The Icon Of Infinite Sorrow

Sorrow Sun image courtesy of Hereticwerks

...Painted on the inside of a seashell. Centuries ago, the Icon of Infinite Sorrow was first discovered by the itinerant spherewalking priest Harbinger Moondance. He found it on a pedestal within a small shoreside shrine on the eternally twilit world of Gravelsea, an ancient grave-realm whose demise preceded the founding of Everway. 

An icon of unfolding gloom, this seashell has traveled to many different realms. It has been worshiped as the symbol of a goddess, revered as the royal sigil of a demoness, and venerated and feared as a terror-weapon and Doom Shell. 

Each realm which has guested it has suffered a novel and ultimate catastrophe. Because these disasters are never tied to a realm's existing Virtue-Fault-Fate tryptic, the Icon of Infinite Sorrow is a Usurper force in material form, a movable curse.

The Chamber Platinum has drawn out a spherepath for the Icon of Infinite Sorrow. It is headed on a lazy spiral inwards toward the First City. 

The person who currently carries the Icon of Infinite Sorrow is unknown to the Chamber Platinum. Spherewalkers are being recruited by the Chamber to find the icon-bearer and discretely stop them in their tracks.

Thanks to Jim and Jody Garrison of Hereticwerks for providing this great image. It is a perfect representation of the Icon.

A Horn Made Of A Conch Shell...

University of Michigan Museum of Art
Photo c. 2012 by John Everett Till

...And surrounded by fine bronze metalwork. This conch horn was one of those used to attract and kill the dragon Sea Hag who had terrorized the people of the realm of Wingspan. Brave shaman-sailors from the Sitting Dog Archipelago went to sea in the war-catamarans of the Archipelago's trader-pirates accompanying the war parties readying themselves for battle. The shamans blew horns like the one shown above to attract the dragon. Thirsty Ones, summoned from the deeps, and the thirsty arrows of countless archers did the rest.

But the story doesn't end there.

The horn depicted here ended up in the Dragon Trade, and has traveled from realm-to-realm across the spheres since the great sea-battle. While not made from a dragon's parts, this particular horn helped to kill a dragon, and is therefore considered relevant to the Trade. A dragon didn't touch it, but its sounds helped to attract and kill a dragon!

The horn has changed realms many times, but still has the power to call out to the dragons of a sphere, and to draw those dragons called toward the horn blower. The horn has also developed two novel abilities as a result of its travels: 

• It can call to a dragon in an adjacent sphere, opening a gate for them; and 
• It can sound out the 'branes of a realm for concealed, interpolated realms, such as Nest Realm

Several dragon-savants, dragon-servants, and dragon-priests are searching the spheres to find this horn. And because of its second novel ability, the Chamber Platinum would also like to find it.

Strangerside Scholar: On Mousetrap Realms

Merode Mousetrap, c. 1427-32
http://historiesofecology.blogspot.com/
2012/05/merode-mousetrap.html

After the dragons lost in their war against the gods, they turned to other pursuits. Partly due to spite, and partly due to boredom, some of the dragons began devising and setting traps among the spheres.  They created the Mousetrap Realms to catch and kill Spherewalkers.

The Mousetrap Realms have one way in: a Gate which opens into a new realm, beckoning a Spherewalker to come explore. But unlike normal realms among the spheres, the Mousetrap Realms have no way out. Either their Gate works in only one direction, opening only into the realm, or else once entered, the Mousetrap Realm becomes a more active and deadly trap.

Death by starvation. Death by plenitude or lack, whether Earth, Air, Fire, or Water. False epiphanies. Entombment. World-creatures. Treasure of Infinite Counting. Doppel-craft. The dragons have never lacked for imagination in devising their traps. And they were masters of misdirection.

Humans have often attributed the creation of Mousetrap Realms to capricious gods or demons. Few have seen the Dragons' Stamp: The House of Knives, The Box of Under, the Ocean-Hole, Mother of Cankers, the Roundel, the Whorl, Pop-Up Drop Down, the Meat Grinder, the Flower That Ate Itself, and The Limbless Tree. Even the names of the Mousetrap Realms sound like curses.

There are in fact hundreds of Mousetrap Realms on record at the Library of All Worlds. As many as one realm in one hundred may be Mousetrap Realms. It is wise to consult the collection of spherepaths within the Library of All Worlds, or the Chamber Platinum's special collection (these are usually the most up-to-date) before planning a particularly long journey among the spheres.

Most Spherewalkers will encounter a Mousetrap Realm if they travel far enough.

An Assassin's Journal...

http://ncssnetwork.ning.com/photo/
journal-03?context=latest

...with dozens of persons' names crossed off, and dozens more to go. Adjacent to each person's name is the name of their realm. A wafer-thin dagger in a equally thin metallic sheath has been somehow attached to the journal's cover. The pages within will appear entirely blank, until the journal is closed and the dagger is pulled from its sheath. Once the journal is opened again, with dagger in hand,  the words within become visible in a rust colored ink.

The dagger is as sharp as an obsidian knife. You could easily slip it between someone's ribs, like a hot knife into butter. Underneath how many pillows this journal has been secreted? The dagger is much more than a weapon. It helps prepare the kill.

The assassin cuts their own skin with the tip of the blade, and draws out their own blood to be used as ink. The names of future victims and their realms are written on the pages within, and crossed out with the victim's own blood, once they have been slain. 

After a victim's name gas been crossed off the list, no one will remember that they ever existed. They will simply be a mystery victim, found in the wrong place, such as in the bed of a king or queen. 

In one of the entries within the journal, both the victim's name and their realm have been crossed out. No reference to this realm can be found in the Library of All Worlds, or in the records and spheremaps of the Chamber Platinum.

Organization Within The Library Of All Worlds

Sunday was my Father's Birthday. He loved books, so to honor him,this week, I am doing a series of posts about books, bookstores, and libraries in Everway.


The Library of All Worlds is "a collection of large building filled with scrolls holding knowledge and wisdom collected from a thousand spheres. Chamber Platinum is a group of people sponsored by the library who explore new realms and spheres. The Crookstaff and Scratch families have their head estates in this center" (Playing Guide, p.21). 

Another description states that: it is: "a vast library in the city of EVERWAY. It hosts the CHAMBER PLATINUM, a scholarly organization dedicated to exploring the SPHERES" (Spherewalker Sourcebook, p.64).

Images of the Bayt al-Hikma
http://totalwar.honga.net/building.php?v=dlv6&f=papal_states&b=bayt_al_hikma&encode=en

Organization: The Library of All Worlds has countless books, scrolls, and maps. It has three primary organizational divisions, in addition to the Chamber Platinum. And there are numerous factions within these organizations. The primary organizations that make up the Library are Acquisitions, Collections, the House of Wisdom, and of course, the Chamber Platinum.* The role of these four organizations is as follows:

• Acquisitions: is responsible for acquiring new texts and scrolls for the Library. Means of acquisition include purchase of texts, donations, copying, Reshelving (a statute that allows the Library to commandeer, for a period of up to one year, any privately held text within the walls of the City of Everway), as well as more aggressive and covert methods that are usually referred to as Field Work. Not all donations are accepted. Texts that are not needed are usually sold to the Book House, or to private dealers and bookhounds who approach Acquisitions seeking rejected texts. Acquisitions is also responsible for disposing of texts that Collections no longer wants or needs. 
• Acquisitions is typically staffed by a mix of Scratch, Crookstaff, Crow, and Keeper family members. 
• Acquisitions is led by Light Scratch, also known as the Red Scribe for her advocacy of aggressive Field Work in realms and spheres that are known or suspected to be at risk of implosion.
• Collections is responsible for all day-to-day operations of the Library, including helping patrons search the Collections catalog, finding texts in the Vasty Stacks (and it should be noted that the  Vasty Stacks are a species of Tidal Pool), shelving of texts and scrolls, security of the Collections (including secret/closed collections and archives), arrangements for private study rooms, classrooms, and meeting rooms, overnight accommodations for visiting scholars, and more.  
• The majority of staff in this department are members of the Scratch family. Security roles are led by members of the Crow and Keeper family. 
• The Plume family guards The Stepwise, a room-sized artifact deep within the bowels of the Library. 
• Collections is led by Heather Scratch, who has embarked on an ambitious new numerical reorganization of the collections. 
• The reorganization is about 15% complete. A a traditionalist cataloging faction within Collections called the Elementalists is doing everything they can to sabotage the process, arguing that numerical cataloging is "unnatural".
• The House of Wisdom has three components:
• An academy for Everwayan youth, employing the best scholars and teachers in the city of Everway
• A research faculty comprised of scholars in residence (mostly Everwayans) and visiting scholars from the million spheres
• The Gem School, a relatively new association devoted to research and play of the  Jeweled Bead Game. This game uses polyhedral gems and stones with strange markings and symbols. The game can be played reflectively (to model the world, the spheres, politics, economies, etc.) or competitively, often with a gambling component. The Outsider Broken Wing introduced the Jeweled Bead Game to Everway. While the game has a small street following in Strangerside, almost all serious practitioners of the game spend their time playing in the Library precincts.
• The House of Wisdom is led by Thousand Owls Crookstaff.
• The Chamber Platinum, as described above, is a society of Spherewalkers who are scholars and adventurers. The Chamber is devoted to exploring the millions spheres, and commissions both exploratory expeditions and at times urgent problem-solving missions to other spheres. The Chamber has its own extensive collection of books, scrolls, and maps, including spherepaths. The Chamber Platinum also has an armory and relic vaults that are located within the Library, in the Chamber Tower levels directly below the Chamber Platinum's meeting rooms and dormitories.  
• In the past, the Chamber has often partnered with Acquisitions. The current policies of the Red Scribe have made that collaboration more problematic.
• The Chamber Platinum currently lacks a leader. In the interim, Hermes Branch Crookstaff of the Council is responsible for the Chamber.

The Librarian of All Worlds is responsible for leadership of the Library as a whole, and each of the organizations has a leader on the Library Committee that serves the Librarian of All Worlds. The Librarian position is traditionally elected by the Council and ratified by the King. 

• The current Librarian is Thunder Perfect Mind Crookstaff.

*I am indebted to Sam Chupp for this organizational framework. It is very influenced by a Vampire LARP he GM'd at Simcon in the 1990s in Rochester, NY. The LARP was set in a Tremere library in the wilderness of Canada. My Tremere scholar challenged a demon to Certamen - and lost, gloriously.