## Metadata Name: I Holding: None Office: None ## Background You were born the day Solinis lost its suns. Their final rays illuminated your still-bloody cheeks, and bathed you in the death rattle of your planet. It was only when the rest of your world had gone dark and cold that you began to cry, and your mother knew a sacrifice had been accepted: the Leviathan's Corpse was coming. Untethered from its suns, Solinis sought warmth from its own blood. Light was a frivolous and unjustified expense, but with measured sacrifices the inhabitants of Solinis managed to generate their own heat and sustenance. The world went to war with itself, with raids launched to seize new sacrifices from anywhere but your own home and bombs dropped to stave away the cold. Not yet old enough to walk, you clawed open your own mother's chest, and swaddled yourself upon her warm, sputtering heart. You had lived only in darkness, so you learned to listen well, and in the hiss of your mother's final breath, you were *sure* you could hear the Corpse listening back: "The now-dead suns are MY sacrifice", you claimed--your first words. And the Great Corpse, perhaps amused, accepted. Your world still builds pyres with their own corpses, but you were granted freedom that day: the heat and pressure of a dozen suns was lodged within you, their rage and their misery and burning so brightly anyone could see it plainly on your glowing skin. When it pleased you that fire was set loose, and the wars of Solinis were suspended while brave men cowered from your scouring light. You earned no little repute, and some disciples clamored through the searing light and freezing dark, and they named you Beacon. Those few that reached you fell to their knees, struck blind by your radiance and cried out that surely you would come to See the destruction of the Empress herself. The Death of the Plaguesmith is the omen you've been searching for. Surely the time to reveal yourself is close approaching. You have drenched the fires within you to pass unnoticed, for you can feel the Swimmer in Darkness approaching. This will be your final test, to prepare Its great feast. To keep them blind as it approaches, to prevent any pitiful attempts at intercession, until their doom falls upon them. They fear the darkness and the cold, and this makes you laugh until you cannot stand, for *their* ending will be written in fire. When at last your Lord arrives to unleash you upon this Empire, everyone at this council will go out with a boom. ## Mechanics ### Asset: [[Myriad/Assets/Bringer of Doubt|Bringer of Doubt]] To be a Leviathan Cultist is to create doubt where once there was certainty. Surely no one would serve such a creature. Surely such a mad cultist could never harm us behind our sturdy walls. Surely we're safe. Surely. With your every action, you teach those around you that only doubt will survive. Whenever you participate in a [[Combat]], [[Negotiation]], or [[Endeavor]], you may choose to remove up to three advantages from your side. If you do, all other sides must remove a number of advantages equal to one more than the number you removed. With the exception of the first four sentences, this Asset is identical to [[Sageling]], and you may claim to have that Asset instead when questioned. ### Lien: [[Probably Not a Great Idea]] Alright. Yes. You serve the Leviathan's Corpse. Not only is it an unstoppable engine of horror and death, it also lost the biggest fight it ever had. Admittedly, this is not what most people would consider a great basket for all of your eggs. But they don't get it. They just don't. We've all been low. We've all had that moment when we stop being a person and start being an animal, that next moment when the animal goes and we become a rabid, broken *thing*. When even that has fled, we become meat. It is in that meat moment when we discover the truth of ourselves. We have not been brought low, we are lowly things which imagined ourselves on a height. We do not love ourselves, for it would be a mockery of love to give it to such an unworthy thing. The Leviathan's Corpse loves that thing. It loves your meat. It loves your broken rabidness. It loves your animalistic drive to *be*. It loves you whole and broken, high and low. In that love, it offers you a choice. Stagnate, or grow. Growth, of course, cannot come without pain, and you lost your pain in the meat moments long ago. Now, you must find that pain elsewhere. At the beginning of each session, you are Marked. Before the end of the session, you must pass that mark off by engaging another character in private conversation for at least five minutes on the topic of the Leviathan's Corpse. If you do so, that character becomes Marked. If the player chooses to mark another target in the same way before the end of the next session, nothing happens to them. If a character receives a mark and does not pass it on, that character dies at the end of the session. ## Themes These themes are offered to help inform roleplay, but do not carry a mechanical effect. - Cosmic Horror - The Taxonomy of Godhood - The Place Between the Unstoppable and Immovable