What's the problem, Semiurge? Cat got your tongue? Gods cursed you with writers' block? Currently trying to escape from an elaborate series of traps in a Propaganda Due-run CIA blacksite? Either way, I couldn't help but notice the voluptuary vanitas that Phlox left on your doorstep back in the benighted days of the Trump administration. By right of usufruct, terra nullius, squatters' rights, and nine-tenths of the law, I'm sequestering this scandalous oilwork to my blog for safekeeping.
Phlox, my dear, don't think you're getting off scot-free either. For lobbing a ping where it just wouldn't pong, I've elected to confiscate your idea of a Zodiacal reaction table. That should be alright, shouldn't it? After all, you did say you had abandoned it.
Embassy of the Antimoon
Condition of the Ambassadrix, d8:
- Full Moon. The lady of the embassy is not present; courtiers (an ossuaryful of skeletal homunculi) must instead run the show between her demise and coming birth. Anarchy and opportunity.
- Waning Gibbous. The antimoon is but a babe, and all power in her regent. But hints of her personality this time around can already be seen. All are busy in an attempt to reform themselves to match the adult she shall become.
- Waning Crescent. The antimoon is in her girlhood, or perhaps in her boyhood. She knows what she wants; nothing else. A tyrant which her courtiers manage only through their deceit and her innocence.
- New Moon. The antimoon is in her full power. All know who is in charge here; ambitions are vast. Little skeleton homuncili are set fast to work, and the snake follows those who tarry.
- Waxing Crescent. The antimoon has slowed down just slightly as she hits middle age. Whether or not she buys a new sports car, she is perplexed by philosophical questions: is she a mayfly, doomed to extinction in just a week or two? Or is she immortal, appearing again and again?
- Waxing Gibbous. Death, or rebirth, comes near. The antimoon offloads personal responsibility for institutions that she fancies will bind her successors, even as she remembers evading those of those before.
- Eclipse. The Antimoon entertains her otherwise shy consort, the Antisun.
- Occulted by Storm and Sky. As 1d6+1 above, but the Antimoon is locked out of her palace by storm giants. She may seek the aid of ruffians such as the PCs to achieve egress.
Goals of the Ambassadrix, d12:
- Aries. The Antimoon seeks to spur war between father and son, brother and sister, nation and nation.
- Taurus. The Antimoon instead seeks to unite the ranks of men against a single threat, which she shall unleash.
- Gemini. The Antimoon is building a double-world of our own, sending forth copyists and kidnappers. With a scapel and blue pen, she edits out what she considers "errors" before translating them to her new world.
- Cancer. The Antimoon has seen the most statistically perfect equilibrium of our universe, and seeks to hurry it along. (1d4 teloi: 1: perfect entropy, 2: zero-surplus competitive equilibrium, 3: total conformity to human desires, 4: roll on Ionian Ontology Generator)
- Leo. Fed up with mortal incompetence, the Antimoon has decided to take over the world on her own.
- Virgo. She has had infinite previous iterations, but surely, there is at least one thing that is new to her? She will find that thing.
- Libra. The Antimoon seeks to undo the work of her predecessor (roll on this chart again.)
- Scorpio. The Antimoon has designated the PCs as her frenemies, seeking to earn their love and emnity all at once.
- Sagittarius. The Antimoon has located the five young mortals on whom the world's destiny pivots, and is seeking to find them appropriate tutors.
- Capricorn. ___
- Aquarius. But for the sake of five righteous ones is the world maintained. The Antimoon seeks to (1d6: 1-2, tempt them away from righteousness to better immanetize the eschaton; 3-4, raise up a sixth to righteousness before the fifth passes; 5-6, )
- Pisces. The Antimoon seeks to pass herself off as some other divine figure, and steal its worship.
Form of the Embassy, d6:
- Mercury, an illegal marketplace which has opened up, and which offers wares from a slightly wrong version of this world
- Venus, a gallery of arts, with the Great Patroness the Antimoon at its center of prestige and funding,
- Mars, a rumbling plague, ranks of doctors passing through the miasma to carry out ukases from a court of meritocrats,
- Jupiter, an actual roving embassy, with its queen from a far-off land,
- Saturn, a carnival celebration which has incongruously broken out,
- Nibiru, a universe on the other side of the mirror (if Nibiru x Gemini, the Antimoon seeks to sublate these universes to a higher unity)
Engarde!
As one sinecured gentleman might say to another: the ball is now in your court. Phlox or Semiurge, I present you with a gift: a simple cortical homunculus. He might not look like much, but it is up to you to shape him into higher and finer things.
I got hit by a truck
ReplyDeletewell now i feel like a dick :(
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