Talk:Black Pearl Gate

Forgotten Byblos

Description: A figure in robes of wrapped, tan cloth bound around his body and head, wrapped around his face with no discernible holes for eyes or mouth. The cloth is inscribed with dense, complicated writing, handing in scroll-like strips - his arms extend from the folds, wrapped similarly, with long, dextrous fingers. A metal ring lies on his left hand, and he often produces a book (or several) from the depths of his robe, while a metal, plated belt hung with scroll-cases and pouches is clasped around his waist.. His feet, obscured by his robes, make a hollow clacking, almost scratching noise.

Attributes: 20 points to spread between base stats. Resolution is stat + d20.

Might: 2 Immovable

Skill: 2 Deft Hands

Intellect: 10 Great Scholar

Integrity: 6 Seen it All

Miraculous Power: Memory

A wizard and scholar, Byblos took knowledge to the logical heights, expressing the soul in art and writing. Through this knowledge, he can affect the minds of others, viewing their recollections of their life, altering them, or stealing them entirely. He can recreate designs lost to time, call up ancient secrets he's glimpsed in the patterns of the world, and discern the presence of thought were none appears.

Mythic Artefacts

Codex Immateria - a large tome containing the souls of great beings, inscribed on paper, giving great insight into magic and the nature of the soul. Can be used to summon a wraith-like shadow to defend its master.

Demon Ring - a ring with an ornate symbol on it, containing the power of demons captured and 'recorded' by Forgotten Byblos. Fires a bolt of madness that warps and distorts reality with chaotic power, wounding targets and twisting objects.

Background

Principles: Preserve the deeds and lives of all that lived or existed, without embellishment or omission. Force knowledge into the open and expose secrets when it is safe to do so, create monuments to the mind and souls of others.

Legends: Resurrected the ancient Empire of Dreams after a thousand years, restoring them as undead as they were at their height. Destroyed the Heroes of Whitemountain when they attempted to recover and destroy the Quartz Tablet, which contained a spell designed to awaken the ocean in rage against anyone. Stole the memory of the Goddess Arcana as punishment for denying the secrets of Lunar magic to humans.

Regrets: Keeping the memories of the Goddess, rather than giving them to the people. Slaying so many heroes who attempted to steal knowledge from me, as I held it in trust. Being unable to restore more civilizations (and later, the world itself) from dust.

Memories: The deeds, thoughts, and very souls of many of the greatest minds. The great cities of the Empire of Dreams, and the sun across the Towering Arcus. Every day of wars, every year the seas were enraged my the great Tablet's magic, and the last words of the demigod Ortha. The great libraries I build, that now lie unseen or in dust.

Reasons: There is knowledge and history under that black arch, lying in secret amid the dead and dying. It will be uncovered and taken into the light.

Special Achievement: Doomtrain Summon

Sathena

• Description: A tall beauty with dark skin and darker hair, her expression as changable as the wind, clad in form fitting armour of white and silver and blue, a shield floats by one hand, a spear over the other.
• Attributes: 20 points to spread between base stats. Resolution is stat + d10.
  • Might: 5 Warrior Born
  • Skill: 10 Fleeter than Thought
  • Intellect: 2 Strategist
  • Integrity: 3 Passionate

• Miraculous Power: Movement
  • Sathena can modify space and distance around her, applying great force or teleporting instantly
• Mythic Artefacts: What relics of the world that was do you still carry?
  • The panoply of Meri - taken from the body of her fallen enemy, the armour and shield of Meri offer a powerful defence to the wielder. Once per battle the panoply will completely negate one blow that got through its wearers defences.
  • The spear of Adrenla -taken from Sathena's companion Adrenla when she fell in combat. The spear can be in two places at once, striking twice up to twice per battle.
• Background:
  • Principles: Sathena is a heroine, that defines her. Glory, Arete, to do great deeds even at the end of all things.
  • Legends: Sathena the passionate, Sathena the adventurous, Sathena the breaker of armies and unmaker of kings. Sathena who fought the gods and slew the goddess Meri, divine agent to the world and took her armour. Sathena the betrayed. Sathena the peaceless. Sathena the lost.
  • Regrets: And all the wonders of the world and a hundred victories I would give them up for one embrace from you, fallen Adrenla.
  • Memories: The great deeds of the past, the revels and the battles, the great fleets of man and of the gods. The palace atop the eternal mountain.
  • Reasons: What deeds are their left but these?

