## Statistics Galactic Age: 40,003 Subjective Age: 2,888 Homeworld: [[Rina's Holdfast]] Home Sector: [[The Sectors#Sundered Harmony (6)|Sundered Harmony]] Affinity Groups - [[Past Projects/The Plague Lords/Affinity Groups/Agents]] - Wonders & Great works - [[Past Projects/The Plague Lords/Affinity Groups/Scientists]] - Seeking Genius - Always looking for the next great wonder to stamp their name on. - What is Science? (Wondermaking) - Brand is brand, baby. You are likely the most famous Attaché in all of [[The Sectors#Sundered Harmony (6)|Sundered Harmony]]. For the forty galactic millennia of your life, you've traveled from place to place identifying the grandest, most impressive projects. Then, having done so, you put your name on them. Sometimes it's as simple as securing funding. Others, you've acted as a networking resource, connecting the dreamers with the financiers and experts they needed. Most often, you've just been a mentor, guiding the project through its many growing pains and reassuring the visionaries when things grew dark. Whatever the specifics of each deal, you've become a legend in this part of the galaxy for being synonymous with success. You understand better than most that all power is soft power, and that the best way to acquire soft power is by making yourself its source. Fueled by that understanding, you've worked hard to make yourself Sundered Harmony's most desirable business partner. The groundlings might think you're nothing but a name and a talent for getting it in lights, but the real players? They know that picking winners and losers is the truest form of art. You want to fill the galaxy with wonder. It's common knowledge among a certain set of galactic society that the vast majority of planets in Lakh are populated by at least a small number of humans. What is less common knowledge, however, is that almost none of those planets have ever heard of the Celestial Empire. They aren't in rebellion, they simply don't know that there's any life beyond their homeworld. There are plenty of cults out there trying to go world-by-world, conquering or converting as is that particular cult's wont. You do like the idea of bringing more of the galaxy on-line, as it were, but have no desire to do so through conquest. The galaxy is already full enough of bloodshed, no need to add to it. You've come to the [[Plague Council]] because Myriadic Councils have no rules. Rumor has it that, at the same Council which followed [[I Killed the Plaguesmith|Death of the Plaguesmith]], the scion of one Great House very nearly succeeded in passing the motion "all drugs must be given to me." A project which, if approved, would have dwarfed everything but the founding of the [[Celestial Empire]] in scope. While you have no desire to be crushed in a black hole of mind-altering substances, you can't help admiring such boldness. You want to do something similar, if less self-destructive. You want to convince the Myriadic Council to build *something*, something only they can. Whether that's a weapon too powerful for even the Great Houses, a triumphal arc crafted from a black hole, a perfect super-intelligence, or something *really* strange, you don't much care, so long as humans on billions of populated worlds will look to the stars and know that they are not alone. ## Goals 1. Get your name on the biggest and best projects, whatever those projects may be and whatever your involvement may entail. 2. Protect and advanced the interests of [[Rina's Holdfast]], particularly where those interests include acquiring a superweapon or other wonder. 3. Convince the Myriadic Council to authorize the construction of something only they could approve. ## Character Notes - Cerul is quite young by the standards of galactic society, but they have an outsized reputation. Like a highly influential music producer, Cerul's primary form of interaction with the galaxy is slapping their name on major projects. Again much like a music producer, the general public regards Cerul as something of an amusing curiosity, while the artists, the *real* creators, regard them as something akin to a minor god. Put simply, Cerul picks winners. They've done so well at it, in fact, that it's become somewhat self-fulfilling. If Cerul puts their name on something, the galaxy's financiers and power brokers rush along to try and claim a piece of that thing, regardless of actual merit. How will Cerul leverage their cultural cachet to ensure they, and their people, benefit from this cultural cachet during the [[Plague Council]]? - Like many highly successful young people, Cerul is a bit monomaniacal. They can't help but constantly stay on the lookout for projects worthy of their time and attention. It's just intoxicating, even after all of these centuries, to see their name in planet-sized lights. The fact that they're so well-known for it exacerbates the situation somewhat, as well. Sometimes it seems like every person