For those of you who end up waiting and fidgeting for new posts, here are some prompts to keep you busy -- and potentially earn you bonus xp. You don't have to do all of these prompts at once, and you can post them at any time (or PM if you really prefer). However, First Age incarnations may will? be significant early on in the game, so I'll have to make something up for you if you don't write anything yourself!

- What was your character's First Age incarnation like? Give me a name, paragraph description and (optionally) a story about them. You can also describe any other previous lives, but the First Age one is particularly important.

- If you play a Solar or Lunar, would your character have had a mate from a previous life? If so, I am willing to let you help determine details about this individual: name, appearance, personality, previous events he/she was involved in... anything you can think of pertaining to a Solar/Lunar mate.

- You can also help flesh out Five Coils and its denizens by providing concepts, descriptions, or anecdotes that involve some aspect of Five Coils society (whether mortal, Dragon-blooded or Celestial) and your character's place in it. It can be in bullet points, description, narrative, whatever works best for you!

- Lastly, I enjoy it when players provide pictures, theme songs, stories and other such media to help give life to their characters. Share them with us by posting them here!
This message was last edited by the GM at 11:56, Mon 08 Dec 2008.

Dena's first age incarnation was Iris In a Field of Briars, a Waxing Moon Caste Lunar with a hummingbird totem renowned for her intense physical beauty.  During the primordial war she was primarily a general over the armies of terrestrials, providing motivation and leadership in concerted action against the Primordials.  Legends and myths from that age hold that her warform was so beautiful that she developed a martial arts style that could cause enemies to go blind from seeing her.
After the end of the war Iris found a new career in fashion, designing artifact clothing that could keep the wearer warm under all conditions, protect from poisons, or let one dance for weeks without fatigue all while also providing the height of elegance and style.
Her Solar mate was a Dawn Caste named Gerad.  As the centuries passed the effects of the Great Curse came on them in a unique way, causing them to fight horribly over minor matters and inverting the normal effects of the Solar Link to cause Iris to detest Gerad.  Their fights became legendary, in one case leveling both their palace and several hundred acres of forestland in a debate over what color to decorate the bedroom.
When the Terrestrials turned on them Iris was able to cause five generals to cut their own throats rather than touch her, and threw their ranks into confusion.  She and Gerad might have escaped if they hadn't immediately started fighting over which direction to flee, resulting in them both being overtaken and inflicting embarrassingly small casualties on the Dragonblooded in the battle.
Dena's second incarnation fell to Chimerism and at that point her totem was broken, turning from the hummingbird to the wasp.  She also seems to randomly change castes without a fixed one, although all her reincarnations are attractive and shorter than the average.

Third, in it's first incarnation, was a very strange being in many ways. Its name in those days was simple, Shining Eye. It was just as uncertain as to what it's gender was in those days, as well, a carefully guarded secret. Some say even that Shining Eye once was a proud, virile man, or a gorgeous woman, but had, for the rite of Solar Sorcery, given up it's gender to a third circle demon. It was said that each recipient of Shining Eye's shard would show a similar lack of a gender identity, one way or another, and by anyone's recounting, this has been true. Despite Shining Eye's androgyny, it was known far and wide, as a Twilight of unusual passion and intensity, even for a Solar. It was sometimes said that Shining Eye had been destined for a Zenith shard, but had somehow had the matter confused. The stories of those days are stirring tales, and if Shining Eye could see what would become of its shard, it would undoubtedly be ashamed of, or enraged by, what has been done to its shard's vessel.

There was a story of Shining Eye, in its later days. Few people know of it, fewer still are sure if it is true or not. During the time of Cascading Years, when reality itself broke, and every Celestial Exalted found themselves appointed a task to put things right, Shining Eye found itself in a strange place indeed. It looked about, and everywhere, there was a thick, cloying steam, so hot as to scald a mortal, but easily weathered by Shining Eye. Underfoot, there was nothing but endless metal plates, occasionally dotted with pipes and conduits. It wandered long in the steam, until it met an odd machine. It was a construct, much like ones that Shining Eye had experimented with at home. 'Where am I, friend machine?' Shining Eye asked the construct. The construct responded rather rudely, by attempting to extract the water from the rather unpleasant biologial matter before it. Shining Eye, a short while after, asked again, and the next machine, much less hostile, told it that it was within the steaming chest of the Machine God, Autochthon. Shining Eye remembered Autochthon- It had been one of the greatest voices against the Great Geas, not wishing to show mistrust one of the two Primordials that had been willing to help the God's Rebellion. It thanked the machine politely, and left to search for the heart of this place.