Tehom

• Description: Tehom is grand, grand, noble and timeless in her appearance, albeit faintly matronly, standing at approximately twice the height of an ordinary human. Her blue hair shines like a thousand glittering streams braided into a single mighty river, parted behind a crest of two wings that jut from her head. Her skin is a seawater-tinged alabaster.
• Attributes:
  • Strength: 8 Titanic Force
  • Skill: 3 Seagoing Wit
  • Intellect: 3 Nurturing Instinct
  • Integrity: 6 Indestructible Dignity

• Miraculous Power: The Primordial Element
  • Tehom can create, diminish and transfigure the element of water, creating great deluges and droughts that might ravage the land at the apex or her strength, or cause the most horrific and agonizing of ends to those with bodies of flesh and blood.
• Mythic Artefacts
  • Amphora of the First: A large and absolutely indestructible container of water with two handles, that would take many men to carry but in the hands of a giant is comfortable as a cudgel or battering ram. The amphora contains liquid from the first of the world's oceans, a liquid not easily described as water but containing the potential of all life that traces its origins to the sea. The ancient sea grants things the power of survival, healing infirmities and knitting wounds. Secretly, it yearns to be free and burst forth from the amphora, commencing a new cycle of evolution.
  • Titanic Hippocamp: A massive steed with great finned wings that can bear it into the sky or through the oceans and a scaly coat adorning a body that begins as a horse and ends with a long tail like that of a sea-dragon. A pouch in its stomach contains infinite space but a person who knows what they desire can withdraw any item placed within effortlessly.
• Background
  • Principles: Tehom carries the mantle of a long-lost goddess who created the world's oceans and allowed life to flourish, a sort of living memory that continues on in the world. The weight of time has made her cool and less concerned by the specifics, although she believes that life must be allowed to continue on in the new world- no matter the cost. Despite ennui, her self-preservation instinct is quite high.
  • Legends: Tehom ended the thousand-year draught in a distant land that had allowed dessicated skeleton lords to rule over that part of the world, raised a long-lost kingdom from the depths of the ocean and
  • Regrets: She was a mother of kings, heroes, giants and monsters an age and a half ago. While she remains immortal, they never were.
  • Memories: The names of many lovers, children and the tragedies where they killed each other. A brief but loving childhood in an old temple.
  • Reasons: Something of the world must live on.

Arniskos The Black Knight

• Description: Is large heavily muscular man, long raven hair, tied together by a battered red ribbon, clad in silver armor that has started to rust, and cape long ago muddied beyond recongization.
• Attributes:
  • Strength: 5 The Knight's Strength
  • Skill: 6 Knight's Fury of Steel
  • Intellect: 4 Knight's Tactics
  • Integrity: 5 Knight's Honor and Pride

• Miraculous Power: Chalice of the Holy Blood (Life sphere) effect on things drunken from it or poured upon)
• Having quested in the past to find the Holy Chalice of Heaven, Arniskos has drinken of its cup, and since then age no longer affects him, as the holy blood naturally keeps him hale as the day he drunk of it.
• Mythic Artefacts
  • The Kingsword: Large two handed sword imbued with the essence of Arniskos, its rule over swords is undisputed, and all other swords must submit or turn before it.
  • The Ringof Honor: Given to him by the great wizard Al-Zafaria, the Crown of Honor is a crown is one which bounds oaths made truly in unbreakable geass.
• Background
  • Principles: Obey thy Lord, Protect the Realm, Protect the Weak, Defend Honor, Avenge Evil, Keep true to your word. Embody Justice, Find Solace and Redemption.
  • Legends: The Knight Arniskos was hailed as one of the greatest knights of the Realm. He slewed the Great Dragon Dathsiss, lead his Brothers on a Crusades that purged the Vampire Lords of Ravenstill, was the champion of the people and loved by the lords and ladies. His greatest triumph was the Quest for the Holy Chalice, which protected from the Dark Knight and (father) Krisnkos. His stories that were told of being the embodiment of chivalry.
  • Regrets: His story was also told of betrayal of love and friendship. Off the "Treacherous" Queen Kellithia seduction of him and his trial by combat which saw his King and mentor died at his sword broke his heart and ended his stories.
  • Memories: Kellithia's embrace, the Holy Chalice, Kamberton's blood on my sword.
  • Reasons: There must still be something I can do to redeem myself.

Alessia

• Description: Alessia is a giant of strange, almost organic-looking metal, cast in the resemblance of a knight - though with twisted proportions, inhumanly thin and gaunt, with a frame easily twice as tall as that of a grown man. Her other forms varied - although in her time as the Archivist, she typically took the form of a noble of the Last Empire, beautiful and clad in a dress of living metal, but as her own spirit crumbled, her grasp on this art too began to fade, becoming more and more difficult to grasp. Her bone-white colour, however, remains the one constant.
• Attributes:
  • Might: 5 Messenger of Ruin
  • Skill: 3 Lethally Precise
  • Intellect: 4 The Walking Archive
  • Integrity: 8 Loyalty Beyond Reason Or Death

• Miraculous Power: The Royal Aegis (The Manifestation of Will Ruin)
  • In the early days of the Last Empire, a dozen warriors stood alongside the Ash King when he rose from the ruins of past eras and claimed his first world, and from there sent out a thousand thousand galleons on a campaign to claim all cosmos. Those would come to be known as the Ash Knights - and Alessia was one of them. They were all granted a certain power, as a sign of the faith that the Ash King had in them. Out of the twelve knights, Alessia was the purest, the strongest of will - and she was given the power to manifest that will into reality, to impose it on the world.

Her will became both a sword and a shield - something to cover herself in when she stepped onto strange, alien worlds, something to ward against the blows from her foes, something to provide comfort and mend broken flesh, something to cut down these who would stand against the Ash King, not so much with a blade's edge as with sheer intent, and finally something to guide the living metal that became her body to take new shapes as it was desired. It is with this power that Alessia merged herself with her armour when she was reduced to nothing but flakes of ash herself, and with this power that she brought ruin to a hundred worlds and salvation to a thousand more.

However, as is the nature of will, it is of no help to ones other than her - and how much strength truly is in the will of a pure soul, when that soul itself has become hollow? By now, it can bring nothing but ruin, a reflection of a broken, warped knight.

• Mythic Artefacts:
  • The Armour of Royal Aegis - as much Alessia's flesh as armour. When her body was lost in the great struggle against the titan Hvala, Alessia could not bear the thought of such disloyalty as abandoning her liege in the time of need; and, rather than accept her death, fused her soul with her panoply of living metal. As such, she no longer suffers from the frailties of the flesh that may distract her from her eternal duty - her armour adapting and mending itself in battle, as easily as breathing.
  • The Halberd of Ruin - a weapon crafted for Alessia by the legendary one-eyed smiths of the Black King, who dwells in the absence of things, as thanks for giving them the gift of light. It still glows faintly in the remembrance of that small mercy. Imbued with the essence of that strange place, it has the power to rend things that are not within the realm of the physical just as easily as flesh and steel, bringing ruin to all equally.

• Background:
  • Principles: There is no virtue greater than loyalty. Alessia had always served the Ash King, the ruler of the Last Empire, the final gasp of cosmos before its slow collapse, before and after her death, unswerving, unreasoning; she sees little need for personal glory or riches. Once, she also dreamt of seeing the ends of the cosmos - with all its wonders and miracles.
  • Legends: Ended the war against the titans with the slaying of their king, Hvala; brought a thousand worlds under the rule of the Last Empire, and seen a thousand times that; forced the great wyrm Mekhala to bow before her liege; travelled the realm of the Black King for hundred days and hundred nights and lived.
  • Regrets: Not going with the Ash King and her comrades through the Gate, remaining so that someone might be left who would remember the Last Empire, and still dream its dreams. Seeing the end of cosmos, and her own dreams slowly hollowed out as it crumbled, until nothing but a shell remained. Not saying "yes" to Miha on that night of the full moon.
  • Memories: The duel around the dying star. The childhood spent in the desert amidst ruins, before the coming of the Ash King. The journey through the crumbling lands. The tears under moonlight. The radiance of a thousand alien suns. The face of the Ash King as he led the remnants of his empire through the gate, never to return. The loneliness of crystal archives, tending to memories that have nobody else to remember them.
  • Reasons: The Ash King gave me the orders to safeguard the memories of the Last Empire, and were I to wait until I crumble to nothing as well, I would be failing his trust. I want a world to exist where I could, one day, dream again.