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jennamoran · 2 years ago

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Nobilis 4 Quest Set #3 and #4

Previously, on Nobilis 4 Quest Sets ...

https://jennamoran.tumblr.com/post/699243715456352256/nobilis-4-quest-set-1

https://jennamoran.tumblr.com/post/702042336109133824/nobilis-4-quest-set-2

Like those, this post is a transcript---

I developed the quests on discord in front of a few friends and playtesters, and then overcame the fact that discord hates cut and paste and Microsoft Word hates cut and paste and tumblr hates posting formatted content in order to cut and paste it from discord to Word, format it, and share it here with all of you.

Please enjoy!

... oh, and fair warning: this is literally a novel-length post. I like to think it’s entertaining, but only if you’re willing to skim or if you really like not just game design but particularly weird game design stuff for my particular games. ^_^

I’ve done as much editing as I can, that taken into account, which is to say, I’ve tried to make sure it’s a good transcript copy, I’ve turned all the discord icons into text for you, I’ve put in asides for things people who aren’t into deep Nobilis/CMWGE/Glitch lore might not know, and I’ve turned many of the parts where I was typing in sentence fragments to get things down quickly into actual, coherent, readable, text ...

But, like I said, novel-length; I may well have missed some stuff!

I’m using “.” as a line separator because tumblr really fights me sometimes on my previous solution (bolded spaces alternating with regular spaces) to its habit of deleting blank lines.

Without further ado, the post!

NOVEMBER 26, 2022

Let’s start! We’re building the quest set for Aspect, or rather the hopefully 3-4-color quest set that’s designed to work well on Aspect but works at least pretty well on the others.

So of course we start by imagining a Power who develops their Aspect using this quest.

Possibly … the Power of Prayer, who takes your prayers—to God, Heaven, nameless providence, the universe, anything that isn't to Giorg of the Rule or whatever—up the mountain to release into the sky.

(except for the ones too generally nasty or personally antithetical to them, which burn away on touching their skin, which they have to use to fill up ash pillows and blankets to comfort the damned instead)

They were sacrificed to a Games Magister when they were young, but, they’ve been obstinately refusing to destroy themselves ever since because Pops—Pops being the Games Magister, of course—“kind of needs someone to look after them.”

Quest 1 is wrestling with the fact that prayers are kind of pointless before deciding to hunt down that fiddle everyone keeps talking about, quest 2 is hanging out with a Fallen Angel, quest 3 is hijinks at secret mountain fiddle school?

ASIDE 1: “That fiddle” refers to a bit from Nob3 that suggests that Cneph might be trapped in a fiddle somewhere. I don’t think it’s actually canon, but it’s compelling enough that it’s probably true in any game that doesn’t have a reason for Cneph to be somewhere else?

ASIDE 2: A friend suggests tongue-in-cheek that quest 2 probably takes place in Georgia. It was briefly actually possible, but never likely, because the Appalachians have strong genre tropes of their own that I’m not super-fluent in.

ASIDE 3: It’ll turn out, incidentally, that I fundamentally misunderstood this quest set anyway; fortunately, I was able to salvage things, but don’t be surprised if things don’t work out as I confidently declare that they will in non-aside notes.

Anyway!

My still sketchy ideas for book 2 involve a contest for the honor or survival of Pops against some antagonistic Rule lord, in which it's revealed that there are a lot of magical postgraduate schools in various mountains dedicated to mastery of specific crafts, not just fiddle, with some overarching premise behind that. Not sure what the contest in question is about just yet.

… I'm picturing painting/calligraphy related stuff in one part of my brain and cooking in another, but probably it's not competitive food painting.

Anyway, overall, the general schools-everywhere concept allows for an actual like mentor (or romantic interest or rival or some combination) in book 2 quest 2 and a proper confusion of stuff in book 2 quest 3 and then ... some looming threat in a painting or cooking world or world sealed away by the school

NOVEMBER 27, 2022

Book 3 is probably about Hell or the underworld. Like I often do in book 2 or 3, it deviates from the pattern of the other books by having nothing to do with magical schools and instead substituting some kind of underworld mansion; it also has nothing to do with Pops.

Probably it’ll be more explicit about the comforting the damned in this one.

Book 4 would then be about Heaven in some fashion but … content dealing with Heaven is often tricky to make interesting. Hrm.

Let's look at the Issues a bit.

Assuming I stick with a gold Issue, the options are It Never Stops! and Complex.

It Never Stops! 1, card: There’s some over-the-top stuff going on. It makes it harder to just relax and be yourself. But you can handle it. You can stay cool. You can just, you know, help a little, or be a little rebellious or snarky, or explain carefully why you don’t want to be involved, and then you’re done, bam, in, out, simple, and you can go back to being you

It Never Stops! 2, card: OK, maybe you’ve made some commitments. Maybe they’re getting a little tough to keep. But if you just stay focused, you know, stick to what really matters, and keep moving forward, you’ll totally resolve the whole thing soon. Everything is going to be fine

It Never Stops! 3, intro: "Phew! It’s almost over." Then some stuff about picking upcoming decision points where you'll definitely be able to resolve everything, or at worst lose and have them resolved against you.

Card: Just hang on a little longer. A little longer, and it’ll all be over.

It Never Stops! 4, intro: you get another chance, and we veer away from "ending things" to "figuring out how you've changed"

Card: You’ve changed. You need to mark and express that change somehow so you can get your head around it. (This can blow things up and accelerate to 5 instead of ending the Issue.)

It Never Stops! 5, intro: basically, the change is a bigger deal than you thought.

Card: You’ve changed. Really changed. You are not who you’ve been. You need to do something to mark and express that change so you can get your head around it.

Complex 1: Sometimes you get a little bit too excited, distracted, or weird.

Complex 2, intro: figure out what your complex is about.

Complex 2, card: There’s something you are not doing enough about. You have to try harder. Don’t give up! Say something like that to yourself, or even out loud, right now. “I have to try harder on [[this thing, whatever it is.]] It’ll be OK if I work harder.”

Complex 3, intro: you feel even farther from success! Time for a plan.

Complex 3, card: Here’s your Issue

(space to write it)

...but you have a plan.

Did it fail? Come up with a new plan. Keep going. You just have to make it to Complex 4 and everything will definitely, definitely work out OK.

Complex 4, intro: ok, we sort of lied. On another note, think about the thing you absolutely shouldn't do now, and then realize that wait, wait, that might ... if you do it right ... you might be able to use that to fix things. (I don't know if I specified it cleanly enough in the book, but this is meant as "oh no no no no no thinking about what not to do just inspired an IDEA" rather than "do what you know is dumb")

Complex 4, card: Here’s your Issue (space to write it)

...but you have a plan.

...come on, world, just this once, just let it work!

(Enacting your plan, and bringing disaster down on your head, closes the Issue and ...)

Complex 5, intro: kick it up a notch with a new, improved plan, one just crazy enough to work.

Complex 5, card: You know what you absolutely, positively can’t let happen. You have a new, improved plan. It’ll work. It will work. It’s your last shot. It has to. (Ends with failure or grace.)

ASIDE: A friend notes that “Pops” brings to mind a gameslord who runs a 1950 chocklit shoppe, possibly one that’s also a gaming café.

Me, imagining: "It's a game cafe." "Where are the games?" "..." "...?" "here's your sword"

So we want to get to Issue 1 by deciding to get Cneph's fiddle, which either gets us to "I can handle this, I just have to stay cool and maybe step in a little." (It never Stops!) or "Sometimes I get a little bit too excited, distracted, or weird." (Complex)

Odd results.

We want to get to Issue 2 by the disaster at the end of the music school arc, which is either "Maybe things are a bit tough, but ... we can fix this." (It never stops!) or "I might have a bit of a complex about this, but! I need! to try! harder!" (complex)

We want to get to Issue 3 after facing some threat re: cooking/painting, and winning! which is either "decision points upcoming. Just hang on! It's almost over!" (It never stops!) or "This is going terribly. I need a plan!" (complex)

We want to get to Issue 4 after making it home from the underworld: "time to figure out how you've changed" (It never stops!) or "make a really, really (bad^H^H^H) dangerous plan" (Complex)

We want to get to Issue 5 after making it home from Heaven: "You've really changed, express that at the end of the book" (It never stops!) or "Here's an even (worse^H^H^H^H^H) better plan, probably failing or resolving in grace due to series constraints at the very end!" (complex)

This feels like it pushes towards Complex, because ultimately the story is very protagonist-driven and It Never Stops! isn't.

Like, there's interesting stuff with Issue 4 and 5 on It Never Stops! there but still ... overall ...

It Never Stops! is for a reactive protagonist, and Complex is for a proactive one, and this protagonist is mostly proactive.

So let’s assume Complex.

The end of quest 1 is then also their kind of a rueful acknowledgment that they don't do things the normal way when they go after the fiddle. Not so much, "I will go on a grand journey!" but rather: "you know, I don't have to limit myself to ordinary approaches, and in fact, doing so is playing against my strengths."

And the end of quest 3/book 1 is then ...

I think mostly what that tells us ... or at least, suggests ... is that the end-of-quest disaster is probably one that the protagonist could ignore, but they don't because they have too many spoons to leave things alone.

The end of book 2 gives rise to a terrible plan, which is presumably going to the underworld.

The end of book 3 gives rise to an even more terrible plan, a plan which specifically starts with "well, unfortunately, the one thing I can't do is X. ... wait ... what if ..." and then some elaboration on that that makes X palatable.

Apparently X is raiding Heaven or something Heaven-associated—Nobilis Heaven is kind of awkward here, and I'm trying to keep these in the Nobilis setting, but, well. Something about delivering the prayers very directly.

(Which reminds me that part of going to the underworld is to take well-wishes type prayers to the dead; this is one reason why "the underworld" works better than "Hell," although again, Nobilis afterlife is awkward here. Still, that's one thing I was thinking about there, anyway.)

The end of book 4 is tricky because whatever ULTIMATE plan one comes up with upon hitting Complex 5 has very little space in which to work. In theory, I could leave the series unfinished—close off with a plan that doesn't get its own book. Or something could interrupt it, like getting the goal delivered to them by an ally/enemy/romantic interest/something before they leave on it.

Kind of a "I will now go CHALLENGE THE VOID to recover the CUP OF SOULS*"

"this cup?"

"... oh." kind of thing.

* not an actual cup in Nobilis cosmology, though I guess any cup can be a cup of souls if you name it hard enough

so why is going to Heaven the absolute last thing they can possibly do?

(before they go, “waiiiit…” and decide to do just that?)

Nominally you don't want to go to the people at the top for justice when you've been doing illegal things, I suppose—more broadly,

[interrupts myself]

Oh! Right, it's if Heaven is hunting them for some reason.

If, I don't know, whatever they did down below is something absolutely unacceptable to Heaven—presumably because it involves unraveling the work that keeps the Fallen in Hell, or that keeps humans from flooding into Heaven, but possibly just because it was blasphemous against Heaven's principles or really personally offensive to some big name angel—then going to Heaven and ... I dunno, joining angel magical school ... is the obvious "wait, that just might work" dumb plan.

It founders initially against the "Nobilis Angels by default don't care that much about keeping Hell down, and certainly not in a way that would have them hunt an individual over it" but possibly I can keep poking at that.

Like they care about keeping Hell down as a matter of military detente but they aren't normally specifically feeling an ongoing investment in punishing the Fallen or whatever

Stealing something from Heaven to make things better in Hell, or more likely "using something stolen from Heaven that falls into their hands to make things better" could work.

Or taking on the whole burden of sin, which ... presumably exists in Nobilis? It's never actually made clear what decides whether your soul goes up or down but it's either sin, karma, chance, or something story-specific, probably.

Right?

The downside of this kind of idea is that it plays against the "bodhisattva ministering to the ghosts in Hell" vibe I wanted with the Hell visit …

… but then again part of my brain is visualizing Annwn or the Halls under the Mountain instead of Nobilis Hell and the first part of my brain hasn't figured out how the ministering is a plot exactly yet, so there’s wiggle room.

I guess "oops killed Cneph" is another good way to make yourself angelic enemy #1, though I'm not really sure where I'd go with that other than "it's vaguely viable given the fiddle thing"

I guess that while Noble canon has mostly had the Fallen relatively free of direct Angelic control the idea of some high-end Angel being invested in a "punishment" of a specific Fallen is possible. They are very into justice.

And not so much the restorative kind usually

Or at least

Hm.

Honestly, that should probably depend on the Angel, locking them into a non-restorative mold is awkward.

But at least some of them are into smity justice and others into poetic justice and others into manifesting their seething resentments in "just" ways

probably specifically for their exes or ex-besties

so if we picture this as like how the greek gods would react if you just popped down to Hades and freed a random titan ... it probably wouldn't parallel how Nobilis Angels in general work but it might fit one or two, possibly even one or two who are ... well, there is no canon on whether there are particularly important Angels, so the books can imagine that there are

(The books make a big deal of a few particular Angels but there's no canon on whether the Angels make a big deal out of them)

NOVEMBER 28, 2022

migraine today so nothing today

NOVEMBER 30, 2022

migraine has faded, so back to it, though the post-migraine day or two is usually pretty hollow

I think I've convinced myself that something bound does get released at the end of book 3. Possibly there’s a romantic interenemy (since I think there's a peri floating around, metaphorically on the floating part) who is all "I can't protect you if you do this." I'm wondering if the Power gathers a whole bunch of souls as they go on the premise that releasing them from Hell isn't that much different from releasing prayers upwards from Earth, although it feels like there's some element of those souls having to be light/willing enough, with some having to be comforted instead, not as a moral stance for the story but as a narrative structural concern; that might need to be interrogated a little.

ASIDE: Peri introduced November 30, “floating around, metaphorically.” Keep an eye on him! He’ll be important later. (A “peri” is a half-angel. I think. If I’m wrong, it’s what I’m using it as here anyway.)

I think they then hide in Heaven in book 4 because "where is a prayer more invisible than right in front of the eyes of the angels?"

So the end of book 2 sends them to the underworld, because ... well, complex 3.

There was something they were not doing enough about. ... I guess technically for a Complex, your plan is supposed to be about the same sort of thing both times—a plan to resolve the Issue each time, if you get me—so if they're going to Heaven to hide, that's also why they go to the Underworld. If they go to the Underworld to help, that's also why they go to Heaven. And I think the final Complex 5 plan is to take over Heaven, so hrm.

Going by the thing with Pops they are a bit overly attached. Codependent or clingy. So we could have the end of book 3 be like, they've gotten someone they cared about out of Hell, up into Heaven, and they should just ... leave it there, they really should, that's a GOOD ending, and maybe they even agree with that for a while, because among other things there are people like Pops they can't exactly take with them to Heaven, but then they're all like “what the heck idc” and they tie their whole mountain home to a bunch of prayers and crack open the sky and go upwards, Pops and all. I think that's reconcilable with the basic role of the character if they admit at the beginning of book 1 that they have trouble letting go of each prayer. What I don't like about that is that it implies that book 3 is a rescue mission, going down into Hell because there's someone in specific they care about, rather than just helping out in general. It sort of opens the possibility of an Angel romantic interest who Falls on deciding to move forward—not by necessity, I think, Angels are self-righteous enough that a lot of them are in more suspect relations than "with a Power of the Game," but because in this particular case the Angel actually decided "oh, hm, yeah, those Angels who decided that fighting for love for everything was worth leaving Heaven for were right" as opposed to "nah, this love is OK."

... hm, no. Need a better complex. Competitiveness? Not listening? Overmuch faith in the system?

long pause

Possibly just “taking everything on their own shoulders” will work?

I had the idea while thinking about competitiveness of "the world isn't fair. What are you going to do, complain about it to Heaven? —no. Take that look off your face. No!" as the seed of book 4, and a separate idea about maybe trying to fulfill a particular prayer after looking at it and realizing that Heaven couldn't help when going down to the underworld.

Like, someone wants their family back, and it turns out some of the souls are in Hell, but one is actually lost. And then the complex is like, faith that you (well, they) can fix things, that at most if you can't it's because there's been a closed communication channel somewhere that you need to work around—viable, maybe?

We’d still have a key friend or love interest in the picture, peri or Angel probably, and I entertained having their problems or Pops' problems as a key thing but ... probably not

DECEMBER 1, 2022

I thought about this more last night while falling asleep so the only question is if I can recover what I thought about.

…

I think Complexes and Aspect both reward going somewhat ridiculous.

So I think I was thinking last night in terms of someone who actually cared about their magical school grades and permanent record and doing well enough to get into Heaven for postgraduate work.

Which would be relevant if we ported over the Nobilis thing of how you're not actually getting into Heaven, regardless of how cool you are, and had them sneak in in book 4; and had book 3 and the descent into the underworld be at least in part about trying to correct a transcript issue that can only be fixed with a witness who is dead.

… I guess I'm kind of repeatedly fighting the Complex, even though it has its points, because my initial picture of the character wasn't anime goofy.

What about trying It Never Stops! again?

If book 1, quest 1 => It Never Stops! 1 then it implies that the move forward to searching out the fiddle was almost involuntary. That the character was stuck, but in part they kind of wanted to be. Only, the end of the quest forces them to realize that they can't just keep wasting their time. They’d encounter the fallen angel during the quest itself, and think about the fiddle afterwards.

Then book 1, quest 3 ends with a disaster, which is where the commitments leading into book 2 kick in.

Book 2, quest 4 gives the feeling of "it's almost over." Pops is safe. Just, y'know, gotta go down to Hell and deal with some paperwork about this, help some people out, whatever.

Book 3, quest 5 gives the feeling of "have I changed?" and it's marked by heading up to Heaven by attaching their mountain home to a bunch of prayers for flight.

Book 4, quest 5 is realizing it was a bigger change than they thought.

… that’s how it looks with the underlying Issue being “It Never Stops!” and not “Complex.”

The key things that I liked out of what I was building before:

I like the idea that there's some ... institution ... in Heaven that they want to get into, that won't ever actually let them in, that they break into instead in book 4.

I like an angel/peri romantic interest or romantic-tension-friendship, possibly who falls in late book 2 or is just generally on the verge of that.

I like the character being a bit overly earnest in regards to the rules of the world and grades and the like, I just can't see them being enough of a stickler to go full Complex with without becoming unworthy of being a protagonist. They're kind of codependent, but same there. ...

Name: Tellador Witt. Witt is short for the childhood name of "wtf is this," Tellador for explaining something as they were rushing off only to be all "ah, I'm telling this to the door again"

ASIDE: This name doesn’t stick.

The peri or angel is Casimir. Possibly Casimir Chauncey, not sure. I can't remember where my brain is getting Chauncey from so I hesitate.

Aspect 1

You’re blocked. Frozen. Stuck. There’s something you can’t get past.

Reward. You push past it.

Book 1, quest 1 - If you pray, or wish, or send something out into the universe, and you don't have the power to send it all the way, then your prayers will make their way to Tellador Witt, Power of Prayer, whose job it is to carry them up the mountain, open up the sky, and send them on to Heaven, to be unanswered there. Tellador's honestly fine with this. They have a job to do, and they like doing it, even if it's kind of a dead end. But when people fill up the mountain hunting a runaway fallen angel who stole a fiddle from fantasy mountain fiddle school (working title), and one such hunter, Casimir, gets stuck staying with Tellador and Pops during a storm and talks about how Cneph might be in the fiddle, or maybe in every fiddle, and anyway it doesn't matter because if you fiddle properly you can do anything, Tellador is forced to accept the possibility that they might not be doing enough for people's prayers. They won't go too far here, though, maybe just ... like ... go over to where they know the runaway fallen angel is hiding, and ask a few questions, not actually getting involved? (lingering possibility that there's a complex involving romance or ambition, both of which could also trigger here, or just about doing enough for their job, which could be like, admitting to Casimir that it's a lot of work to move prayers from "probably going nowhere" to "probably going nowhere, with ceremony.")

ASIDE: Lest the grammar confuse, Tellador is a they—they’re not formally nonbinary, but they’re “keeping their options open.”

DECEMBER 2, 2022

Aspect 2

You’re presented with the option of another way of life or another way of thinking.

Result: you have an insight: you see or hear something that you wouldn’t have been able to before.

Book 1, quest 2 - Tellador takes a journey with the runaway fallen angel. I'm seeing red and white streamers on the trees on lightly wooded hills, an airship regatta, and candy apples, none of which makes immediate sense but at least it does define a space of journey. I think it implies a fair in a place where time is fucked up, presumably as part of taking the fiddle towards a metaphorical heart of the world. Probably there's a renewal of the world sort of thing that the fiddle has to be played for, which the fiddle school that had the fiddle wasn’t paying attention to, leading to its theft and use and Tellador having an insight.

Loosely speaking, I think the insight is just an awakening sense of there being more to the world—a first glimpse of actual Heaven, and the institution there? Or maybe their first recognition, prompted by the Fall itself, that maybe that Heaven isn't keeping what Tellador considers to be the implicit bargain of Tellador's existence and at least looking at the prayers before tossing them out? Realizing that the beauty up there is infinite, but Heaven's heart is somehow smaller than their own.

Aspect 3

You’re dealing with stressful, bizarre, and confusing social situations[FN].

Result: you finish up your latest obligation, optionally come home and take your literal or metaphorical shoes off, and learn something shattering.

[FN] Your best friend wants you to romantically intercede for them. With the person you love, to boot! Or, there’s factional conflict at your school or temple. Your parents have ridiculous expectations of you. You’re living at the house of your worst enemies. ... stuff like that!

Book 1, quest 3 - They go to study at the fiddle school—following up on the hints of possibility they saw in quest 1, maybe quest 2. Now, I'm not actually good at farcical social situations, but I think it boils down to sneaking out at night to find a good space to play and not wake their roommate and getting mistaken for basically everyone else who might possibly be sneaking out at night, from secret admirers to hired assassins to food delivery professionals, eventually leading to the night of the big cake delivery/dual assignation/assassination-target-extraction while also carting a delirious Casimir around, or somesuch. Anyway, when it's all complete, and they crash exhausted on their couch, they hear about what's going on with Pops.

Book 2, quest 1 - There's a yearly ritual that four? Seven? Imperators gather for, to hold up the sky. To bring the autumn. It affirms them and their Estates. But Pops is old and has been wounded by a rival, and while they're weak the value of their Estate's been challenged. So Tellador (Tellamor? might sound better, hm.) goes to the Duelist's College? Tourney? to prove that Pops' other Estate, the Gun, is still competitive with other weapons that might replace it in the ritual.

(The Gun being the same age as Prayer doesn't really make sense, but I like it better as a pair with Prayer than the Sword, the Fist is TOO old, and most other weapons are too weird or specific.)

Tellador hits it off well with their main potential competitor, but loses the first double-elimination fight against ... her? ... and is in general struggling because they don't actually have Bullets.

The end of the quest is breaking past that to realize that a gun's need for bullets is just a magic feather—"the real bullets were inside you all along” or whatever.

Some parade grounds in a high place things. Some tending wounded Pops things. Flags.

This may all have to be rewritten, my brain is not doing well. But, forward! in case it's just that Aspect is hard enough that I have to do a series of drafts instead of just writing stuff down.

Book 2, quest 2 - Having broken past the blockage, Tellador is now in a position to focus on what's important, which is to say, digging into Pops' past.

… er, that is, training for the combat part of the yearly ritual, in case they have to take Pops' role for it!

Quest featuring: an exciting opportunity to dig into the secrets of Pops' past! at the little town where the ritual started, taught by a Serpent who Tellador eventually realizes is the one who goes weird in the autumn and has to be combatted against. Hanging out with them socially gives rise to the insight about their relationship in times of eld.

Book 2, quest 3 - As we get down to three or four competitors, the Rules jerk that wounded Pops takes over intensive training, probably trying to sabotage Tellador. The last bits of the historical drama that started all this get unearthed. Tellador wins the tournament, the snake goes bad in a proper yearly fashion.

