Plane Travelers & Rite Stories

This is, at the very least, for my own edification and hopefully for the edification of others. The story told through various Rite-tones gives us significant information about several individuals who traveled the planes before us.

Having made contact with Tasna, Duškomira, and Xilai, we now have considerably more information about these tones and this process. See also this linkpearl post: Verification Concerning Rite-tone Resonances, though I’ve done my best to keep this folio updated with the current information there.

Khejvard, Beastforged Scavenger of the Beast

Many of the Fang-aspected Rite-tones seem to invoke Khejvard. Probably human, likely deceased.

Khejvard’s Rite-tones

Graces of the Fang

• [Warmonger]: There were those who simply believed war was a certainty. Khejvard knew it, in his very flesh.
• [Will to Fight - Fang]: “Sometimes, the only real trick is… you gotta be bigger and badder than the other guy.” – Khejvard, Beastforged scavenger
• [That’s When I Carried You]: “Khejvard found something interesting today scavenging. Someone, apparently. Calls themself Xilai.”
• [Gut Feeling]: “You gotta be ready! You gotta rush in! If you don’t strike first, the fiends will!”

Rites of the Fang

• [Crush]: “I dunno what the hells the Beast burped up, and I don’t want it to live long ‘nough to find out.”
• [Entrench]: “I’ll never understand how ya kept yourself alive before I got here.”
• [Death Parade]: “You just gotta trust that the fiends’ll run out eventually.”

Sidereal Rites

• [Everyone Dies Someday]: “Set your heart right every day. Fight like you’re already dead and have nothin’ to fear. That’s freedom.”
• [Rage]: “Sometimes, all I can think about is how good it feels t’ sink my hammer into a fiend. Dunno what that means.”
• [Beatdown]: “Make ‘em choose between takin’ the hit and fightin’ back, and you’ve already got ‘em beat.”

Duškomira, Night-Blessed, of Valaïs

Many of the Claw-aspected Rite-tones seem to invoke Duškomira. Duškomira has died once, and then lived again—this seems to be the “undead” referenced in the “Traveler’s Guide,” which Duškomira has noted has a definite bias. Duškomira noted that she can control every aspect of her appearance.

• I met Duškomira by walking into a shop hidden in a mirror in the Queenstown Bazaar. I’ll accession the memory later. I did not know it was her at the time.

Duškomira’s Rite-tones

Graces of the Claw

• [Combat Instinct]: “You are of the darkness now, Duškomir. You must learn to walk alongside it”.
• [The Will to Fight - Claw]: “I’ll tell you a secret. The secret is- Death is on your side, not his.” —Duškomira, Night-Blessed
• [Honed Combat Instinct]: “The night belonged to Duškomira, and she to it.”
• [Combat Reflexes]: “My loyalties lie elsewhere now. I will not harm you if you do not harm me. I have a home to which I must return safely.” —Duškomira, Night-Blessed
• [Pragmatism]: She had been no stranger to death while she was alive. Now, she danced with it, joy in her heart.
• [Momentum]: There was no shortage of those who would quiet her song; there was no shortage of knives in the night.

Rites of the Claw

Many of these are unattributed. I’m guessing somewhat from tone, though some of these might also be Tasna? Some of the others sound very much like Khejvard. Only Instructive insomuch as it might reveal character.

• [Shifting Strike]: “Sometimes, things just aren’t the way you thought they were.”
• [Feint]: “Make them defend against what isn’t there, and they won’t ever notice what is.”
• [Backstab]: “Not a drop of honor to be found here. Just the Song, and each other.”

Sidereal Rites

• [Strangling Darkness]: “Sometimes, you can just stand back and let the Night do all the hard work for you.”
• [Sorrowful Memory]: “Sometimes if I’m away from home too long, I hear the Pathos in my heart. Reminding me of who I used to be.”

