse Gravity! Civilla: Oh what a feeling - Terzo: Fighting on the ceiling.
At least bone is relatively fragile, after a while. Fragile enough that one hit from Decius shatters it to pieces, even with its Damage Reduction. Fragments scatter - to the ceiling.
Ayva: I take it we’re not taking any bits home? Civilla: No. Well... I’ll think about it.
Although given all the bones are hollow and lightweight, we can make an educated guess as to how the hags acquired them. We endeavor to return the remains of their children to the Strix. And Civilla has an idea too, telling us to come outside with her after we've finished looting. She wants to Mark the house with her personal sigil, get her Movanic Deva Awaken the colossal tree adjacent to the house, and set the gigantic animate plant as a guardian. We point out that we should talk to the Kitkastitka first, so at the very least the tree won’t mash them into fertilizer the moment they come near the house.
Ayva: And if they have a druid we can tell them ‘hey you have a tree friend that can kick ass now’. Decius: Now I’m laughing at the idea of Awakening a Dryad’s tree so it can walk around. Ayva: Now I have another two paintings to do! Stop doing this. Terzo: We can’t help being awesome.
Small Correction. The Familiars would only lose their spell knowledge, and that's only by inference. The rules are very silent on the fate of familiar's whose spellcaster has died and not been resurrected.
Golem, Bone
The Known World
Meryshan (The Cursed Isle) The remaining people of Meryshan are descended from the slaves who rose up against their Witch Elf masters at end of the witch-war, while the allied armies put everything to torch without restraint. A blighted people in a blighted land. Primarily: Humans (slave-descended) + mixed Kith
Kirvin
Home of some of the most driven engineers and inventors, along with the best miners and spice farmers. The Clanholds of Kirvin are made up of people known to be focused, steady and mechanically attuned. Primarily Dwarves.
Storm-Horn Strongholds Tropical highlands of cliff-forts and rain-slick roads, where storms decide travel and politics. Survival is logistics, and oaths are sworn “as the wind allows.” Primarily Orcs.
Suzen The Suzen can trace their identity the first rebellions against the Empire and are the home of the Church of Light, which dominates every aspect of their lives. Rumoured to have access to lost Imperial magics, their homeland is largely less wild than other regions. Primarily Humans.
Typari
Originally quite peaceful, the witch-war and the rise of the Church of Light, Typari have taken a more violent and directly military path. They are clever, inquisitive, sometimes too curious for their own good. Home of vast libraries and academies, and outlandish fashion. Primarily Humans, Elves and Dwarves.
The Free Principalities
Despite the name, the generations since the fall of the Empire have seen the rising power of the Merchant Houses. Worldly, friendly, they make good merchants, negotiators and peacemakers. Trade flows best when there is peace, and trade is their lifeblood. Primarily Humans, Elves and Ogres.
The Greenbelt March
“Two weathers” (storm months vs. dry months) and “two cultures” rubbing together: a blending-zone where compromise, mixed households, and “law-by-custom” are normal. Primarily Humans and Orcs.
Broadplain Confederacies
Chokepoint ports and hard bargains – trade is welcome, but controlled. Treaties exist to make betrayal expensive, not impossible. Primarily Ogres and Orcs
Witchlands
Open grasslands that punish the careless and reward the pragmatic. Witch-bred ways and “strange rites” are treated as survival craft, not superstition. Primarily Humans, Elves and Witch-bred
The Imperial Steppelands
For the old Imperial home, the witch-war’s lesson was that nobility had to be affirmed through deed. The scions of the Steppelands are charming, if sometimes haughty. They value classical education – swordplay, diplomacy, magic, philosophy and the arts. Primarily Elves, Humans and Dwarves.
Stonelands
Thin soil, heavy stone, and people who build roads and walls because they must. Oaths are treated like infrastructure – break one and you’re the threat. Primarily Humans.
Rinzen
Internally focused, Rinzen are more self-sufficient and less likely to rely on alliances and trade, even if it meant that they suffer with less. Stubborn, loyal to a fault, and they will often refuse to back down. They are guided by their ancestor’s stories and songs. Primarily Humans and Orcs.
The Hundred Tribes
The Hundred Tribes would be a threat if not for their constant inner strife. “Peace is an Illusion” is their collective motto, it is tempered by a rigid code of honour, that prohibits unwarranted violence and offers chances for non-violent solutions, including Wergild. Primarily Humans and Ogres.
