Peng Lai, where dreams come true, the Chancel of Kirin

Properties of Peng Lai

Everyone has a purpose
Destiny shapes all lives
Doubt will destroy you

The Geography of Peng Lai

Peng Lai is a great mountain in a still, sun-set sea, with great clouds rumbling above its peak and a lazy, perpetual rain. It has a picaresque quality, like a fantastic painting brought to life. One can only arrive at Peng Lai by boat, which leads to a great gate and wall. One must pass the gate and then travel the 10,000 steps to reach the top of the great, craggy mountain, and only there, at the top, can one petition Kirin herself to grant your destiny. The path taken is called the Pilgrimage and one must necessarily encounter the whole of Kirin’s estates and Powers along the way in some fashion.

The Poison of Peng Lai

Something rots at the heart of Peng Lai. A great crack runs up the entirely of the mountain that has split the temple at the top itself. At first, it was barely perceptible, but it grows worse. Something blackens the plant life and the water, and sometimes, off the beaten path, terrible beasts roam. Not everyone sees these things, but they always flicker at the edges of your vision. This is the manifestation of the poison of Peng Lai, which Kirin claims is the result of some attack on her domain and her estates, perhaps the act of an Excrucian, or perhaps even treachery by Lord Entropy himself (for he is Dark and Kirin is Light). The poison can infect and wound those who stay in Peng Lai via numerous possiblepaths, but only one vector for infection is certain: If you give into your doubts about Peng Lai, you’ll be poisoned. This definitelyincludes a player asking if “Will this poison me?” Just asking such a question results in the poisoning of your character. The severity of poison depends on how deep one has traveled into Peng Lai, and manifests as a wound.
Other possibleways to become poisoned mayinclude (or may not include!):

Accepting food/help from strangers
Suffering the scorn of others
Drinking the water of Peng Lai
Accepting a lie as truth
Acting in a way contrary to your true dharma

Go to a better place!

0 or less: You may not enter Peng Lai, for you are unworthy!

1: You may not enter Peng Lai yet, but perhaps you’ll be worthy of entrance some day

3: You may not enter Peng Lai, for you are unworthy, but you meet someone who is also trying to gain entrance. You agree to go out for a cup of tea together!

5: You may not enter Peng Lai, for you are not worthy, but you know why you are unworthy! You have learned how you mightenter Peng Lai! You just need to improve these things about yourself, and by following your dharmic path, you will inevitably enter Peng Lai.

6: You may not enter Peng Lai, for you are unworthy, but you have learned what it takes for anyoneto enter Peng Lai. People come to you for help, and you can offer them your great wisdom.

8:You may enter Peng Lai. You are worthy!

9: Do not enter Peng Lai. Stay, and help others enter Peng Lai.

Troubles, Tools and Bonds

You are worthy!: None may enter Peng Lai who are unworthy, which is built into the difficulty list. But if one is truly worthy, having fulfilled their dharma, walked the path of their life and finally, at last, achieved their destiny, gains a +5 to enter Peng Lai. This definitely applies to any Power whose Flower is Alyssym.

Exile

Many manypeople want to enter Peng Lai. Entire nations have decamped from their worlds to come to Peng Lai to find their destiny, but none are worthy to enter. They await their moment of destiny at the base of the mountain, outside of the gate, in a great, vast refugee community named Exile. Budd reigns here, often bringing people across the sunset sea and parking them at Exile until he can find another place for them. It acts as a sort of half-way house for the dispossessed and desperate. The result is an explosion of anarchic culture, despair, hope, bright-eyed children and hollow-eyed adults, cynicism mixed with idealism, and violence mixed with hope.

The Poison of Exile: Exile isn’tpoisoned, because it’s outsidePeng Lai. It lies at the gate that entersPeng Lai. So, Budd is quick to assure everyone that there is no danger in Exile. Even so, rumors persist that those who have poisoned Peng Lai reside in Exile, and certainly some strange and dangerous seeming characters lurk in Exile, lending it some truth. If there is poison in Exile, though, it is evidently weak:

Poison of Exile: Surface Wound (“Strangers mean to harm me”) 1

Properties of Exile

Tool/Trouble: That’s Weird! (+/-2): Everything in Exile is weird. Ancient Gauls brush shoulders with medieval Jews, modern Syrians and Zeta Reticulans. You can find anything in Exile, providing you seek something unfamiliar. This cuts both ways. If you seek something weird or exotic, you gain +2 to find it (that is, not only are you more likely to find it, but doing so will improve your life), but seeking the traditional and familiar is penalized (That is, not only is it more likely to fail, but it will make your life worse).
Edge: The Specter of Violence (Varies): The Power of Violence, one of Bhaal’s powers, visited Exile after the death of Bhaal, in an effort to force Budd back to his old ways. Deadwood found him and killed him, and his specter still haunts Exile. The people there are all intimately familiar with the fear and possibility of violence. One can invoke the power of Violence simply by uttering its name, implying the possibility. Doing so grants a powerful edge that increases the more one invokes him. It cannot be used to improve your life, but it can be used to force your will onto others. However, the more powerful you make the specter of violence, the more powerful it becomes for others to invoke as well. Budd has forbidden his invocation, because too much invocation might bring Violence back.

Description Snippets

A light drizzle taps gently on the draped cloth that covers the pavillion of the marketplace. Beneath you, the mud squishes between your toes or beneath your shoes. Thunder rumbles and the warm, lifting wind, the one that flaps the canopy above, smells of lotus blossoms, peace and the promise of a coming spring. Through the drizzle, to the East, the sun touches the horizon behind the grey curtain of rain, and paints the great mountain of Peng Lai a rainbow of hues.
An elephant stops at a red light, flicking his ears to wave away flies as he waits for traffic to pass before him. Atop the gray titan rests a wide-eyed alien, wearing a turban on his oversized, pallid head. When he catches you watching him, he waves his riding crop and shouts in a deep bariton “Wazzaaaap?”
As you walk through the market, a black woman begins to shout at you from a stall. She wears prayer beads in her dreads that clack ceremoniously as she moves, and her richly colored, arabic-styles robes flow in the wind. She’s trying to sell you saffron, or perhaps an old 8-track player. Across the street, a portly goblin also vies for your attention. His griddle steams with crab pancakes, falafel and fresh, still-living gagh. He grins at you with yellow teeth and waves the odor of his crazed BBQ in your direction “Only one dolla!” he growls.
A little girl is lost in a dark alley. A Mexican, a Syrian and a Zeta Reticulan, with ominous technology, notice her. They close in. She trembled but says “I am not afraid!” Behind her, an ominous specter rises invisibly. It whispers a threat in her ear. She trembles again. The men, they say “You look lost, little girl.” One reaches out for her…

Improve Yourself!