they meet is trying to pitch them on something. That's useful, since Cerul is something of an intelligence operative at heart, but it can also be exhausting. How does the character square their professional success with their occassional desire to just be a person? - [[Rina's Holdfast]], Cerul's home Holding, is infamous in certain circles as a hotbed of rebellion and treason. While Cerul is much less tightly tied to the Holding than some other characters, they still recognize it as home and seek to help it succeed and flourish. At the same time, there's a definite fear that, if Cerul successfully acquired a superweapon or other truly grand construction on the Holding's behalf, the [[Voidstalker Corps]] may well respond with violence. Having lived under this threat for thousands of years, does Cerul want to stay on the Voidstalkers' good side, or do they refuse to be cowed? ## Connections 1. [[Bureaucrat Micelle]] 1. "Is the mushroom thing weird? Sure. But it's also flawlessly executed." 2. Micelle is old. Weird old. You've heard that the Senior Bureaucrats sometimes go... *strange*, but you'd never observed it before you met Micelle about ten thousand galactic years back. Among the most senior of [[Celestial Empress|Her Majesty's]] servants in [[The Sectors#Sundered Harmony (6)|Sundered Harmony]], they could likely have been made Principal Bureaucrat of the entire sector if they tried. Instead, Micelle seems content to tend their ever-growing collection of strange, too-intelligent fungi. While some find this amusing, a funny little obsession from a very old individual, you can't help but think something's up. You're the galaxy's foremost expert on brand management, and you know what it looks like when someone's selling an image. You've met the Bureaucrat many times over the last few subjective centuries, and they've never wavered from their monomaniacal obsession with mushrooms, bringing them into every situation and conversation. What is Micelle hiding so carefully behind that simple facade and, more importantly, is it good enough to put your name on it? 2. [[Hivemother]] 1. "I don't *think* I'm about to get eaten by a trillion bees, but how would you even know what to look for? Besides the bees, I mean." 2. If Micelle is weird old, there aren't words for something as ancient as the Hivemother. Legends claim that the first four [[Sapient Plagues]] are older than even the [[Wend]], that they're older than all but the [[Celestial Empress]] Herself. Those same legends, however, claim that the Sapient Plagues were crafted as weapons against Her Majesty, which makes them suspect. You simply can't imagine anything going up against the Empress and surviving, let alone four of them. Whatever the truth, you've known the Hivemother your entire life. You remember a time before [[I Killed the Plaguesmith|the Death of the Plaguesmith]], when the Sapient Plagues moved among humanity as peacefully as any human (and much more so than some). During those early days of your life, you spent many wonderful evenings listening to wild stories from some of the youngest Hivelings, those no more than a few hundred thousand years old. That's where you learned the legends of the first four, and where you developed your love of swapping stories. You saw the Hivemother often in those days, a distant but pleasant figure visiting your Holding's leaders on matters far beyond your younger self's ken. In the millennia since, you've encountered them only rarely. Each time, they've spoken with you for at least a few minutes, usually on surprisingly mundane details of your life. You don't know why, but those conversations always stand out as pivotal moments of your life. Now, you and the Hivemother will both be in attendance at one of the most pivotal moments in *anyone's* life. Will your familiar bonds be enough to bridge the gap, or has the galaxy become too hostile to allow such prosaic connection? 3. [[Spy Morir]] 1. "Morir? A great conversationalist with only a moderate god complex. For a spymaster that's pretty good." 2. You've known Morir for maybe fifteen thousand galactic years, a bit over a subjective millennium. In that time, you've learned a lot. Spying, or at least, spying the way you thought it was done, is an affair of deceit and manipulation, of theft and murder and graft. The way Morir does it, spying is basically having a lot of friends and staying in touch with them. Somehow, you're not exactly sure how, you became one of those friends. For subjective centuries, the two of you have maintained a healthy, highly useful correspondence. You've shared tidbits about your work, and Morir has helped you find new opportunities. True, you've seen a fair few of the tidbits you shared with them get reshared out to various power players across the galaxy. But if you're really honest with yourself, you were more than a little flattered to think your idle comments were worthy of such wide dissemination. You can't exactly call Morir a friend, nor a colleague, but you've found that the arrangement suits you. You've seen, after all, how often people in this galaxy turn on their so-called friends for nothing more than opportunity. Now, you and Morir will both be attending an event surrounded by [[The Sectors#Sundered Harmony (6)|Sundered Harmony's]] most powerful and influential figures. Will your working relationship prove more profitable than ever, or will self-interest see you and the spymaster at odds? 4. [[Harbinger Wilde]] 1. "Do not make Wilde your problem. Make Wilde your enemies' problem." 