Lake-March Gateholds
Mountain passes and cold lakes controlled by fortress-towns and toll charters. Winter closes roads; the Gateholds keep order by making terms clear and passage safe. Primarily Orcs and Humans
Duskvale Also known as “The Veiled Holds”. A shadowed land of dark pines, underroads, and closed gates. Memory is duty here – grudges are long, forgiveness is formal, and outsiders are obligations. Primarily Elves (Mostly Dark Elves) and Dwarves
I really do need to get around to updating the map with the place names, instead of "Group X" placeholders.
The Outer Realms
The Cosmology of the Known Universe
(Weldun's notes on his RPG setting)
This setting’s cosmos is shaped like a cluster of adjoining “bubbles.” Reality sits at the center: the physical world of stone and blood, weather and kingdoms, cause and effect. Surrounding Reality are the Outer Realms—not “planets,” not “afterlives,” not mere metaphors, but real places and real principles that press against the world. They leak through thin places, answer certain kinds of magic, and sometimes leave fingerprints on people.
One thing up front: Reality is not an Outer Realm. It’s the middle. Antinimus is not an Outer Realm either. It sits outside the whole pattern. Everything else in the diagram is an Outer Realm, including the border-realms Dream and Shadow.
What the Outer Realms are (in plain terms)
Each Outer Realm is a pure expression of an idea—an element, a force, or a cosmic principle. Reality is complicated and mixed; the Outer Realms are intense and single-minded. That intensity has consequences:
In the Outer Realms, the realm’s concept becomes landscape, weather, law, and instinct. When an Outer Realm touches Reality, it does so as omens, strange physics, symbolism made real, and spirits wearing that realm’s “face." Magic and miracles don’t just “break rules”—they often borrow pressure from a Realm and momentarily make the world agree with it. Morality is in the inhabitants, not the realms. No Outer Realm (except Antinimus) is “good” or “evil.” Instead, each Realm is inhabited by personifications of what it represents, in two broad expressions:
Elysian personifications: constructive, stabilizing, ennobling expressions of the realm’s concept.
Diabolic personifications: corrosive, predatory, deforming expressions of that same concept.
They aren’t “angels vs demons” in the universal sense. They’re the Realm’s idea wearing two different hungers. Example: Fire can be hearth, forge, and purification… or wildfire, arson, and consumption. Same realm. Different faces.
The map at a glance -
The cosmology has three “layers” of closeness to Reality:
1) The Core - Reality (center) 2) The Near Ring (closest Outer Realms) - These six directly border Reality and are the most commonly “felt” in everyday life: 3) The Far Ring (principle-realms)
These sit “beyond” the near ring. They’re still Outer Realms, but more abstract, more absolute, and often more dangerous to contact directly:
Light (The Empyrean) — born of Spirit + Fire Life (Genesis) — born of Spirit + Earth Order (The Arcanum) — born of Earth + Water Darkness (The Void) — born of Water + Husk Death (Necrosis) — born of Husk + Air Disorder (Pandemonium) — born of Air + Fire
The two border-realms (overlaps) - These are Outer Realms that interlock with Reality:
Dream (overlap of Reality + Spirit) Shadow (overlap of Reality + Husk)
They’re where people “fall through the cracks” most often.
Guess who's back? With character, this time!
Sometimes I'll listen to a song while reading through a ruleset and a character will coalesce. Obviously, some liberties are taken with how lyrics are interpreted, but when inspiration strikes I cannot help but at least sketch out a brief concept. This time, let's try to do it on purpose. I hope you like it and, who knows, maybe people will like this enough to encourage me to try my hand at a few others. Especially if I find a song that "speaks" to me.
Anyhoo...
Sung into Being, #1: "Man in a Box" by Alice in Chains.
While I know the song is about censorship and the how the band was effed over by the record industry, the song’s lyrics and video couches this in themes of entrapment, silence, religious critique and suffering (they especially lean into this with a theme of animal cruelty), all bound in a desperate cry for truth and liberation. Oh yeah, I got one for this. Feel free to steal, BTW.
Jerrin "The Boxborn" Vhal. (DnD 5e)
Human Warlock (Pact of the Tome with the Great Old One Patron).
Chaotic Neutral – Jerrin is driven by personal freedom and truth, unbound by law or tradition.
Character Concept:
Jerrin Vhal was a child chosen by a corrupt religious order to be “sealed away” — a human sacrifice left to waste in isolation beneath the temple grounds. Entombed inside a wooden reliquary known as The Confession Box, he was fed through slats and left in the dark for years, a living martyr for the sins of others. But something ancient heard his silent screams — and answered.