0 or less: Sometimes fad dieting and self-improvement plans leave you worse off than you were before.

1: You’re perfect the way you are.

3: Your motivation for self-improvement infects others!

4: You improve yourself in some specific, small way.

6: Your self-improvement is noticeable. Others are impressed! Even jealous!

7: You gain the sort of quick self-improvement people really crave. You lose all that weight and look great! You get that degree! You’re a better person.

9: You don’t achieve self-improvement, but you find the path to genuine self-improvement and gain a stone that you can apply to self-improvement

Troubles, Tools and Bonds

Wound: Superficial Self-Improvement: Success at self-improvement might be illusory. You gain a bond that states that you’re better at something, but it wounds you, and lasts only until such time that you realize that it’s not really you, and then goes away.
Wound: Magical Self-Improvement: Success at self-improvement might be illusory but awesome. This grants you the sort of benefits that you see in adverts or on posters, the sort of self-improvement that you actually want. It’s kung fu, or a perfect waistline, or a better degree than everyone else. You are a demonstrably better person. This is also a wound, but a Serious or Divine Wound. It grants an Affliction-based power associated with your self-improvement, and lasts until you realize that it’s not really you. This sort of self-improvement dissolves people, like the chubby sweet girl who becomes sleek and perfect but loses all of her personality and becomes a plastic magazine cover.

The Golden Palace

Visible from Exile is the great Golden Palace, a wondrous and glittering mansion that stands just beyond the gates and has balconies from which its denizens can step out, survey those unworthy of entrance into Peng Lai, and assure themselves that they are better people.

The Golden Palace is the domain of the Power of Etiquette, though it has lain empty for quite some time. Nonetheless, the relics of her passing remain within. It contains libraries full of geneological books in which one may find proof that your ancestors were kings, or golden robot-like beings who will happily teach you how to eat or speak or dress or walk to prove that you are a superior person. If you remain in the Golden Palace, they promise you, you can achieve the sort of success that one dreams about.

Poison of the Golden Palace: The poison of the Golden Palace is well-known, and it haunts the hallways. The persistent rumor is that if you’re discovered to be poisoned, you’ll be cast out of Peng Lai, thus the denizens of the Golden Palace run about, attempting to prove to others that, unlike the dirty people of Exile, they’re too good to be poisoned. Nonetheless, more and more sick people are found. What is its cause?

Serious Wound: “I am not good enough” 2

Properties of the Golden Palace

Edge: Self-Improvement Scheme +3: The Golden makes self-improvement easier, if you can step past its gates. However, its effects only apply in comparison to others. You may apply it as a tool, but only if you accept one of the wounds aabove as a result of the attempt.
Edge: Proof of Worth (+4): The Golden Palace contains a vast library of documents, certificates and eloquent books that all prove that you, specifically, are worthy. These can be offered up as evidence of proof of worth to anyone, including to gain entrance to Peng Lai!
Bond: Better than You: The native Denizens of the Golden Palace have a bond that expresses their ultimate superiority over all others, worth +1 to +5, depending on how supreme they are, though usually only the Duchess of Etiquette herself has achieved the lofty heights of “Better than You +5”

Description Snippets

The golden clockwork denizen of the golden palace gleams a burnished hue in gaze of the setting sun. She bows before you. “I am DeeDee-Six, human/Noble relations. I am pleased to make your acquaintance. Please, step in out of the rain.”
Endless halls and spiraling staircases spread before you, each leading to unknown and unfamiliar rooms. Portraits of people you should know, but don’t, line the walls, and various impressive statuary and knick-knacks clutter the walls, giving one the sense that a single touch might send the crashing down, shattering the cathedral like silence of the Golden Palace. The clockwork robots move precisely and exactly: the know they belong here, know where they are going and where they are coming from. Do you?
Down one of the corridors, you can see humans sitting at tables and dining under the instruction of golden robots. They lift their spoons to their mouths in perfect unison, and lower them again, clacking them together on the table like one great machine.
Upon the balcony, you can survey the valley below. Exile spreads out beneath you, filthy and muddy, a riot of disconnected colors. The people seem so small, so petty and so minor from this lofty perch. A woman stands at your side. She smiles at you. She seems to believe you are important and impressive. She clears her throat, and you sense that she’s about to test her perception, to see if you belong here, in this lofty perch, or down there, among the rabble.
As you walk the endless halls in search of the missing mistress of Etiquette, you overhear a conversation “We are here to make you better,” a clockwork robot intones with the vibratoins of a tolling clock. “But if I am on the soil of Peng Lai, surely I am already worthy.” “I said not that you were unworthy, only that we are here to make you better.”

Find Inner Peace

0 or less: Your doubts manifest as the poison of Peng Lai! I guess it isa real thing!

1: You meditate and find your center and calm. But does that really count as inner peace?

3: You meditate beautifully and find your center and calm. But is that inner peace? Others think it might be. They want to know how you achieved it.

5: You meditate and find your center and calm, and you also realize something important, about yourself, about your past, about your regrets or hopes and dreams. You understand the world better, as well as your place in it. But does that really count as inner peace?

6: You meditate and find your center and calm, and others are awed by your evident inner peace. They come to you as a wise sage and ask for help in achieving inner peace. But did you really achieve inner peace.

8: You meditate and find your center and calm and achieve enlightenment. You know something profoundly spiritual and important, having learned a fundamental truth of the world that you can offer to others. But does that really count as inner peace?

9: You meditate and find your center and calm.