There are many stories about what happened within, but Shining Eye itself glazed over these details, and in one way or another, it met with the eight Divine Ministers of Autochthon. It struck a bargain with Autochthon, aiding in the construction of a special creature, composed of adamant. Shining Eye did not ask Autochthon what it needed it for.

It did not say what happened afterwards. It merely appeared where it had been before the Cascading Years, very pale, and holding something that it had not had before. It was a small, delicate construct locust, no larger than Shining Eye's hand with eyes of starmetal, legs of orichalcum, wings of moonsilver, a body of jade, a carapace plated with soulsteel, and engraven with Shining Eye's mark, though it swore that it had never made them, a pair of jaws made from gleaming, deadly-sharp adamant. It kept the locust forever locked within a box hung from it's neck, until the Great Feast, when it, along with it's fellowkind, were killed. The box opened. The locust fell. And a Sidereal, wishing to prevent the danger of such an artifact, destroyed it.

By and large, if the consequences of this were widely known, it would generally be considered a poor idea.

(Well, there we are, my first attempt at something like this. I recently read some of Weapons of the Gods, and was rather inspired by the lore sections, so I tried my hand at something similar, a mix of heroic adventure and a little comedy, and with all those fun little implications. Of course, I don't know if we'll meet Alchemicals... but something had to bork up the surface world, presumably.)

Like most Celestials, Dashu has had many incarnations.  However, in the first age one of his more famous ones was the The Treacherous Downfall of the Unrighteous Path (or Downfall), a spy in the underworld used by the Deliberative to track and kill the crime lords.  However, like many of the other Night Caste who felt they received little recognition by living in the shadows during the Age of Glories, he who was named to be the downfall of those who followed the path unrighteousness eventually turned to the that same path to gain his own glory.  The Downfall became a masterful crime lord in his own right and it was many centuries before anyone stopped him.  Downfall was a master of the Ebon Shadow Martial Arts style and these memories frequently find their way into the memories of his future incarnations.

During the Age of Sorrows, Dashu's incarnation was somewhat more mundane... for a Solar Exalted.  He exalted on the Blessed Isle in the house of Sesus.  His name was Silius.  It took ever bit of cunning, guile, and power he had to find his way out of the hands of the Wyld Hunt.  He took to learning how to live off the land and avoided large cities, becoming a natural woodsman.  It wasn't until a second circle demon who had escaped its bindings attacked a small town that Silius met his demise.  Unable to simply walk away, Silius intervened and was ultimately able to win.  The villagers decided to repay his kindness by sending for the Hunt which arrived incredibly quickly due to the fact a troupe of Immaculates were traveling in the area nearby.  Still injured from his battle, Silius was easy for them to track and kill.

The Bramble:

This section of 5 Coils is a vast tangle of tree roots from some vast plant on the surface.  It extends farther than 5 coils itself both upward and downward.  In order to facilitate security most levels do not connect to The Bramble at all.  The few that do connect through lengthy tunnels.

For some time The Bramble has been a source of quality large-scale lumber.  The Wood-Aspect Dragonblooded who care for it are careful not to remove enough wood to kill it, but a few tons of lumber can safely be taken every year without problem.  It also connects to some vast underground aquifer and can supply many thousands of gallons of fresh water every day through taps to the fibrous roots.  When there is excess waste and compost beyond what's needed for 5-Coils farming industry, it goes to nourish The Bramble.

The Bramble is notably dangerous for it's other inhabitants, some roots are hollow and contain very large aggressive ants that are fed by The Bramble itself, and will fiercely protect it from any harm, or disturbance, or anything that simply happens to annoy them.  These creatures, each about an inch long, are not particularly dangerous individually but come in vast swarms.  This makes travel through The Bramble quite hazardous, however it does connect at several levels of 5-coils through relatively unused tunnels and could bypass certain checkpoints and defenses.