When the temple fell in a cataclysm, Jerrin crawled from the wreckage, still chained, eyes burned shut by eldritch light — but alive. The Box had become part of him, and with it, the voice of the Entity that dwelled in the silence.
Direct Lyrical Inspirations:
“I'm the man in the box” – He was literally sealed in a box for years, a ritual scapegoat to absorb the sins of the community.
“Won't you come and save me?” – He cries for deliverance not just from physical captivity, but from spiritual ignorance.
“Feed my eyes, can you sew them shut?” – His eyes were ritually sewn shut as part of the sacrifice. Now blind, he “sees” via supernatural senses granted by his patron.
“Jesus Christ, deny your maker” – He has turned from false gods and now bears witness against religious hypocrisy. Traits, Abilities, and Flavor: Eyes Sewn Shut – Cannot see in the traditional sense; Mechanically he still has normal sight via his pact with his patron. Devil’s Sight and Eldritch Sight expand on this gift.
The Whispering Box – Carries a relic of his past (the remains of his box that have formed into a small replica), which whispers secrets and maddening truths. May provide insight, lore, or cryptic warnings and serves as his Book of Shadows.
The Silent One – An ancient being that communicates through whispers just on the edge of hearing. Provides psychic powers, whispers of forbidden knowledge, and madness.
Voice of the Damned – His voice echoes with the power of the entity; can use Command, Dissonant Whispers, or Suggestion flavored as disturbing proclamations. Obviously, Dreadful Word
Personality: Shaped by years of isolation, Jerrin speaks in riddles and broken phrases. Hates hypocrites, false prophets, and religious institutions. Seeks freedom, but fears returning to isolation. May ask others: “Can you hear it too?” when the entity speaks.
Roleplaying Hooks:
What did the Entity really say to him in the dark? Is he a prophet, or just insane? Does he want revenge… or redemption? And is the Box still binding him — or is it all that protects the world from him?
cc ò )___)_ hey everyone...
cc ò)___)_ sorry i haven't posted in a bit
cc ~ )___)_ stuff has happened and it's made it hard to post...
cc ò )___)_ and currently i am sick... not even a full restore or pokécenter can fix it...
cc > )___)_ just have to wait it out...
cc _ )___)_ i'm doing my best to get better, but this it hard...
cc .)___\ GOOD NEWS!
cc ò )___\ Oh- Sorry for yelling.
cc ^ )___\ But I am feeling much better now!
cc •)___\ Sure, it's still summer and hot,
cc - )___\ but to be honest, I have almost gotten used to just hanging out in my mini fridge bed.
cc ô )___\ Apparently Vidri's uncle got a new deep freezer so maybe I can see about going in there when we go to visit!
cc ~ )___\ It'd probably be incredible...
cc ' )___\ Ah! Sorry, getting sidetracked!
📋cò ")___\ Where was I...?
📋cô )___\ Oh right! Me feeling better!
cc û )___\ Yes, I am feeling better and I am happy about that.
i imagine this is how tumblr users interact
They're not wrong...
So I just now learned about Stagecoach Mary and how have I never heard of this absolute LEGEND of a woman before
She was born a slave and freed when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued (she was about 30)
She was about six feet tall and 200 pounds and once she was free she decided she’d never take shit from anyone ever again
When one of her close friends, a nun by the name of Mother Amadeus, became ill with pneumonia at her convent in Montana, Mary headed alone into the frontier to nurse Mother Amadeus back to health
After Mother Amadeus recovered, she gave Mary a job as the foreman of the convent. She repaired buildings, took care of chickens, made the long and dangerous journeys into town for supplies, and did other odd jobs.
She could drink most men under the table, and one saloon offered five bucks and a free shot of whiskey to any man who could take a punch to the face from Mary and remain standing.
She was once said by a local paper to have broken more noses than anyone else in Montana
She was outspokenly Republican, which at this time was the liberal party in America, and would get into political debates with the more conservative townsfolk
One time a man insulted her outside the saloon so hit him in the face with a rock, and only stopped when other cowboys held her back.
On one supply run into town, her wagon overturned and the horses fled. Mary spent all night single-handedly fending off a pack of wolves with her guns before she righted the heavy wagon by herself and tracked down the spooked horses. The only thing lost in the accident was a jar of molasses.
