The Maelstrom And The Depths Beyond

Squawk, reforged

Squawks player started with a very interesting concept. A Kenku artificer looking to replace their own body parts with mechanical ones. It was a goal that fit neatly into the idea I had of the squawk being the first of a new generation of beings that were born of, and in tune with, the weave of magic surrounding Asterta. He chose battlesmith and his steel defender became the prototype of the “new” body he was building for himself, one he would refine over and over across years of play.

When the party stumbled over a super dungeon known to the people of the past as the Well of Ascension, Squawks time came. Faced at last with a final and terrible challenge of confronting his own mortality, he followed the footsteps of the generation that had been lost, and succeeded where they didn’t. He managed to divest his own soul from his body and implant it into his warforged creation. Becoming, in some ways, the first of his kind.

Their purpose, turned towards war.

Haaaaad to do the Wildlings in the Viltrumite art meme going around.

Vox Populi Incognito

Off the stage or the battlefield, Pent is the opposite of flashy. She knows how to blend in. To be utterly anonymous, to take on the appearance of the most forgettable face you saw today. She has the skill and magic to support bamboozling even the keenest senses. She has one finger on the strings of fate and can make them vibrate to her tune.

Forces in Ungren work tirelessly to disenfranchise a populace already beset by organized crime and underhanded and untouchable nobility. The Fickle Thieves efforts propel them further into harms way as they disrupt these schemes. Anonymity is the greatest tool they have in their fight to steal back the heart of the city

Smooches 💜

Virtuous is a wildly popular and critically acclaimed manga series that started its run in 2170.

The basic premise is that a group of semi-immortal assassins reside on a mysterious space station on the edges of dark space, under the watchful eye of its conservator, an asari of great age known as the Director.   There are never more than ten (originally seven) assassins operating at any given time, named by each of the seven virtues.  Each assassin is a resurrected mortal, brought back by unknown forces, who had committed heinous acts in life. They are not permitted to die until they have used their newfound abilities to balance the scales, a path that is rarely straightforward or clear, and always surprising.   However, neither are they resurrected with a newfound sense of guilt or remorse; watching this evolution is part of the series appeal.

These past lives are slowly revealed over the course of each character’s narrative, closely tied to their search for atonement, using their skills to redress evil, though it is unknown which particular set of conditions will finally set them free. Some fight for thousands of years; others for only days.  Each assassin’s crime and atonement is loosely linked to their oppositional deadly sin (ex. the Humility character is immersed in situations involving pride). 

Seven years into the series, three additional virtue characters were added: Faith, Hope, and Love.  These characters have typically led morally bankrupt lives above and beyond even the usual criteria for a Virtue to manifest.  It is implied in the series that these virtue characters only appear in response to the demise of an appropriate mortal, and thus (unlike the original seven), not always active.  (Love in particular is known as one of the most vicious characters in the series, including the antagonists.)

Virtues have been portrayed by nearly every sentient species in the galaxy over the course of the manga’s run, and the only Virtue that is still alive from the original issue is Temperance.  There is constant speculation about her original life as well as her exit condition.

The series is beloved not only for the complex moral themes and intricate narratives, but because of the bittersweet tension of knowing every protagonist is fated to die as soon as they reach personal enlightenment and achieve atonement, which also brings closure to their previous life.  It also forces readers to confront “villains” (in the form of the protagonist Virtues) who never saw their actions as evil in life, and how the actions of their antagonists are seen in that light.  The story plays out against a dramatic an evolving galactic backdrop; though it has existed for less than twenty years real time, it spans several hundred years in-universe, with issues often skipping back and forth across the timeline to explore different phases of the characters’ lives.

Its human author pair is from Benning, and the artist is asari—one of the first alien artists to break into this very human art form.  While it borrows heavily from human religious themes, specifically Christian popular theology, it is also noted for its branching explorations of alien religious and philosophical beliefs, as the true nature of the Director and/or Virtue Station are never revealed, and both its characters and its fans frequently speculate on what drives the cycle of atonement, and what decides when an atonement is complete and the assassin can finally embrace death.

I hope you enjoy