Troubles, Tools and Bonds

Wound: Enlightenment (1): You have achieved enlightenment, which grants +1 to any attempts to retain your moral center. This is a great burden, however, and it wounds you (superficial). The only way to heal it is to accept that it is an illusion.
Tool: Inner Peace (+5): You have achieved the final state of bliss where no things bother you. How did you do it? Can it be done?

The Tea Garden

The heart of the Peng Lai is not its temple, but its tea garden. Here, the Cult of the Tea Blossom serves perfect tea brewed in the hot springs from the heart of the mountain, where the Power of Tea reigns over the peace of Peng Lai. With the death of Abigail Ng, however, things have fallen into disarray. Two of the five divine guard beasts, the sworn protectors of the Tea Garden, have been exiled and one has vanished. Abigail herself has perished. The Cult of the Tea Blossom struggles to hold the increasing poison at bay, but sometimes the hot springs run black with it, and the caverns deep in the bowels of the temple hiss and whistle with the hungry rumblings of strange, shadowy monsters.

Poison of the Tea Garden: The Tea Garden now has not one, but two poisons. The first, the original, is an insidious one that comes to those who try to meditate, and often takes the form of a poisoned enlightenment. The other, the new one, comes (sometimes!) to those who drink the tea. The latter is contagious, because the bearer carries the poison of Peng Lai.

Serious Wound: “I shall never find inner peace” (3)
Serious Wound: “Veins filled with the Poison of Peng Lai” (3)

Properties of the Tea Garden

The Five Divine Guardians: The Five Divine Beasts are immortal martial artists who have achieved martial enlightenment in the Tea Garden and have been chosen by Kirin to act as the protectors of the Power of Tea. They failed in their task. To learn more, see Abigail Ng.
Cult of the Tea Blossom (+3): When it comes to enjoying a cup of tea, few can offer a better or more perfect cup of tea than the Cult of the Tea Blossom. Yukimura Yuji himself has gone on a quest to find them and to join their ranks due to his love of Abigail Ng, but has thus far failed.

Description Snippets

The rain of Peng Lai bounces off the roof of your pagoda, leaving you in peace. In the distance, it fills a deer-chaser fills slowly with rain water and then rings out a gentle bamboo percussion. The white noise of the rain wipes out all other noise and sound, leaving you alone with your thoughts.
Tea feels warm in your hand. It warms your lips, your mouth, and it tastes bitter and sweet at once, each flavor accentuating the other. It fills your belly with healing warmth. Deep in that warmth, in the truth found in the yin and yang of sweet and bitter, you sense some greater truth.
Rain disturbs the peace of the ponds in the garden. It makes their surface a riot of tiny ripples. Beside the pools, tea blossoms catch the rain, forming small, jewel-like droplets on the petals and blossoms.
As you seek calm, the cultists sit with you. They prepare your tea, wearing their robes of green and black, beautiful young women not much different from the barristas of Vancouver except for the gentleness of their eyes. Their graceful tea ceremony is ruined by the rival of a frightened priestess, who whispers urgently in their ear. The tea cup slips ever so slightly, losing some of its tea, and the cup itself cracking in her hand. The sound of that crack cuts through the peace offered by the fall of the rain, and the warmth of the tea in your hand.

Achieve True Wisdom

0 or less: You’ve achieved sophistry. You’ve come up with some clever arguments and ideas that seem sound, but are actually just very clever logical fallacies. You’re actually worse off than when you started!

1: Learning is fun!

2: You don’t achieve wisdom, but you do achieve trivia. Did you know that James Garfield was the first US president to be assassinated in office?

3: You didn’t achieve wisdom, but you’re more erudite. You can offer wisdoms that impress others, even if they’re not truewisdom.

5: You don’t achieve true wisdom, but you learned something you needed to know. This is usually some pertinent fact to a problem in your life, such as a good strategy to defeat an enemy, or a wrong you committed in the past and should rectify.

6: You don’t achieve true wisdom, but you become so erudite that people begin to think of you as a sage. They hope you’ll offer them your wisdom, so they can gain it more easily than risking themselves on the Poison of the Font, or otherwise going through the work themselves.

8:You don’t achieve true wisdom, but you learn something profoundlyimportant: the secret vulnerability of Lord Entropy, the name of a lost world, the true nature of the Poison of Peng Lai.

9: You know that you do not know. You have achieved the first step of true wisdom.

Troubles, Tools and Bonds

Tool: True Wisdom (+5): Can such a thing even exist?

The Fountain of Wisdom

Near the pinnacle of Peng Lai, deep in a foreboding cavern protected by strange monsters and terrifying, difficult to navigate cavern, one can find the fountain. It is lonely, with no attendants or assistants, deep in a cavern haunted by shadows, for wisdom stands alone. Those who humbly kneel may drink from it and partake of the heartwaters of Peng Lai, that which feeds the tea garden springs below, and gain not only inner peace, but true wisdom. When Deirdre Brooks drank from the font, she became the Power of Education.

Poison of the Fountain of Wisdom: Some refuse to drink from the Font of Wisdom for fear of its poison. They would rather cling to the truths they already know rather than risk their world view on the false wisdom offered by the Font. They claim that some who drink from the fountain sometimes find something black and brakish in it, something dread and terrible. When they do, they find themselves afflicted with the following poison:

Serious Wound: Nothing is True (4)

Properties of the Fountain of Wisdom

The Unknown Beast: A monster shrouded in mystery stalks the caverns outside the Font of Wisdom. Its claws and teeth drip with all the poisons of Peng Lai, and the fears of mortal men call it. It whispers to others to turn back, to accept their ignorance. Those who embrace and revel in their ignorance became the allies of the Unknown Beast, who rests in their shadows, breathing its poison on all others. The Unknown Beast has an Aspect Gift “Slavering Beast” 5, the Mysterious Gift, and the Poisons of Peng Lai gift, which allows it to inflict any poison of Peng Lai.
The Winding Cavern (Trouble -4): Making it through the winding caverns of the font of wisdom require facing illusions, tricky passages and intuition-defying physics, but all of it follows a logic of its own. Those who face the Winding Cavern face a -4 to their efforts to navigate it unless they set aside their preconceptions.

Description Snippets

The cliff leading to the cavern is exceedingly narrow. The wind here howls and turns the rain into cutting droplets that make the stone slick and dangerous. Exile is a patchwork of color down below, and the stairs of Peng Lai seem a thin ribbon winding of up the mountain side. You’re reached a terrifying height, one few mortals have ever achieved. Dare you to rise further? To touch heaven itself?
The cavern offers some shelter from the rain, but it’s cold. The stone of the cavern walls feels hard and unforgiving under your hands, and it vanishes deep into uncertain shadows, creating a confusing maze of darkness and uncertainty. The only illumination offered comes from sudden jags of lightning outside, which cast strange, unfamiliar shadows. You’d have to leave the cave to know what cast those shadows, but true wisdom lies deeper in the cavern.
Something crawls these caverns with you. It hulks. It breaths. You cannot see it, but you sense its presence. “There is no font,” a stranger once confided in you down in Exile. “Kirin is a monster and lies to others to convince them to come up here so that she can devour you.” Those words come unbidden as you realize that the heavy, poisonous breathing of the Unknown Beast is right behind you…

Summit Peng Lai

0 or less: The path of Peng Lai is a straight and narrow one, yet somehow, you managed to get lost. Strange monsters lurk in the wilderness of Peng Lai, the manifestation of your doubts and fears, and the poison of Peng Lai. They breath their poison in to the wilds of Peng Lai, and they hunt you now.

1: My, doens’t Peng Lai have beautiful scenery?

2: You manage to climb Peng Lai! You reach the Tea Garden, where you may find inner peace. Isn’t that enough?

3: The Tea Cult are impressed you’ve made it so far. “Few manage so many steps, for the burden of destiny is great. Come, great one, and sit with us.”

4: You manage to climb Peng Lai! You reach the Font of Wisdom. It’s yawning cavern now beckons to you.

6: Tales of your summit spread far and wide. People know you surrendered your chance for inner peace instead for a chance at wisdom. When you return, they will eagerly sit at your feet, waiting to learn what you will tell them.

7: You summit Peng Lai. The temple of Kirin lies before you. Dare you to enter and face your destiny?

Troubles, Tools and Bonds

Trouble: Destiny answers to none (-5): You cannot force destiny’s hand. Attempting to do so results in a -5 trouble. Those who attempt to avoid their destiny, or who try to rewrite it, end badly.
Wound: Burning Dharma (+1 to +5): If you find your destiny in Peng Lai, beneath the gaze of the Divine Kirin, your dharma shall burn with vivid intensity and slowly consume you in the process. If you accept the burden of your bright destiny, you’ll gain a bond to achieve your destiny, but it will manifest as a wound. The closer you get to your destiny, the larger the bond gets, but the worse your wound gets, until eventually the conflagaration consumes you utterly at the moment of perfect oneness with your purpose.

For none may speak of the Temple of Kirin

The Temple of Kirin

The Temple rests upon the pinnacle of Peng Lai, beneath the weeping rain clouds. The rift that runs through Peng Lai reaches it and splits it in twain. The split travels even higher and rends the clouds above, creating a rift through which the sunset gleams and casts a hopeful rainbow through the perpetual rain. Some say that in that split, you can see the real truth of Peng Lai. Others say that the split itself is a lie, something placed their by an excrucian menace. Those who step in the temple may look upon the rift and see the truth for themselves, but those that do may not speak of it, for none who have beheld Kirin’s temple may speak of it, by the Divine Mandate of Kirin herself.

The Temple of Kirin, at the 10,000^thstep, carries within it the ultimate promise of knowing and achieving your purpose. Kirin will grant you the destiny you know you deserve. She will make your dreams come true. All travel in Peng Lai, each step, is but a step in an attempt to achieve ones true purpose. Her temple represents the culmination of that dream: You can be all that you ever hoped to be.

And, if the rumors are true, that pinnacle is poisoned. According to their doubts, Kirin’s temple rests atop a lie. Do you believe them, or do you believe her?

Poison of Kirin’s Temple: Kirin assures all that her temple has escaped all poison, that upon the completion of your pilgrimage, you’ll certainly achieve your destiny, but some claim that when you reach the top, you’ll find nothing but an empty ruin. They argue that Kirin’s temple is the source of the poison, and that the poison itself is the truth of Peng Lai, and that Peng Lai is, itself, a lie. If that’s true, then when one reaches the temple, they’ll be afflicted with this soul-breaking poison:

Divine Wound: I have no purpose (5)

Properties of the Temple of Kirin

Imperial Miracle: Speak Note of What Happens Here: Those who witness the beautiful majesty or Kirin’s temple are forbidden from speaking of it. When asked, their eyes widen, and then they shake their head “You cannot understand without seeing it. It is not what you expect” and they are always right.
The Bent Strands of Destiny: Kirin and her palace let you achieve, or even change, your ultimate destiny. You may escape the trouble of “Destiny Answers to None” but Kirin will set your destiny on fire if she does this.

Description Snippets

None ever describe the temple of Kirin. Perhaps none have seen it?

XygXygl "Budd" Zardoz, the Repentent Destroyer, Baron of Immigration

Excrucians have launched wave after wave of attacks on Earth, but few were weirder than the time they brought aliens. First, they arranged for the death of Zeta Reticula, among other worlds, and then enslaved the desperate, homeless refugees and hurled them with excrucian-powered weaponry. Budd led one of these attacks, wielding one of Zeta Reticula’s most lethal weapons. Alas, Deirdre and Magnus combined forced to fend off this attack, the first working with the Power of Science (who wielded Occam’s Razor) to prove that the Zeta Reticulans really couldn’t be attacking, and then Magnus turned the engines of economy and hype to popularizing the attack. Through their efforts, mankind was saved and the Zeta Reticulans reduced to jokes and tchotchkies.

As Deirdre waded through his armada, her red blade glowing with disdain, Budd made sure to surrender to her. Deirdre brought her to Peng Lai and cast the war-criminal before Kirin’s throne for judgment. When she demanded to know why he shouldn’t be brought before the Locust Court for serving an Excrucian, Budd claimed he had only his race’s best interests in mind. Kirin understood this and judged that he should serve her as her power: He would save all of humanity by taking them away from this doomed world and to other, safer worlds, far from the threat of Excrucians. In exchange, she would allow him to move the refugees of dead worlds, including his own, to Earth. When humanity was safe, she would allow him to be free once more. He graciously accepted slavery as preferable to death, and gained the Estate of Immigration to better serve Kirin.

He works now to repair the harm his armada dealt to the fabric of Earth’s reality. His Reticulan Conspiracy works tirelessly to ferry people to and from the world. The conspiracy vanishes people from the world, bringing them to a safer world far from the Excrucian war. They also go to dead or dying worlds and brings the desperate back to Earth. Many of them congregate in refugee camps at the base of Peng Lai until they can find some secret nook and cranny on Earth into which they can secret themselves.

Despite his good works, the Powers and Imperators of Earth remember well that he once served an Excrucian and continue to question his motives. Can we really trust the aliens he brings with him? Have they been properly vetted? And are the people of Earth being safely taken care of? Kirin assures everyone that everything is fine, but many people are suspicious of Budd, despite his claims to be a true Earth-man now, having even taken an Earth name (borrowed from one of his abductees).

Budd serves the Song of the Wild; His flowers are the Wild Rose (The Key of Something Different) and Gorse (The Key of Something Enthralled). His anchors are the Reticulan Conspiracy and his Interstellar Death Engine and flag ship of the Reticulan invasion, the Arc of Extinction.

Immigrants

Budd brings a variety of important races with him into Earth as part of Kirin’s exchange program of hope and redemption. They’re not technically anchors, but they often serve Budd’s purpose. Among others, these include:

Gnomes

From a dying world full of rich greenery, giant bugs, mushroom houses and colorful, twee deciduous trees, Gnomes have escaped the dread hand of the Excrucians to make their way to Earth. Budd often holds them up as an example of model immigrants, as they’ve integrated fairly well with humanity. They’ve found a place in the gardens of mankind and employment in the banks of Zurich. Often, when humans discuss gnomes, they universally imply that gnomes are jewish. This is a stereotype! Most gnomes might be jewish, but there’s quite some Buddhist and LeVayan Satanist minorities among the gnomish populations
Rules of Gnomes:

Bond: Gnomes are adorable +1
Bond: Gnomes are very good with money +1
Affliction: Gnomes turn to stone while a human looks at them 2

Steampunks

Not all aliens from other worlds aren’t human! Steampunks come from a world that’s dying of airship piracy. Starvation, war and general collapse have turned the world into a vast ruin of decaying monuments, badlands and deserts full of lost cities and toxic smogs that hide the land. They came to Earth recently, and have mostly settled into the Pacific Northwest. Some have mistaken their technology and style as a fashion trend and begun aping Steampunks, which the Steampunks consider offensive cultural appropriation.

Rules of Steampunks:

Bond: Steampunks look great +1
Bond: Steampunk technology is beautiful, wholesome and impractical +2

Zeta Reticulans

Hailing from Zeta Reticuli, they mounted an ill-fated invasion in the early 20^thcentury, under the threat of Excrucian extinction, who employed robotic inquisitors to ensure that the Zeta Reticulans obeyed his will. Since the failed war, wiped from humanity’s memory, which remains only as audio-recorded thought records that some have mistaken for a radio play, the Zeta Reticulans have taken up residency in the world, where they serve in Budd’s conspiracy, helping to transport humans off world, often leaving duplicates or tracking devices in the humans that remain. They also work closely with the governments of the world to give them new technology (and, it must be said, those governments often use Zeta Reticulan assistance to maintain power)

Rules of Zeta Reticulans:

Bond: Zeta Reticulans are small, weak and ugly +2
Bond: Zeta Reticulans are smarter than humans +1
Bond: Zeta Reticulans experiment on others +1
Bond: Zeta Reticulan technology is dangerous, frightening and powerful +2

Abigail Ng, Saintess of Tea

Ah, here she is, the tragic Abigail Ng. Who is she? Where did she come from? What happened to her?

This post has no spoilers, not even after the jump, because she’s too central to offer any information on. She’s on par with a few other figures who won’t even get a post at all. But I can tell you a few things about her.

Background

British archeaologist Matilda Carter believed that a secretive “tea blossom cult” existed in on some lost island off the coast of China, and that this cult had a direct line to God. Her obsessive pursuit of it put her in the cross hairs of the guardians of the cult, the Five Divine-Beasts. One, the accomplished and handsome Ng Sin-Feng fell for her wit and beauty and sought to bring her into the cult. Another, the sinister Li Xuan, saw a danger in her and demanded her destruction. Kirin whispered her judgment and spoke of the destiny of Matilda Carter, that she and Ng would bear her a child that would become her heart and saintess. Li Xuan declared “This must not be,” and was exiled from Peng Lai by Kirin.

To fulfill Kirin’s command, Matilda and Ng married and moved back to Britain to raise the child.
Abigail was born beneath an auspicious sign of the pheonix and enjoyed a well-heeled British life, thanks to her mother’s lingering fortunes and her father’s mysterious wealth. Her father raised her in the ways of the tea ceremony, and her mother raised her as a proper British lady. While they journeyed off to China to prepare her entrance into the cult, Abigail was left in a boarding school, dreaming of a new life for herself where she could decide for herself what she wanted to be, rather than being forced to live up to her parents’ legacy.

On her 16^th birthday, the time of her sacrifice came and she journeyed with her parents to China to become the saintess of the Tea Blossom Cult.

Unwittingly ascending to godhood didn’t set well with Abigail. She understood it. She felt as though it had always been there, but she found it unduly interfered with her life. And so, in a fit of teenage pique, she left England when she turned 18 and chose to study journalism in the University of British Colombia. She remained duty bound to serve Kirin, though, and so Kirin shifted Peng Lai to connect to Vancouver, embedding Sun Yat Sen’s garden throughout Vancouver’s history.

She was found killed in an abandoned warehouse by an unknown assailant.

Notes

Abigail’s flowers were the Alyssym (the Key of Something Spiritual) and the Gorse (the Key of Something in Thrall). She had the Cult of the Tea Blossom (with both Sin-Feng and Xuan) as her (known) anchors. She followed the Song of Heaven, for Abigail sought to make the world a better place.

Ng Sin-Feng

Li Xuan

Deirdre Brooks, Bodhisattva of Education

Dierdre Brooks worked veryhard to earn her PhD (in Education, with a thesis on “Epistymology and Education: On knowing when something has been taught” and when something has been learned) and it launched her from the world of mere mortals into the magnificent world of academics, where she had always yearned to be. Only there, she discovered that she was locked in an endless wheel of dissertation, publication, argumentation and lecture. She realized that she learned nothing and knew nothing. So, she abandoned her lofty position and wandered the world.

She studied in the secret laboratories beneath the Rocky Mountains she found data without context. She sought knowledge in the sacred libraries of the vatican and found only dust. She meditated with mystics in India and found empty babbling. She journeyed further east until she found her path blocked by endless ocean, and a single island, and upon the island, a deer. She sailed to the island and clambered the winding paths of its mountain, always following the strange deer. Finally, the deer stopped by a fountain in a cave, and bowed its head.

“You may drink,” it said “But you will forever be burdened with wisdom.”
Suddenly, all became clear: the context behind the data, the meaning of the dusty books, the truth in the babbling, and the purpose of the fountain. “I know what I came to know.” She said, and the deer became a kirin and bowed its head

“Then you should teach me.”

And thus, was Deirdre enlightened. Kirin became her student and offered the Estate of Education as her payment. Deirdre came back down from the mountain bearing a new great work: The Eightfold Path to Smarter Living: the Art of Self-Engagement, a wondrous treatise that laid out the steps necessary to improving ones life. But though the wisdom contained unparalleled wisdom, those who followed its precepts needed a teacher, and Deirdre became that teacher, for she had transcendedher professorship and became something greater: a life-coach.

Dierdre follows the Song of Light, and her flowers are the Vervain (the Key of Something Powerful) and the Alyssym (the Key of Destiny Fulfilled).

Anchors

The Red Mark

There exist seven blades called the points of order. Each guards a location that pinions order to the world, keeping it from descending into chaos. Several have already been lost, including the Point of Justice (which was only recently lost during a US presidential election) and the Point of Philosophy, which was replaced by a poor substitute created by the desperate magics of a Franciscan friar, William of Ockham. The Red Mark is the Point of Wisdom, and the defender of the Font of Wisdom always carries it. Deirdre always keeps it at her side, and rarely draws it unless necessary. Those wounded by the blade have their flaws revealed to all the world, even to themselves. Seeing exactly how one is wrong is usually enough to undo any mortal, though Gods have been known to reinvent themselves as correct and, of course, the flawless have nothing to fear from the blade.

The Body of Deirdrian Literature

Deirdre has published a consider volume of work in her increasingly long lifetime, but especially during the time she was trapped on the Wheel of Academics, before she escaped and became the Bodhisattva of Education. Her two most important books, sometimes called “the capstones” or the black and white treatise, are the “Epistymology and Education” and “the Art of Self-Engagement”. Either presents the user enormous power of insight and awareness, though the latter is very difficult to find in the mortal world (you can still get some limited print runs, though), and both together have the power to bring those who study both the sort of enlightenment that Deirdre herself found, and access to her Ivory Tower God-Body technique (which is the physical manifestation of her enlightenment).

Any of the books have the power to summon Deirdre, and those who read her books often describe the content of their pages to address the reader directly, if Deirdre so wishes to bestow them with the glory of her wisdom.

The Disciples of Self-Engagement

Deirdre offers her services to those who wish to improve their education and finally achieve the sort of happiness and enlightenment that she, herself, has. She has a few mortal clients, though most of these are prophets of some fragment of her wisdom, who peddle what they’ve learned in the self-help market. She also helps fellow powers (including Magnus Carter), vampires trying to kick their teenage-girl habits, minor Gods who seek to rehabilitate their image by appearing in major motion pictures, and Kirin herself. She is bound by her own divine will to improve their lives, and they are bound by her divine will to become part of her greater estate.

The first of her clients was Kirin herself, who revealed her true identity to Deirdre and asked for help in gaining the acceptance and love she sought. Deirdre accepted and understood, and so she seeks to undermine the Excrucian War. She regularly meets with Cameron Delacroix and discusses what can be done to bring the war to an end.

Deirdre is also a hipster; her academic dissatisfaction was spurred by the whisperings of the Arch-hipster, and it drove her across the world. She bears a sleeve tattoo that has been embellished in every country she has travelled, and wears authentic horn-rimmed glasses to fix her eyesight. She was the vector of infection for Yvonka/Kirin.

Deirdre is also in love with ideas. She has fallen for another Estate, and thus the power associated with it. She finds it fascinating and could study it endlessly, but fears revealing her crush to anyone, for fear of falling afoul of the Windflower law and, more importantly, revealing a weakness to others.

Aspect 2 (Pulp Hero) (6)
Domain 0
Persona 5 (15)
Treasure 0
Miracle Points: 8 (3)
Common Gifts: Immutable (1)
Gifts:

The Red Mark, a Point of Order (Treasure 5, Simple Miracle, Local Things, forces someone to understand their errors) (2)
Ivory Tower God-Body Technique (Aspect 5 Skill: Martial Arts, Simple Miracle, Self, Broadly applicable) (3)

Passions and Skills

Passion: “You can learn to live better” +1
Superior Quality: Enlightened +1
Skill: Life Coach +3
Skill: College Educated +3
Cool +2
Shine +5

Bonds and Afflictions

Bond: I must guard the fountain of Wisdom +3
Bond: I am the pinnacle of human education +3
Bond: My PhD makes me a better person than people without one +1
Bond: I make my clients, including Kirin, better people +1
Bond: I’m in love with an idea +2
Affliction: All the world is my school 3

Affliction: I’m a hipster 3

Kirin, the Koi Goddess, the Light Magister of Tea, Immigration, Education, Etiquette, Koi Fish and Rain

The Chinese Unicorn, the k’i-lin, is one of the four animals of good omen;

the others are the dragon, the phoenix, and the tortoise.

