Hoo-boy. Guess it's time for this.



In our last Solar campaign we had agreed beforehand that the game was about a Circle of three Solars rising to power in the Eastern fringe of the Hundred Kingdoms, establishing the beginning of a new Solar Deliberative, and taking Creation to task in the name of the Unconquered Sun. Little did we know that the in-character dynamics of the party and a number of spectacular Limit Breaks would eventually cause a series of atrocities ending in... well, we'll get to that. I know I'm going to miss a few out of a 25+ session campaign, but here are the three critical events which can be grokked outside the context of the game:



1) The first big warning sign was in the third session, when the Circle, badly injured after a fight with a Garda Bird (all deep in the -2s at least), demanded from the local god of spring and renewal that they be regrown just as she regrew the trees of the forest in an ancient pact fueled by the prayers and blood offerings of the nearby city. They agreed to offer up the Essence in the lives of the very old and the very young of the city they had chosen to protect, and watched those lives be snuffed out in a rain of emerald arrows. Casualty count: Around four thousand - I never put an actual number on it, being too shocked (although hardly displeased) by the turn of events.



2) The Limit Breaking Night Caste with Deliberate Cruelty chained together two hundred captured Imperial soldiers and marched them deep below the earth, then spiked the chains immovably into the stone. He left them alone in the utter dark, but not before tapping on the stone to attract the unspeakable carnivorous monstrosities that they had found the session before...



3) Ah, the big one. For about six sessions the PCs had been aware of a growing Realm military presence in nearby Greyfalls, and that a powerful Wyld Hunt was approaching from the west, although they didn't have its exact position. Knowing that time was running out, they formed a plan to wipe out the garrison at Greyfalls before it could move against them.



The plan: infiltrate the city in disguise, summon the souped-up Garda from the first story arc which still longed for vengeance, defeat it, and allow its suicidal conflagration to obliterate everything around it while they employed Perfect Defenses to avoid harm. It had previously been established that the ancient bird's death throes could devastate a good-sized city or army - employing it here would, in theory, wipe out the garrison, the river fleet, and pretty much everyone inside the walls.



It took two sessions to pull off, mostly because the Circle was bitterly divided as to whether to carry it out, particularly when they discovered that some of their assumptions were incorrect; specifically, that the majority of the Realm soldiers were stationed in an enclave by the waterfalls rather than inside the city. The Zenith browbeat the kind-hearted but rather meek Twilight, and the Night was eventually convinced that it was the most efficient way to go about things. The Night's ronin Sidereal companion abandoned them in disgust, betraying them to the Bronze Faction and reappearing girded for war and fighting alongside of the Garda when it was summoned; they ended up cutting their ronin friend down, and would likely have killed her had the Garda not gone nova at the end of the round. In the end, the bird's dying fires consumed Greyfalls, its entire citizenry, about a third of the Imperial garrison, and the anchored warships.



Every Solar underwent Limit Break over the course of two scenes, giving rise to the second-most intense roleplaying and dialogue I have ever seen or participated in. The phrase "We are horrible people," which had been bandied about out of character as a half-joke several times, became "we are the utterly irredeemable monsters that the Dragon-Blooded say we are". It was true, and everyone at the table realized it. That, I think, is the precise moment when we realized what the Solar Great Curse was really all about.



To cut a long story a little shorter (and cutting out a great deal of background and story which would be better suited to a full-fledged Actual Play thread), the Solars ended up returning to their newly constructed temple to the Unconquered Sun and sat in judgment over the Night Caste by his request after his dark past all came spilling out (including the feeding of helpless prisoners to monsters, and the murder of the Solar who was the UC's High Priest before the party Zenith). They condemned him to death, as they would any of their citizenry, or else they would become tyrants who were above their own laws.



They shortly thereafter realized that, although the Night Caste had done horrible things, so had all the rest of them, all in the name of the Unconquered Sun. Eleven solid hours of play culminated in the Circle laying mass condemnations upon *themselves*, and, convinced that only the Sun could judge whether they were fit to live or die, they plunged knives into their hearts.



It took us another two hours to decide, out of character, whether the Solars lived or died. In the end we realized that it was the best ending we could have ever wished for, and we let them redeem themselves in death.