2. You have an eye for the strange, the impressive, the out-of-scale, and Wilde is all three. They move through the galaxy with a strange sort of presence, as though they carry their own gravity well. You first noticed them at one of your lesser soirees twenty or thirty millennia back, when they were telling a delightfully scandalous joke to what turned out to be some particularly humorless Voidsingers. The minor war that touched off, and the various second-order effects of that war, were more than enough to prove to you that Wilde was one to watch. At the same time, you've noticed a decidedly hotheaded streak in the Harbinger. Cutting words are one thing, but they seem a bit overfond of inciting violence as a panacea to their every social ill. To avoid their ire, you've made a point of presenting yourself as something of an affable fool whenever they're around. You tell stupid jokes, misspeak, and generally let yourself seem just a bit on the back foot. This has worked beautifully, as there have been no end of *actual* fools volunteering themselves for Wilde's acid wit. Unfortunately, it looks like your playacting may have worked a bit *too* well and Wilde is on the verge of not taking you seriously at all. Will you convince the acerbic Harbinger that you're just-foolish-enough, or is it time to drop the charade and develop a new working dynamic? ## Mechanics **Asset:** [[Good Looks and Propaganda]] Attractiveness is a wildly variable thing. Each culture has a different ideal of beauty, and those ideals are often tied to complex historical and social factors. Some argue that the very notion of beauty itself is so fraught as to be useless, and they may very well be right. What you know, however, is that understanding a given person's idea of attractiveness is the first and most essential step in selling them something. On nearly every world in the galaxy with public media, you can get a strong sense of local beauty standards by flipping to a weather station and writing down descriptions of everyone you see. There's a simple reason for that... people like to listen to people they like to look at. Your ability to manipulate this impulse is nearly mythical. By speaking to a [[Projects/Myriad/Holdings|Holding's]] Governor or any cultural [[Officers|officer]] for a few minutes, you gain an insight into their local aesthetic standards and how to use those standards in crafting messages to that culture. Any time you participate in a [[Negotiation]] with a Holding whose aesthetic standards are known to you, you may negate the application of one [[Asset]] from a member of that Holding. You may apply this Asset once per Holding per Negotiation. **Special:** Producer Tag You are known for being known for being known. When you say something is the next big thing, that isn't prophecy, it's instruction. Any time you are publicly associated with a project (anything covered by the [[Combat]], [[Negotiation]], or [[Endeavor]] systems), your side (if there are multiple sides) or all participants (if there are no sides) gains a number of advantages equal to the number of participants on your side. In other words, if you're one of five people participating in an endeavor, the Advantage count increases by 5. If you're on one side of a negotiation with two allies, up against a team of four, your side gains a total of 3 advantages (one for you). **Lien:** [[Rule of Cool]] Being obsessed with fashion certainly has its uses, but it's undeniably exhausting. You have no choice but to keep track of every shift, every little quirk of culture, and how your messaging must shift in response. Any time a character references something as "cool," "interesting," or any other, similarly positive adjective, you feel compelled to subject them to a focus-group like set of questions. You have a deep-seated need to know exactly why they liked that thing, what they liked about it, and how various changes might impact their opinion of it. When you are denied the opportunity to gather this information, whether because of time constraints or because of an uncooperative conversational partner, you become irritable and full of doubt regarding that person's culture. You are unable to apply your Asset to that character's Holding until you have spoken with their Governor about whatever the topic was they expressed interest in.