The Unicorn is foremost of all the 360 creatures that live on land…

Its appearance foretells the birth of an upright ruler.

To wound the Chinese Unicorn or to come across its dead body is unlucky.

The span of this animal’s natural life is a thousand years.

-Jorge Luis Borges, the Book of Imaginary Beings

No Imperator is more beloved of Vancouver (and perhaps the world) than the beautiful Koi Goddess, Kirin. She is your dreams made flesh. She descended from her Island that Isn’t, the Mountain of Dreams, Peng Lai, and brought with her the promise of a better life. Her passage makes turns peasants into kings. A wish in one of her ponds can give you the most loving of wives. Invoking her name can substantially improve your efforts to find the cure to dangerous diseases. She has been worshiped throughout the world in a thousand small cults, by those who would be kings, or who would fall in love, or simply those who wanted a better life. Even so, the goddess of Rain struggles with a tragic existence. Peng Lai has been poisoned and cracked by saboteurs unseen, and now her precious Abigail Ng has been taken from her. Torment is often visited upon her, and she makes no secret that she believes this comes from her opposition to many of Lord Entropy’s Laws:

The Windflower Law: We must all learn to love
The Chestnut Law: We must learn to forgive
The Rule of Man: Humanity deserves our respect.
The Rule of War: Why must we make war on the Excrucians? Has none tried to understand their grievance?
The Crowfoot Law: Makes us all complicit in Entropy’s tyranny.
The Code for Humanity: Let humanity be as they would be.

Thus far, she merely voices her objections, but she has begun to grumble that Lord Entropy seeks to destroy her.

She has three powers.

Abigail Ng, the Power of Tea, who was always destined to be Kirin’s power, who brought solace to the the tormented Koi Goddess. She’s taking Abigail’s death pretty hard.
Bob, the Power of Immigration, a Zeta Reticulan who has forged a pact with Kirin to evacuate doomed humans from this world and resettle them elsewhere. In exchange, she allows him to smuggle aliens onto Earth.
Deirdre Brooks, PhD and the Power of Education, a Bodhisattva who transcended both life and academics to become Kirin’s most potent power.

Her Flowers are the Lotus (the Key of the Descending Angel) and the Star of Bethlehem (the Key of Something, Changed Forever)

Estate of Tea

-Tea infuses water with its essence (2).
-Tea soothes pain (2)
-Tea quiets the din of the world (1)
-Tea is surrounded by beauty and class (1)

Domain Miracles of Tea

Make a cup of tea. Make a moment momentarily peaceful, or more beautiful, or more classy.
Know everything about a cup of tea (where it came from, what sort of tea it is), talk to a cup about what it has seen, sense the nearest tea.
Make a cup of tea a potent pain killer. Make a cup of tea enormously enlightening, or make a tea party/ceremony magnificently classy. Make a cup of tea very strong.
Conjure a pot of tea out of nothing. Summon tea to you. Animate tea like a water bender, lashing it around and attacking people with it.
Destroy a cup of tea. Remove taste or color from a cup of tea. Prevent a cup of tea from soothing someone, or from being classy. Look into a cup of tea and see through any other cup of tea, or know details about someone who drinks a cup of tea, or see the future in the tea leaves.
Transport a specific cup of tea from one place to another. A cup of tea can cure wounds, or fill a lake with tea-goodness, or become bitter enough to kill.
Create and animate a great tea tsunami that crushes cities. Creat a new flavor of tea ex-nihilo.
Remove a sort of tea from existence (“Nightshade tea is no longer possible”).
Oolong tea was never “blue” tea. Green Tea is native to China, rather than the Americas.

Persona Miracles of Tea

Make someone a little more soothing, or a little more bitter, or make their surroundings a little classier.
Become present in any cup of tea. See through any single cup of tea.
Change your surroundings to something classier and more beautiful. Infuse water with some element of our essence. Sooth the pain of others with a touch.
Infuse water with someone’s essence, so that people pick up their memories with a drink. Make someone harsh and bitter (without a bit of sugar, in any case). Surround someone with beautiful and classy people.
Remove someone’s bitterness. Erase their essence from water (such as their blood). Cast them into a world without class or beauty. Become incarnated in all cups of tea.
Make someone a divine saint of tea, for whom the presence of tea, or the drinking of tea, will greatly empower them. Make tea obey someone’s whim, turning into the greatest tea-master ever. Become able to soothe the pain of death. Turn the entire country around you into a place of beauty and class. Slip your entire essence into the water around you, becoming incarnated in water.
Make someone hatefully bitter and willing to kill. Turn someone into a scar that silences all around them. Suffuse an ocean with the essence of a dying ship-captain.
Remove the essence of the God of Salt from the ocean. Cast down a king by removing all beauty and class from around him. Pluck the thorn of hatred from the thumb of Lord Entropy.
Enchant an entire bloodline to require tea to survive, but to gain magical powers whenever they drink tea.

Estate of Immigration

– Immigration is feared by conservatives (1)
– Immigration crosses borders (3)
– Immigration moves people from places of despair to places of hope (1)
– Immigration brings a foreign influence into an area (2)

Domain Miracles of Immigration

Add a bit of foreign flavor to a local establishment or culture or individual (Give someone the ability to speak a new language for a little bit). Move someone closer to a place that will help them. Create a visible path from where you are to where you need to go. Get past customs.
Know something about a specific immigrant, or about the state of immigration in the area, or where the nearest ethnic district might be. Speak to any immigrant from anywhere without use of the Gift of Tongues.
Protect a specific immigrant from harm. Protect a small ethnic district from harm. Increase the immigration into a particular city.
Create a wave of immigrants into a city. Summon/Create/Control a specific immigrant. Open a gate from one world to another.
See the state of immigration in the future. Speak to a spooky immigrant and find out the truth of the future. Kill an immigrant. Damage or destroy an ethnic enclave. Prevent people from crossing a specific border. Remove foreign influences
Make a specific immigrant immortal. Make an ethnic enclave an eternal fixture of a city and a constant well-spring of its unusual culture, like NYC’s chinatown. Damage the walls of creation to allow more Excrucians to spill in. Change the ultimate destination/fate of a specific immigrant. Change the source, or destination, of a group of immigrants. Change what immigration will mean to a city. Shift an enclave or an immigrant from one city to another, or change someone’s origin point.
Create a mass migration from one location to another. Conjure an entire nation of immigrants from nothing.
Cast an entire nation back to their homeland. Remove all immigrants from a country.
Change the historical impact of a migration (“The Great Migration strengthened the Roman Empire”)/