Book 2, quest 4 - Combat-based quests are historically tricky but this feels like it involves a journey across a barren realm to drag the target out and fight. Probably ... the snake, having gone wicked mode, hides in the deep mythic but is having enough of a nasty effect on the world that this part of the ritual is obligatory. But a journey isn't a whole quest, probably; there needs to be a siege, some trying on outfits, and a bit of ordinary life under a shadow and ... harvesting from a garden? first.

I hope my brain knows what it's doing but I'll find out tomorrow I guess

Something to do with a big meal. I don't think Thanksgiving-inspired despite fall theming because the visual has duels on a giant platter.

Book 2, quest 4 leaves Tellador with some paperwork to be done in Hell. I probably can't just tack that on in a random paragraph, but I am.

doing the impossible is my middle name, if you type very poorly

Book 3 I want to try to get back to the core of Aspect, training, by working on the fiddle more, with quest 1 unlocking something in the underworld, but

ASIDE:

Friend 1: If you want to train in Hades, you gotta have a fiddle in your hand Me: that’s what they say Friend 2: and a fiddle in the hand is worth two in the bush which is why quest 4 will consist of a hunt for the elusive and dangerous Bush Fiddle, said to be the greatest of musical beasts Me: biddle Me: ... buddle Friend 2: nods buddle

DECEMBER 3, 2022

Book 3, quest 1 - I guess the absolute simplest approach here would be an accumulation of prayers too heavy to go upwards, leading to the breakthrough of descending with them. Not very fiddle-heavy, but directly on point.

It needs an equivalent for the runaway fallen angel and a reason for Casimir to get stuck with Tellador, but …

Book 3, quest 2 - the simplest answer would then be the journey into the underworld with the fallen angel equivalent, learning how to deal with the prayers below.

Book 3, quest 3 - then there's complex social situations from an accumulation of expectations down below, ...

OK, I know what I'm doing wrong.

The thought process that let me figure this out started with me thinking about what a “normal” Aspect Arc would be about at quest 3, which would be, clearly, that the great fiddle masters of the underworld have lost their way and started caring about unimportant things, distractions, metrics and rewards rather than songs, losing track of what matters and almost forgetting the fiddle song that keeps Excrucians from invading from below or whatever in quest 4.

And I started trying to do comparisons with the silly example character that I thought of first, the Power of Pound Cake (they used to be Giant Puffy Cake before getting pounded flat by Aspect), and realized the problem that’s been making all this so very, very hard:

Tellador is a Shepherd character.

This honestly should have been obvious.

Now, I don't want to get rid of all this progress, and I don't know how much will directly convert, so here's what I'm going to do:

I'm going to make an Aspect Arc about Casimir, who actually wants to learn the fiddle, and they can both be in the same books, and then I can move Tellador properly to a Shepherd-based quest set while keeping most of the plot beats that I already have.

Book 1, quest 1, Casimir: Casimir is a peri Power at magic fiddle school trying to master the fiddle, but not getting anywhere ... until an encounter with his fallen angel parent points the way to true music.

Book 1, quest 2, Casimir: Either this is where Casimir is stranded in the mountains with Tellador and Pops, or it's learning from the fallen angel. The first is neater, the second more narratively sound.

Book 1, quest 3, Casimir: Casimir obviously doesn't want fiddle school to catch up with his parent, so he has to squiggle Tellador into sneaking off with fallen angel and magic fiddle and distract everyone with Pops' prospective fiddle performance that Pops doesn't know about while trying not to get tongue-tied around Tellador, caught by the eagle-eared tutors who might hear forbidden notes in his performances if he doesn't distract them by implying he's been learning from Pops, Tellador, their rivals, whatever else, and just in general keep the search together and in the wrong area until Tellador is away, which is great until he gets back home and finds out that the fallen angel was caught and immured after all.

First Attempt at Book 2, quest 1, Casimir: Casimir is distracted from pure fiddlery by the study of the sword, which he'll need to free his parental figure. (Parallels are fine, though possibly not exploitable.) However, he gets stuck until he's offered tutelage by a Rules type in exchange for participating in the contest thing.

First Attempt at Book 2, quest 2, Casimir: Casimir learns the sword (maybe not the ideal weapon, but the bow is too punny) and progresses through the trials, eventually finding the link back to music.

I redacted these when I got to quest 3.

Book 2, quest 1, Casimir: Casimir studies the fiddle as weapon in preparation for a fall ritual where he'll have the chance to free his parental figure. However, he gets stuck ...

Book 2, quest 2, Casimir: Casimir learns about the Rule and Game old rivalry => insight

Book 2, quest 3, Casimir: Casimir has to figure out how to throw the trials to Tellador, who doesn't even have bullets, apparently, without breaking an oath, and keep anyone from noticing that the fallen angel who they were going to sacrifice or something is missing, and also deal with the way that nobody seems to actually care about the ritual's purpose any more (instead using it to work out old rivalries and such and ok fair rescue fallen angels or whatever). Everything seems under control but because of the missing sacrifice and the general shenanigans, a Serpent goes wicked mode.

Book 2, quest 4, Casimir: Dealing with said Serpent.

Book 3, quest 1, Casimir: The next step in mastering the secrets of the fiddle is to learn one of the great songs that Cneph played back when making the world, but it's hard! It's not until there's a breakthrough that it's worth descending to the underworld to play it in its proper setting.

Book 3, quest 2, Casimir: oh god what is Tellador doing trying to help these people still, wait, idea for fiddle stuff

Book 3, quest 3, Casimir: There was a time when the Fallen knew to keep their fiddle skills sharp to keep the Excrucians out, but these days the musicians of below are all being “eternally tortured this” and “lost in endless dreaming that” and “turning into limbless dragons the other,” not to mention all the ones who are clinging to the discredited Parfolio School of Theoretical Fiddlery, so even finding the people who are supposed to know what they're doing any longer is basically impossible much less getting them back into form.

Book 3, quest 4, Casimir: Thus, Excrucians.

Book 3, quest 5, Casimir: Followed by a long struggle to rise back out of Hell because nobody actually makes it easy.

Book 4, quest 1, Casimir: Casimir presumably is the one who actually cares about the school in Heaven, so upon finally getting past a fiddle skill improvement blockage, applies.

Book 4, quest 2, Casimir: More Tellador stuff, probably, because Tellador is still going upwards.

Book 4, quest 3, Casimir: Both of them sneaking around in disguise as proper Angels because nobody can get in the other way, accidentally winding up the heads of a new rebellion.

Book 4, quest 4, Casimir: Against the despotic government there. (apparently there’s a despotic government. There.)

Book 4, quest 5, Casimir: returning home

This is very patchy and awkward but! I think it's solid enough that I can fill out Tellador's Shepherd Arc, then jump back to it in Aspect, and they'll feed off of each other to get the last details. Notice that while books 3 and 4 that I hadn't touched much are still sketchier, and quests 4 and 5 that I hadn't touched much the same, the quest 3s that were honestly just killing me fell right into place.

Since we're being sketchy anyway:

(Book 3, Shepherd 3, Tellador: probably already in the underworld for this) ... let’s do 2 first.

Book 3, Shepherd 2, Tellador: this would make the most sense for descending below and dealing with the dead. Let’s do 1 first.

Book 3, Shepherd 1, Tellador: daily life at the mountain. Thinking a lot about Casimir and the events of book 2. Imagining shapes in the clouds. Someone immortal, in immortal grief for someone they lost, passes through. Smirking at Casimir's frustrated prayers about fiddlery. A harsh autumn and early if dry winter lead to food shortages that don't actually matter except aesthetically to any PCs involved. Eating soup in Pops' cave home. Dry scrub shows up somewhere. Tending a wounded animal happens. There’s some memories. Ends with realizing that the grief-prayers have gotten too heavy and it's time to move them along.

Book 3, Shepherd 2, Tellador: the trip to Hell is always harrowing. People are ... impolite. The sky is really gray. The food you get with underworld tokens is really stingy. Tellador's hands always get chapped repairing infrastructure and fighting off stinging beasts along the way. Also apparently this time they have to take care of Casimir who is basically like a lost puppy down here but also really stuck up about it.

Book 3, Shepherd 3, Tellador: Tellador sees someone they knew as a kid who used to haunt those mountains before dying (or, as Pops said, "taking their life's work to its natural conclusion, elsewhere"), and bargains a sack of griefs and prayers to one of the less nice Fallen for the chance to work things out with them and take their soul away. It eventually turns out that this is mostly time-consuming and difficult because the friend was offered a chance to save Tellador from Pops and thought that was what things were actually about, leading to Tellador admitting that they're well aware Pops is awful, but that they've learned not to get other people burned and that's all they're obligated to worry about. Casimir steals back the griefs and prayers because the Fallen ignores their fiddluciary duties.

Book 3, Shepherd 4: While Tellador hasn't really been paying attention to this, in the background Casimir has been complaining a lot about how nobody in Hell seems to care about the fact that the old fiddle defenses keeping the cup of flame intact against Excrucians are holding up any longer, and that does seem to be true. There's a major invasion, comparable to the original Heaven incursion, and a giant void dragon Nidhoggr type shows up, and there’s some guarding Casimir as he fiddles back the boundaries, and hiding in various weird awful Hell places, and watching bigger folks cast down with bigger folks at the bloody living palace with weird nodules at the center of everything in the distance.

Book 3, Shepherd 5: It is with the griefs and messages of the living that Tellador rebuilds part of the place, which has been torn open to the void, as a non-horrific domain within the place. Though I think this is not, in general, one of the worse or more permanent visions of Hell for Nobilis, since there was already inefficiency and people allowing Tellador to bring comfort and Fallen being Nob3+ Fallen and so forth, but still, a vale of ... if not comfort, forgetfulness and peace.

Book 4, Shepherd 1, Tellador: there’s daily life in the underworld as repairs finish. Tellador has realized that the fault for everything is Heaven, whether or not my previous comments or text have ever actually suggested that anywhere. There’s hanging out with Casimir. There’s taking shelter from weird infernal storms. There’s giving some very high-level Fallen Angel a place to crash (that isn't part of the politics of everything) so they can slack. There’s carrying prayers and a few souls up a particularly, particularly tall mountain to pierce the sky of Hell. Ultimately, there’s launching a prayer-lift-based expedition to Heaven itself

Book 4, Shepherd 2: Ascending the tree with Casimir and a stowaway Fallen runaway from Hell on a rickety flying temple, things are tricky and difficult, and they're only going to get harder on reaching Heaven.

Book 4, Shepherd 3: Nominally I'd stop off at a random world here to do something cool, and that might still be what happens, but I think other narrative constraints force this to be the extraordinary life at the school in Heaven.

Book 4, Shepherd 4: parallels Aspect 4.

Book 4, Shepherd 5: rebuilding Heaven after the revolution

OK, we have the very roughest of writeups for everything, that's good.

DECEMBER 4, 2022

OK, starting from the beginning, but hopefully to get somewhere this time around!

Aspect 1

You’re blocked. Frozen. Stuck. There’s something you can’t get past.

Reward. You push past it.

Complex 1

Sometimes you get a little bit too excited, distracted, or weird.

He's disturbed and mostly goes about his life, getting meals at the cafeteria, arguing with friends, doing little duels of magic and fiddlery, staring at the moon, walking high roads, taking classes, ignoring avarice spirits ... but also thinking about that song, and occasionally hearing it again. Eventually it stops, and he tries to recapture it in his own work, but fails; he learns, later, that the masters of the college have caught a fallen angel in the web of light that guards the tunnels to the fiddle vault, and has to go in and rescue her. He is devastated and embarrassed to realize that it's his mom, particularly since he brought a friend with him and doesn't want to deal with that at the time, but getting to hear it close up — he can hear her reaching for what she had once, when she was in Heaven, the work that was in unity with the voice of Cneph, who made the world. He can hear the music bleeding into the arch of Heaven in that song. He can hear his own boundaries shifting.

... then it fades, and he breaks her free, watches her steal a fiddle, realizes he isn't sure if freeing her was actually what he wanted to do, reports her escape, and uncertainly follows.

Book 1, quest 2: Casimir travels to what will turn out to be Tellador's mountain, getting impromptu lectures on the way on one particular Fallen's possibly biased theory on what it means that Cneph is "in a fiddle" and why she has to take it somewhere. Other students are also chasing, but none of them casually join his mom at her campfire—they're all a ways behind, except when they set traps in canyons using fiddle magic or ambush her and arguably Casimir during a lightning-set fire. Ultimately a bad storm separates them and Casimir is forced to take shelter in the cave-like home of a concerning Game Magister and his weird, concerningly optimistic and empathetic kid, whom Casimir immediately despises and has a crush on. He tries to convince them that Heaven isn't listening to prayers and the Game hates and kills people and acorn soup is the worst thing ever but also Tellador likes his fiddle playing so what is he going to do? It's not until he's dragged on one of the prayer-lifting sessions and sees the nastier prayers sizzling off of Tellador's skin and possibly sees the grave of the friend of Tellador's Pops got killed off when Tellador was young before Tellador knew better that he realizes (and only because Mom's music, in the distance, pierces the solitude of his conceptions) that Tellador isn't just naive, and confesses that it'd be nice if someone helped his mother get away.

DECEMBER 5, 2022

Aspect 3

You’re dealing with stressful, bizarre, and confusing social situations[FN].

Result: you finish up your latest obligation, optionally come home and take your literal or metaphorical shoes off, and learn something shattering.

Book 1, quest 3: Casimir rejoins the search party as it sets up a base camp in an old temple by Pops' cave from which to scour the area. The other side of the temple is, unfortunately, where Tellador and the Fallen Angel crash for the first night. The only solution is to convince the search party that the back of the temple is haunted by a pair of dead lovers that nobody can look at without dying. He fumbles the story a bit by explaining that they have to lay them to rest or none of them will survive to return home, so instead of just LEAVING the base camp is firmly established. Also the dead lovers play a lot of fiddle. Also that Tellador who showed up to borrow supplies is unrelated, they're the kid of the Games Magister who lives in a cave nearby and is ABOUT TO HAVE A FIDDLE PERFORMANCE YOU CAN'T MISS GO GO GO NO DON'T LOOK LEFT no teacher I don't need remedial fiddle practice in the oubliette to get the forbidden notes of love and Cneph-fiddling out of my song oh god Tellador is looking at me MUST GET TO THE CAVE SO POPS KNOWS ABOUT THE FIDDLE PERFORMANCE sort of thing. Lots and lots of running around and identity juggling and getting people to play fiddle for other people while behind curtains or in oubliettes while making sure that none of them are the same people who already did so, and anyway it all FINALLY pays off and the dead lovers are laid to rest and FINALLY LEFT THANK YOU TELLADOR, MOM, and the search party is off in the wrong direction, and he goes back to school, only to find out that the Fallen Angel was caught and immured after all.

Complex 2

There's something you are not doing enough about: getting this business with your Mom squared away so you can focus on the fiddle. You have to try harder.

Book 2, quest 1: A long time ago, in the eternal summer of the world that was the Second Age, the heroes and the Powers of the world would compete for the honor of serving at the court of the Serpent that was Summer and donating their strength to the cup of flame that kept the void at bay. Even now, once in each great cycle of years, when the last ritual's power begins to fade, heroes and Powers gather for a great tourney in the Serpent's mountain-home, pitting their Estates and artifice against one another. Casimir doesn't know much about this ritual or what it does today, but learning after breaking into the cells that his mother has been donated to this ritual as a sacrifice, he volunteers himself as a participant. Most of this is told in flashback, because we start with his own form of being stuck: he isn't good enough. There's a song he can hear, in the air. A song to play, to shore up the world. He isn't good enough. There's a weapon he can use, probably just an ordinary sword or whatever. But he isn't going to win. Or throw the contest to Tellador. He is overwhelmed and small and stuck. Everywhere is paegantry and feasts and rustic glory and natural and architected beauty and nature in the full bloom of summer and he throws himself at it with everything he has and he isn't going to matter. Tellador isn't going to notice him. His fiddle is going to be meaningless. Mom is going to die and not even know he showed up. It's summer and it's like the air's a wall of ice.

... until a Lord of Rule, and one of the patrons of the event, takes an interest in him, and shows him a vision like a scrap of song, like an inspiration, too big and jittery for his hands or body to really capture but still there's something there, enough to scrape at the edge of the wall, enough to get out of the qualifiers, enough to owe a debt he hates to a god he cannot trust.

Aspect 2 You’re presented with the option of another way of life or another way of thinking.

Result: you have an insight: you see or hear something that you wouldn’t have been able to before.

Book 2, quest 2: Casimir studies the nature of the world under the Lord of Rule, who is, among other things, Graveyards and Nyctophobia. He is taught of the perfidy of the Game* and the endless chill of the void beyond the world, and hints of that void touch his swordsmanship and fiddlecraft. He dreams of sitting at fires with Warmains in the endless dark and wolves and fairies bickering over his bones. He isn't coping with it well, but it's helping him. He talks to Tellador about it even though their gormless cheer irritates him almost as much as it helps. He doesn't refuse acorn soup. He hangs out with other fiddlers and warriors at various meals and events. A competitor tries to sabotage him somewhere. He watches a few of Tellador's fights. He tries to get far enough not to need more help from the Rule. At some point he understands, in the echo of the void-song off the mountain, that at least in the past, the winners were sacrificed to prolong the summer. He can practically see it, practically taste it: how they were stuffed into the cracks of the world, thrown into the apertures of void to be consumed there, to shore up the cracks created by the way of things and keep the grotesque reel of revelry turning ever on.

(* in case I wind up distracted here, I don't think the Game was actually perfidious in the past, I am loosely envisioning the Rule being the one that broke the summer of the world, possibly to preserve its champion—but, well, the Second Age was going to end anyway, while Earth could have been the problem with the First Age as unlikely as that is, it definitely wasn't with the Second.)

Book 2, quest 3: Casimir falls back on old habits and drives the guards away from Mom's cell using a ghost story of a roaming hungry spirit, enhanced now with Nyctophobia fiddle technique, including an awkward experience roaring and growling around the corner, but when someone important gets hurt and that part of the castle is locked down and it's decided that only the winner of the fight competition can deal with the monster, he has to make sure that either he or (when his points are too low) Tellador, who doesn't even have bullets, wins, so he can get Mom out. He explains away his attempted visit to the forbidden area as an assignation and now has to also keep Tellador from finding out that they're apparently sneaking off together without Tellador's knowledge because Tellador would totally make fun of him. Also the Rules Magister is very upset at his collaboration with the Game, which is unfair, because he doesn't even like Pops, winding up with having to get Tellador to stand in for him at fiddle work so he can disguise himself as Tellador using peri powers to win a fight that Tellador couldn't. He doesn't know that almost everyone there knows some of what's going on but is rooting for their relationship on the one hand and laughing at his running around desperately on the other and thus not interfering. (This is helpful when he is forced to resort to interfering with a duel while disguised as the ghost by wearing a sheet, which wouldn't have flown at all if people weren't tolerating him amusedly.) Anyway, it all works out, Tellador wins, Tellador gets Mom out probably, everything's good, he can relax now, except it becomes clear without Mom either he gets sacrificed or Tellador gets sacrificed or the whole ritual goes spla. Unfortunately, the Rules Magister is also aware of this and stops Casimir’s attempted preemptive self-sacrifice.

Book 2, quest 4: This might have led to Tellador's death/sacrifice, but apparently either someone else stopped that or Tellador was just too oblivious to sacrifice themselves, because the Serpent of Summer goes Wicked Mode. It's unclear to Casimir whether that's wrong or if it's supposed to happen, to be honest, but it puts the castle (apparently there's a castle, although my brain had previously told me it was a village) where this is taking place under siege from ... I'm seeing tree-root type things. Vampire pumpkins. Oppressive autumn heat alternating with frost. Mostly hungry tree roots though and brambles and such. And the sky broken to let in the coming winter, void, and death. The dead, perhaps. Some siege stuff, making food supplies last. Some keeping control of someone who loses it and tries to let the dead in. Some playing music on the balcony. Ghost stories and fear. The Imperator of Rule gets in a fight with Pops, who blames the Imperator of Rule for letting this happen the first time, while the Rule Magister apparently thinks Pops ought to have tossed himself into the void back then because what other good is prayer anyway? Blood and fever. Casimir finally sneaks out and journeys through the deep mythic to put the Serpent down

… though the way that journey actually ends is with stabbing it, getting beaten up, looking at the sad creature, and then playing for it until his fingers bleed and the sky first storms then calms and some of the pain of the void at being locked out all those years and the pain of the world at it breaking in subsides.

Casimir understands it, then, as he watches it sleep; that the songs that sustain the world, that they haven't been played properly since the Fall. That it's no wonder his Mom stole Cneph's fiddle to try to deal with it, it's no wonder the ritual went weird both now and back then. The world needs music like this or it'll fall apart, and no one's playing it.

Complex 3

Here's your Issue ("getting this business with your Mom squared away so you can focus on the fiddle") ... but you have a plan.

Book 3, quest 1, Quick Notes: We know there's a song Casimir hears. We know he can't capture it. It looks from other quests like probably he's at fiddle school for a lot of this, though eventually he descends into the underworld because that's the plan. Probably the thing that helps him push past it is Tellador visiting before descending—maybe Casimir was blocked by hesitancy/fear/innate stasis before that point. This isn't the full writeup, it's a temporary writeup so when I next go forward I can choose between filling in the 4-5s or going forward with book 3.

DECEMBER 6, 2022

Aspect 4

This is an epic struggle with something terrifying and supernatural.

Result: you win. Sometimes you’re left stranded and far from home, sometimes you get a victory parade; sometimes there’s more to do, sometimes it’s 100% triumph; sometimes the HG has to delay your victory a few scenes or invoke silly tropes like “but that wasn’t the real big bad” to stop play from grinding to a halt, and sometimes your victory is pure awesome. But, no matter what? You win.

Book 1, quest 4: so this is a notional short story that squeezes in between "search goes off in the wrong direction" at the end of book 1 and "Casimir heads off to the ritual" at the beginning of book 2.

Casimir and the search party are in the mountains, and they become prey to something that hunts there, some old hungry god-beast ghost from a True God that died but couldn't do it right. It picks off members of the search party. It hunts them through rocky hills, scrublands, and spires of barren stone. Its yawning jaws are even in his dreams, in his thoughts when he closes his eyes, in his music when he plays to keep out the cold. The group argues at a river and splits up; blood is shed, and a fiddle broken, and someone in the other party uses a curse to send it after Casimir's. He falls into a kind of delirium as he sinks into the mythic as it hunts, its hunt becoming less and less physical and more an active devouring of his spirit that he challenges with song, and the rises and falls of the land are the intensification and quieting of the song he plays; until at last on a peak on a moonlit night with the land sprawling out beneath him he plays its bones into the earth and it and nearly himself to the other side of death, and, shockingly, he's won. In part because he's that good, in part because Avarice is bigger than its stomach, but in part because it already consented inadvertently to the metaphor of the song being their battle and so it's listening as he bridges from what should have been the conclusion of the hunt to a coda and its end.

I can sort of feel that transition, the song drifting down to silence as it eats him, then the quiet trill, then the chonky sawing of the bow as it picks up into the whirling dance of the actual ending of it. Anyway.

Aspect 5 You’re lost in the dark.

Result: you find your way home, maybe even with some treasure, maybe having left something good behind—

But the experience has changed you.

Book 1, quest 5: this would, then, be the long walk home alone, after the True God's laid to rest. Tradition says Casimir has encounters on the way, someone to help, someone to betray him, something wondrous and fairy-tale. A forester in red. A fairy or monster by a stream. The full moon. A case can be made that he's not in his right mind, having pushed himself quite hard. Tradition says that his fiddle is possibly broken and he makes a new one along the way. Something in him was buried and lost with the God, and he has to find himself in the bones of the world, in nuts and roots and berries, in the trap of a much more mundane but still magic forest creature and its abattoir, in the transient house of a helpful spirit, in the fabrics of a hospital after he reemerges into the world and a car hits him, in the mouse that a proud feral cat drops off for him. He grants things their wishes, because Avarice is dead, you see. He starts by trying to grant a wish to a stone he finds along the way, but it doesn't express one. Moves on through the encounters. Eventually someone's just kind of concerned for him and is just hoping he'll be okay, which forces the still waters of him to stir towards waking. He talks a bit about the stone, and the person he’s talking to mentions that it doesn't want anything because it's dead, and he's all "ah," and almost reaches out for human touch but this person is mostly a stranger and he's too restrained and Casimir for it, so instead he just says "how about that," and heads on home.