She lost her job at the convent when she got into a gunfight with a male employee who did not want to take orders from a black woman. She reportedly shot him in the ass, which angered the local bishop.
After losing her convent job, Mary spent a brief time running a restaurant, where she welcomed and served all comers
When a job for a mail carrier opened at the local US Post Office, Mary got the job because she managed to hitch six horses to a wagon faster than any of the male candidates
She was sixty at the time
This made her the first black woman mail carrier, and the second woman mail carrier in US history
When the snows were too deep for the horses to manage the long and dangerous delivery routes, Mary would strap on snowshoes, put the bags of mail on her shoulders, and do it herself
At one point she apparently had a pet eagle????
She only retired from the mail route when she was about 70 years old, and instead made a quieter living by babysitting and running a laundry business in the town of Cascade
She was a huge baseball fan and often gave the local team a big bouquet of flowers from her garden
The people of Cascade loved Mary so much that they closed the schools annually on her birthday
When a law was passed in Montana that forbade women from drinking in saloons, the mayor of Cascade granted Mary an exemption.
When her house burned down, the whole town got together to help her build a new one
She continued drinking, fighting, and going to baseball games until she died of liver failure at 82 in 1914
Mary (far right) and the local baseball team
Anyway sorry for gushing I just now heard about her and I’m in love
I’ve heard of her, but godDAMN, if her story doesn’t bear repeating. ^w^
She has her own wikipedia page. Enjoy.
There are several documentaries about her, too. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6004312/
She too so little shit from anyone and was accepted by her white townsfolk. Never forget that you don't have to take shit just because you're different.
The Bullshit-Free Witchcraft Podcast: 58. Liminal Spaces and the Crossroads
This month we’re talking about liminality and the spaces in between. The places that don’t really seem to belong where they are, where that sense of unreality kicks in. Where we go to the edge of the firelight to the transition to the night.
And how that all links into one of the most important, almost universal pieces of folklore: The Crossroads.
(And, of course, don’t forget this show is part of the Nerd & Tie Podcast Network, and funded by listeners like you via Patreon. Consider joining our Discord!)
Music: “So I Said It,” “The Man With One Eye,” “Untitle Nonsense” (Trae Dorn) / Random Loops (Apple Music Library)
Listen to the episode / Subscribe on iTunes
am taking perverse pleasure in reminding people it's 2025. that's a star trek year. silly little science fiction number. except it's happening, and DANG ain't it underwhelming!
for Gen Z folks who didn't live through it:
the late 2000s to mid 2010s were culturally, a time of a resurgence of hope. I don't think we seriously realized it at the time (for all the Obama campaign posters), but it honestly was the last period in recent history where it was assumed the future would be better.
that was a big thing, that many millennials didn't realize was a big thing, until it was torn away. we honestly thought it was over, the fear and uncertainty of the Cold War and the Nuclear Age (and Bush 2.0). we were born in an era of reprieve. things were bad, yes, the world was insane and unfair, but it was better than it was before. the world had been at the brink of ultimate disaster, and then it stepped back. (And we honestly thought we had escaped our parents' legacy, by sheer virtue of being born in the correct decade.)
I cannot overstate how much that shapes your worldview, growing up in a time where the recent present is better than the recent past. we had reason to believe the world was getting better. because it was, actually! for a good while there! progress was slow, but it was real, and we could feel its grit on our fingertips.
and now we're in an age of regression. because you were robbed. we were robbed. a great global era of robbery (of housing and food and time and health and body and freedom and fundamental human rights), has blossomed, and is happening everyday today.
be furious. they will steal the teeth from your gums.
I'm on the Millennial end of Gen-X. A Xillennial. And we're just tired. Gen-X has been putting up with Boomer Bullshit the longest and just as we thought that we'd finally gotten through to them, just as we thought that we were making progress, the Boomers all but collectively pivoted to the "don't care, got mine" mentality that we know them for. This is why we embraced heavy metal. Because we were pissed. We still are, but so many of us are just tired. We missed out on all the opportunities. Be you Millennial or Gen-Z or even Gen-Alpha, we ARE your allies. We KNOW your pain, trust us. But we're also tired. Just so... damned... tired. Many of us are all screamed out.
ya’ll were really gonna let me live my life in ignorance thinking mr. rogers was straight???
oh whoops, did we forget to tell you? there’s a quote in The Good Neighbor where Mr. Rogers talked about being attracted to both men and women
FRED ROGERS I LOVE YOU EVEN MORE
WOOOO
tumblr rediscovering this post in 2025: