Hieroglyph-of-Oasis

The Sage of the Oasis was born Apshut to a Terrestrial family in Puropolis. A clear genius, she was expected to exalt and carry on the honour of the line, and was educated by the Immaculates in expectation of this. However, the expected exaltation never came, and Apshut became dissatisfied with the contrast between theory and practice of the Realm satraps. Around the time of the exaltation of her younger brother, a many sided falling-out between her, her family and the Immaculate monks saw her leave the city for the Solarium.

Five years later, she restored the springs of that ancient manse to full strength and published Movements of the Mind of Creation under the name Hieroglyph-of-Oasis, a work in five books that began with broadly-agreed Immaculate philosophical precepts and went on to prove both the existence of a superior reason encompassing the elements, and the vulnerability of Dynastic government to scrutiny in this light. Its arguments were raw and not yet whole, but struck a chord, and the work was proscribed by the Immaculate Order and Apshut was disowned by her family, eliminating that name entirely.

In the twenty-five years since then the once moribund Solarium has slowly recovered as a centre of thought in opposition to the Realm and the Immaculates, buttressed by occasional publications or developments from Hieroglyph and her students and collaborators. The Immaculate Order has frowned on it for a long time, but their power is not hegemonic so far from the Blessed Isle, and there are rumours that once-Apshut's family still extend her some protection in Dynastic politics.

Five years ago, as the Realm was thrown into chaos, Hieroglyph was working on her new magnum opus, Cosmos in the Vision of the Absolute Eye. A work both more ambitious and more perfect than its predecessor, answering two decades of refutations and repudiating the Immaculate Hierarchy in favour of rule by Reason. The arguments of her detractors, sometimes seeming to have come from more-than-Terrestrial hands, were more than her mind could bear. Then as she stood before a fire with her manuscript in hand, in the twilight of a day of fruitless contemplation, her mind was struck by a golden flash of inspiration.

She finished the book that night. In the morning, a beatific figure alighted on her balcony in a flutter of white feathers, bearing tidings and warnings, and heralding the beginning of an intellectual explosion.

Name: Hieroglyph-of-Oasis

Exaltation: Solar

Caste: Twilight

Anima: Elaborate geometric diagrams

Supernality: Lore

Essence: 1

Limit Trigger: Being mistaken

Experience: 0/0 0/0

Attributes

Strength 2

Dexterity 3

Stamina 2

Charisma 2

Manipulation 3

Appearance 4

Perception 4

Intelligence 5

Wits 2

Abilities

Archery

Athletics 1

Awareness 1

Brawl 1

Bureaucracy 2

Craft (geomancy) 4

Dodge

Integrity 5

Investigation

Larceny

Linguistics 4

Lore (Solarium scholar) 5

Martial Arts (Crane) 3

Medicine 3

Melee

Occult 4

Performance 3

Presence 2

Resistance

Ride

Sail

Socialise 2

Stealth

Survival

Thrown

War

Specialities

Linguistics (scholarly)

Lore (philosophy)

Lore (magic)

Lore (natural science)

Vital Statistics

Essence: 13/13 (33/33)

Willpower: 6/6

Health

[ ] 0

[ ][ ] -1

[ ][ ] -2

[ ] -4

[ ] Incap

Join Battle: 2d+[3]

Attack (unarmed): 6d, 2d damage, +6d excellency

Attack (war fan): 6/10d, 9d damage (lethal, martial arts, disarming), +6d excellency

Attack (war parasol): 6/8d, 11d damage (bashing, martial arts, disarming), +6d excellency

Parry: 3 (unarmed) or 3 (war fan) or 4 (war parasol), excellency up to 6

Dodge: 2 (unarmoured), excellency up to 3

Soak: 2d (unarmoured) or 5d (chain shirt)

Resolve: 4

Guile: 3

Charms

Integrity

Stubborn Boar Defence

+2 Resolve against repeated persuasion attempts.

Linguistics

Subtle Speech Method (3m)

Speak esoterically.

Flowing Elegant Hand (2m)

Double 9s on Linguistics

Lore

Harmonious Academic Methodology (-)

+Essence sux to lore speciality rolls, gain additional specialities over time.

Bottomless Wellspring Approach (-)

Roll to introduce facts when your knowledge is challenged. 1 automatic success on speciality lore rolls.

Lore-Inducing Concentration (3m)

1 automatic success and reroll 6s on fact introduction or challenges.

Truth-Rendering Gaze (6m)

Produce sudden insight on a studied subject.

Prophet of Seventeen Cycles (12m 1wp)

Make a pronouncement against a project based on study.

God-King's Shrike (30m 1wp)

Roll Intelligence + Lore vs. diff 5 to make a true prediction of cataclysm 1/year.