Persona Miracles of Immigration

Make someone a little more controversial with conservatives. Give someone an accent, or the ability to speak a foreign language.
Become any immigrant.
Become terrifying to conservatives. Become able to cross any border (passing through locked doors, making it through customs). Create a foreign influence on someone (changing their language, or the local food, etc). Teleport someone to a better place.
Curse someone to be feared/hated by a conservative. Curse someone so that everyone around him speaks a language he doesn’t understand.
Incarnate within an entire immigrant enclave, or within all immigrants. Prevent someone from crossing a boarder, or from entering a better place.
Make someone able to sense immigrants, or to better understand them, or to guide them to where they need to go and to protect them. Teleport an entire nation to a better place. Add a foreign influence to country or a world (“No matter what planet he went to, Shakespeare and Coca-Cola followed thereafter). Become able to cross mystical borders (such as the border between life and death, or between worlds).
Throw someone across a border.
Prevent anyone from leaving a nation. Prevent an entire tribe from making it to their promised land for forty years!
Make a nation a beacon to all immigrants everywhere, even aliens (as has already been done with America).

Estate of Education

– Education turns a student into a master (2)
– Education reveals your ignorance (2)
– Education changes how you see the world (1)
– Education exacts a price for its wisdom (1)
– Education takes place in a school (1)

Domain Miracles of Education

Make someone a little more sophisticated without making them any smarter. Ring a school bell. Impress someone with your obviously superior intellect, or make them feel a little foolish. Know a useless bit of trivia. Conjure the ringing of a school bell. Summon up useless schoolwork.
Learn an interesting new fact! Intuitively know where someone was educated. Know the location of the nearest school.
Improve someone’s innate education so that they know something the didn’t before (or “had always known” this). Protect a teacher or a school building. Protect a specific school program from harm.
Conjure a teacher or student from nothing. Create a new class in a school with a wave of a hand (“Oh, Excrucian Studies 101? That’s on floor 2. Better hurry!”)
Open up a text book and learn the future from it. See anything that takes place in a school. Destroy a school, kill a teacher, or remove someone’s education (or at least their credentials) from them.
Ensure that a lesson is so thoroughly learned, it is never forgotten. Educate someone perfectly and instantly, making them a master in a mere montage. Rewrite the nature of someone’s education or a school program. Ensure that someone will learn at the feet of a particular teacher, learn a particular fact, or shape the impact of that person’s specific education on the world (“You’ll look back on this lesson and realize this was the beginning of your discovery of the cure for cancer”).
Create a new educational philosophy, a new franchise of schools, or an entire body of students.
Wipe out an entire topic of education, or destroy an entire nation’s educational system.
Change the destiny of a particular form of education (“Only get a STEM degree if you want to flip burgers. Liberate arts are where the money is at). Give a student a world-shaking destiny, provided he finishes his education (“If you want to conquer the world, you really need to learn your multiplication tables”)

Persona Miracles of Education

Make someone a little more educational. Make a place a little more school-like.
Be present in any single teacher; appear in any school.
Turn someone who has declared themselves your student into a master. Reveal someone’s specific ignorance about something, or convince others that he’s a (legitimately!) a fool. Beguile someone with illusions. Extract a supernatural price for your wisdom (their life, their first born, etc)
Anoint someone as a miraculous teacher, who can turn others into masters; anoint a location as a proper school.
A teacher’s lessons will never stick. This location is no longer a school. Someone’s ignorance will remain hidden. See everything that happens in a specific school, from all locations at once. Listen to the thoughts of every teacher. See through every PHD document in the world. Ensure that someone can never step foot in a school again. Death cannot occur in this school until the end of the day;
Turn someone into a powerful advocate for Education; A particular books or TV program becomes notoriously educational. Instantly make someone a master of something magical or powerful; reveal the ignorance of God; cast an illusion over an entire city;
An entire nation becomes a school; Marriages can only take place in schools; Death can only take place in schools;
Russia has no schools; Ensure an entire race cannot step foot on school grounds. Death cannot occur in any school;
Grant easy (or difficult) access of Education to a nation;

Estate of Koi

– Koi are ornamental carp (Koi are an ornamental version of their species) (4)
– Koi grant wishes (2)

– Koi belong in water gardens (1)

Aspect 2 (Touched-Up)
Persona (Koi) 1
Treasure 0
Miracle Points: 8
Common Gifts: Immortal (6), Glorious (2)
Gifts:

Awaken Inner Potential (4): With a touch, a blessing or a kiss, the Koi Goddess can awaken your dharma and set it on fire. You will achieve your destiny now, rather than later, and your destiny will be even greater than anything you could have achieved on your own. This costs her a miracle point.
Prophecy (1): The Koi Goddess knows the future. She can focus on a pool of water or a mirror and tell you what your destiny will be. Sometimes, the Koi Goddess will froth and lose herself and speak of the future. The Koi Goddess can also rewrite your destiny, but she only does this as an Imperial miracle.

Passions and Skills

Passion: “I want to make the world a better place” +1
Passion: “I want to be loved” +1
Superior Quality: Grace +2
Cool +2
Shine +5

Bonds and Afflictions

Bond: I am the most beloved in the world +3
Bond: I make dreams come true +2
Bond: Lord Entropy’s tyranny must be resisted +2
Bond: I find peace in Abigail +1
Bond: I find strength in Dierdre +1
Bond: I will honor my oath to Bob +1

Affliction: Everything I do has superhuman consequences +3