Rohsu Xilai, Kindred Knight of Mu

Many of the Scale-aspected Rite-tones seem to invoke Xilai. Kin.

Xilai’s Rite-tones

Graces of the Scale

• [The Unwavering]: Through the harshest days, against the fiercest foes, Xilai’s faith never once faltered.
• [Will to Fight - Scale]: “It matters not where I am. I will still protect those in need of protection.” —Xilai, Kindred Knight
• [Guarded Hand]: Xilai found it easier, sometimes, to think of their armour as their true face.
• [Til the Last]: Xilai found themself in an unfamiliar place. Then, they found themself alone.
• [Grin and Bare It]: The heat here hit different. The fiends here were strange…

The combination of the text found on Khejvard’s [That’s When I Carried You] + [Til the Last] and [Grin and Bare It] make me suspect that, however Xilai ended up on the Beast it was neither intentional nor easy.

Rites of the Scale

• [Block]: “Yes, I know it is twice my size. No, I do not care.”
• [Wall]: “You will have to go through me!”
• [Taunt]: “You will die! You will die and the White Sun will scour your bones until you are naught but sand!”
• [Protect]: “It is what I do. It is what I have always done.”
• [Maintenance]: “Let me take some weight off your shoulders, friend.”
  • Notably, this Rite-tone shows Tasna and Khejvard as well as Xilai, I believe—though not Duškomira
• [Shed Scales]: “Khejvard! Remember what you said about the best defense?!”

Other Tellurian Rites

• [Wild Swing]: “Make me an opening, Xilai! Let’s finish it off!”
  • Unsure who the speaker is, though Khejvard would be the logical conclusion

Sidereal Rites

• [Condemnation]: “Go ahead. Do your worst. Tasna taught me a few tricks.”
  • Mentions Tasna; speaker is Xilai, confirmed by Duškomira

Tasna of Samudra

Many of the Breath-aspected Rite-tones seem to invoke Tasna. Naiad. Seems to go by “V” here on the Beast. Was the Academician of Samudra for some amount of time. Jae knows her and knows where she is.

Tasna’s Rite-tones

Graces of Breath

• [Snipe]: Aether was aether. This far away from the Academy, she’d use whatever tools she needed.
• [Will to Fight - Breath]: “Close your eyes and aim. Close your ears, and listen. Feel the aether flowing; it will tell you where you need to be.”
• [No Pressure]: Tasna led expedition after expedition into the Septentrione. She never lost a single soul to the mists.
• [Opportunity Cost]: “I don’t know where the path will lead! But if I don’t try, I’ll never learn!” ­—Tasna, Academician Emerita
• [Recoup]: How to get one’s bearings, when the aether is suddenly so very different from all you’ve ever known?

Rites of Breath

• [Rearguard]: The skills that served her well at home still served her every bit as well, here.
• [Command]: After all, she did run the entire Academy, once.

Sidereal Rites

• [Big Damn Hero]: Nobody treated Tasna like a stranger any more, after that.
• [Reconjure]: All that has been is recalled in the stars. Tasna conducted them like an orchestra.
• [Ivory Blood]: They found Tasna’s body in the Septentrione. Frozen solid — but not like you’d expect — alabaster and gold. Perfect.
• [Condemnation]: “Go ahead. Do your worst. Tasna taught me a few tricks.”
  • Mentions Tasna; speaker is Xilai, confirmed by Duškomira
• [Elixir]: “It’s just a blockage in your flow of aether. If you think about it like that, it’s easy to fix!”

Ciet of Almachadta (?)

Caught in the door between worlds on Almachadta in an attempt to join the others. Spoken Wood.

• [The Final Seal Is Broken]
  • Initial text: …. . .-.. .–. .. – - .-. .- .–. .–. . -.. .. -. …. . .-. . (HELP I’M TRAPPED IN HERE)
  • Glorious text: - …. . — - …. . .-. … .- .-. . .– .- .. - .. -. –. ..-. — .-. – . (THE OTHERS ARE WAITING FOR ME)

Duškomira notes that this tone changed when they changed many of the other tones, but not through their intent.