First Knowledge's Grace (4m)

Ignore penalties to teach someone, teach the severely disabled.

Flowing Mind Prana (xp)

Use unspent experience to teach others, causing them to accumulate the Solar's intimacies.

Legendary Scholar's Curriculum (-)

Offer taught experience to [Essence] characters, or half taught experience to [Essence*5] characters. Confer unheld intimacies.

Occult

Terrestrial Circle Sorcery

Can cast Terrestrial spells and create Terrestrial workings.

Crane Style

Empowering Justice Redirection (3m)

Supplement attack against aggressor with +1 hit success and +1 post-soak damage success, +2 if aggressor hit.

Fluttering Cry of Warning (3m)

+2 parry on defend other, enemy must pay init to attack other. Can defend other reflexively.

Terrestrial Circle

The Ex of Secret Waters (Shaping Ritual)

Young Hieroglyph did not enjoy her first years at the Solarium, with inferior teachers, second-rate lodgings and suspicious schoolmates. Isolated, she shrunk into herself and busied herself with things that were reliable: its ancient walls and the crystal revolutions of reason. Her first great work Movements took shape on stolen parchment, but alongside an ever-growing deciphering of the myriad diagrams and inscriptions carved onto the manse itself. Eventually, one Calibration, these investigations led her to the central spring of the manse, and down into its dying waters.

The Prince of Hidden Waters was handsome, sensitive, and interested in her work. He gave her peace to think and a whetstone for her arguments. He gave her wisdom to see the essence behind the world, and the insight to command it. He gave her scraps of his library of secrets, and a room of silk and soft light to finish her opus. Eventually, he gave her his hand.

They divorced shortly after. Hieroglyph rapidly came to see the prince as a sexist boor more interested in a beautiful sorceress trophy than real investigation of the cosmos, petitioned to the elemental authorities and had the joining reverted come Calibration. She returned to the Solarium, and with her power restored its waters and amazed her former teachers with the work of her absence.

The shaping ritual Ex of Secret Waters is similar to the Ifrit Pact ritual. The sorceress may draw motes from nearby bodies of water and aquatic elementals. She may petition the Prince for old times' sake with an Appearance + Performance roll. When she would gain willpower from upholding an intimacy based on intellectual certainty or vital knowledge, she may instead gain 5 sorcerous motes. Shedding levels of certainty from such an intimacy to further augment a spell.

Purchasable merits include Undrowned Majesty (water breathing, storm resistance), and Suzerain of Bottomless Waters (augment water spells).

Cirrus Skiff (15sm, 1wp)

Cloud chariot that flies at 6 mph.

Demon of the First Circle (ritual, 2wp)

Summon a demon at midnight, and bind it with Intelligence + Occult vs. Resolve.

Merits and Intimacies

Merits

Contacts 3 (Intelligentsia)

As the mistress of the premier non-Immaculate centre of learning in the region, Hieroglyph has the ear of a wide range of correspondents and a roll of many former students.

Influence 3 (Mistress of the Verdant Solarium)

She also has access to the resources and connections of the Solarium itself, an oasis of dozens of scholars, hundreds of students, and thousands of merchants, soldiers, peasants and slaves sustained by its water and wealth.

Language 3 (Flametongue, Old Realm, High Realm, Dragontongue)

Manse 3 (Verdant Solarium)

Clear and sweet fountains feeding pools and hanging gardens, behind walls of glass and sandstone. A poolside resort school. The manse yields the Fountain-Summoning Stone.

Martial Artist 4

Mentor 2 (Maiden of White Feathers and Gold Touchstones, Crane divinity and martial arts tutor)

The divine crane who alighted in the Solarium when Hieroglyph exalted, already aware of her nature. She convinced Hieroglyph of the inevitability of violence and chaos in the coming age of sorrows, and has begun training her and her students in martial arts fit to blunt this.

Resources 3

The Solarium takes subscriptions from local notables eager to be seen sponsoring religion and learning, not to mention grateful former students and those who wish to prop up institutions independent of the Realm and its Immaculates. They also sell salt, manufactures and services produced in or near the Solarium, and tax trade that goes via the watering point.