Even in his prior incarnations, Alus Tycho has always been something both more and less than a mortal. The first and foremost of all his Exalted lives was that of Ael Eren Illune (No Word Spoken), an Amiliki-Queen who governed the mortals in the provenance of Tear’s March under the ultimate and, then divine, authority of the Dragon-Kings.

Silent since birth, when a curious young Dragon-King ripped her vocal cords from her throat to examine them, she was among the first of her people to master the art of written word and to unlock the inherent power in these symbols. She carved them not only into every facet of her kingdom, but into her very flesh. Ael Eren Illune, as described by those few remaining records, had never been one of the great beauties of the Primordial World, but her ascension into near-god-hood, not as an Exalt but as an Amiliki, destroyed what traces of comeliness she might have possessed. Her body was mass of painted scars, each one a powerful sign of warding against every demon, spirit, Dragon-King, or mortal worthy of name and many who were not. A warrior-queen through and through, she lead her warriors on countless raids into neighboring lands to capture warm-bodies for the Dragon-Kings to offer upon their altars to the sun. She even constructed a ziggurat of her own, upon which she spilled the blood of only great warriors or leaders.

Exaltation came swift to her. Ael Eren Illune Exalted in the golden light of dawn as she stood upon that very alter, her body painted red in the blood of a rival Amiliki-King who, just moments before, her own hand had cut the heart from. This offering, intended to beseech the sun to drive off the strange and evil sights and sounds that had begun to roll across the land, brought her something else instead: A shocking awareness that her lords and masters, the Dragon-Kings, were in the midst of a struggle for their very lives. That there was, in fact, a war raging across the entire face of Creation and that she, would be one of the instruments to end it. No longer, the sun told her, should she make war upon her neighbors, but offer them her protection. His symbol would become Her’s, a new mark worn upon her brow and no mark of warding would ever best it.

Legends speak of how eager Ael Eren Illune became to fulfill her new master’s request that she ordered every village and town raised to the ground. Every scrap of stone and wood that could be found was dragged, often for hundreds of miles, to what was then the sparsely populated seat of her power. Here, she built a new city. One whose every facet was meticulously planned and charted. None could fathom her design, for none could even behold it lest they could see through the eyes of the sun as she could. Thousands died in this monumental task, yet in the end, the Amiliki-Queen had designed a fortress-city whose very shape was that of a massive symbol of warding. The touch of the Primordials could only scratch at it’s door, never breaching the boundaries of it’s walls. This was Kabalien, which would become mortal-made cities of note to survive the Primordial War and in time which later generations would know as Deheleshen.

Ael Eren Illune herself, however, would not survive the War. Her duties to her people fulfilled, she outfitted herself with talismans of magical gold fused into her flesh and set out to do battle upon the front lines of the war. Ever a protector, even here, she often sacrificed her flesh and sanity to protect other Exalts from the ravages of the Primordials. Ever more, her body was torn apart and replaced by orichalcum, until at last there was simply not enough of her still flesh and blood to hold her soul and it slipped away into the night.

Her shard, however, would be reborn and at the tail end of the War, a new Solar would arise to take her place...

There are many stories about him. He was said to be a Lunar, a wolf totem, with a very unusual personality. He entered the Five Coils when it was created- They say, to see if he could escape given only a spoon. He was rather disappointed when he discovered that all the food given used only chopsticks.

He is Free. He says that he had a name before that, but it's the only name that matters to him anymore. Free is what he wishes to be, and some say, what he wishes others to be. He's very powerful, quite possibly impossible to kill, and a great sorceror. At the same time, his personality would be best described as... mad. This should be obvious, if only for the reason that he is trapped in the Five Coils. This superficial strangeness hides a deep, noble personality, however- Some say that the real reason he stays is for the sake of a young girl, a Lunar sorceress, with a frog- such an inoffensive creature- as her totem, who's bound by some magic or another, to stay in Five Coils. Others say that he waits for the day when he will be able to destroy Five Coils from the inside. The Dragon-Blooded who run Five Coils says that he does not exist.

Myth or reality, Free is a powerful name in Five Coils. He's said to be a giant of a man, broad-shouldered, strong-muscled, feral-grinning. His left eye has, tattooed in place of an eyebrow, the only tattoo that adorns his body: NOFUTURE, said to have been given to him after he took the eye of a powerful Solar witch, which sits in his left eyesocket now. Some even say the one he took the eye from was his spouse, but as with all things about Free, the stories conflict.

He wears a black and white striped bodysuit, and has an iron ball attached to one leg. He wears this by choice, and has incorporated it into his style of fighting, using it to give his kicks a lethal level of strength, and he has a fantastic control over ice, his spells all taking a more arctic theme- The Death of Obsidian Butterflies, rather than shards of rock, are replaced with razor-sharp flakes of snow. It is unknown how he changes the nature of these spells, woven into the very fabric of the universe- Some put it to the influence of the eye he holds, some to his own mad nature, some say that it's the proof that he's merely a myth of hope among the underclass of Five Coils.

But if he is real, then this is his chance.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:35, Tue 16 Dec 2008.

Video of a pangolin.  It isn't Turtle's totem animal (which is a turtle...) but it does give a good impression of certain physical characteristics I was thinking for his Beastman form.  Both are sort of awkward, heavily armored, hunched figures with powerful oversized claws.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btkVS7uYNwM

And inspiration for a "Deranged Attack Tortoise" martial arts style.  Apparently they're pretty territorial.  I haven't incorporated that into Grinning Turtle's personality but probably will into his First Age incarnation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul0gfCyeiyM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWKfENaNH4g&NR=1
This message was last edited by the player at 09:04, Sun 21 Dec 2008.

   Saffron’s First Age incarnation was known as Anaximander the Gentle. He was a quiet and introspective man who originally led with compassion, mercy, and by example.
   A skilled martial artist and healer, he preferred to use his abilities to save lives instead of taking them. He could sense sicknesses from unbalanced Essence as easily as a master musician can hear the one instrument out of tune with the others. He could correct them with little effort.
   As a negotiator he was known to pick apart the opponent’s argument from the inside. He started by accepting the other’s opinion and then twisting it until his opponent realized the futility of her belief.
   In the Primordial War, he acted as herald trying to reason with the other side as much as possible. He took many more prisoners than he killed. And everyone he had to kill, he would honor in some way and forgive them for forcing his hand.
   After the war, he set about making treaties and solving internecine conflict.
    He was father like, parenting everyone around him in a way that was originally not offensive and intrusive.
   As the curse took hold, he became less tolerant of others beliefs. His fatherly demeanor became oppressive and punitive. His attacks on others beliefs would overt, harsh, and critical. All of the finesse, he possessed in his height was lost. And then the Dragonbloods turned on him and eliminated him.
   His partner in his life was Aurora, a Lunar, with a musical talent and badass fighting spirit. Rory, as he called her, soothed with words and song when her lover was stressed. She was fun loving and full of life. She reminded Anaximander to stop and smell the roses when he would drift into too much thought. She stood by him through the end – even as he became less the gentle lover and more the oppressive tyrant. When the Terrestrials came knocking she died as his side.

Turtle's greatest preincarnation of note was a scarred veteran of the Primordial War, Chelara the Snappish.  An honored warrior, Chelara's main contribution was keeping powerful primary souls of Primordials occupied while her allies enacted the often bizarre and time consuming requirements for their permanent deaths.  When her Solar mate died in the final cataclysmic battle of the war, she decided that she preferred a solitary life where she could control her own fate.  Rather than face the humiliation of bowing before a much younger and weaker Solar partner, she instead established her own territory toward the outskirts of Creation, disdaining contact with the early Solar empires, and later the Deliberative.  As the First Age wore on and Creation's borders were expanded by clever Solar Twilight and No Moon savants, she moved her own territories outward, always just skirting the Wyld.

Eventually, however, she refused to move any further.  About a thousand years after the end of the Primordial War, Chelara stood her ground, facing off against a young but skilled Solar Twilight seeking to expand his own territory by stabilizing land from the Wyld borders.  Though Chelara correctly assessed that the Solar would be no match for her physical might, she had failed to recognize the advancements the sorcerous arts had made since the beginning of her self-imposed exile.  Rather than engage in direct combat, the Twilight threw a powerful Solar Circle curse of his own devising upon her.