Book 3, quest 1: Casimir is at fiddle school. He has a plan, which is to say, descending to Hell in his mother's footsteps (a ridiculous romanticization, but his ridiculous romanticization) to bolster the ancient wards against the void. He can practically taste ... feel ... touch ... the song he needs to play. But it eludes him. The nights are dark and the moon is bright and there are fires lit in the halls of the fiddle school in the mountains and wolves howl in the distance and strange beasts are cooked upon the fires and the maesters of the school dream on ancient secrets and trade instruction for bone and miracles and riddlery and have mouths dark with tobacco or betel or something like that and the students dress up in fancy poofy outfits and build a 3d sculpture model of a song out of many-colored painted laminated branches in the shared study and argue over the meanings of historical fiddle-players but they're afraid. And he can't get it, no matter how he works at it, he falls short, and he is at risk of trading something vital to a maester for instruction to push past when Tellador visits and talks about how they're going down below but thought they'd stop by Casimir’s place first and something clicks in Casimir's understanding and he can fill out the hollow in the song.

Book 3, quest 2: Casimir and Tellador descend. Casimir listens to Tellador's theories on people and the world, mostly with a kind of exhaustion at dealing with someone who has optimism and energy still.

The road down the Ash is scary, with rivers of venom, paths of corrupted wood, sulfurous clouds, and the worlds they pass through are bitter, withered; they know prayer only when Tellador passes, so Tellador must carefully gather all of them up when they pass.

Tellador shoves Casimir forward to fix some world's crops that haven't grown for seven years with a fiddle song and Casimir grumpily takes that world's crown in exchange. (Some of the stuff fiddle music does in these stories is outside the realm of Aspect but whatever, it's either an Aspect-bound art, Ability-based magic, he's cheating with Persona/Treasure on the side, or he's buying Bonds/Geasa with some of the Aspect quests. That’s not super-important here.)

There are frightening omens in the sky on another world, but they just wait it out. There’s acidic rain in a miserable corner of the Ash. But there’s also laughing and goofing off on the road, neat sights, encounters with weird domestic animals, crossing a river in the early prototype prayer-flight-craft, playing music (together?) at somebody's wedding, and opening up somewhat about some of the burdens of his heart. Casimir probably gets to take ownership of his own identity for the first time after explaining some of his reasons for self-hate as a half-Fallen Power of Avarice and getting scoffed at for it and realizing that Tellador is right, he can be whatever, it's not like anyone else even knows him down here. That probably happens around the time of the wedding, shortly after, so the wedding festivities can still be going on outside when he goes to sleep thinking on that.

Book 3, quest 3: To clear the way for Tellador to help out the dead, Casimir fakes up an imaginary high-ranking Fallen who the two of them are working for. He accidentally chooses the name of a legendary Fallen who vanished long ago under mysterious circumstances—it’s not a pure coincidence, it’s a name his mother mentioned once when he was a kid that slipped out accidentally because the subconscious keeps all this stuff—and anyway it turns out that that legendary Fallen is a legendary Fallen that a bunch of locals are interested in dueling, dating, visiting, inviting to visit, etcetera, and Casimir’s attempts to pawn them off with stuff like "oh, he'll see you when hell freezes over" get met with "great, Tuesday it is" and his attempts to change proposed sponsors to something more tenable just land on another legendary figure that he’d forgotten was an actual name and soon he has to fake diabolical phenomena with fiddle music, explain away Tellador who is barely cooperating with the deception as the "great architect" he has to manage, deal with his Mom who feels crowded and stressed by his coming down (she’s all I gave you a perfectly good world! Just stay there! Leave me alone! I have my own life, I can’t be chained down by a kid all the time! I need to own everything and work on my PowerPoint presentations!) and ultimately Casimir winds up having to impersonate both fake lost legends and later (when she wants to step out for a moment) his mom at the same time at a party which also proves his only chance to metaphorically pin down a couple of personages and find out what HAPPENED to their part of the fiddle theme they ought to be playing because when he tried to talk to them as himself they were all just "oh, I'm too busy suffering eternal agony to talk to a peri" or "oh, I'm too hungry for peri flesh to talk to a peri" or "really, my eternal langour forbids me to break my silence for someone as small as a peri, don't you think it's a beautiful infernal silence?" He barely makes it through, SOMEHOW, which is when the walls of Hell start to crack.

Book 3, quest 4: Lots of guerrilla war through the landscape of Hell, I think, here, which is more gnarled corrupted thorny roots and of course fire and dreamlike mists and Excrucian ridings in the "sky." Fighting in the distance as bigger powers than they clash. Local stuff as Tellador and Casimir try to make it to the stone circle type locations where he can fiddle back a bit of the necessary boundary. Meals with the damned in the shadow of war. Explosions at the palace. The void dragon acts as an impossible bump in the last song that needs to be played, and so Casimir must fiddle the void dragon away. This works by fiddling it into dissipating into nothingness because, after all, it’s made of nothingness—getting it to let go of existing and its hatred for the world and return to the void so that the song can be completed and the boundaries resealed.

Book 3, quest 5: Tellador is busy rebuilding infrastructure and doesn't need Casimir for that part. So I think this is Casimir wandering around meeting individual souls and interacting with them. Granting them things they need, individual ways to unknot themselves and find escape. Wrestling with his heritage and the ongoing Issue. Occasionally meeting some unnamed Fallen at a fire and having fiddle competitions, which end inconclusively. Occasionally his mother comes by and yells at him for letting the souls go because it's not like she wants to see them hurt but anyway their getting hurt is just temporary, probably, just like the current conditions which a committee is working on she thinks! The important thing is that they belong there, like, to her, and to other people, and so shouldn’t just leave. (His mother being Avarice much more literally than he, of course, which is the weakness to the love that otherwise would not tolerate such torments.) Eventually he's complaining about this to a tormented soul he's helping and the soul is eyeing him the way victims do when you complain about your attachment to their tormentors but ultimately the soul is all "yeah, it's hard letting go" which is what that soul needed, and what Casimir needed too, to grasp that this is all he has, here, that there isn't a magic relationship with his mom or Hell that he's somehow missing, there's just ... this, this and the fact that she's trying but is also awful and broken. And that's both how he finds his way "home," which in this case is both where he already was and back to Tellador's side, and also pushes his Issue to Complex 4: dealing with Heaven, which did this to them.

Hell in these books ... well, I don't know where it would actually land, because I don't know exactly how I would be squaring Nob3 compassion with the traditional vision of Hell. I imagine I'd be bouncing back and forth a lot in both writing and editing, both making it a lot kinder than the impossibly awful traditional vision but also showing just how even Nob3+ fallen can be broken enough to not be ... good, just ... holy.

(I suspect that I would land on a very dreamy, symbolic torment, with a lot of people twisted up by the place even as the Fallen themselves are but not much pain-for-the-sake-of-pain and almost no degradation-for-the-sake-of-degradation—make it about the knots in the heart, about the way we get hurt and twisted up just by living in the world, rather than a realm of abusers or a metaphor for one of the big world evils or anything—but possibly that would wind up not feeling enough like Hell and I'd correct the other way, don't know.)

possibly Tellador’s name should actually be Telomere, just because that's a great name for a Game Magister to give someone

Book 2, quest 5, belatedly: So this is between dealing with the Serpent and returning to fiddle school. And what's interesting is that I don't think Casimir is gonna be delirious or messed up from the ending of quest 4, really, this time around. Just, ... I think it ends and he doesn't know how to go back. He lives in a little rickety rustic town sustained by vacationers who like the nearby woods and mountains, and he sells people their heart's desire (sometimes little carvings of it, sometimes the thing itself, sometimes the desire, sometimes a song), and sometimes scales from the snake, and someone whose desires got snuffed out at some point (so he can't sell them anything) keeps coming in to figure him out, and he shows them a haunted place in the woods and later a vision of something to want. And like "what is that?" they ask when looking at the vision of what to want, and Casimir looks at it more closely and sees a world where the songs are played properly and he's finished his studies at the school, among other things he doesn't even want to think about* and he's like, frack, I guess I want that.

* he's very repressed

Book 4, quest 1: Casimir is working on the very first song he heard back when, the song his mother played that touched on the work of Cneph, but isn't getting anywhere. In the meantime, his life is very normal. Lurking in the background as Tellador finishes up work. Hanging out with very ordinary dead and occasional monsters and slacking Fallen. Staring down weird Hell animals. Taking walks in mostly-repaired places. Visual thematics like the purple eggy bramble marsh place from Teenage Exocolonist and temporary settlements/refugee camps. Life is lots of little tasks and making it through the day. Then he hears some Fallen playing or singing something about the Fall itself and he stops feeling stuck; it carries him, he reaches a new level by seizing song from the world.

DECEMBER 7, 2022 (technically – I worked past midnight)

Book 4, quest 2: Casimir and Tellador ascend; and I think ... his Mom stows away on the flying temple, even though she was being distant, so she can talk more about the Fall. Lots of pretty clouds to ascend through, even if they are sulfurous. Lots of cool sunrises and sunsets through the branches of the tree with auroras around the sun. Taming elephant-sized dragonflies. Rising through the ring around a world, or a shattered planet. Giving directions to a mysterious centaur-like passerby heavy enough to shake their flying mountain temple when it lands upon their craft. Having that temple broken and a third of it chopped off by a cut off an Excrucian sword in a nearby battle not even aimed at them. Eventually, getting high enough that the fumes of Hell are no longer present and the beauty of things is ever-richer as they rise and the world is as a river flowing until they reach the gates, where they should be turned away; where they would be turned away, if he didn't know the Angels well enough from his mother's stories to claim justice as the child and Power of Avarice, that once was bright, and has been cast down, polluted, and denied. So they're let in, and Tellador's all like "neat, are they going to be nice to you?" and Casimir's "no, they're just kicking it up the chain far enough to find someone who can snuff me out, distract that guy and let's book it." More or less.

Book 4, quest 3: Casimir and Tellador disguise themselves as Angels. Casimir sneaks into the main fiddle institute of Heaven to try to dig up what they have on warding music, although he's furious because they practice a style he disfavors. Unfortunately, the hideout they find to hang out in, after they've started fixing it up a bit, turns out to be the gathering place for masked revolutionaries. (Worse, Casimir has already accidentally agreed to host a fiddle school social there.) What with one thing and another, including Tellador's cogent point that that's what they're there for, they become leaders of the budding revolution. Casimir manages to convince most of the fiddle institute Angels at the social that he's actually organizing a performance of a scandalous music-heavy play about the Fall rather than a revolution and winds up deeply frustrated because even the revolutionaries are interested. His attempts to steal the warding music from a reclusive elder's office fail, the elder blackmails him into giving the elder a good place in the play, and it snowballs until he just runs with it and uses the play as an excuse to ask for access to the old music archives and as justification for everything he wants to do in general. The performance somehow completes successfully, although he's not sure why that matters to anyone. He finds the warding music he was looking for in the vaults. Heaven is a little stirred up. He emerges from the vaults to find the institute on lockdown.

... some heavy unstated and probably un-worked-out assumptions there, but I think it's at least loosely viable.

Book 4, quest 4: This particular version of Heaven is more explicitly despotic than the typical "loosely organized commune of arrogance and privilege" you see in the Nobilis setting—that's the Aspect Arc style coming through, you see—so there's someone who took over after the Fall, someone who probably pushed it, made the evolving conflict within the Angelic society of the time turn irrevocably bloody, some great nameless? winged provenance that slouches upon Heaven's throne, some Angel of Stasis, Hierarchy, Exclusion, Blinders, Gated Communities, and the Peak. Some Angel who bound Cneph themselves in a fiddle long ago, who locked up God in their pocket and made God think that pocket was the boundless world, took the golden songs to be their own, and has not, perhaps made as good a use of them as they might. And so when it seizes and isolates the institute, it is not with soldiers but with distance, with mist, with silence. When it spreads its wings, its seven sky-gray wings, above those green fields and bright flowers and old stone halls, it is not to trample them but to dim them, lull them into dreaming, make them still, and cut them from the fabric of the heights. The place feels empty, echoing. It's hard to breathe there. It withers on the vine. Ash rains softly down. At a feast, they starve; in Heaven, beauty fades; the music Casimir plays is dulled.

... no, that's too weak. Those Estates would be meaningfully weak, but that's too weak, so the Estates and meaning are wrong.

Um, um um, um um.

Ash, yes, and a world like clockwork, and fences of living steel. Oh, is it the Industrial Revolution again? I promise I don't have an axe to grind there, I guess it's just a core part of my symbol set. But OK, yeah, that must be what it is. Or at least … mechanization.

Either way, though, when he breaks past its steam/metal/fire mechanisms and steel-wire defenses and confronts it in the tower of the place with fiddle in hand ... it's already dead. It killed itself when it took the throne.

He just has to make it see that.

Book 4, quest 5: Wandering down the tree, talking to Cneph in his fiddle, working miracles for the worlds of the Ash, subduing abhorrent weapons using what amount to Far Roofs techniques along the way. On some random world, he frees a Fallen Angel trapped under a rock by a lifeless sea, mentioning that Heaven's discussing reparations; though, the Fallen tells him, "... we're already the folk of Hell." He raids the gardens of the Hesperides. In the end, he's back on Earth, and a star falls, and Cneph asks him what he'd wish for, and he puts the fiddle away and goes out to hang out with Tellador, and the reader thinks that's the ending, but it's time for Complex 5:

"What if we just ... lifted Hell?"

DECEMBER 7, 2022 (ACTUAL)

Switching over to ... can I switch their name to Telomere?

I want to so I will. It may fail and revert.

ASIDE: This name doesn’t stick.

Shepherd 1

This is the story of your ordinary life—the everyday work, stresses, and pleasures that form the fabric of your days.

Result. A responsibility falls on you out of nowhere.

Telomere, Book 1, Quest 1

If you pray, or wish, or send something out into the universe, and you don't have the power to send it all the way, then your prayers will make their way to Telomere Swift, Power of Prayer, whose job it is to carry them up the mountain, open up the sky, and send them on to Heaven, to be unanswered there. Telomere's doing pretty well with all of this. They have a job to do, and they like doing it, even if it's kind of a dead end. But when people fill up the mountain hunting a runaway fallen angel who stole a fiddle from Mysterious Fantasy Mountain Fiddle School (working title), this snappy little emo ball of neuroses fiddle hunter Casimir gets stuck staying with Telomere and Pops during a storm and ... after a while poking at him with interest to get him to open up a bit, Telomere gets him to ask for help, which turns out to boil down to "help my mom, the fallen angel we're hunting, get away." Aw! Listening to her play after Telomere finds her, there's a feeling like

Calling 1

You feel like there’s something you need to do, but you’re not sure what. You’ve forgotten, or you haven��t figured it out yet, or all the pieces haven’t come together yet for you to act.

Shepherd 2

You’re having a little trouble keeping your life on an even keel.

Result. You’re doing OK, but there’s a big challenge coming up.

Telomere, Book 1, Quest 2

Telomere and the fallen angel crash for the night at an old temple and immediately the entire search party shows up. Before they can sneak off properly, Casimir convinces the search party that there's a pair of ghost lovers back where they're sleeping who have to be carefully monitored, which like what?

As far as Telomere can tell the whole thing is a series of complicated excuses to keep Telomere or Casimir's Mom from leaving too quickly, but Casimir freaks out every time Telomere takes a break to take some prayers anywhere. At least it's a good opportunity to help clean up the old temple and have meals with the fiddlers sometimes while pretending to be a ghost and explore the mountain and get to know Casimir's mom and listen to neat music. Apparently the real journey starts once they get away, though.

^ is this what I want for quest 2, or do I want to go straight to the journey to the past? Will ponder, but wanted to post first

... no, this is good stuff, but I think the two quest sets will be too similar if I do that.

Instead, let’s skip past just about everything that happens while Casimir and Telomere are together as happening either “while Casimir’s quest is in focus” or “at the very end of Telomere’s quest 1/beginning of their quest 2,” allowing the quests to actually have different focuses and themes, and carry that general way of handling things forward into future quests when we can.

Telomere, Book 1, Quest 2, Take 2

Telomere takes a journey with the runaway fallen angel. Journey aesthetics: red and white streamers on the trees on lightly wooded hills, an airship regatta, and candy apples ... so, a fair in a place where time is fucked up, presumably as part of taking the fiddle towards a metaphorical heart of the world. Casimir's Mom is very flighty and the world is very strange, but it's all fine.

Shepherd 3

Absolution

There’s something haunting you from the past, but you’ve got the chance to make it right.

Result. It’s the most amazing thing. You do.

Telomere, Book 1, Quest 3

The fair is a place where something broke, long ago. It's where …

(looks up Colbrand in the Far Roofs draft, determines there's enough on that already)

… the Angel of the Golden Age—

Hm.

I want the people of the fair to be the servants of the now-Fallen Angel of the Golden Age, and I want that Angel to have made the original Ereto/Eurytos, but while the latter may be correct, I think the first part is wrong.

The fair is a stuck memory of the King Beneath the Stone, the first Angel to actually die, back when people didn't really know that could happen. A stuck memory of the revel where they were killed, shadows of the angels that couldn't move on—

No, not that either. That fits the journey theming better but not the story arc for the book. Maybe port some of it back into quest 2?

I like quest 3 as "visiting the ruins of the Golden Age, and the crafting of Ereto," because it lets the fallen angel's purpose be taking the fiddle back to when Cneph was listening to her, which puts the whole book in a kind of harmony.

And the fixing ... it can't be remembering the way Ereto was before it was twisted, because the Golden Age is a Fallen Estate for a reason—as definitionally golden as the age itself was, it's generally a harmful Estate.

But ... Telomere can tell Eurytos about what's to come, can humanize it some, temper its glory, and in turn temper the monster that it later will become?

I need to redo both of these but I think that will be quest 3.

DECEMBER 8, 2022

Telomere, Book 1, Quest 2, Take 3

Telomere takes a journey with Casimir's Mom. They reach the arid lands at the edge of the world where a town still mourns for the loss of its prince, the first Angel to know death. They (Telomere) take up work maintaining its clock tower, discharging occasional prayers from there, and trying to repair the town’s fountain while they wait for the moment to pass on to their destination. Everything's harder and lonelier there; Casimir's Mom is alien and hides in the tower, and the town is clingy with expectations and weighty with sorrow and it's hot and dusty and the grief sticks with them; they dream of the Angel they never met, and loss, and the burden grows. It'll never be resolved, at least, not unless Telomere stays there long enough to see the last of the sky regatta off, to see the place put away its streamers and its mourning garb and its candy apples (they didn't really know how to mourn yet), unless they're there long enough to watch as the dead Angel gets wrestled resisting down into the ground …

No.

Telomere, Book 1, Quest 2, Take 4

Telomere takes a journey with Casimir's Mom. They reach the arid lands at the edge of the world where a town still mourns for the loss of its prince, the first Angel to know death. They (Telomere) take up work maintaining its clock tower, discharging occasional prayers from there, and trying to repair the coffin-ship, last in the armada, that'll take the body away while they wait for the moment to pass on to their destination. Everything's harder and lonelier there; Casimir's Mom is alien and hides in the tower, and the town is clingy with expectations and weighty with sorrow and it's hot and dusty and the grief sticks with them. The Angel doesn't want to go, of course. The patterns of death were not properly set, back then. They follow its prayers to the Angel by the town and meet with it from time to time, it doesn't want to go. And when the ship is fixed, and it's time to go ... they could stay, and wrestle it into the box, or keep it from going in, but Telomere made a promies to Casimir, so they go through the gate that opens in the clocktower's peak, and look back, instead. They're doing OK, though ...

OK! And we keep quest 3 as sketched out, so that's book 1. (We'll polish it up a bit when we do the Shepherd quests, but that's enough for the pass we're doing before the Aspect quests.)

Telomere, Book 2, Quest 1

Telomere is again just doing their thing. What's different this time?

... I think to know that I have to do book 1 quest 5, which means I'd like to do book 3 first so I have an example of a quest 5 in its proper place to look at, so.

… probably some things are different, but mostly Telomere is doing their thing.

Then, they find out about this ritual Pops is involved in that they have to go help handle.

After working on quest 4 and reading about Calling 3, I think that something in book 1 quest 5 must have silenced Telomere's heart. And that they don't know how to fix it. There was a Warmain once who made your heart too loud and that might have helped … but that Warmain is dead.

Part of going to the ritual is that they're afraid of a heart attack under the circumstances and stepping a bit out of time will help.

Telomere, Book 2, Quest 2

Telomere is hanging out in the lands of summer, doing duels, though having a bit of trouble given that Telomere isn't really much for guns and prayers are not bullets. They hit it off well with their main potential competitor but lose the first double-elimination fight against her and are in general struggling. Parade grounds in a high place, flags, fights. Things inspired by the other quest 2: tending the gun, dealing with people who are struggling with change, dust, dealing with alien flaky people, armada in the sky.

Telomere, Book 2, Quest 3

Long ago, at the end of the Second Age, a Rule Magister opted to hold its Power back from the sacrifice, gambling that it could push Pops to burn himself out making up the gap instead, leading to ... well, probably not the Fall of the Second Age, not even on Earth, but one of the thematic incidents thereupon attendant, the wounding of the Serpent of Summer and its first fall into Wicked Mode. When the yearly ritual goes spla, and Pops is all "welp, time to show the Rule that we know how to sacrifice ourselves," meaningful look at Telomere because obviously Games Magisters don’t sacrifice themselves, Telomere is all "seriously Pops we've been over this."

Instead they borrow one of Casimir's Mom's time portals (because we've established she can do that, though I should work out the details of how and what Estate it is when polishing these) to go back and talk to the Serpent of the time about how fucked up all this is.

ASIDE: Later I decide to give her the Estate of Hauntings. I think this is awesome but it doesn’t actually come up outside of “it’s thematic and it means she can make time portals with Sealed,” so I might as well mention it here.

Telomere, Book 2, Quest 4 Telomere takes advantage of being in the past to hunt down that Warmain, ultimately passing his test and having to kill him to get away, but when they get back to the present, and can actually connect again with the people they care about, they can hear their heart again.

ASIDE: When writing flores I forgot I’d already given the Warmain a gender and used she/her pronouns there. Diversity win! The deuterocanonical monster outside the world who died long ago might arguably be genderfluid or something, maybe, scholars are uncertain

DECEMBER 9, 2022

Telomere, Book 3, Quest 1

daily life at the mountain. Thinking a lot about Casimir and the events of book 2. Imagining shapes in clouds. Someone immortal, in immortal grief for someone they lost, passes through. Smirk at Casimir's frustrated prayers about fiddlery. A harsh autumn and early if dry winter leads to food shortages that don't actually matter except aesthetically to anyone involved. Soup in Pops' cave home. Dry scrub. Tending a wounded animal. Memories. Realizing that the grief-prayers have gotten too heavy and it's time to move them along. Picks up Casimir on the way.

Telomere, Book 3, Shepherd 2:

the trip to Hell is always harrowing. Everyone's life is sad and it's hard to help. It's hot and dry. The food you get with underworld tokens is really stingy. Telomere's hands always get chapped doing road work and stuff along the way. Maybe fighting off weird stinging beasts. Casimir's tagging along like a lost, stuck-up puppy. No one wants to let go of anything. But Telomere's managing.

Telomere, Book 3, Shepherd 3:

Telomere sees someone they knew as a kid who used to haunt those mountains before dying (or, as Pops said, "taking their life's work to its natural conclusion, elsewhere"), and spends a while with them (with Casimir's fiddle help) dreaming through what their life ought to have been like, to give them some closure on it. The thorns that held them down below uncurl, and the soul departs.

Historical note: the friend died in part because they were offered a chance to save Telomere from Pops and failed at it, leading to Telomere admitting that they're well aware Pops is awful, but they've learned not to get other people burned and that's all they're obligated to worry about.

Telomere, Book 3, Shepherd 4:

I think Telomere's part in the Excrucian invasion is... well, probably a lot of it is just moving through weird dangerous terrain, and dealing with hunting beasts and hostile landscape, and sheltering locals and/or Casimir, and seeing wonders as Casimir fiddles the boundaries back, and the like. But at some point they have to go deal with one of the commanders, a Strategist dying of Righteous Wrath, and gently point out that they're making it worse rather than better for the damned while tying the dude up in fetters of the prayers people have made for said dead and I dunno probably ultimately tossing him in the sack of prayers to be sent up to Heaven to do something about later.

Telomere, Book 3, Shepherd 5:

Telomere takes advantage of the fact that they're doing repair efforts on the walls of Hell anyway to build their own little domain down there. It's less of an improvement over the work of the Fallen than one might hope—the Fallen aren't as bad in Nob3+ as in Nob2/many churches, and Hell has some intrinsic qualities keeping Telomere from making a little paradise—but it's ... nice? An accomplishment, anyway. And when it's done, they understand a little more about how the world went wrong: Heaven doesn't listen. Heaven understands virtue, but not Hell. So they decide to go fix that.

(now that I’ve seen quests 4-5 …)

DETOUR Telomere, Book 1, Quest 4

This is a journey to fairyland, which is to say a local lacuna, because something's gone wrong with the ... king of the place ... and because the King has fallen into sleep, has ceased to bother with the dull and boring world, the King's ice palace is melting and its waters are running deeper and deeper and hungry crocodilian creatures move among the trees outside and sleek shapes in the water and bodiless, alienated voices sing, and to kill that King and wake the King's heir Telomere has to go so deep into the ice that their heart goes still.

Telomere, Book 1, Quest 5

Under Pops' supervision, and at Pops' request, in a forge in the back of the cave Telomere makes a gun. They keep getting distracted, though, thinking of the lacuna, and wind up making something that affirms the world, that wakes a spark of interest in it, not really a gun proper so much as a flame of life and willful hope to be held in hand. I suspect structurally this is the scene of its completion interrupted by a ton of flashbacks. The gun is a miracle, and just looking on it is a wonder, but "it doesn't ... take bullets," Pops frowns.

Telomere, Book 2, Quest 5

This would probably be reforging the quest-4-Warmain's weapon, with a side of befriending its Mystery-self-side. Since I'm looking at the spine of "the Priory of the Orange Tree" and remembering Karma’s Ritho drawings ( https://kaaramel.tumblr.com/tagged/ritho ) the Mystery is probably draconic or at least wiggly-tailed. Something about the clear skies, something about it hunting on the mountain, something about the reforging process. The most appropriate Mystery is presumably something to do with the weight of grief, but also not exactly on point.

ASIDE: These days, instead of limiting myself to true horror-words giants from Brewster’s Phrase and Fable, I tend to give Abhorrent Weapons a variety of mood-words that only trend unpleasant because they’re weapons and a spirit that’s a mythological monster of some sort. My Patreon has some more on this if you dig around for the Far Roofs game. Anyway, I’m looking for a good emotion that isn’t too big for a minor Weapon and a good monster that isn’t too notable for the same, that I didn’t use up in Nobilis or CMWGE or Far Roofs!

Um. I'm sure I've done Sorrow, and it's too big to choose here anyway—ah, right, Sorrow is Banshee. Gloom? looks at Calling 2 for thoughts Fixation? Trudge?

… Wait, no, we're at Calling 3 already, not Calling 2 …

Clamor? Overwhelm?

I guess it's a minor Warmain, I can go with Clamor, and just everything being too loud, too much.

Monsters, hm, hm.

“Myling” is interesting, “Bukavac” looks more right.

… I guess it's Bukavac, particularly since apparently they have some connection to the real creature the bittern, which are obviously linguistically connected to bitterness

(pictured: an Abhorrent Weapon):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze1uzC7h8UE

The weapon of the warmain that makes your heart too loud, everybody.

Telomere, Book 4, Shepherd 1:

prayer-lift-based expedition is launched towards Heaven. Daily life on the floating platform, with occasional stops on worlds to help people or admire stuff.

Telomere, Book 4, Shepherd 2:

Things are more difficult after actually reaching Heaven, because while Casimir can do fiddle institute stuff and they can help, Telomere (types "Tellamore" on the first try now, good grief) has to actually make a living. Things are weirdly wrong, weirdly tense. They can't track down where prayers are going or who's dealing with them. They work at a place of habitation and do library research and sometimes deal with Casimir's rebellion hijinks. Occasionally admire the beauty of this or that place, but mostly, concern.

Telomere, Book 4, Quest 3:

This one focuses on the unbinding of Cneph—at least pulling Cneph towards the surface again. Roaming Heaven and dodging the forces of that which rules it while telling Cneph the story of the world. This one probably just unlocks the gate, leaving …

Telomere, Book 4, Quest 4: ... to be the quest where Telomere goes in and confronts Cneph and drags Cneph back out to the surface of things. Telomere, Book 4, Quest 5: Left in charge of Heaven, Telomere works on building the bureau and artifact recipient site that'll handle prayers in the future before passing off responsibility for the rest and heading home.

Bluh, kind of lame but I think a solid enough framework that I can start building the Aspect quest set before polishing it.

DECEMBER 10, 2022

OK! Back to work with

Aspect 1

You’re blocked. Frozen. Stuck. There’s something you can’t get past.

Reward. You push past it.

Book 1, quest 1: Casimir is the Power of Avarice—half-human, half-Angel, with the Angel Fallen. (Avarice is notable for the universality of its love and its ability to damage, after all, though once it was a high and holy and selective thing. The Angel governs ... Avarice, Crowns, Impossible Dreams, and Overviews.) He isn't fond of his Estate but he can't let go of it and do gigantic destruction miracles either so he just pretends it doesn't exist and mopes around at magical fiddle school in the mountains. Unfortunately, his fiddle development is blocked because he doesn't trust the world enough and is only working with what he has inside him ... until he hears that Angel ... his ... mother? ... playing in the distance. He's disturbed and mostly goes about his life, getting meals at the cafeteria, arguing with friends, doing little duels of magic and fiddlery, staring at the moon, walking high roads, taking classes, ignoring avarice spirits ... but also thinking about that song, and occasionally hearing it again. Eventually it stops, and he tries to recapture it in his own work, but fails; he learns, later, that the masters of the college have caught a fallen angel in the web of light that guards the tunnels to the fiddle vault, and has to go in and rescue her. He is devastated and embarrassed to realize that it's his mom, particularly since he brought a friend with him and doesn't want to deal with that at the time, but getting to hear it close up — he can hear her reaching for what she had once, when she was in Heaven, the work that was in unity with the voice of Cneph, who made the world. He can hear the music bleeding into the arch of Heaven in that song. He can hear his own boundaries shifting. ... then it fades, and he breaks her free, watches her steal a fiddle, realizes he isn't sure if that's what he wanted to do, reports her escape, and uncertainly follows.

Book 2, quest 1: A long time ago, in the eternal summer of the world that was the Second Age, the heroes and the Powers of the world would compete for the honor of serving at the court of the Serpent that was Summer and donating their strength to the cup of flame that kept the void at bay. Even now, once in each great cycle of years, when the last ritual's power begins to fade, heroes and Powers gather for a great tourney in the Serpent's mountain-home, pitting their Estates and artifice against one another. He doesn't know much about this ritual or what it does today, but learning after breaking into the cells that his mother has been donated to this ritual as a sacrifice, Casimir volunteers himself as a participant. Most of this is flashback, because we start with his own form of being stuck: he isn't good enough. There's a song he can hear, in the air. A song to play, to shore up the world. He isn't good enough. There's a weapon he can use, probably just an ordinary sword or whatever. But he isn't going to win. Or throw the contest to Tellador. He is overwhelmed and small and stuck. Everywhere is paegantry and feasts and rustic glory and natural and architected beauty and nature in the full bloom of summer and he throws himself at it with everything he has and he isn't going to matter. Tellador isn't going to notice him. His fiddle is going to be meaningless. Mom is going to die and not even know he showed up. It's summer and it's like the air's a wall of ice. ... until a Lord of Rule, and one of the patrons of the event, takes an interest in him, and shows him a vision like a scrap of song, like an inspiration, too big and jittery for his hands or body to really capture but still there's something there, enough to scrape at the edge of the wall, enough to get out of the qualifiers, enough to owe a debt he hates to a god he cannot trust.

Book 3, quest 1: Casimir is at fiddle school. He has a plan, which is to say, descending to Hell in his mother's footsteps (a ridiculous romanticization, but his ridiculous romanticization) to bolster the ancient wards against the void. He can practically taste ... feel ... touch ... the song he needs to play. But it eludes him. The nights are dark and the moon is bright and there are fires lit in the halls of the fiddle school in the mountains and wolves howl in the distance and strange beasts are cooked upon the fires and the maesters of the school dream on ancient secrets and trade instruction for bone and miracles and riddlery and have mouths dark with tobacco or betel or something like that and the students dress up in fancy poofy outfits and build a 3d sculpture model of a song out of many-colored painted laminated branches in the shared study and argue over the meanings of historical fiddle-players but they're afraid. And he can't get it, no matter how he works at it, he falls short, and is at risk of trading something vital to a maester for instruction to push past when Tellador visits and talks about how they're going down below and thought they'd stop by first and something clicks in Casimir's understanding and he can fill out the hollow in the song.

Book 4, quest 1: Casimir is working on the very first song he heard back when, the song his mother played that touched on the work of Cneph, but isn't getting anywhere. In the meantime, his life is very normal. Lurking in the background as Tellador finishes up work. Hanging out with very ordinary dead and occasional monsters and slacking Fallen. Staring down weird Hell animals. Taking walks in mostly-repaired places. Visual thematics like the purple eggy bramble from Teenage Exocolonist and temporary settlements/refugee camps. Life is lots of little tasks and making it through the day. Then he hears some Fallen playing or singing something about the Fall itself and he stops feeling stuck; it carries him, he reaches a new level by seizing song from the world.

ASIDE I had the thought on December 9th that the fifth quest set for the book might be from the Gods of Pegana, if it's public domain, which it probably is?

…

unlike most of these asides this was actually mentioned at the time, but, like, it started with “aside” so I figured I’d format it like this anyway.

SECOND ASIDE: QUEST CONDENSATION TECHNIQUE, NUMBER WHATEVER

OK, the way we’re going to do this is we’re going to break that first writeup into a bunch of numbered pieces and then try to match each of them up to comparable pieces in the other books. Sometimes those are pieces I actually wrote down, sometimes they’re new, but I can “see” them in the other books once I look for them.

Then we’ll move on to book 2; if there are important pieces not covered, we’ll write them down and try to match them up, etc.

For this quest, I numbered them the same way no matter which book inspired a given piece, and I didn’t really keep track of which book a numbered piece came from.

Later on, I came up with the format:

2-1, 2-2, etc. for concepts that I first noticed in the writeup for book 2, 3-1, 3-2 in book 3, etc.

Later I also started recording four matches for every piece, even if I couldn’t really find them—I used question marks when I wasn’t sure or couldn’t find anything.

For right now, though, this is just going to be 19 things I saw in the writeups above, with as many matched-up pieces as I could find for each.

The benefits of this approach, anyway, are twofold:

First, it’s very mechanical, which is useful when I’m tired or whatever: I don’t have to worry about whether I can find a parallel to something. I just write it in the list. Thinking about troublesome list entries can come on a second or third pass.

Second, keeping track of the numbers can be helpful later on when I have turned things into major goals or quest flavor or whatever: when I’m trying to figure out icons, or figure out how a quest flavor changes when doing a simplified version, and the basic quest flavor isn’t telling me enough, I can go back to its original source in the text.

Without further ado: 19 things!

1. He hears his mother's song in the air/a song he needs to play, in the air/he can practically taste a song he needs to play/he hears a fallen singing or playing.

2. He gets meals in a school cafeteria/at feasts/strange beasts cooked upon the fires/hanging out with the ordinary dead, monsters, and slacking Fallen.

3. He mopes around at magical fiddle school. / he isn't going to win. He's at beautiful tourney castle. / He sweeps around gloomily at magical fiddle school. / He's emo in post-invasion Hell

4. He's in the mountains. / In the full bloom of summer, rustic beauty, by the lake. / It's dark and the moon is bright and there are fires in the halls. / It's dry and dusty and brambly and tangled.

5. His fiddle development is blocked. He can't capture the song in his work. / He isn't going to win. It's like the air's a wall of ice. / The song he needs eludes him. / He isn't getting anywhere on the work of Cneph.

6. He argues with friends. / He argues at dinner. / He and others work on a sculpture out of song. / He hangs out with monsters and slacking Fallen.

7. He does little duels of magic and fiddlery. / He duels in the tourney. / He trades riddles, miracles, and bone for instruction. / He stares down Hell animals.

8. He takes classes. / He listens to the tales of the participants in the tourney. / He argues with peers about the meanings of historical fiddle-players. / He takes walks in mostly-repaired places.

9. He ignores avarice spirits. / He ignores his conscience. / Wolves howl in the distance. / He ignores the setting of Hell.

10. He walks high roads. / He looks down from the balconies. / Same / Also taking walks.

11. A Fallen Angel, his mom, is captured in a web of light. / A banner, above the feasting table. OR Knowing his Mom is going to die. / The maesters dream ancient secrets. / An Excrucian, caught in a web?

12. He's embarrassed in front of a friend. / He's generally socially awkward. / Same / Same

13. Mom reaches for what she had once, in Heaven. Music bleeds into the arch of Heaven. / A vision, shown by the rule. / Tellador speaks of the suffering, in Hell / A Fallen plays of the Fall

14. His boundaries shift. / He sees something. / Same / Same

15. He frees his Mom. / He owes the Rule. / He almost owes a maester / He seizes song from the world

From book 2

16. Paegantry / extreme fiddle school aesthetic / extreme fiddle school aesthetic, dark palette / distinct Hell decoration style

17. Vines upon the castle walls. / ... same as 16, probably.

From book 3

18. The students dress in poofy outfits / probably some attention to costume elsewhere.

19. Stained mouths / staring into the void in general.

OK! Let’s turn these into quest flavor/major goals!

ASIDE: Later, I would realize that some of these items would also turn into “general description” of what’s going on in the quest, and would take more and more advantage of that over time. This was particularly useful when I was in exceptional pain or really tired or whatever, because it meant I could be even less discriminating about what I recorded because I had a place to put things that didn’t make sense as goals/flavor and that when I went to write up an explanation of what happens in the quest, I had content all ready to go. The only downside is that it made quest descriptions longer, which will probably add a few cents to Nobilis’ final printing cost unless I wind up editing them down.

1. [[RECEPTIVE/DECISIVE]] inspiration haunts you

8. [[RECEPTIVE/DECISIVE]] you listen to exposition

4. [[SETTING/DECISIVE]] the air is heady and the world is wild

10. [[SETTING/DECISIVE]] you take in the view

6. [[SETTING/DECISIVE]] you argue a weird hypothetical

7. [[STRUGGLE/DECISIVE]] someone challenges you to prove yourself

9. [[STRUGGLE/DECISIVE]] you don't want to deal with this

2. [[SETTING/PASTORAL]] you eat in a big group setting

3. [[SETTING/FLAME]] you wrestle with uncertainty and despair

19. [[SETTING/FLAME]] you stare into the void.

12. [[SETTING/FLAME]] a friend shows up at an awkward moment.

5. [[FALLING STAR/FLAME]] you struggle futilely to progress

11. Major Goal: Someone is suspended above the world.

13. Major Goal: A transcendent vision shifts your perspective.

15. Major Goal: You break a personal rule.

16. [[SETTING/FALLING STAR]] immersing in the baroque, excessive regional aesthetic

3 MG, 13 flavor after first pass. So we can ditch 6 flavor, or, more plausibly, convert one to a major goal and ditch 3-4.

UPDATING …

MAJOR GOALS

Someone is suspended above the world.

A transcendent vision shifts your perspective.

You break a personal rule.

QUEST FLAVOR

1. [[RECEPTIVE/DECISIVE]] inspiration haunts you

8. [[RECEPTIVE/DECISIVE]] you listen to exposition

4. [[SETTING/DECISIVE]] the air is heady and the world is wild

10. [[SETTING/DECISIVE]] you take in the view

- we can ditch one of these

6. [[SETTING/DECISIVE]] you argue a weird hypothetical

7. [[STRUGGLE/DECISIVE]] someone challenges you to prove yourself

9. [[STRUGGLE/DECISIVE]] you don't want to deal with this

2. [[SETTING/PASTORAL]] you eat in a big group setting

3. [[SETTING/FLAME]] you wrestle with uncertainty and despair

19. [[SETTING/FLAME]] you stare into the void.

- we can ditch one of these

12. [[SETTING/FLAME]] a friend shows up at an awkward moment.

5. [[FALLING STAR/FLAME]] you struggle futilely to progress

16. [[SETTING/FALLING STAR]] immersing in the baroque, excessive regional aesthetic

- organizing is easiest if we ditch one of these

Next pass, I'll delete those three and try to find three more

UPDATING …

GENERAL QUEST DESCRIPTION

“baroque aesthetic” thing moves to here

MAJOR GOALS

Someone is suspended above the world.

A transcendent vision shifts your perspective.

You break a personal rule.

You eat in a big group setting.

QUEST FLAVOR

1. [[RECEPTIVE/DECISIVE]] inspiration haunts you

8. [[RECEPTIVE/DECISIVE]] exposition floods you

4. [[SETTING/DECISIVE]] the air is heady and the world is wild

6. [[SETTING/DECISIVE]] you argue a weird hypothetical

7. [[STRUGGLE/DECISIVE]] someone challenges you

19. [[SETTING/FLAME]] you stare literally or metaphorically into the void

12. [[SETTING/FLAME]] A friend shows up at an awkward moment.

5. [[FALLING STAR/FLAME]] you struggle futilely to progress

... 40 XP. I kind of wanted it to be 35 but this is fine.

What would the quest be called? Working title, um,

... inspiration haunts you / exposition floods you / someone challenges you / the air is heady and the world is wild / you argue a weird hypothetical / you stare into the literal or metaphorical void / a friend shows up at an awkward moment. / you struggle futilely to progress ...

Working title, The Struggle, knowing that it's going to change anyway.

INVERSIONS

The Struggle (Inverted), Pass 1

[[DECISIVE/RECEPTIVE]] inspiration haunts you

[[DECISIVE/RECEPTIVE]] exposition floods you

MG a hostile agency wounds or traumatizes you

[[FALLING STAR/RECEPTIVE]] you immerse in the natural world

[[FALLING STAR/RECEPTIVE]] weird exposition floods you

[[FALLING STAR/PASTORAL]] you contemplate infinity and the void

[[FALLING STAR/PASTORAL]] spending time with a friend

[[SETTING/PASTORAL]] talking about your difficulty in making progress

... some of these suggest that I had the colors wrong in the original, tbh. Like I wonder if "inspiration haunts you" should have been [[RECEPTIVE/PASTORAL]] originally, if "you argue a weird hypothetical" ought to have been [[SETTING/PASTORAL]], so that it can turn into a series of arguments here; if "a friend shows up at an awkward moment" should have been [[SETTING/PASTORAL]] so they can keep showing up at awkward moments. I'll have to think about all three of those, because they might also be wrong. As things stand we can get rid of at least two which helps, getting rid of three is better.

… but I'm slowing down for the day so

ASIDE I’m generally being a lot stricter about flipping the icons when simplifying the quests than I’ve been in the past—certainly stricter than I was in CMWGE, maybe than I was in Glitch?

You don’t have to keep to it that way. You don’t have to look at your [[DECISIVE/PASTORAL]] flavor item and say “oh, the simplified quest has to have this as RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR, or a Major Goal, or not at all.

I’m just keeping to it strictly because …

It seems to be working?

And the more it works for, the less value there seems to be in deviating from it once. Like, if it’s a constant struggle, then sure, I’ll ignore it, but if it’s working 99% of the time, then the remaining 1% is more of an excuse to figure out what I’m missing, you know?

and in theory that thing I’m missing could be “the strict icon flipping doesn’t work here.”

but so far it hasn’t been.

(an hour after I tried to stop for the day)

I think I'll just do the first of those changes.

THE STRUGGLE (WORKING TITLE)

QUEST DESCRIPTION

baroque aesthetic moves to here

MAJOR GOALS

Someone is suspended above the world.

A transcendent vision shifts your perspective.

You break a personal rule.

You eat in a big group setting.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[RECEPTIVE/PASTORAL]] inspiration haunts you

[[RECEPTIVE/DECISIVE]] exposition floods you

[[STRUGGLE/DECISIVE]] someone challenges you

[[SETTING/DECISIVE]] the air is heady and the world is wild

[[SETTING/DECISIVE]] you argue a weird hypothetical

[[SETTING/FLAME]] you stare into the literal or metaphorical void

[[SETTING/FLAME]] a friend shows up at an awkward moment

[[FALLING STAR/FLAME]] you struggle futilely to progress

SIMPLIFIED

MAJOR GOALS

A transcendent vision shifts your perspective;

You talk about your difficulty in making progress;

A hostile agency wounds or traumatizes you.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[DECISIVE/SETTING]] inspiration haunts you

[[FALLING STAR/RECEPTIVE]] exposition floods you

[[FALLING STAR/RECEPTIVE]] you immerse yourself in the natural world

[[FALLING STAR/FLAME]] you're crowded and overwhelmed

[[FALLING STAR/PASTORAL]] you contemplate infinity and the void

DECEMBER 11, 2022

Aspect 2

You’re presented with the option of another way of life or another way of thinking.

Result: you have an insight: you see or hear something that you wouldn’t have been able to before.

ASIDE: Further name experimentation begins! I think this is the one that stuck.

Book 1, quest 2: Casimir travels to what will turn out to be Telleamor's mountain, getting impromptu lectures on the way on one particular Fallen's possibly biased theory on what it means that Cneph is "in a fiddle" and why she has to take it somewhere. Other students are also chasing, but none of them casually join his mom at her campfire—they're all a ways behind, except when they set traps in canyons using fiddle magic or ambush her and arguably Casimir during a lightning-set fire. Ultimately a bad storm separates them and Casimir is forced to take shelter in the cave-like home of a concerning Game Magister and his weird, concerningly optimistic and empathetic kid, who Casimir immediately despises and has a crush on. He tries to convince them that Heaven isn't listening to prayers and the Game hates and kills people and acorn soup is the worst thing ever but also Telleamor likes his fiddle playing so what is he going to do? It's not until he's dragged on one of the prayer-lifting sessions and sees the nastier prayers sizzling off of Telleamor's skin and possibly sees the grave of the friend of Telleamor's Pops got killed off when Telleamor was young before Telleamor knew better that he realizes (and only because Mom's music, in the distance, pierces the solitude of his conceptions) that Telleamor isn't just naive, and confesses that it'd be nice if someone helped his mother get away.

Book 2, quest 2: Casimir studies the nature of the world under the Lord of Rule, who is, among other things, Graveyards and Nyctophobia. He is taught of the "perfidy" of the Game and the endless chill of the void beyond the world, and hints of that void touch his swordsmanship and fiddlecraft. He dreams of sitting at fires with Warmains in the endless dark and wolves and fairies bickering over his bones. He isn't coping with it well, but it's helping him. He talks to Telleamor about it even though their gormless cheer irritates him almost as much as it helps. He doesn't refuse acorn soup. He hangs out with other fiddlers and warriors at various meals and events. A competitor tries to sabotage him somewhere. He watches a few of Telleamor's fights. He tries to get far enough not to need more help from the Rule. At some point he understands, in the echo of the void-song off the mountain, that at least in the past, the winners were sacrificed to prolong the summer. He can practically see it, practically taste it: how they were stuffed into the cracks of the world, thrown into the apertures of void to be consumed there, to shore up the cracks created by the way of things and keep the grotesque reel of revelry turning ever on.

Book 3, quest 2: Casimir and Telleamor descend. Casimir listens to Telleamor's theories on people and the world, mostly with a kind of exhaustion at dealing with someone who has optimism and energy still. The road down the Ash is scary, with rivers of venom, paths of corrupted wood, sulfurous clouds, and the worlds they pass through are bitter, withered; they know prayer only when Telleamor passes, so they must carefully gather all of them up when they pass. Telleamor shoves him forward to fix some world's crops that haven't grown for seven years with a fiddle song and he grumpily takes that world's crown in exchange. (Some of the stuff fiddle music does in these stories is outside the realm of Aspect but whatever, it's either an Aspect-bound art, Ability-based magic, he's cheating with Persona/Treasure on the side, or he's buying Bonds/Geasa with some of the Aspect quests.) There are frightening omens in the sky on another world, but they just wait it out. Acidic rain in a miserable corner of the Ash. But also laughing and goofing off on the road, neat sights, encounters with weird domestic animals, crossing a river in the early prototype prayer-flight-craft, playing at someone's wedding, opening up somewhat about some of the burdens of his heart. Probably gets to take ownership of his own identity for the first time after explaining some of his reasons for self-hate as a half-Fallen Power of Avarice and getting scoffed at for it and realizing that Telleamor is right, he can be whatever, it's not like anyone else even knows him down here. That's probably in the same place as the wedding, so the wedding festivities can still be going on outside when he goes to sleep thinking on that.

Book 4, quest 2: Casimir and Telleamor ascend; and I think ... Casimir's Mom stows away on the flying temple, even though she was being distant, so she can talk more about the Fall. Lots of pretty clouds to ascend through, even if they are sulfurous. Lots of cool sunrises and sunsets through the branches of the tree with auroras around the sun. Taming elephant-sized dragonflies. Rising through the ring around a world, or a shattered planet. Giving directions to a mysterious centaur-like passerby heavy enough to shake their flying mountain temple when it lands upon their craft. Having that temple broken and a third of it chopped off by a cut off an Excrucian sword in a nearby battle not even aimed at them. Eventually, getting high enough that the fumes of Hell are no longer present and the beauty of things is ever-richer as they rise and the world is as a river flowing until they reach the gates, where they should be turned away; where they would be turned away, if he didn't know the Angels well enough from his mother's stories to claim justice as the child and Power of Avarice, that once was bright, and has been cast down, polluted, and denied. So they're let in, and Telleamor's all like "neat, are they going to be nice to you?" and Casimir's "no, they're just kicking it up the chain far enough to find someone who can snuff me, distract that guy and let's book it." More or less.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER:

(An interim state, because I had to pause midway through: this is basically “the first book, plus I did some stuff on the first two list items.)

3. Casimir joins his Mom at a campfire.

4. Other students track his Mom.

5. Other students set traps in canyons using fiddle magic.

6. Other students ambush her and Casimir in a lightning-set fire.

7. A bad storm separates Casimir and Mom.

8. Casimir takes shelter in the cave-like home of Pops and Telleamor.

9. Casimir despises and has a crush on Telleamor.

10. Casimir sulkily eats acorn soup while protesting.

11. Casimir protests Telleamor's loyalty to the Game.

12. Casimir is outraged by the prayers thing.

13. Casimir is dragged along on a prayer-lifting session.

14. Casimir walks up the mountain with Telleamor.

15. Prayers sizzle off of Telleamor's skin.

16. The grave of Telleamor's friend.

17. Mom's music in the distance pierces the solitude of Casimir's conceptions.

18. Casimir asks for help.

here's another interim state! Something like "4-1" means "this is a piece from quest 4 that I haven't matched up to anything from earlier quests yet." Something like "text / ? / ? / text" means I don't know what the correspondence in quest 2-3 is, but the first and last texts are what it is in quests 1 and 4.

I’m kind of scattering the 4-1, 2-3 whatever among the others in places where I think they “go.”

4-1. They ascend.

3. Casimir joins his Mom at a campfire. / Casimir sits with a Warmain in the endless dark, wolves and fairies bickering over his bones. / waiting out a storm/omens in the sky by a hidden fire in a corner of the ash.

2-1. Hints of the void touch his swordmanship and fiddlecraft.

2-2. He isn't coping with that well, but it's helping him.

4. Other students track his Mom. / A competitor tries to sabotage him. 5. Other students set traps in canyons using fiddle magic.

3-1. The road down the Ash is scary.

3-2. Rivers of venom

3-3. Paths of corrupted wood.

6. Other students ambush her and Casimir in a lightning-set fire.

4-2. ? / ? / Sulforous clouds / Pretty clouds to ascend through. Or is this 6?

3-4. The worlds they pass through are bitter, withered.

4-3. Cool sunrises, sunsets, auroras around the sun.

7. A bad storm separates Casimir and Mom. / ? / Acidic rain in a miserable corner of the Ash.

3-5. Telleamor makes him fix crops with a fiddle song.

3-6. He claims a crown.

8. Casimir takes shelter in the cave-like home of Pops and Telleamor.

2-3. ? / He hangs out with other fiddlers and warriors. / Laughing and goofing off on the road.

3-7. Neat sights.

3-8. ? / ? / Encounters with weird domestic animals. / Taming elephant sized dragonflies.

3-9. ? / ? / Crossing a river in a prototype prayer-flight craft. / Rising through a ring around a world or a shattered planet. OR the world is as a river, when they get high enough

4-4. Giving directions to a mysterious, heavy centaur-like passersby.

3-10 Playing at someone's wedding.

2-4. ? / Casimir talks to Telleamor about the void. / Casimir opens up about his heart, takes ownership of his identity.

9. Casimir despises and has a crush on Telleamor.

10. Casimir sulkily eats acorn soup while protesting. / Casimir doesn't refuse acorn soup.

11. Casimir protests Telleamor's loyalty to the Game.

12. Casimir is outraged by the prayers thing. / ? / ? / Casimir claims justice from the Angels.

13. Casimir is dragged along on a prayer-lifting session.

14. Casimir walks up the mountain with Telleamor. / ? / Telleamor gathers prayers on other worlds.

15. Prayers sizzle off of Telleamor's skin.

16. The grave of Telleamor's friend.

2-5. He can practically see, taste, the sacrifices to summer.

4-5. A passing sword cuts off a third their vehicle.

4-6. Everything is amazingly beautiful.

4-7 The Angels turn them away.

17. Mom's music in the distance pierces the solitude of Casimir's conceptions. / ? / Wedding music.

18. Casimir asks for help. / ? / ? / Casimir claims justice from the angels (alternate)

4-8 They book it into Heaven.

This one was more of a struggle, possibly because it's late, possibly because it's a struggle; the previous one was more or less just written like I wrote it.

So …

Let’s pull meaning out bit by bit, one entry at a time!

1. Casimir gets lectured about what it means that Cneph's in a fiddle. / Casimir studies the nature of the world under the Lord of Rule. / Casimir listens to Telleamor's theories on people and the world, exhausted. / Casimir's Mom lectures on something, probably thoughts on what the world "should" be based on its origins.

- someone teaching about the world, generally

4-1. Traveling to the mountain / Dreams of traveling through the void / Descending the Ash / Ascending the Ash

- travel, generally

2. Casimir's Mom talks about why she stole a fiddle that might be that one to take to the Golden Age / Casimir learns of the perfidy of the game and the endless chill of the void beyond the world. / Telleamor talks about the why behind some of their actions, probably the gathering prayers on other worlds. / Casimir's Mom talks about the Fall.

- talking about reasons and history, generally

3. Casimir joins his Mom at a campfire. / Casimir sits with a Warmain in the endless dark, wolves and fairies bickering over his bones. / waiting out a storm by a hidden fire in a corner of the ash. / meeting the centaurine stranger

- strange meetings at a fire, generally

16. The grave of Telleamor's friend / Hints of the void touch Casimir's swordmanship and fiddlecraft. / The worlds they pass through are bitter, withered. / A shattered planet. + Casimir doesn't cope with these well, but they help with insight.

- hints of the void and the grave, generally

4. Other students track his Mom. / A competitor tries to sabotage him. / Omens in the sky / a sword slashes by

- being hunted, generally

5. Other students set traps in canyons using fiddle magic. / ? / paths of corrupted wood / ?

- traveling a hazardous canyon/valley/cut in the earth, also it's beautiful/evocative, generally

3-1. The road down the Ash is scary.

- ... not sure if "the situation is scary" is worth general note or trying to find matches for.

3-2. Rivers of venom

- rivers show up in general, but I don’t think they’re this list item.

6. Other students ambush her and Casimir in a lightning-set fire. /

- I think ambush/disaster is a thing, so I'm keeping this separate from 4-2. Blaze/fire thematics are another:

4-2. Lightning-set fire and ambush / Blaze of light / Sulfurous clouds / Cool sunrises, sunsets, auroras around the sun.

- the aforementioned blaze/fire thematics

4-3. ? / ? / Neat sights / They ascend through pretty clouds.

- there’s pretty scenery, generally. But the scenery is probably compromised, since the clouds are still sulfurous, and this isn't likely its own option but part of another?

3-4. Nasty prayers sizzle on Telleamor's skin / Casimir is taught of the "perfidy" of the Game / The worlds they pass through are bitter, withered. / Casimir's Mom talks about the Fall.

- something about bitterness and sorrow?

7. A bad storm separates Casimir and Mom. / A night storm? / Acidic rain in a miserable corner of the Ash. / A storm as they rise?

- (not developed at this time)

3-5. Telleamor makes Casimir fix crops with a fiddle song.

- I think this is just demonstrating having learned from list item 1, which probably does appear in all four.

3-6. He claims a crown. - and claiming a prize therefrom 8. Casimir takes shelter in the cave-like home of Pops and Telleamor. / He hangs out with other fiddlers and warriors. / Laughing and goofing off on the road. / ?

- just being with people

3-8. ? / ? / Encounters with weird domestic animals. / Taming elephant sized dragonflies.

- (not developed at this time)

3-9. ? / ? / Crossing a river in a prototype prayer-flight craft. / Rising through a ring around a world or a shattered planet. OR the world is as a river, when they get high enough

- (not developed at this time)

4-4. Giving directions to a mysterious, heavy centaur-like passersby.

- giving directions might be a separate flavor item, but probably not.

3-10 Playing at someone's wedding.

- this is the ceremony form of proving you've learned what list item 1 had to teach.

2-4. ? / Casimir talks to Telleamor about the void. / Casimir opens up about his heart, takes ownership of his identity.

- this is probably enough to form an item from

9. Casimir despises and has a crush on Telleamor.

- probably not its own item, though given that Casimir also despises the Rule and also despises and loves his Mom, it may be part of the general text. Though I think the "despite" is three different flavors of affectation, like, for the Rule, it's just pride, while for Mom and Telleamor it's different kinds of distancing.

10. Casimir sulkily eats acorn soup while protesting. / Casimir doesn't refuse acorn soup.

- I need to despecify acorn soup but this probably recurs once that’s done.

11. Casimir protests Telleamor's loyalty to the Game.

- Telleamor is not the central character in book 1, so this prrrobably isn't its own entry

12. Casimir is outraged by the prayers thing/ is outraged by the sacrifice / ? / Casimir claims justice from the Angels.

- something general about anger at the injustices of the world

13. Casimir is dragged along on a prayer-lifting session.

- doesn't appear to recur, really, except in that Casimir follows Telleamor around a lot? And watches their duels, etc. I guess that might be worth an entry.

14. Casimir walks up the mountain with Telleamor. / ? / Telleamor gathers prayers on other worlds. /

- accompanying someone (another Power? a romantic interest?) about their work

2-5. He can practically see, taste, the sacrifices to summer.

- probably not its own entry, since we've already done outrage at this. Maybe make that outrage bit more visceral than whatever I'd otherwise write?

4-7 The Angels turn them away.

- the world is disappointing, but we've seen that elsewhere in this list.

17. Mom's music in the distance pierces the solitude of Casimir's conceptions. / ? / Wedding music. / Bells of Heaven

- (not developed at this time)

18. Casimir asks for help. / ? / ? / Casimir claims justice from the angels (alternate)

- (not developed at this time)

4-8 They book it into Heaven.

- bolting for cover is actually a recurring element.

OK, let's start condensing this down into a quest!

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

Travel happens, either as the frame or in dreams/bursts/flashbacks/side stories.

The scenery is likely pretty but compromised/dangerous in some fashion.

Tentatively, the alternate perspective is the "Arc companion," who you often affect to despise and also often love.

Sometimes there's someone else like that floating around to be a companion in later Arcs.

You wrestle with some past or present personal tragedy, often tied to a great force of the world.

MAJOR GOALS

You let yourself be disturbed or shaken by something—generally, death or the void—so that you can learn and grow from the experience;

You travel through a dangerous chasm, canyon, or valley;

You are ambushed, and injured;

A terrible storm crashes down upon you;

You bear witness to an overwhelming bitterness;

You claim a great prize;

You cross a great river;

Music breaks through the walls around your mind and brings you a great insight.

QUEST FLAVOR

1. [[RECEPTIVE/DECISIVE]] someone teaches what they know about the nature of the world.

12. [[RECEPTIVE/DECISIVE]] you're viscerally outraged by the injustice of the world.

3. [[SETTING/DECISIVE]] you share a campfire with someone strange.

10. [[SETTING/DECISIVE]] you eat a meal you don't mind but like to grumble about for some reason.

3-8. [[SETTING/DECISIVE]] bond with an animal not normally domesticated on your world

2. [[SETTING/PASTORAL]] your Arc companion talks about their backstory or motivations.

3-5. [[SETTING/PASTORAL]] demonstrate what you've learned from your Arc companion

8. [[SETTING/PASTORAL]] have fun with people

4-8. [[SETTING/STRUGGLE]] bolting for cover

13. [[SETTING]] watch over or tag along with someone you purport to despise

4. [[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] something is hunting you

4-2. [[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] a brilliant blaze of light or fire

2-4. [[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] you open up to someone about the personal tragedy tied to the quest

14. [[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] keeping another Power company, or working beside them, as they perform their duties

So we're starting with 8 major goals and 14 quest flavor, that's rare.

I like a lot of the major goals so I don't know if I can get it down below 45 XP. I probably shouldn't go all the way to 55 even if I did that for Glitch once, but 50 is not actually that bad given that

(a) it's not actually much longer than 45, since you can claim 5 major goals and not 4, and

(b) the new Glitch/Nobilis context that a 50 XP quest is exactly what you need for 3 xp.

… still, even a 50 XP quest is 5 major goals and 10 quest flavor, so some trimming will be needful.

We can kill 8 and 4-8, “have fun with people” and “bolting for cover,” as quest flavor;” not very useful. That's a start.

We can move the dangerous chasm, canyon, or valley to the general description. … but I don't want to? Or, rather, my instinct is not to?

I guess we don't need both 13 and 14, “watch over or tag along with someone you purport to despise” and “keeping another Power company, or working beside them, as they perform their duties,” though I'm not sure which to get rid of.

I guess we can move “You let yourself be disturbed or shaken by something—generally, death or the void—so that you can learn and grow from the experience;” down to the quest flavor section, although that makes things worse in one sense.

… same for “You bear witness to an overwhelming bitterness,” which … we can combine with “you're viscerally outraged by the injustice of the world.” Somehow.

We probably don’t actually need “You cross a great river,” do we?

We can ditch “something is hunting you,” I guess, as … interesting, but not important.

We need to work a lot more on 10, “you eat a meal you don't mind but like to grumble about for some reason.” but probably shouldn’t remove it.

Same for 3-5, “demonstrate what you've learned from your Arc companion.”

… it’s harder to delete the rest, let's pause and integrate the changes above first.

UPDATING …

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

Travel happens, either as the frame or in dreams/bursts/flashbacks/side stories.

The scenery is likely pretty but compromised/dangerous in some fashion.

Tentatively, the alternate perspective is the "Arc companion," who you often affect to despise and also often love.

Sometimes there's someone else like that floating around to be a companion in later Arcs.

You wrestle with some past or present personal tragedy, often tied to a great force of the world.

MAJOR GOALS

You travel through a dangerous chasm, canyon, or valley;

You are ambushed, and injured;

A terrible storm crashes down upon you;

You claim a great prize;

An overwhelming, evocative scene or experience gives you a personal revelation.

QUEST FLAVOR

16. [[SETTING/RECEPTIVE]] you let an experience or event disturb or unbalance you

1. [[RECEPTIVE/DECISIVE]] someone teaches what they know about the nature of the world.

12. [[RECEPTIVE/DECISIVE]] you're viscerally outraged by the injustice of the world. / You bear witness to an overwhelming bitterness;

3. [[SETTING/DECISIVE]] you share a campfire with someone strange.

10. [[SETTING/DECISIVE]] you eat a meal you don't mind but like to grumble about for some reason - work on this pending

3-8. [[SETTING/DECISIVE]] bond with an animal not normally domesticated on your world

2. [[SETTING/PASTORAL]] your Arc companion talks about their backstory or motivations.

3-5. [[SETTING/PASTORAL]] demonstrate what you've learned from your Arc companion - work on this pending

4-2. [[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] a brilliant blaze of light or fire

2-4. [[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] you open up to someone about the personal tragedy tied to the quest

CHOICE OF WHICH OF THESE TO DELETE PENDING:

13. [[SETTING]] watch over or tag along with someone you purport to despise

14. [[PASTORAL/DECISIVE]] keeping another Power company, or working beside them, as they perform their duties

Didn’t completely integrate the changes before posting this because cat feeding time.

UPDATING AGAIN POST CAT-FEEDING …

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

Travel happens, either as the frame or in dreams/bursts/flashbacks/side stories.

The scenery is likely pretty but compromised/dangerous in some fashion.

Tentatively, the alternate perspective is the "Arc companion," who you often affect to despise and also often love.

Sometimes there's someone else like that floating around to be a companion in later Arcs.

You wrestle with some past or present personal tragedy, often tied to a great force of the world.

MAJOR GOALS

You travel through a dangerous chasm, canyon, or valley;

You are ambushed, and injured; A terrible storm crashes down upon you;

You claim a great prize;

An overwhelming, evocative scene or experience gives you a personal revelation.

QUEST FLAVOR

16. [[SETTING/RECEPTIVE]] you let an experience or event disturb or unbalance you (ASIDE: later, I’ll change this to [[SETTING/POISONED]])

1. [[RECEPTIVE/DECISIVE]] someone teaches what they know about the nature of the world.

12. [[RECEPTIVE/DECISIVE]] you're viscerally outraged by the injustice of the world.

3. [[SETTING/DECISIVE]] you share a campfire with someone strange.

10. [[SETTING/DECISIVE]] you have unnecessarily complicated emotions about a meal

3-8. [[SETTING/DECISIVE]] bond with an animal not normally domesticated on your world

3-5. [[SETTING/DECISIVE]] prove yourself and the merit of what you have been learning

2. [[PASTORAL/DECISIVE*]] opening up about your tragedy and backstory, or, listening as your Arc companion does the same (ASIDE: later, I’ll change this to [[PASTORAL/FALLING STAR]])

4-2. [[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] a brilliant blaze of light or fire

14. [[FLAME/PASTORAL*]] watching another Power at work (ASIDE: later, I’ll switch the order on these to PASTORAL/FLAME for abstruse aesthetic reasons.)

Let’s invert this to build a simplified quest!

INVERSIONS

[[FALLING STAR/DECISIVE]] you think on how the world is getting to you (ASIDE: … then I decided to make this FALLING STAR/STRUGGLE and change the quest flavor item in the original quest to SETTING POISONED)

[[DECISIVE/RECEPTIVE]] someone teaches what they know about the nature of the world

[[DECISIVE/RECEPTIVE]] you're viscerally outraged by the injustice of the world

[[FALLING STAR/RECEPTIVE]] you share a campfire with something strange

[[FALLING STAR/RECEPTIVE]] you have unnecessarily complicated and extreme emotions over a meal

[[FALLING STAR/RECEPTIVE]] you bond deeply to an animal not normally domesticated on your world

[[FALLING STAR/RECEPTIVE]] a montage of your efforts to prove yourself

[[FLAME/RECEPTIVE]] failing to open up about your tragedy and backstory, or, listening as your Arc companion manages

Major Goal: a brilliant blaze of light or fire gives you a personal revelation

[[PASTORAL/FLAME]] watching another Power at work

hm hm hm

That’s 9 quest flavor. We can get down to 7 pretty easy, I guess: combine “you think on how the world is getting to you” with “you’re viscerally outraged by the injustice of the world.” Fold “you have unnecessarily complicated and extreme emotions over a meal” into the major goal where an overwhelming scene gives you a revelation. Maybe six if we work at it, combining all the FALLING STAR/RECEPTIVE entries?

We can drop at least the “You claim a great prize” major goal, and either the one about the chasm or the one about the storm.

ASIDE: this changed a little bit while actually working on it, because if I’d done that I would have wound up with two different “gives you a revelation” major goals. Instead, I wound up at:

INVERSION

MAJOR GOALS

You share a campfire with something strange;

You are ambushed, and injured;

A brilliant blaze of light or fire gives you a personal revelation.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[DECISIVE/SETTING]] someone teaches what they know about the nature of the world

[[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]] one thing and another, the world is getting to you

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] your heart overflows; and why right now?

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] you try, and fail, to prove yourself

[[SETTING/FLAME]] you try to open up about yourself, and fail

ASIDE: I think I wound up folding watching another Power at work into someone teaching you about the nature of the world.

Anyway, I then decided that “one thing and another, the world is getting to you” wasn’t a good quest flavor … I don’t remember my reasoning, but I think it was just that it gave too little guidance and the guidance it gave pointed in the wrong direction. So I wound up splitting it in two and making this a 30 XP quest.

UPDATING ...

INVERSION

MAJOR GOALS

You share a campfire with something strange;

You are ambushed, and injured;

A brilliant blaze of light or fire gives you a personal revelation.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[DECISIVE/SETTING]] someone teaches what they know about the nature of the world

[[DECISIVE/RECEPTIVE]] you're viscerally outraged by the injustice of the world.

[[FALLING STAR/RECEPTIVE]] your heart overflows; and why right now?

[[FALLING STAR/RECEPTIVE]] you try, and fail, to prove yourself

[[FALLING STAR/STRUGGLE]] you're not sure you can cope with what you're experiencing

[[FLAME/SETTING]] you try to open up about yourself, and fail

OK, that's quest 2! It may need a bit of polish still, but I’m a compulsory editor so it’ll get it automatically as I assemble the book.

Working title, not to be kept, is Emotional Travels

Aspect 3

You’re dealing with stressful, bizarre, and confusing social situations[FN].

Result: you finish up your latest obligation, optionally come home and take your literal or metaphorical shoes off, and learn something shattering.

... stuff like that!

Book 1, quest 3: Casimir rejoins the search party as it sets up a base camp in an old temple by Pops' cave from which to scour the area. The other side of the temple is, unfortunately, where Telleamor and the Fallen Angel crash for the first night. The only solution is to convince the search party that the back of the temple is haunted by a pair of dead lovers that nobody can look at without dying. He fumbles the story a bit by explaining that they have to lay them to rest or none of them will survive to return home, so instead of just LEAVING the base camp is firmly established. Also the dead lovers play a lot of fiddle. Also that Telleamor who showed up to borrow supplies is unrelated, they're the kid of the Games Magister who lives in a cave nearby and is ABOUT TO HAVE A FIDDLE PERFORMANCE YOU CAN'T MISS GO GO GO DON'T LOOK LEFT no teacher I don't need remedial fiddle practice in the oubliette to get the forbidden notes of love and Cneph-fiddling out of my song oh god Telleamor is looking at me MUST GET TO THE CAVE SO POPS KNOWS ABOUT THE FIDDLE PERFORMANCE sort of thing. Lots and lots of running around and identity juggling and getting people to play fiddle for other people while behind curtains or in oubliettes while making sure that none of them are the same people who already did so, and anyway it all FINALLY pays off and the dead lovers are laid to rest and FINALLY LEFT THANK YOU TELLEAMOR, MOM, and the search party is off in the wrong direction, and he goes back to school, only to find out that the Fallen Angel was caught and immured after all. (Complex 2)

Book 2, quest 3: Casimir falls back on old habits and drives the guards away from Mom's cell using a ghost story of a roaming hungry spirit, enhanced now with Nyctophobia fiddle technique, including an awkward experience roaring and growling around the corner, but when someone important gets hurt and that part of the castle is locked down and it's decided that only the winner of the fight competition can deal with the monster, he has to make sure that either he or (when his points are too low) Telleamor, who doesn't even have bullets, wins, so he can get Mom out. He explains away his attempted visit to the forbidden area as an assignation and now has to also keep Telleamor from finding out that they're apparently sneaking off together without Telleamor's knowledge because Telleamor would totally make fun of him. Also the Rules Magister is very upset at his collaboration with the Game, which is unfair, because he doesn't even like Pops, winding up with having to get Telleamor to stand in for him at fiddle work so he can disguise himself as Telleamor using peri powers to win a fight that Telleamor couldn't. He doesn't know that almost everyone there knows some of what's going on but is rooting for their relationship on the one hand and laughing at his running around desperately on the other and thus not interfering. (This is helpful when he is forced to resort to interfering with a duel while disguised as the ghost by wearing a sheet, which wouldn't have flown if people weren't tolerating him.) However, it all works out, Telleamor wins, Telleamor gets Mom out probably, everything's good, he can relax now, except it becomes clear without Mom either he gets sacrificed or Telleamor gets sacrificed or the whole ritual goes spla. The Rules Magister's not going to let Casimir sacrifice...

Book 3, quest 3: To clear the way for Telleamor to help out the dead, Casimir fakes up an imaginary high-ranking Fallen who the two of them are working for. He accidentally chooses the name of a legendary Fallen who vanished long ago under mysterious circumstances his mother mentioned once when he was a kid, that a bunch of locals are interested in dueling, dating, visiting, inviting to visit, etcetera, and his attempts to pawn them off with "oh, he'll see you when hell freezes over" get met with "great, Tuesday it is" and his attempts to change proposed sponsors to something more tenable just land on another legendary figure and soon he has to fake diabolical phenomena with fiddle music, explain away Telleamor who is barely cooperating with the deception as the "great architect" he has to manage, deal with his Mom who feels crowded and stressed by his coming down like she gave him a good world can't he just stay there, and ultimately wind up impersonating both fake lost legends and later (when she wants to step out for a moment) his mom at the same time at a party which also proves his only chance to metaphorically pin down a couple of personages and find out what HAPPENED to their part of the fiddle theme they ought to be playing because they were all just "oh, I'm too busy suffering eternal agony to talk to a peri" or "I'm too hungry for peri flesh to talk to a peri" or "really, my eternal langour forbids me to break my silence for such as you, don't you think it's a beautiful silence?" He barely makes it through, SOMEHOW, which is when the walls of Hell start to crack.

Book 4, quest 3: Casimir and Telleamor disguise themselves as Angels. Casimir sneaks into the main fiddle institute of Heaven to try to dig up what they have on warding music, although he's furious because they practice a style he disfavors. Unfortunately, the hideout they find to hang out in, after they've started fixing it up a bit, turns out to be the gathering place for masked revolutionaries. (Worse, Casimir has already accidentally agreed to host a fiddle school social there.) What with one thing and another, including Telleamor's cogent point that that's what they're there for, they become leaders of the budding revolution. Casimir manages to convince most of the fiddle institute Angels at the social that he's actually organizing a performance of a scandalous music-heavy play about the Fall rather than a revolution and winds up deeply frustrated because even the revolutionaries are interested. His attempts to steal the warding music from a reclusive elder's office fail, the elder blackmails him into giving the elder a good place in the play, and it snowballs until he just runs with it and uses it (the play) as an excuse to ask for access to the old music archives (and as justification for everything he wants to do in general). The performance somehow completes successfully, although he's not sure why that matters to anyone. He finds the warding music he was looking for in the vaults. Heaven is a little stirred up. He emerges from the vaults to find the institute on lockdown.

PULLING BITS OF MEANING OUT OF THIS …

1. Part of the general set up is infiltration: there's a group of people who don't know that you're not on their side. A base camp, a guard group, sociable Fallen, arguably the academy Angels. It's actually more nuanced, because you're not actually not on their side, you're just pulling something.

2. There's an area you want to keep people away from.

3. Trying to scare people off with a story of dead lovers / with a ghost story of a roaming hungry spirit enhanced with Nyctophobia fiddle technique / with an imaginary Fallen sponsor / with a scandalous play

4. Accidentally overcomplicating that story with the idea that the dead lovers have to be laid to rest / things get more complex when someone gets hurt and the area gets locked down (an odd one out, though, since usually "can't get people away is the thing" / accidentally overcomplicating the story with a second sponsor but also more importantly by arranging meetings with the sponsor / accidentally overcomplicating the play by getting the revolutionaries interested in it

5. forbidden notes of love and Cneph-fiddling get into the song, which is embarrassing / Nyctophobia gets into the song, which is embarrassing /

5A. particularly strained (sitcom desperate) moments of faking being ghost lovers / hungry spirit / excuses for missing Fallen / explanations for things Casimir is doing as part of the play.

6. the story gets more complex, requiring more to handle: explaining away fiddling in the wrong location as the dead lovers / explaining away an attempted visit to the locked-down area as an assignation / unclear parallel in the third / unclear parallel in the fourth, unless it's giving more and more people a place in the play.

7. multiple identities: Telleamor is one of the ghosts, but also Telleamor; then Casimir disguises as Telleamor and vice versa; then Casimir as multiple Fallen; then fakes being multiple revolutionaries

8. frantically redirecting people's attention: GO TO THE FIDDLE PERFORMANCE, etc

9. the temple and the oubliette / the castle / "the great architect" / the Heavenly fiddle institute - something architectural

10. someone playing fiddle while pretending to be someone else / someone fighting while pretending to be someone else / someone dueling, dating, hosting a party, etc. while pretending to be someone else / someone being masked in a play while pretending to be someone else ... generally, in a mask/disguise/concealment, and not talking

11. running around desperately

12. people think that all the running around is a cover for a relationship, and root for that

13. disaster at the end, though that's just an Aspect thing so possibly not an action

14. people reading way too much into fiddle music / x2 / visiting Hell for reasons unrelated to Mom / actions not intended as revolutionary originally

3-1. ? / ? / Getting answers from someone while in disguise that they wouldn't give you otherwise / getting answers from someone because of the play that they wouldn't give otherwise

4-1 people putting dealing with the ghosts ahead of the ostensibly important search / people putting their investment in the ghost story ahead of the battles / people putting their interest in ... oh, this is 3-1 / people putting the play ahead of the revolution or the fiddle institute

DECEMBER 12, 2022

ASSEMBLING …

GENERAL SETUP

An element of covert action/infiltration: you're trying to get away with something under the noses of a group that you aren't fully in bed with but don't actually dislike.

Generally you'll want to keep people away from an area.

9. The architecture is likely richly realized.

MAJOR GOALS

4. You complicate an ongoing deception in a way that winds up making it harder to maintain; (not sure if this is quest flavor or MG)

5A. You get away with a particularly ridiculous or sad attempt at deception, likely because you're being indulged;

7. You have to switch between multiple disguises or false identities in the course of a scene, and it wasn't explicitly planned;

12. Someone thinks you're in a relationship that you're not, or that the core activities of the quest are romantic in a way that they're not

QUEST FLAVOR

3. make up or embroider a story to keep someone temporarily out of a place

4. complicate an ongoing deception in a way that winds up making it harder to maintain (not sure if this is quest flavor or MG)

6 ... just merges with 3 and 4, we'll reconcile them into ... a more general 1-2 entries

5. your art or words expose influences/emotions you'd rather conceal

7. you disguise yourself as someone else, or vice versa

8. you frantically redirect someone's attention

10. accomplishing a defined task or performance while pretending to be someone else

11. you are dramatically overcommitted

14. someone reads way too much into what you are doing here

3-1. someone uninterested in you is shockingly invested in your false identity, story, or artistic endeavor

... OK, refining ...

GENERAL SETUP

An element of covert action/infiltration: you're trying to get away with something under the noses of a group that you aren't fully in bed with but don't actually dislike. Generally you'll want to keep people away from an area.

The architecture is likely richly realized.

MAJOR GOALS

5A. You get away with a particularly ridiculous or sad attempt at deception, likely because you're being indulged;

7. You have to switch between multiple disguises or false identities in the course of a scene, and it wasn't explicitly planned;

12. Someone thinks you're in a relationship that you're not, or that the core activities of the quest are romantic in a way that they're not

QUEST FLAVOR

[[DECISIVE/FLAME]] you come up with a story, false identity, diversion, or artistic endeavor ... or, complicate an existing one

[[DECISIVE/PASTORAL]] your art or words expose influences/emotions you'd rather conceal

[[DECISIVE/PASTORAL]] you disguise yourself as someone else, or vice versa

[[DECISIVE/PASTORAL]] you accomplish a defined task or performance while pretending to be someone else

[[DECISIVE/POISONED]] someone is shockingly invested in your story, false identity, diversion, or art

[[STRUGGLE/FLAME]] you are WAY overcommitted

[[STRUGGLE/FLAME]] you frantically redirect someone's attention

[[STRUGGLE/FLAME]] someone reads way too much into what you are doing here

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] admire the local architecture

Hm, finishing this should be easy! Ditch one of the disguise entries and one of the STRUGGLE/FLAME entries and we have a 35-XPer?

ASIDE: OK, granted, it’s kind of cheating, and a thing I inherited from CMWGE, that I let 35-XP quests have just 3 major goals.

FINISHING …

GENERAL SETUP

The architecture is likely richly realized.

MAJOR GOALS

You get away with a particularly ridiculous or sad attempt at deception, likely because you're being indulged;

You have to switch between multiple disguises or false identities in the course of a scene, and it wasn't explicitly planned;

Someone thinks you're in a relationship that you're not, or that the core activities of the quest are romantic in a way that they're not

QUEST FLAVOR

[[STRUGGLE/FLAME]] you frantically redirect someone's attention

[[STRUGGLE/FLAME]] someone reads WAY too much into what you are doing here (ASIDE: this becomes [[FALLING STAR/FLAME]] after I think about the simplified quest.)

[[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] you get literally or metaphorically lost in the local architecture (ASIDE: this becomes [[SETTING/FLAME]] after I think about the simplified quest.)

[[DECISIVE/PASTORAL]] your art or words expose influences/emotions you'd rather conceal

[[DECISIVE/PASTORAL]] you attempt a defined task or performance while pretending to be someone else (ASIDE: this becomes [[STRUGGLE/PASTORAL]] after I think about the simplified quest.)

[[DECISIVE/POISONED]] someone is shockingly invested in your deception, false identity, diversion, or art

[[DECISIVE/FLAME]] you come up with a deception, false identity, diversion, or artistic endeavor ... or, complicate an existing one (ASIDE: this becomes [[DECISIVE/POISONED]] after I think about the simplified quest.)

ASIDE: I need to try to remember to say more about the icons that aren’t in direct game-mechanic use this time around.

Let’s invert these!

INVERSION

[[PASTORAL/POISONED]] someone sees past your deception

[[PASTORAL/FALLING STAR]] someone sees the truth of you

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] you explore the local architecture

[[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] you're overwhelmed by something in the world

[[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] you perfect a role or imitation

[[RECEPTIVE/STRUGGLE]] someone else tries to steer your deception, diversion, false identity, or art

[[DECISIVE/FLAME]] you come up with a deception, false identity, diversion, or artistic endeavor ... or, complicate an existing one.

... some of these are cool, some just flat don't work even with creative icon adjustment. Hrmmmmm.

There was an alternate way of flipping the icons that I used in GMD now and then.

What was it?

…

I didn’t write it down, and I wasn’t as strict about inversion in GMD so nothing’s reliable … but I can still probably pull it out by exegesis. Um.

Orange/Struggle <=> Gold/Flame

Green/Poisoned <=> Silver/Setting

Purple/Pastoral <=> Blue/Decisive

Red/Receptive <=> Black/Falling Star

Maybe?

…

No, I conclude it’s STRUGGLE <=> POISONED, DECISIVE <=> FLAME, SETTING <=> PASTORAL, RECEPTIVE <=> FALLING STAR

So then,

INVERSION ATTEMPT #2

[[POISONED/DECISIVE]] you carefully construct a diversion

[[POISONED/DECISIVE]] you think someone misunderstands you

[[FALLING STAR/DECISIVE]] you have thoughts on the local architecture

[[FLAME/SETTING]] you blurt something out

[[FLAME/SETTING]] you study a role

[[FLAME/STRUGGLE]] someone tries to take over your deception, false identity, or artistic endeavor

[[FLAME/DECISIVE]] you come up with a deception, false identity, or artistic endeavor ... or complicate an existing one.

... no, this isn’t better.

INVERSION ATTEMPT #3, GETTING SERIOUS WITH THIS

[[STRUGGLE/FLAME]] you frantically redirect someone's attention

=> …

So, when you’re a writer, and you’re trying to speed through the storyline, moments like this become less interesting. You can’t spend a whole scene on them. What we want is probably “You construct a diversion.” It’s … OK, the standard inversion is OK:

[[PASTORAL/POISONED]] you construct a diversion

[[STRUGGLE/FLAME]] someone reads WAY too much into what you are doing here

=> …

So, when you’re speeding through the storyline, this kind of moment stays very much the same. Like, at most what happens is, it becomes gentler teasing. Someone reading ... uncomfortable amounts of truth into what you're doing here. “Someone sees through you” “Someone reads an embarrassing amount into what you're doing.” That kind of thing. [[PASTORAL]] is good, ... [[SETTING]]?

[[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] you get literally or metaphorically lost in the local architecture

=> …

So, when you speed through the storyline, you do want more in the way of ... a montage/transition, here. Camera views spinning around the architecture. [[FALLING STAR]] stuff. And maybe some direct exploration, [[PASTORAL]], is fine, but it’s not a plot point (being lost or even proper exploration, which would be setting), just a backdrop for conversation/events.

ASIDE: the fact that silver/setting is exploration/discovery, and also slice of life scenes, is the kind of thing I’d want to remember to mention in the icon list, rather than just throwing out something basic like I did in Glitch.

[[DECISIVE/PASTORAL]] your art or words expose influences/emotions you'd rather conceal

=> …

This probably actually just gets dropped in the sped-up version, as it's fluff.

Moving it to a major goal first with expectation of deletion.

[[DECISIVE/PASTORAL]] you attempt a defined task or performance while pretending to be someone else

=> …

The straightforward inversion is fine: [[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] you study a role

Or [[STRUGGLE/FLAME]] you’re mistaken for someone else.

[[DECISIVE/POISONED]] someone is shockingly invested in your deception, false identity, diversion, or art

=> …

someone else wanting in would stay the same. This doesn't feel [[RECEPTIVE/STRUGGLE]] though, it feels [[FLAME/PASTORAL]] …

I can’t fix that by changing the original icons without making them, well, flame/pastoral, which isn’t what I want in the original quest … maybe turn this into a major goal?

[[DECISIVE/FLAME]] you come up with a deception, false identity, diversion, or artistic endeavor ... or, complicate an existing one

=> …

this honestly wants to stay the same, not become [[RECEPTIVE/PASTORAL]].

I guess the idea in the shift is that more of the story is people's reactions than the original deception, which ... makes sense, in the accelerated version your story/whatever is more of a premise. But still. Possibly keep the original [[DECISIVE/FLAME]] but switch its wording to "someone does something that makes your ongoing web of deceit, etc., more complex?"

INVERSION, TAKE 3.5

MAJOR GOALS

Someone thinks you're in a relationship that you're not, or that the core activities of the quest are romantic in a way that they're not;

Someone becomes shockingly invested in your deception, false identity, diversion, or art

QUEST FLAVOR

[[POISONED/PASTORAL]] you construct a diversion

[[SETTING/PASTORAL]] someone reads an embarrassing amount into what you're doing <= this one is probably going away

[[FALLING STAR/PASTORAL]] you immerse in the wonders of the local architecture

[[POISONED/FLAME]] you frantically come up with or change to a new identity or disguise

[[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] something comes up that complicates an ongoing deception, identity, diversion, or performance (ASIDE: in the final version, this changes to [[RECEPTIVE/STRUGGLE]].

Working title, Flailing.

On to quest 4!

Aspect 4

This is an epic struggle with something terrifying and supernatural.

Book 1, quest 4: so this squeezes in between "search goes off in the wrong direction" and "Casimir heads off to the ritual." Casimir and the search party are in the mountains, and become prey to something that hunts there, some old hungry god-beast ghost from a True God that died but couldn't do it right. It picks off members of the search party. It hunts them through rocky hills, scrublands, and spires of barren stone. Its yawning jaws are even in his dreams, in his thoughts when he closes his eyes, in his music when he plays to keep out the cold. The group argues at a river and splits up; blood is shed, and a fiddle broken, and someone in the other party uses a curse to send it after Casimir's. He falls into a kind of delirium as he sinks into the mythic as it hunts, its hunt becoming less and less physical and more an active devouring of his spirit that he challenges with song, and the rises and falls of the land are the intensification and quieting of the song he plays; until at last on a peak on a moonlit night with the land sprawling out beneath him he plays its bones into the earth and it and nearly himself to the other side of death, and, shockingly, he's won. In part because he's that good, in part because Avarice is bigger than its stomach, but in part because it already consented inadvertently to the metaphor of the song being their battle and so it's listening as he bridges from what should have been the conclusion of the hunt to a coda and its end. (I can sort of feel that transition, the song drifting down to silence as it eats him, then the quiet trill, then the chonky sawing of the bow as it picks up into the whirling dance of the actual ending of it. Anyway.)

Book 2, quest 4: No sacrifice happens, so the Serpent of Summer goes Wicked Mode. It's unclear to Casimir whether that's wrong or if it's supposed to happen, to be honest, but it puts the castle (apparently there's a castle, although my brain had previously told me it was a village) where this is taking place under siege from ... I'm seeing tree-root type things. Vampire pumpkins. Oppressive autumn heat alternating with frost. Mostly hungry tree roots though and brambles and such. And the sky broken to let in the coming winter, void, and death. The dead, perhaps. Some siege stuff, making food supplies last. Some keeping control of someone who loses it and tries to let the dead in. Some playing music on the balcony. Ghost stories and fear. The Imperator of Rule gets in a fight with Pops, who blames the Imperator of Rule for letting this happen the first time, while the Rule Magister apparently thinks Pops ought to have tossed himself into the void back then because what other good is prayer anyway? Blood and fever. Casimir finally sneaks out and journeys through the deep mythic to put the Serpent down, though the way it actually ends is stabbing it, getting beaten up, looking at the sad creature, and playing for it until his fingers bleed and the sky first storms then calms and some of the pain of the void at being locked out all those years and the pain of the world at it breaking in subsides. Casimir understands it, then, as he watches it sleep; that the songs that sustain the world, that they haven't been played properly since the Fall. That it's no wonder his Mom stole Cneph's fiddle to try to deal with it, it's no wonder the ritual went weird both now and back then. The world needs music like this or it'll fall apart, and no one's playing it.

Book 3, quest 4: Lots of guerrilla war through the landscape of Hell, I think, here, which is more gnarled corrupted thorny roots and of course fire and dreamlike mists and Excrucian ridings in the "sky." Fighting in the distance as bigger powers than they clash. Local stuff as Telleamor and Casimir try to make it to the stone circle type locations where he can fiddle back a bit of the necessary boundary. Meals with the damned in the shadow of war. Explosions at the palace. The void dragon as an impossible bump in the last song that needs to be played, and thus fiddling the void dragon into dissipation because it's made of nothingness—getting it to let go of existing and its hatred for the world and return to the void so that the song can be completed and the boundaries resealed.

Book 4, quest 4: This particular version of Heaven is more explicitly despotic than the typical "loosely organized commune of arrogance and privilege" you see in the Nobilis setting—that's the Aspect Arc style coming through, you see—so there's someone who took over after the Fall, someone who probably pushed it, made the evolving conflict within the Angelic society of the time turn irrevocably bloody, some great nameless? winged provenance that slouches upon Heaven's throne, some Angel of Stasis, Hierarchy, Exclusion, Blinders, Gated Communities, and the Peak. ... or maybe more Mechanization/Industry? I dunno. Some Angel who bound Cneph themselves in a fiddle long ago, who locked up God in their pocket and made God think that pocket was the boundless world, took the golden songs to be their own, and has not, perhaps made as good a use of them as they might. And so when it seizes and isolates the institute, it is not with soldiers but with ash, mist, a world like clockwork, and fences of living steel. When it spreads its wings, its seven sky-gray wings, above those green fields and bright flowers and old stone halls, they writhe with system. The place feels metallic and rusted. It's hard to breathe there. It withers on the vine. Ash rains softly down. At a feast, they starve; in Heaven, beauty fades; the music Casimir plays is dulled. (Thematics may not be completely accurate yet.) When he breaks past its steam/metal/fire mechanisms and steel-wire defenses and confronts it in the tower of the place with fiddle in hand ... it's already dead. It killed itself when it took the throne. he just has to make it see.

DECEMBER 13, 2022

EXTRACTING CREATIVE CONTENT FOR STUDY …

1. Casimir is in a search party / Casimir is in a besieged castle / Casimir is in a besieged Hell. / Casimir is in a besieged institute in Heaven.

2. Casimir is in the mountains / Casimir is in a besieged castle / Casimir is in Hell. / Casimir is in a metallic, rusted place.

3. Casimir becomes prey to an old hungry god-beast ghost that died but didn't die right / the Serpent of Summer goes Wicked Mode / Excrucians invade, including a void dragon. / an Angel of Mechanization goes ham on him

4. It picks off members of the search party / the people there / lots of souls and Fallen die. / there are slowly just ... fewer and fewer people around. They vanish when nobody's looking, as it were.

5ab. It hunts them through rocky hills, scrublands, spires of barren stone / It attacks with hungry tree roots and brambles, using vampiric plants and the dead / There's more thorny brambles but I think they belong there, probably more rocky areas and stone too, but the Excrucians mostly attack through blades and monsters and such / Rusty metal fencing serves as brambles. Barrenness of somewhere mined out.

6. He dreams of its yawning jaws, sees them when he closes his eyes, plays them in his music / ghost stories, fiddle on the balcony, and fear / dreamlike mists, fiddling at night, and fear / ash and mist and a suffocating sensation, the music Casimir plays is dulled.

2-1. Corpses are encountered / The dead invade / corpses are encountered, as well as souls / the soldiers of the Angel are unliving things

2-2. A struggle to survive in the wilds / Food supplies are limited / A struggle to survive in the wilds; also, meals seized in the shadow of war / At a feast, they starve.

7. He plays music to keep out the cold / oppressive autumn heat alternates with frost / fires of Hell alternate with cold of the void / temperature unclear, maybe the choking heat of incinerators alternating with the cold of homelessness? Details unlikely to matter but just in case.

8. The group argues at a river; blood is shed, a fiddle broken. / keeping control of people who lose it and try to let the dead in; the Rule fights with Pops / tensions are high; fights happen in the distance / I'm not seeing where the internal conflict happens in book 4, which is interesting. Maybe in the distance? Though, isolation is a big thing ...

9. They split up. / Casimir sneaks out to deal with it / Casimir goes off to handle the void dragon / Casimir heads off to deal with it, but it's not a very big moment.

10. Someone uses a curse to send it after Casimir's group. / the Rule fights with Pops / Someone curses Casimir / The whole place is cursed, really.

11. Casimir falls into delirium and sinks into the mythic / Casimir suffers fever, journeys into the mythic / Casimir is lost in the mist and travels Hell / Casimir is lost in the mist and mythic stuff happens.

12. The hunt becomes less and less physical and more and more an active devouring of his spirit that he challenges with song / Casimir stabs it, gets beaten up, and then shifts to music / Casimir isn't able to fight the void dragon / Casimir gets past its defenses, but physical fighting is pointless.

13. The rising and falling of the land becomes an intensification and quieting of the song as he plays / He plays for it until his fingers bleed and the sky first storms and then calms / The void dragon is a bump in Casimir's song / Presumably he plays for it.

14. On a peak on a moonlit night with the land sprawling out beneath him he plays its bones into the earth / Some of the pain of the void at being locked out and the pain of the world at its breaking in subsides / He plays until it lets go of its hatred and thus its own existence / He plays until it knows it's already dead.

15. and it and nearly himself to the other side of death / the sky breaks to let in the winter, void, and death / the sky breaks to let in the void / it floats above the institute, spreading its seven wings and letting ash fall down, and death

16. Avarice was bigger than it could swallow, and he was good / ? / something about Creation being a lump in the stomach of the void / ?

17. And it's already consented to the metaphor of the song being their battle and he bridged from the coda of "the fight ending" to "its ending" / the world needs music like this to keep it from falling apart. / It never wanted to exist, and the music lets it free. / it was already dead.

18. He's won. / He's won; he understands. / He's won, and reseals the world. / He's won.

DECEMBER 14, 2022

CONSOLIDATING/ORGANIZING …

DROPPING THIS ONE

9 - not great for group play, probably.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

2. You're in a stark, sere place, majestic but inhospitable. (Perhaps in the right season, or before the current circumstances, it was hospitable enough.)

5b. There is often scrubland and spires or pillars of bare stone.

3. There's a monster so big and terrible it's like the weather.

1. You're in a group.

12. Generally speaking you will fail to kill it with force, and vice versa, and eventually shift into a metaphorical conflict—making an artistic or conceptual argument against it.

13. For better or worse, no matter how good or bad your conceptual argument or the description of your artistic argument is, you'll usually struggle until the quest is ready to end and then win when it does, so keep that in mind. (Obviously if that causes anyone serious suspension of disbelief issues that can be discussed OOC, but as long as you're both within spitting distance of holding on that long, and you're within spitting distance of winning at that point, that's what'll happen.)

MAJOR GOALS

8. internal conflict escalates to the point where blood is shed and something is destroyed. It can be something you witness rather than participate in, or something that happens in a flashback, as long as it's meaningful and visceral anyway;

11. Falling into a fever, delirium, or fugue, you descend into the mythic depths. Usually the fever causes the descent or vice versa, but it's not strictly required;

12. Your conflict with the monster shifts from something physical to something metaphysical/conceptual/metaphorical;

14, 17. You release the monster from pain, hatred, false existence, or the like;

15. The sky breaks, to show the void or death beyond.

QUEST FLAVOR

4. someone in your group gets taken out by the monster or vanishes off-camera.

4a. thinking or talking about someone who got taken out ^ not an actual thing from the “books” but I don't like faceless NPCs

5a. you're swarmed by something like living brambles or barbed wire, thorny roots, or spiny tentacles

6. you experience or share a dreadful vision

2-1. you encounter the dead

5c. you realize that something dead has woken

2-2. people eat, but hunger still pervades

7. it's bitterly cold or oppressively hot (often both in a single quest)

10. a wicked curse manifests its thorns against you

16. something is too big to swallow (?)

REFINING ...

MAJOR GOALS

11. Falling into a fever, delirium, or fugue, you descend into the mythic depths. Usually the fever causes the descent or vice versa, but it's not strictly required;

12. Your conflict with the monster shifts from something physical to something metaphysical/conceptual/metaphorical;

14, 17. You release the monster from pain, hatred, false existence, or the like;

15. The sky breaks, to show the void or death beyond.

QUEST FLAVOR

4. [[DECISIVE/SETTING]] someone in your group gets taken out by the monster or vanishes off-camera.

4a. [[PASTORAL/SETTING]] thinking or talking about someone who got taken out

5a. [[PASTORAL/POISONED]] you're swarmed by something like living brambles or barbed wire, thorny roots, or spiny tentacles

6. [[RECEPTIVE/POISONED]] you experience or share a dreadful vision

2-1. [[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] you encounter the dead

5c. [[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] you realize that something dead has woken

2-2. [[DECISIVE/SETTING]] people eat, but hunger still pervades

7. [[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] it's bitterly cold or oppressively hot (often both in a single quest)

10. [[RECEPTIVE/POISONED]] a wicked curse manifests its thorns against you

16. [[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] something is too big to swallow (?)

Technically that is already a viable 50 XP quest. Do I want a 50 XP quest here? This feels like a quest that can take a while, but closer to 40-45. Item 16 can go; I kept it around in case it turned out to be useful for some reason, but it didn't. That'd get us down to 45. To get to 40 I'd need to drop one more flavor and one major goal. I ... kind of want to drop the 14/17 goal, though, or rather move it to the generic description, it's too ... specific. Ugh. This feels right at 45, though.

… OK, so we drop 14/17 and move 16 to the major goals, making it "you notice something the monster cannot properly consume."

UPDATING …

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

2. You're in a stark, sere place, majestic but inhospitable. (Perhaps in the right season, or before the current circumstances, it was hospitable enough.)

5b. There is often scrubland and spires or pillars of bare stone.

3. There's a monster so big and terrible it's like the weather.

1. You're in a group.

12. Generally speaking you will fail to kill it with force, and vice versa, and eventually shift into a metaphorical conflict—making an artistic or conceptual argument against it.

14, 17. Often the final victory is in the form of releasing the monster from pain, death, hatred, false existence, or the like.

MAJOR GOALS

11. Falling into a fever, delirium, or fugue, you descend into the mythic depths. Usually the fever causes the descent or vice versa, but it's not strictly required;

12. Your conflict with the monster shifts from something physical to something metaphysical/conceptual/metaphorical;

16. You notice something the monster cannot properly/entirely consume;

15. The sky breaks, to show the void or death beyond.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] it's bitterly cold or oppressively hot (often both in a single quest) (ASIDE: this becomes [[PASTORAL/SETTING]] after I think about the simplified quest.)

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] you encounter the dead

[[DECISIVE/SETTING]] people eat, but hunger still pervades

[[DECISIVE/SETTING]] someone in your group gets taken out by the monster or vanishes off-camera

[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] thinking or talking about someone who got taken out

[[PASTORAL/POISONED]] you're swarmed by something like living brambles or barbed wire, thorny roots, or spiny tentacles

[[RECEPTIVE/POISONED]] you experience or share a dreadful vision

[[RECEPTIVE/POISONED]] a wicked curse manifests its thorns against you

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] you realize/discover that something dead has woken

OK!

INVERSION

[[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]] you struggle to survive extreme temperatures <= should be FLAME tho

[[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]] you mourn the dead

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] you dissociate or have a vision during a meal

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] someone in your group is taken out by the monster before your eyes, or you realize they have vanished [[

FLAME/FALLING STAR]] you mourn the dead

[[FLAME/STRUGGLE]] you struggle against something like a swarm of living brambles or barbed wire, thorned roots, or spiny tentacles

[[DECISIVE/STRUGGLE]] you experience or share a dreadful premonition

[[DECISIVE/STRUGGLE]] something or someone triggers the condition for a wicked curse

[[DECISIVE/SETTING]] the dead awake

We don't need two "you mourn the dead," of course, even if FLAME and DECISIVE actions have a different feel, so that'll save us one option immediately.

The curse thing is neat but honestly superfluous, so that’s another.

As far as major goals go, the fugue has to stay. The conflict becoming metaphysical has to stay. The sky breaking at least wants to stay.

… that suggests we are aiming for 25 XP, meaning we want to get rid of two more quest flavor.

Currently we have seven:

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] you dissociate or have a vision during a meal

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] someone in your group is taken out by the monster before your eyes, or you realize they have vanished

[[FLAME/FALLING STAR]] you mourn the lost

[[FLAME/FALLING STAR]] you struggle to survive extreme temperatures

[[FLAME/STRUGGLE]] you struggle against something like a swarm of living brambles or barbed wire, thorned roots, or spiny tentacles

[[DECISIVE/STRUGGLE]] you experience or share a dreadful premonition

[[DECISIVE/SETTING]] the dead have woken

Let’s see. First, “the dead have woken” can move to the major goals and merge somehow with the sky breaking. Something like "the sky has opened; the dead have woken." We're not expecting a guarantee everyone will hit it anyway, in a 25-XP quest you can only get two of the goals anyway, so that’s fine.

That leaves six flavor, and we want to get down to five. We have two forms of struggle.

… I think we combine them into [[FLAME/STRUGGLE]] you struggle to survive against the monster or the world, if they can even be properly distinguished

INVERSION, UPDATED

MAJOR GOALS

11. Falling into a fever, delirium, or fugue, you descend into the mythic depths. Usually the fever causes the descent or vice versa, but it's not strictly required;

12. Your conflict with the monster shifts from something physical to something metaphysical/conceptual/metaphorical;

15. The sky has opened; the dead have woken.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] you dissociate or have a vision during a meal

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] someone in your group is taken out by the monster before your eyes, or you discover belatedly that they are gone

[[FLAME/FALLING STAR]] you mourn the lost

[[FLAME/STRUGGLE]] you struggle to survive against the monster or the world, if they can even be properly distinguished

[[DECISIVE/STRUGGLE]] you experience or share a dreadful premonition

Working Title: Don't Punch Dead Dragons

Quest 5!

Aspect 5

You’re lost in the dark.

Result: you find your way home, maybe even with some treasure, maybe having left something good behind—

But the experience has changed you.

Book 1, quest 5: this would, then, be the long walk home alone, after the True God's laid to rest. Tradition says Casimir has encounters on the way, someone to help, someone to betray him, something wondrous and fairy-tale. A forester in red. A fairy or monster by a stream. Full moon. A case can be made that he's not in his right mind, having pushed himself quite hard. Tradition says that his fiddle is possibly broken and he makes a new one along the way. Something in him was buried and lost with the God, and he has to find himself in the bones of the world, in nuts and roots and berries, in the trap of a much more mundane but still magic forest creature and its abbatoir, in the transient house of a helpful spirit, in the fabrics of a hospital after he reemerges into the world and a car hits him, in the mouse that a proud feral cat drops off for him. He grants things their wishes, because Avarice is dead, you see. He starts by trying to grant a wish to a stone he finds along the way, but it doesn't express one. Moves on through the encounters. Eventually someone's just kind of concerned for him and is just hoping he'll be okay, which forces the still waters of him to stir towards waking. He talks a bit about the stone, and they mention that it doesn't want anything because it's dead, and he's all "ah," and almost reaches out for human touch but this person is mostly a stranger and he's too restrained and Casimir for it, so instead he just says "how about that," and heads on home.

Book 2, quest 5: So this is between dealing with the Serpent and returning to fiddle school. And what's interesting is that I don't think Casimir is gonna be delirious or messed up from the ending of quest 4, really, this time around. Just, ... I think it ends and he doesn't know how to go back. He lives in a little rickety rustic town sustained by vacationers who like the nearby woods and mountains, and he sells people their heart's desire (sometimes little carvings of it, sometimes the thing itself, sometimes the desire, sometimes a song), and sometimes scales from the snake, and someone whose desires got snuffed out at some point (so he can't sell them anything) keeps coming in to figure him out, and he shows them a haunted place in the woods and later a vision of something to want. And like "what is that?" they ask when looking at the vision of what to want, and Casimir looks at it more closely and sees a world where the songs are played properly and he's finished his studies at the school, among other things he doesn't even want to think about* and he's like, frack, I guess I want that.

* he's very repressed

Book 3, quest 5: Telleamor is busy rebuilding infrastructure and doesn't need Casimir for that part. So I think this is Casimir wandering around meeting individual souls and interacting with them. Granting them things they need, individual ways to unknot themselves and find escape. Wrestling with his heritage and the ongoing Issue. Occasionally meeting some unnamed Fallen at a fire and having fiddle competitions, which end inconclusively. Occasionally his mother comes by and yells at him for letting the souls go because it's not like she wants to see them hurt but anyway their getting hurt is just temporary probably just like the current conditions which a committee is working on she thinks! the important thing is that they belong there, to like her and other people. His mother being Avarice much more literally than he, of course, which is the weakness to the love that otherwise would not tolerate such things. Eventually he's complaining about this to a tormented soul he's helping and the soul is eyeing him the way victims do when you complain about your attachment to their tormentors but ultimately the soul is all "yeah, it's hard letting go" which is what that soul needed, and what Casimir needed too, to grasp that this is all he has, here, that there isn't a magic relationship with his mom or Hell that he's somehow missing, there's just ... this, and the fact that she's trying but also awful and broken. And that's both how he finds his way "home," which in this case is both where he already was and back to Telleamor's side, and also pushes his Issue to Complex 4: dealing with Heaven, which did this to them.

(Relevant, on Hell: I suspect that I would land on a very dreamy, symbolic torment, with a lot of people twisted up by the place even as the Fallen themselves are but not much pain-for-the-sake-of-pain and almost no degradation-for-the-sake-of-degradation—make it about the knots in the heart, about the way we get hurt and twisted up just by living in the world, rather than a realm of abusers or a metaphor for one of the big world evils or anything—but possibly that would wind up not feeling enough like Hell and I'd correct the other way, don't know.)

Book 4, quest 5: Wandering down the tree, talking to Cneph in his fiddle, working miracles for the worlds of the Ash, subduing abhorrent weapons using what amount to Far Roofs techniques along the way. On some random world, he frees a Fallen Angel trapped under a rock by a lifeless sea, mentioning that Heaven's discussing reparations; though, the Fallen tells him, "... we're already the folk of Hell." He raids the gardens of the Hesperides. In the end, he's back on Earth, and a star falls, and Cneph asks him what he'd wish for, and he puts the fiddle away and goes out to hang out with Telleamdor, and the reader thinks that's the ending, but it's time for Complex 5: "What if we just ... lifted Hell?"

Here's the breakdown for just book 1. Will posting it before working on the other parts mean that it has to change more than usual when I do the other parts? Probably, but enh.

1. The long walk home

2. Encounters along the way: someone to help,

3. Encounters along the way: someone to betray,

4. Encounters along the way: something wondrous and fairy tale

5. A forester in red

6. A fairy or monster by a stream

7. Full moon

8. Casimir probably not in his right mind

9. Making a new fiddle along the way

16. He grants things their wishes

17. He grants a wish to a stone he finds, but it has none

10. Something in Casimir buried and lost with quest 4, so Casimir must find himself in the bones of the world, in nuts and roots and berries

11. In the trap of a magic forest creature and its abbatoir

12. In the transient house of a helpful spirit

13. In the texture of the fabrics of a hospital after he reemerges into the world

14. (And a car hits him)

15. In a mouse a proud feral cat drops off for him

18. Someone's just kind of concerned for him

19. He talks about the stone, and someone mentions it doesn't want anything because it's dead

20. "How about that."

Adding in book 2 ... a lot of ? at this point, but mostly because I didn't bother explicitly working through how the fairy tale elements duplicated.

1. The long walk home / He doesn't know how to go back, so he goes to live in a little rickety rustic town sustained by vacationers who like the nearby woods and mountains

2. Encounters along the way: someone to help, / ?

3. Encounters along the way: someone to betray, / ?

4. Encounters along the way: something wondrous and fairy tale / ?

5. A forester in red / ?

6. A fairy or monster by a stream / ?

7. Full moon /?

2-1 or 7. ?/ something magical in glass on the shelves

8. Casimir probably not in his right mind / Casimir in his right mind, but ... at a loss

9. Making a new fiddle along the way / ?

16. He grants things their wishes / He sells people their heart's desire, or little carvings of it, etc. /

17. He grants a wish to a stone he finds, but it has none / He meets someone with no heart's desire, who keeps coming in to try to figure him out

11. In the trap of a magic forest creature and its abbatoir / He shows the desire-less person a haunted place in the woods

12. In the transient house of a helpful spirit / ?

13. In the texture of the fabrics of a hospital after he reemerges into the world / ?

14. (And a car hits him) / is there another disaster like this? probably

15. In a mouse a proud feral cat drops off for him / ?

18. Someone's just kind of concerned for him / Someone's investigating him

19. He talks about the stone, and someone mentions it doesn't want anything because it's dead / "what is that?" they ask when looking at the vision of what to want

20. "How about that." / He sees things he wants, and realizes, frack, he wants that.

DECEMBER 16, 2022

yesterday was lost to a migraine, today might be limited to aftershock, we'll see

Regardless, adding in book 3!

1. The long walk home / He doesn't know how to go back, so he goes to live in a little rickety rustic town sustained by vacationers who like the nearby woods and mountains / Wandering around Hell meeting individual souls and Fallen.

2. Encounters along the way: someone to help, / ? / ?

3. Encounters along the way: someone to betray, / ? / ?

4. Encounters along the way: something wondrous and fairy tale / ? / ?

5. A forester in red / ? / A Fallen presumably

6. A fairy or monster by a stream / ? / Fiddle contests with an unnamed Fallen?

7. Full moon /? / ? 2-1 or 7. ?/ something magical in glass on the shelves / ?

8. Casimir probably not in his right mind / Casimir in his right mind, but ... at a loss / Casimir just at loose ends and tired. /

9. Making a new fiddle along the way / ? / ?

16. He grants things their wishes / He sells people their heart's desire, or little carvings of it, etc. / He gives souls things they need to unknot themselves and escape.

17. He grants a wish to a stone he finds, but it has none / He meets someone with no heart's desire, who keeps coming in to try to figure him out / His Mom objects to his letting souls go, because Avarice

10. Something in Casimir buried and lost with quest 4, so Casimir must find himself in the bones of the world, in nuts and roots and berries / probably still something buried and lost, maybe still nuts and roots and berries? Or something else for food or nourishment? / book 3 is just exhausting, not so much destructive; he'd be left empty, not ... dead. But there's a relationship with his Mom to sort out, and his feelings about his heritage, so a sort of finding himself there, and definitely still the roots of the world, and a certain foraging about for food probably.

11. In the trap of a magic forest creature and its abbatoir / He shows the desire-less person a haunted place in the woods / ?

12. In the transient house of a helpful spirit / ? / ?

13. In the texture of the fabrics of a hospital after he reemerges into the world / ? / ?

14. (And a car hits him) / is there another disaster like this? probably / ?

15. In a mouse a proud feral cat drops off for him / ? / something his Mom brings? /

18. Someone's just kind of concerned for him / Someone's investigating him / Someone's got mixed feelings about his attachment to his Mom /

19. He talks about the stone, and someone mentions it doesn't want anything because it's dead / "what is that?" they ask when looking at the vision of what to want / "yeah, it's hard letting go"

20. "How about that." / He sees things he wants, and realizes, frack, he wants that. / He realizes that there isn't a magic relationship he's missing, there's just this.

And, finally, adding in book 4:

2. Encounters along the way: someone to help, / ? / ? / freeing a Fallen Angel trapped under a rock, mentioning that Heaven's discussing reparations. ("... we're already the folk of Hell.")

3. Encounters along the way: someone to betray, / ? / ? / ?

4. Encounters along the way: something wondrous and fairy tale / ? / ? / He raids the gardens of the Hesperides

5. A forester in red / ? / A Fallen presumably / ?

6. A fairy or monster by a stream / ? / Fiddle contests with an unnamed Fallen? / freeing the Fallen Angel trapped under the rock maybe

7. Full moon /? / ? / ? 2-1 or 7. ?/ something magical in glass on the shelves / ? 4-1 or 7 a star falls

8. Casimir probably not in his right mind / Casimir in his right mind, but ... at a loss / Casimir just at loose ends and tired. / Casimir just at loose ends and tired, again.

9. Making a new fiddle along the way / ? / maybe the fiddle contests? / interacting a lot with Cneph in the fiddle

16. He grants things their wishes / He sells people their heart's desire, or little carvings of it, etc. / He gives souls things they need to unknot themselves and escape. / He works miracles for the worlds and subdues abhorrent weapons with far roofs techniques along the way.

11. In the trap of a magic forest creature and its abbatoir / He shows the desire-less person a haunted place in the woods / ? / possibly the garden here

12. In the transient house of a helpful spirit / ? / ? / ?

13. In the texture of the fabrics of a hospital after he reemerges into the world / ? / ? / ?

14. (And a car hits him) / is there another disaster like this? probably / ? / ?

15. In a mouse a proud feral cat drops off for him / ? / something his Mom brings? / ?

18. Someone's just kind of concerned for him / Someone's investigating him / Someone's got mixed feelings about his attachment to his Mom / Cneph

19. He talks about the stone, and someone mentions it doesn't want anything because it's dead / "what is that?" they ask when looking at the vision of what to want / "yeah, it's hard letting go"/ "What would you wish for?"

20. "How about that." / He sees things he wants, and realizes, frack, he wants that. / He realizes that there isn't a magic relationship he's missing, there's just this. / He goes out to hang out with Telleamor.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

1. You're drifting. The reference drift is a long journey or settling down in the middle of nowhere, but you can also just kind of wander around a campaign site or settle down in the middle of nowhere in a 1-PC (or 2+ PC with cooperative players) game.

8. You're at loose ends and tired, maybe not in your right mind.

9. You've lost some key connection to yourself, your art, or your craft.

10. You hunt for yourself in the roots of the world.

18-20. Often, it ends when someone's words, almost incidentally, show you some kind of basic wisdom... and the way back home.

MAJOR GOALS

3. Someone betrays you, and you don't really mind;

11. You walk a land that is haunted, that is hungry, that would devour you if it could;

12. You spend the night in a dream-like place that vanishes with the dawn;

14. You're wounded by a serious accident—e.g., for a character of characters of mortal constitution, hit by a car or falling from a roof.

QUEST FLAVOR

2. you help someone you meet along the way

4. you encounter something wondrous

5. you meet with the Fallen, or, someone clad in red

6. you contest against a creature out of myth

7. you witness a celestial phenomenon

9. you work to rebuild your connection to yourself, your art, or your craft

16. you gift a wish, miracle, or heart's desire to someone else ... or fail to do so because your target's nature is occluded, damaged, or not whole

10. you forage in nature for your meal

13. you wear some ugly clothes, recently given

15. you are offered a problematic meal.

^ these two probably combine

4 major goals and 9 quest flavor, which is a pretty good start tbh. Let me make sure that this is actually a decent match to books 2-4, though, since a lot of it comes from book 1, but hopefully I'll just confirm that.

UPDATING …

MAJOR GOALS

3. Someone betrays you, and you don't really mind;

11. You walk a land that is haunted, that is hungry, that would devour you if it could;

12. You spend the night ...

CHANGES TO

12. You have, or show someone, a strange and wondrous vision;

14. You're wounded by a serious accident—e.g., for a character of characters of mortal constitution, hit by a car or falling from a roof.

QUEST FLAVOR

2. you help someone you meet along the way

4. you encounter something wondrous

7. you witness a celestial phenomenon

MERGE INTO

4. you encounter a scene of natural or mythic wonder

5. you meet with the Fallen, or, someone clad in red

6. you contest against a creature out of myth

2-1. you share a bit of natural wonder

9. SLIGHT UPDATE FROM “YOUR ART OR YOUR CRAFT” TO “SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO YOU:”

9. you work to rebuild your connection to yourself or something important to you

16. you gift a wish, miracle, or heart's desire to someone else ... or fail to do so because your target's nature is occluded, damaged, or not whole

10. you forage in nature for your meal

13. you wear some ugly clothes, recently given

15. you are offered a problematic meal.

I think that update makes it work for the other books, so there we are!

... needs more refinement and then the inversions but resting my neck for a bit in case my neck is connected to migraines

(a few hours later)

OK, we have 4 major goals, so we want it to be 35-40 XP, 7-8 quest flavor. We have 10, two of which are already destined to merge.

ASIDE: This was an error on my part, we have 10 but that’s post-merger. Looks like it didn’t actually slow me down much except for brief embarrassment though.

So we need to get rid of one or two more. I guess icons and implementing the existing merger first, then that.

QUEST FLAVOR

2. [[DECISIVE/SETTING]] you help someone you meet along the way

2-1. [[DECISIVE/SETTING]] you offer someone a bit of wonder

9. [[DECISIVE/PASTORAL]] you work to rebuild your connection to yourself or something/someone important to you

16. [[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]] you gift a wish, miracle, or heart's desire to someone else ... or fail to do so because your target's nature is occluded, damaged, or not whole.

5/6. [[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]] you contest against a creature out of myth

4. [[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] you encounter a scene of natural or mythic wonder

10. [[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] you forage in nature for your meal, or a friend does on your behalf

13. [[POISONED/SETTING]] you put a recent, unappealing gift to its intended use

That's down to 8. Do I want to get it down to 7?

Apparently not.

COLLECTING ALL THIS …

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

8. You're at loose ends and tired, maybe not in your right mind.

9. You've lost some key connection to yourself, your art, or your craft.

10. You hunt for yourself in the roots of the world.

18-20. Often, it ends when someone's words, almost incidentally, show you some kind of basic wisdom... and the way back home.

MAJOR GOALS

3. Someone betrays you, and you don't really mind;

11. You walk a land that is haunted, that is hungry, that would devour you if it could;

(ASIDE: Later changed to 12. You have, or show someone, a strange and wondrous vision;)

14. You're wounded by a serious accident—e.g., for a character of characters of mortal constitution, hit by a car or falling from a roof.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]] you gift a wish, miracle, or heart's desire to someone else ... or fail to do so because your target's nature is occluded, damaged, or not whole.

[[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]] you contest against a creature out of myth

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] you encounter a scene of natural or mythic wonder

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] you forage in nature for your meal, or a friend does so on your behalf

[[POISONED/SETTING]] you put a recent, unappealing gift to its intended use

[[DECISIVE/SETTING]] you offer somebody a bit of help or wonder

[[DECISIVE/PASTORAL]] you work to rebuild your connection to something/someone important to you

[[DECISIVE/PASTORAL]] you work to rebuild your connection to yourself

INVERSION!

16. [[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] you listen to someone's heart's desire or wish

5/6. [[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] you witness the wondrous or fearsome talent of a creature out of myth

10. [[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]] you study wild vegetation

13. [[STRUGGLE/FALLING STAR]] you receive, and are expected to enjoy and use, a gift

2/2-1. [[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] you encounter someone in need of help or wonder

9. [[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] there's something that should be easy, that should be you or important to you, but you can't connect

All of these might be reframeable as getting XP "when you witness," or "through encountering" or somesuch, which is interesting

We'd like to get rid of at least one more, which by default is 5/6 … turning it into a major goal or something), because of duplicate tags. That gets us down to 5 flavor, for a 25 XP quest, meaning we need to shed two major goals—probably 12, and uh .. 14.

INVERSION, TAKE 2

MAJOR GOALS

3. Someone betrays you, and you don't really mind;

11. You walk a land that is haunted, that is hungry, that would devour you if it could;

You witness the wondrous/fearsome talents of a creature out of myth.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[DECISIVE/FALLING STAR]] you study wild vegetation

[[STRUGGLE/FALLING STAR]] you receive, and are expected to enjoy and use, a gift

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] you encounter someone in need of help or wonder

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] you listen to someone's heart's desire or wish

[[RECEPTIVE/FLAME]] there's something that should be easy, that should be you or important to you, but you can't connect

(reframe all these as "you encounter" probably)

Working title: Wandering

So we have five quests, not really as complete as usual but still like they have all their flavors and goals, working titles:

Aspect 1 - The Struggle

Aspect 2 - Emotional Travels

Aspect 3 - Flailing

Aspect 4 - Don't Punch Dead Dragons

Aspect 5 – Wandering

Is there an Otherworldly Arc? Let's see.

The Struggle has dream elements and ends with a decision, so it's viable Otherworldly 1. It's less of a match for Otherworldly 2, but could probably fit. Distantly OK for Otherworldly 3, but it's a stretch. Poor match for Otherworldly 4. Minimal match for Otherworldly 5 - a big stretch, but I might be able to work my head around to it.

Emotional Travels is an enh match for Otherworldly 1, with some otherworldly experiences. It's honestly quite good for Otherworldly 2. It has some solid notes of Otherworldly 3. It's a poor match for Otherworldly 4. There's very little Otherworldly 5 here.

Flailing doesn't really match Otherworldly 1 very well. Some match for Otherworldly 2, but not great. Very poor match for Otherworldly 3. Some match for Otherworldly 4, but not great. Not good for Otherworldly 5. Cat feeding interrupt

Don't Punch Dead Dragons has some Otherworldly 1 elements in the quest card. Little in the way of 3/5, a tiny bit of 2/4. In the books themselves …

It's a poor match for Otherworldly 1 or 2. Often, something is trying to devour Casimir, but rarely from within; it's bad at 3, too. And 4. It's ... good for 5, though. It works for 5.

Finally, Wandering on its card has a bit of Otherworldly 1, 2, 4, 5. I'm suspecting it's 4 from the card, but looking at the books ... Distant fit for 1. Poor fit for 2. Poor fit for 3. Good fit for 4. Poor fit for 5.

OK, immediate conclusions:

Aspect 1 - The Struggle

Aspect 2 - Emotional Travels

Aspect 3 - Flailing

Aspect 4 / Otherworldly 5 - Don't Punch Dead Dragons

Aspect 5 / Otherworldly 4 - Wandering

And our biggest decision is what to do with “Flailing,” because if we can make that Otherworldly 3, everything's great, and if we can make it Otherworldly 2, things are salvageable.

goes to look at Flailing more carefully

studies Flailing with the deep intensity of an experienced flailer

I guess we can make it Otherworldly 3 by having the quest's nature change when you're doing a green Arc, where, like you have to worry a lot less about farce and a lot more about losing yourself in the role?

OK, further conclusions:

Aspect/Otherworldly 1 - The Struggle

Aspect/Otherworldly 2 - Emotional Travels

Aspect/Otherworldly 3 - Flailing

Aspect 4 / Otherworldly 5 - Don't Punch Dead Dragons

Aspect 5 /Otherworldly 4 - Wandering

So what that looks like as a green Arc is basically, you have this magical thing you're wrestling with, and part of it is a mask—a need to pretend to be someone you're not. You go on a journey either to postpone dealing with it or to get to where you'll take it up, or both, and then you have to deal with the fact that the magic itself is kind of eating you a little. Which it does, so you go wandering around as a shadow of yourself, and eventually recover while helping some big mythic threat. That probably changes a bit about how "Flailing" works. Of course, green is basically Domain for the Nobilis, so another way to think about that is ...

…

There's no way to make that work.

I think we have to do it like this:

Aspect/Otherworldly 1 - The Struggle

Aspect 2 / Otherworldly 3 - Emotional Travels

Aspect 3 / Otherworldly 2 - Flailing

Aspect 4 / Otherworldly 5 - Don't Punch Dead Dragons

Aspect 5 / Otherworldly 4 - Wandering

... yeah, I think we do that. Flailing becomes about not moving forward? Hrm. I don't know if I like that either.

emerges from a walk and think No, I was right the first time.

Aspect/Otherworldly 1 - The Struggle

Aspect/Otherworldly 2 - Emotional Travels

Aspect/Otherworldly 3 - Flailing

Aspect 4/Otherworldly 5 - Don't Punch Dead Dragons

Aspect 5/Otherworldly 4 - Wandering

The way this works is that you have otherworldly experiences, in the Struggle, usually connecting you more deeply to your Domain.

You resist a bit over the course of Emotional Travels, but ultimately give in.

In Flailing, you're just trying to do a covert infiltration, but something—the reference instance is "the uncontrolled influence of your Estate," but it's usually something else in these books because they're Aspect books—is struggling inside you to get out and mess everything up.

In Wandering, you've lost yourself.

In Don't Punch Dead Dragons, an Arc or quest monster harasses you—probably an Arc monster, so introduce them in Emotional Travels or Wandering—but you ultimately wind up helping them find their way back from being lost.

I might have to tweak the Flailing quest card, but not actually all that much--this was in there already, just not very emphasized.

What about Knight?

The Struggle is acceptable as Knight 1, like Aspect 1 quests usually are. It'd be an awkward Knight 2, 3, or 4, though not ... impossible. It's a poor Knight 5.

Emotional Travels would be a weird Knight 1. I'm not seeing Knight 2 or 4 at all, though I'm not seeing a hard block on either. It can be Knight 3, pretty easily, though it's not perfect. Pretty good, tho. There's a hint of Knight 5, but just a hint.

Flailing would be a weird Knight 1. There could be Knight 2 stuff here. There could be Knight 3, by the reasoning for Otherworldly 3. There's hints of Knight 4. Not seeing any real Knight 5 here. ... I think it wants to be 3, but not as much as Emotional Travels does, so will probably wind up as 2.

Don't Punch Dead Dragons would, again, be a weird Knight 1. It doesn't leap out as 2, really, either. There's some Knight 3 in it, but I think it loses to other quests there. It has a certain je ne sais quoi feel of Knight 4, but not so much for Casimir. It could be Knight 5, given how it ends.

Wandering ... oops, dinner. 5? I'll have to go through it all later.

Wandering is not really a Knight 1 quest, but it's not impossible. Similarly, there's no Knight 2 here, though I could probably work something out if I had to. It's a solid Knight 3 but honestly a better Knight 4, I think. It could be Knight 5.

So what we're seeing is that the Knight Arc is pretty mushy, but "The Struggle" slots into 1 pretty easily. "Wandering" has some strong Knight 5 feel, but I think it lands at 4 instead. "Flailing" I think has to be 3, for the same reason as with Otherworldly. We can't lean into the farcical elements because they may not be on point for a Knight character. "Emotional Travel" can be a study of what's in one's way, leaving "Don't Punch Dead Dragons" to be 5

Aspect/Otherworldly/Knight 1- The Struggle

Aspect/Otherworldly/Knight 2 - Emotional Travels

Aspect/Otherworldly/Knight 3 - Flailing

Aspect 4 / Otherworldly/Knight 5 - Don't Punch Dead Dragons

Aspect 5 / Otherworldly/Knight 4 - Wandering

What this looks like is, you are struggling, but then you put your feet on the road. On the road, you face physical and personal difficulties. In a distant place, you're not entirely in control of yourself. You slip up, and wind up lost and wandering. ... and then you put "be something better" in sight, finally achieving it ...

I dunno.

Maybe "Don't Punch Dead Dragons" is actually 2, and "Wandering" is 5, and "Emotional Travels" is 4?

Yeah, I like that.

Aspect/Otherworldly/Knight 1 - The Struggle

Aspect/Otherworldly 2 / Knight 4 - Emotional Travels

Aspect/Otherworldly/Knight 3 - Flailing

Aspect 4 / Otherworldly 5 / Knight 2 - Don't Punch Dead Dragons

Aspect 5 / Otherworldly 4 / Knight 5 - Wandering

What that looks like on a Knight Arc is:

Struggling: you don't really know how to be more connected to your Estate and your role as Power ... but then you put your feet on the road.

Don't Punch Dead Dragons: a showcase of a symbolic enemy in the mythic world.

... no, that doesn't work either, it's good except that Knight 2 isn't meant to be closure, it's meant to be illustrative.

OK, so:

Aspect/Otherworldly/Knight 1 - The Struggle

Aspect/Otherworldly/Knight 2 - Emotional Travels

Aspect/Otherworldly/Knight 3 - Flailing

Aspect 4 / Otherworldly 5 / Knight 4 - Don't Punch Dead Dragons

Aspect 5 / Otherworldly 4 / Knight 5 - Wandering

The Struggle: you don't really know how to be more connected to your Estate and your role as Power ... but then you put your feet on the road.

Emotional Travels: character study

Flailing: something's messing with you, ultimately leading to you screwing up

Don't Punch Dead Dragons: making amends

Wandering: and becoming something new

That works as described, but let me verify with the actual quests

... it'll do.

What about Shepherd?

The Struggle is an obvious Shepherd 1, but the sudden responsibility clause is weak. Like most quests, it's a fine Shepherd 2. It could be 3, unlikely to be 5, 4 doesn't immediately make sense.

Emotional Travels could be Shepherd 1, but is weak for it, and also a bit weak on the sudden responsibility. It's a good Shepherd 2. It's OK for 3-5, like, not great, but maybe potential there on a second look if need be.

Flailing could be Shepherd 2. It could be 1, in that it ends with a sudden responsibility, but it's not very much "your normal life." I normally think of Shepherd 4 purely as adventures, but it's formally a big challenge or adventure so this technically qualifies. It could be 3, maybe, but it's a stretch. 5 is probably a bridge too far, but dunno. It's mushy.

Don't Punch Dead Dragons is definitely not Shepherd 1. 2 is a stretch. 3 is very solid, as is 4. Sort of 5, but the quest card doesn't live up to it.

Wandering isn't a good Shepherd 1, but can be 2. It's iffy on 3, iffy on 4, viable but weird for 5.

There's something to be said for making Wandering Shepherd 1 with the getting hit by the car the sudden responsibility, but.

It's hard to find a Shepherd 1, honestly. Wandering feels too magical, it wants to be the Shepherd 3/5 escalation. ... but Don't Punch Dead Dragons is definitely not your normal days. ... and Flailing is definitely out of your normal context, even if it's somewhat ordinary. ... and Emotional Travels is dramatic, plus travel is rarely ordinary ... and The Struggle explicitly has difficulty and weirdness built into it. It's not ... Shepherdy. Now one argument is that there's no Shepherd Arc, and that Telleamor's Arc won't have an Aspect Arc, and that's why they're a pair.

But … hm.

I guess I will default to simplicity:

Aspect/Otherworldly/Knight/Shepherd 1 - The Struggle

Aspect/Otherworldly/Knight 2 / Shepherd 5 - Emotional Travels

Aspect/Otherworldly/Knight 3 / Shepherd 2 – Flailing

Aspect 4 / Otherworldly 5 / Knight/Shepherd 4 - Don't Punch Dead Dragons

Aspect 5 / Otherworldly 4 / Knight 5 / Shepherd 3 - Wandering

I dunno if I successfully defaulted to simplicity or not.

…

That felt like the combination that worked, though.

DECEMBER 17, 2022

Pulling it all together in one place:

The Struggle

Aspect/Otherworldly/Knight/Shepherd 1

In a place with a baroque aesthetic. Working on something, but it's not easy. Hanging out with others.

MAJOR GOALS

Someone is suspended above the world.

A transcendent vision shifts your perspective.

You break a personal rule.

You eat in a big group setting.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[RECEPTIVE/PASTORAL]] inspiration haunts you

[[RECEPTIVE/DECISIVE]] exposition floods you

[[STRUGGLE/DECISIVE]] someone challenges you

[[SETTING/DECISIVE]] the air is heady and the world is wild

[[SETTING/DECISIVE]] you argue a weird hypothetical

[[SETTING/FLAME]] you stare into the literal or metaphorical void

[[SETTING/FLAME]] a friend shows up at an awkward moment.

[[FALLING STAR/FLAME]] you struggle futilely to progress

The Struggle (Simplified)

MAJOR GOALS

A transcendent vision shifts your perspective.

You talk about your difficulty in making progress.

A hostile agency wounds or traumatizes you.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[DECISIVE/SETTING]] inspiration haunts you

[[FALLING STAR/RECEPTIVE]] exposition floods you

[[FALLING STAR/RECEPTIVE]] you immerse yourself in the natural world

[[FALLING STAR/FLAME]] you're crowded and overwhelmed

[[FALLING STAR/PASTORAL]] you contemplate infinity and the void

Emotional Travels

Aspect/Otherworldly/Knight 2 Shepherd 5

Travel happens, either as the frame or in dreams/bursts/flashbacks/side stories.

The scenery is likely pretty but compromised/dangerous in some fashion.

Tentatively, the alternate perspective is the "Arc companion," who you often affect to despise and also often love. Sometimes there's someone else like that floating around to be a companion in later Arcs.

You wrestle with some past or present personal tragedy, often tied to a great force of the world.

MAJOR GOALS

You travel through a dangerous chasm, canyon, or valley;

You are ambushed, and injured;

A terrible storm crashes down upon you;

You claim a great prize;

An overwhelming, evocative scene or experience gives you a personal revelation.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[SETTING/POISONED]] you let an experience or event disturb or unbalance you

[[SETTING/DECISIVE]] you share a campfire with someone strange.

[[SETTING/DECISIVE]] you have unnecessarily complicated emotions about a meal

[[SETTING/DECISIVE]] bond with an animal not normally domesticated on your world

[[SETTING/DECISIVE]] prove yourself and the merit of what you have been learning

[[RECEPTIVE/DECISIVE]] someone teaches what they know about the nature of the world.

[[RECEPTIVE/DECISIVE]] you're viscerally outraged by the injustice of the world.

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] a brilliant blaze of light or fire

[[PASTORAL/FALLING STAR]] opening up about your tragedy and backstory, or, listening as your Arc companion does the same

[[PASTORAL/FLAME]] watching another Power at work

Emotional Travels (Simplified)

MAJOR GOALS

You share a campfire with something strange;

You are ambushed, and injured;

A brilliant blaze of light or fire gives you a personal revelation.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[DECISIVE/SETTING]] someone teaches what they know about the nature of the world

[[DECISIVE/RECEPTIVE]] you're viscerally outraged by the injustice of the world.

[[FALLING STAR/RECEPTIVE]] your heart overflows; and why right now?

[[FALLING STAR/RECEPTIVE]] you try, and fail, to prove yourself

[[FALLING STAR/STRUGGLE]] you're not sure you can cope with what you're experiencing

[[FLAME/SETTING]] you try to open up about yourself, and fail

(wording may not be permanent)

Flailing

Aspect/Otherworldly/Knight 3 Shepherd 2

The architecture is likely richly realized.

MAJOR GOALS

You get away with a particularly ridiculous or sad attempt at deception, likely because you're being indulged;

You have to switch between multiple disguises or false identities in the course of a scene, and it wasn't explicitly planned;

Someone thinks you're in a relationship that you're not, or that the core activities of the quest are romantic in a way that they're not

QUEST FLAVOR

[[SETTING/FLAME]] you get literally or metaphorically lost in the local architecture

[[FALLING STAR/FLAME]] someone reads WAY too much into what you are doing here

[[STRUGGLE/FLAME]] you frantically redirect someone's attention

[[STRUGGLE/PASTORAL]] you attempt a defined task or performance while pretending to be someone else

[[DECISIVE/PASTORAL]] your art or words expose influences/emotions you'd rather conceal

[[DECISIVE/POISONED]] someone is shockingly invested in your deception, false identity, diversion, or art

[[DECISIVE/POISONED]] you come up with a deception, false identity, diversion, or artistic endeavor ... or, complicate an existing one

Flailing (Simplified)

MAJOR GOALS

Someone thinks you're in a relationship that you're not, or that the core activities of the quest are romantic in a way that they're not;

Someone becomes shockingly invested in your deception, false identity, diversion, or art

QUEST FLAVOR

[[POISONED/PASTORAL]] you construct a diversion

[[SETTING/PASTORAL]] someone reads an embarrassing amount into what you're doing

^ probably going away

[[FALLING STAR/PASTORAL]] you immerse in the wonders of the local architecture

[[POISONED/FLAME]] you frantically come up with or change to a new identity or disguise

[[RECEPTIVE/STRUGGLE]] something comes up that complicates an ongoing deception, identity, diversion, or performance

^ icons on this last one are uncertain still.

Don't Punch Dead Dragons

Aspect 4 Otherworldly 5 Knight/Shepherd 4

You're in a stark, sere place, majestic but inhospitable. (Perhaps in the right season, or before the current circumstances, it was hospitable enough.)

There is often scrubland and spires or pillars of bare stone.

There's a monster so big and terrible it's like the weather.

You're in a group.

Generally speaking you will fail to kill it with force, and vice versa, and eventually shift into a metaphorical conflict—making an artistic or conceptual argument against it.

For better or worse, no matter how good or bad your conceptual argument or the description of your artistic argument is, you'll usually struggle until the quest is ready to end and then win when it does, so keep that in mind.

(Obviously if that causes anyone serious suspension of disbelief issues that can be discussed OOC, but as long as you're both within spitting distance of holding on that long, and you're within spitting distance of winning at that point, that's what'll happen.)

Often the final victory is in the form of releasing the monster from pain, death, hatred, false existence, or the like.

MAJOR GOALS

internal conflict escalates to the point where blood is shed and something is destroyed. It can be something you witness rather than participate in, or something that happens in a flashback, as long as it's meaningful and visceral anyway;

Falling into a fever, delirium, or fugue, you descend into the mythic depths. Usually the fever causes the descent or vice versa, but it's not strictly required;

(NOTE TO SELF: always the mythic?)

Your conflict with the monster shifts from something physical to something metaphysical/conceptual/metaphorical;

You notice something the monster cannot properly/entirely consume;

The sky breaks, to show the void or death beyond.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[RECEPTIVE/SETTING]] you encounter the dead

[[DECISIVE/SETTING]] people eat, but hunger still pervades

[[DECISIVE/SETTING]] someone in your group gets taken out by the monster or vanishes off-camera

[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] thinking or talking about someone who got taken out

[[PASTORAL/SETTING]] it's bitterly cold or oppressively hot (often both in a single quest)

[[PASTORAL/POISONED]] you're swarmed by something like living brambles or barbed wire, thorny roots, or spiny tentacles

[[RECEPTIVE/POISONED]] you experience or share a dreadful vision

[[RECEPTIVE/POISONED]] a wicked curse manifests its thorns against you

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] you realize/discover that something dead has woken

Don't Punch Dead Dragons (Simplified)

MAJOR GOALS

Falling into a fever, delirium, or fugue, you descend into the mythic depths. Usually the fever causes the descent or vice versa, but it's not strictly required;

Your conflict with the monster shifts from something physical to something metaphysical/conceptual/metaphorical;

The sky has opened; the dead have woken.

QUEST FLAVOR

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] you dissociate or have a vision during a meal

[[RECEPTIVE/FALLING STAR]] someone in your group is taken out by the monster before your eyes, or you discover belatedly that they are gone

[[FLAME/FALLING STAR]] you mourn the lost

[[FLAME/STRUGGLE]] you struggle to survive against the monster or the world, if they can even be properly distinguished

[[DECISIVE/STRUGGLE]] you experience or share a dreadful premonition

Wandering

Aspect 5 Otherworldly 4 Knight 5 Shepherd 3

You're drifting. The reference drift is a long journey or settling down in the middle of nowhere, but you can also just kind of wander around a campaign site or settle down in the middle of nowhere in a 1-PC (or 2+ PC with cooperative players) game. You're at loose ends and tired, maybe not in your right mind. You've lost some key connection to yourself, your art, or your craft. You hunt for yourself in the roots of the world. Often, it ends when someone's words, almost incidentally, show you some kind of basic wisdom... and the way back home.

MAJOR GOALS

Someone betrays you, and you don't really mind;

You walk a land that is haunted, that is hungry, that would devour you if it could;

You have, or show someone, a strange and wondrous vision;

You're wounded by a serious accident—e.g., for a character of mortal constitution, you’re hit by a car or fall off of a roof.