Intimacies

The world is and must be ruled by reason

Verdant Solarium (dedication)

Uphold the truth

Knowledge is dangerous in the hands of the foolish

Immaculate Order (contempt)

Vinty (scholarly rivalry)

Order is beauty and beauty order

Violence is unseemly

Vashti (alarm at the prodigal)

White-Gold Maiden (suspicious respect)

Family Cathak-of-Puropolis (tsundere)

Prince of Secret Waters (skeptical nostalgia)

Former Solarium students (pedagogic affection)

Panoply

Objects

Fountain-Summoning Stone (standard hearthstone)

This hearthstone is a dark oval emerald, cold and moist to the touch. If the Fountain-Summoning Stone is buried in the soil and left undisturbed for a short period (ranging from a minute in fertile riverlands to half an hour in the desert), it will presently spring back to the surface atop a gushing fountain of water, which persists until the sun rises and sets. The Fountain-Summoning Stone won’t operate anywhere that a spring couldn’t possibly appear, such as a balcony garden or in a barrel of soil aboard a ship.

Selected Works

Movements of the Mind of Creation: Hieroglyph's first major publication, in five books. In Earth the Immaculate philosophy is summarised, with extensive quotation. In Water ambiguities are highlighted and statements are distilled down to their essence. In Air these key statements are made the basis for an elaborate derivation of cosmic principles extending beyond the elemental dragons. In Wood these principles are brought back to Earth and used to fertilise comments on principles of ethics and politics. Finally, in Fire the previous chapter is compared to the reality of Realm and Immaculate society, with reality making a poor showing in the contest. While the book stops short of explicitly repudiating the Immaculate philosophy, it was nontheless proscribed, which in practice granted it notoriety and infamy.

Sand Grains Strewn In Four Directions: An encyclopaedia of flora, fauna and natural phenomena of the desert and its border regions.

Proofs: A work of pure mathematics which contained several notable results, but was obsoleted when older and more comprehensive texts from the Realm were imported.

Black-Jewelled Dialogues: A book of interviews with summoned agatae, and commentaries on those interviews with a view to discovering and explicating the thought of the beauteous wasps.

Fire and Secret Fire: A history and analysis of known sorcerous workings in the Southern region.

Pentagrammic Dialogues: A collection of ten philosophical dialogues, using the traditional literary characters of five stereotyped late-Shogunate dragonbloods. Each dialogue presents one of the possible elemental pairs discussing a concept such as knowledge, piety or love. The work is on its surface less controversial than Movements and deals with abstract concepts or worthy sentiments, but careful study reveals ellipses and unspoken conclusions pointing beyond conventional wisdom. The work is considered a minor classic of the form and the best to date of Hieroglyph's forays into more literary modes.

Cosmos in the Vision of the Absolute Eye: Hieroglyph's magnum opus, in three books. The first, Stars, surveys the intellectual territory, with particular focus given to the Immaculate philosophy and Hieroglyph's own early philosophy from Movements. The second, Moon, performs an elaborate series of inversions and dissections of all these views, challenging them all from every possible perspective and finding each gravely wanting. The third, Sun, returns to a positive programme and proves the existence of an ultimate perspective which encompasses all others and from which absolute truth and falsehood can be determined. This perspective is the first principle of the cosmos, the absolute reason which gives form and motion to creation and toward which all form and motion strives in its heart.

Flame-Quill Diary: On its face, this post-Absolute Eye work is a travelogue and report of phenomena in isolated regions of the far South. Those who look deeper, however, can decipher piece by piece a report of conversations with a garda bird and discussions of its sayings.

Noted Workings

Restoration of the Verdant Solarium: This working, Hieroglyph's first, restored the waters of the Verdant Oasis demesne to full strength and heralded the revival of that ancient site of learning.

Planting of the Sacred Palms: This working, Hieroglyph's greatest, created the sacred palms that grow in many arboretums inside the Solarium grounds. The oil from the palms can be applied to papyrus, paper or parchment to make the sheets waterproof and resistant to fire, at the cost of making them also impervious to ink. The oil is one of the Solarium's revenue sources and the plants are carefully guarded.

To create this working Hieroglyph first travelled far South to a fabled marsh where plants grow out of simmering water, accompanied only by the mortal martial artist Ten Flowers on the journey there, and the raksha Manticore-As-Man on the return. Armed with samples, she returned north and spent a cycle with her best students coaxing them to a sorcerous germination in the soil of the demesne. The tasks are recorded in Palm-Shaded Journey, a work whose adventurous first chapters have been transcribed more than its tediously botanical conclusion.

The Peaceful Palace: After marching to defend the Solarium from southern marauders, the king of Afarshi honoured Hieroglyph with the suggestion that she perform a great working in his realm. A cycle later, the royal palace was decorated with Old Realm evocations of the glory of the king and his protection of his people, and no storms could enter the royal district, be they sand or rain.

Years later, a travelling scholar from the coast studied the engravings, and found more critical or ironic messages encoded in the dense script. The protection of Afarshi was rescinded, and the Solarium entered a difficult period.

Experience

• Prelude (The Hunt for Manticore): 5xp + 2mxp