Withdrawing from the conflict, Chelara managed to survive the withering curse only by entering a hibernation state.  Unfortunately, her antisocial tendencies sealed her fate.  No Solar capable of Adamant Circle Sorcery was willing to offend their colleague by releasing the curse he had placed upon the Lunar, and the few ancient Lunars who still recalled and honored her contributions to the Primordial War could perform such a countermagic.  Chelara remained where she lay for hundreds of years, eventually dieing in her hibernating state, though whether she was slain by the curse or another former enemy's blade was never determined as her corpse was never located.  Even her death was only determined by the sudden and unexpected termination of her thread on the Loom of Fate and the Exaltation of a new turtle totem Lunar.

Perhaps as a lingering effect of the curse levied by her Solar opponent, most of Chelara's reincarnations would be both unlucky and short-lived, even for Lunars.  Goveld the Plodder, who survived Usurpation, was one of the eldest when he died.  Goveld was killed by Raksha five years after the Usurpation, at an age of just over a century.  As a result of these relatively short life spans, none of the reincarnations ever attained quite the impression upon the Exalted shard.  Why it lost its ability to fix Castes at about the same time as the majority of Lunars was a matter of significant speculation, as aside from this major change neither Goveld nor his subsequent reincarnations ever survived the Wyld long enough to suffer more than superficial Wyld mutations.

Chelara the Snappish was a large, unattractive woman, scarred horribly in the Primordial War by wounds that refused to heal cleanly even with the passage of a thousand years.  Living in virtual isolation, she normally lived in her Beastman form, and it was rare to encounter her out of her suit of moonsilver plate or without the powered grand grimcleaver, both created for her personally during the Primordial War by the race which would later become the Mountain Folk.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:45, Wed 24 Dec 2008.

In recognition of how close we are to reaching our final goal and ending this campaign, I present a quick rendered image I've done of our ultimate goal, the last hurdle before the surface.

Okay a bit better of an image now that I'm not just playing with primitives.

The Pool of Silent Contemplation:
This is the center of a mid-level water-aspected manse in the district of water area.  A single drop of the purest water falls from the great stone spike into the pool exactly on time, once each hour.  Around the central pool are arrayed twelve stones, engraved with the words Time, Love, Life, Harmony, Truth, Madness, Justice, Space, Hate, Balance, Death, and Freedom.  It is said that if a person sits upon a stone and meditates while twelve drops fall without interruption, movement, or distraction, they will acheive perfect understanding of that concept.  Sadly few  can manage such a feat of concentration and only a few dozen of the Dragonblooded have even tried.

The series of incarnations held by the Shard of Exaltation--known only by the title of it's first and greatest holder--the Clockwork General--has always had a slight propensity towards getting into trouble...  As other Solars gravitated either to the new arts of Sorcery developed throughout the First Age--and others began dabbling in  the arts of Creating Life--and others still crafted their own realms out of the depths of the endless Wyld surrounding Creation--the Clockwork General always took pride in utterly mastering the art of machinery...  Some say the General learned the ways of craftsmanship from Autochthon himself--and the first incarnation was slain by a number of his rivals after withdrawing from the deliberative in protest...

But still, even to this day--the Dawn Caste Solar Exaltation had always had an aptitude for the arts of craftsmanship--the secrets Autochthon imparted impressing themselves upon each successive existance, as the Clockwork General reincarnated--produced great wonders, both in the creation of mighty battlefield inventions--and with the dissemination of utiliarian wonders for their people--and always was the Clockwork General seeking a new and cleaner way of waging war...

But still, even in spite of the Second General's brilliance--he was killed in the middle of his Greatest Creation--one that has been lost to memory and Fate alike, as the Dragon Blooded who took him by surprise were afeared of it's might and nobility--and destroyed it in short order.

Now, the Third Clockwork General has arisen--or perhaps the Fourth--though Danae has no memory of any incarnations beyond the Second--and when a crafter-warrior of such briliance has the freedom to act upon the system of Five Coils--perhaps a great future may yet lie in store for the world.