Tones That Resisted Change

Duškomira confirmed that certain tones resisted change rather aggressively when they wrote their story into the Rite. These tones are:

• Fiend-tones:

  • [Invoke: Papyrus]: “Fold the paper just like I showed you. Fold it until it’s perfect. Then, crumple it up and burn it!”
  • [Invoke: Lithos]: “Break a stone - slate works best, obviously - onto which you’ve written a fact only you know.”
  • [Invoke: Lutum]: “You start with a handful of mud thrown onto the ground. Then, a seed from a plant you either love, or hate.”
  • [Invoke: Orichalca]: “For this one, you can use anything at all — as long as it has value to someone.”
  • [Invoke: Vitriol]: “All you need is something that was once part of a fiend, but… you do need to have been the one who killed it.”

• Tones that belong to the Scorpion Queen (Jae more-or-less helpfully pointed them out in This Linkpearl post).

  • [I Am The Odds]: “Don’t tell me you lost hope. You never had it in the first place.” – the Scorpion Queen
  • [Wind Up]: “The scorpion tells you when it’s going to strike, if you’re willing to listen.”
  • [Neutrality Ender]: “Either we pick a side, or the sides pick us.”
  • [Break]: “Every fiend’s got a weak spot.”
  • [Heavy Strikes]: “If I’m not strong enough… I’ll just keep getting stronger ‘till I can beat ALL the fiends!”
  • [Massive Pyre]: “Yes, right here, right now, in the middle of all of this. Let’s dance.”
  • [Real Ultimate Power]: “You don’t understand. I’M the hero in this story!”

• Other resistant Rite-tones:

  • Tellurian tones:
    • [Eating Victory]: The rules were simple: either eat, or be eaten.
    • [Bash]: There’s always a bigger stick. (with its glorious version reading “Congratulations! You found it!”
    • [Swipe]: Quick. Simple. Easy. (with its glorious version reading “Quick. Simple. Easy. And then you do it again.”)
    • [Quick Hit]: They’ll never see you coming.
    • [Adrenaline Surge]: “Fuck!” — many people, across myriad planes
    • [Reassessment]: In the aftermath of battle, are fellow scavengers friends, or foes? Opportunity, or risk?
  • Burning Sidereal Tones
    • [Wild and Pure and Forever Free]: How our hearts sing in the chaos!
    • [Inferno]: Only fire lives here now.
    • [Smother]: Where there’s fire, there’s smoke.
  • Pellucid Sidereal Tones
    • [Fateshunt]: “If Fate is written in the stars then let me be its Editor!”
    • [Invisible Chains]: You can’t see them. But you know they’re there.
    • [Mirror Image]: As above, so below. As it was, so shall it be.
  • All of the Flourishing sidereal tones except [The Final Seal is Broken], as noted above
  • Radiant Sidereal Tones: Only [Condemnation], [Elixir], and [Ivory Blood] were changed; the rest were as they were found
  • Tenebrous Sidereal Tones: Only [Strangling Darkness] and [Sorrowful Memory] were changed. Particularly resistant Tenebrous tones were:
    • [Forbidden Pact]: “Do you believe you can escape me before I arrive? How do you expect to outrun me, when I am already here?”
    • [Dark Prophecy]: “Everyone knows the world will end. The only question that really matters is, what comes next after that?”
    • [Defiance]: downbelow the nightlit city someone’s selling frozen whispers trading teeth for little-deaths and deaths for pearls that weep at midnight… (Duškomira noted that this was deeply familiar to her, less so that they tried to change it)

Per my conversation with Duškomira, neither she nor Xilai recall much about their previous planes. Duškomira posited it could be something taken from you upon planar traversal. I expect we’ll discuss this more in-depth in person with all of us.