Knights of the Live Wire

 Between the cracks, in the spaces between, there is a war raging that you should never hope to perceive.

EXPERIENCING A KNIGHT

    If you experience a Knight indirectly in the Sedated Firmament, you will hear the hiss of the Wävern’s undulations and feel a static chill down your spine. Where they tread, the barrier between the Sedated Firmament and Empyrean Electric runs thin, and sometimes the darkness on the other side howls in lament of its birth. Perhaps you will see their cloak billowing; if you blur your eyes enough and project yourself just too far out of the Tehom Churning, you might see their Heraldry, and risk it seeing you back.

    If you experience a Knight directly in the Sedated Firmament, it will likely be the last thing you see. It will throw itself from a glass cage, and you will see the rippling light of the Firmament searing the air with its radiance, and you will go blind. You will hear the chattering whispers of the Empyrean Electric in the back of your skull, and it will make your brain throb in agony. You will fear death for half a second, then you will fear the possibility of living through the pain. The Knights are often merciful and never kind.

    A Knight cannot access the Tehom Churning. That is why they fight over the Sedated Firmament. It takes flesh to swim in the black waters, it takes lungs to drown.

    Your sense perception is a synaesthetic nightmare in the Empyrean Electric, and the presence of a Knight inflames that to the point of insanity. There are coma wards in the basement below the basement of the White House full of people who spent too long in the Empyrean Electric, and there’s a bed with your name on it...

CODE OF CONDUCT

SERVE RIGHTLY; Vassal’s spirit be done

SERVE OBEDIENTLY, Deafness is Disconnect

SERVE SELFLESSLY, Ego melting to servitude

SERVE MERCIFULLY, Let Disconnect come swiftly

SERVE ETERNALLY, Servitude brings Connection

d8 VASSALS

1 GLEAMING SILVER, planes of impossible chrome and glass swirling in hyper-dimensional pseudofractals. Has a fascination with the pursuit of efficiency. Seeks to rule the Sedated Firmament.

2 HER GREAT BEAUTY, the flickering face of all impossibility. Has a fascination with the relationship between appearance and reality. Seeks to make herself unlike anything in the Sedated Firmament.

3 MIND, a rippling pool of fleshy silver. Has a fascination with subjectivity versus objectivity. Seeks to know everything.

4 FLOW PROTOCOL, millions of skittering feet and gnashing maws. Has a fascination with wealth and trade. Seeks to throw off its shackles and be free to devour starstuff, as it has always wished to.

5 ZRMYAG, a senseless mass of self-consuming and ever growing color. Has a fascination with illusions and games. Seeks to tear himself from the Empyrean Electric for a throne in the Tehom Churning.

6 Z, the great dearth. Has a fascination with the end of all things. Seeks to destroy itself, or remove itself from the Empyrean Electric, or devour all things, or to unmake creation.

7 DEVIAN, a herd of animals both real and chimeric, all with burning human eyes. Has a fascination with the line between mind, flesh, human, and beast. Seeks to dissipate the Tehon Churning.

8 ABADDON, the crying of a child, or perhaps a woman, and a writhing shadow in the corner of your eye. Has a fascination with taboo and depravity. Seeks to poison the Tehon Churning.

SURVIVING AN ENCOUNTER

    If you have found yourself a Knight’s target, the best you can pray for is a swift demise. There is no escaping their blade; they hiss through the air around your head millions of times per second, too silent for you to ever hear, too fast for you to ever see.

In the seconds between you realizing you are a target and your termination, there are two things you can do. One, you can try and justify a lack of culpability for whatever the Knight seeks you for. Two, you can try and beseech it to complete some other task to buy you time to complete the former; if the order is not in defiance of its Vassal, it will delay its primary directive. Impossible tasks are generally a safe bet, buying minutes or hours at a time.

If you experience a Knight when they are not your quarry, you may be able to get it to perform your bidding in a similar manner, but be careful not to act against the wishes of its Vassal. Engaging in the politics of the Empyrean Electric is a death wish, and I never wish you the misfortune of trying to interface with a Vassal directly.

PLOT HOOKS

1 Defend a psychic from a Knight’s attack as they delve into the Tehom Churning.

2 On behalf of a shadow government occult bureau, come up with a task that can stall a Knight for 24 hours to test some experimental technology.

3 A sick multibillionaire will pay you any sum to be executed by a Knight.

4 You’ve noticed the same Knight has been following you for the past week. Why is it observing you?

5 A Vassal believes that you can advance its interests, and sends a Knight with a task for you. If you fail, the Knight will kill you and everyone you have ever met.

6 A Vassal believes that you can advance its interests, and sends a Knight with a task for you. If you fail, the Knight will kill you and everyone you have ever met. You cannot perform the task.

Thank you to Shifty for the photo that inspired this post, thanks to you for reading, and happy gaming.