The new Order of the Dragon welcomes all wayfarers, wanderers and outcasts who devote their talents to helping the Free Folk.
The Lady Dread fights for the Fae, who have been mercilessly hunted by the Ashen Tradition to be corrupted into vicious Ravagers. Her prowess in combat stems from her training as a Leafdancer.
Freeman is a former Child of the Pyre. Maighread bested him in battle and gave him the choice to die or repent. He now lends his arcane powers to the cause of the Dragons and seeks redemption for the harms he has caused.
The Faded Knight is the last surviving soldier of the Order of the Griffon. He had been imprisoned by the Red Cadre at a distant Keep. 'Fade' was rescued by Jorja the Fair and told to seek out Maximus if he wanted revenge against his captors.
The Dragons are sometimes granted aid by a mysterious apparition that they call the Sage. No one knows the Sage's origin or agenda, but his riddles and secrets have often brought the Dragons good fortune.
Long before the rise of the Red Cadre, the Children of the Pyre, and the Ashen Tradition, before the realm fell into chaos and fear, a company of Knights served justice and kept the peace. They were known as the Order of the Dragon. Legend says that they were the first of all the Orders, inspiring the Crow, the Spider, the Griffon and the Unicorn, and that they were the first to fall when the Storm came. Now, when the remaining Orders have been attacked and destroyed or imprisoned, a lone warrior appears bearing the standard of the Dragon and begins rallying champions to the cause of peace and the overthrow of tyranny.
Maximus is an orphan taken in by the the Order of the Crow and trained in combat, tracking and the bardic arts. Before Maximus can complete his training and become a Knight, the Order is attacked and destroyed by the Red Cadre. The wizards of the Cadre imprison Maximus and practice their foul magic upon him until a fellow captive, Jorja the Fair, uses her cunning and trickery to allow them to escape. The two part afterwards, for their safety, but vow to reunite one day. Maximus also vows to use his skills in the service of the Free Folk and to vanquish the Red Cadre.
39993//456999/rex/rex.ca
Intermittent Transmission:
.... leave it to the....*crackle*..... it's no good. *skrt* *static* ... we're screwed...*crackle*
...what the hell....*skrt* bang, bang, bang, They are coming!.... *static* whatever you are going to do do it now... *skrt* only a few more moments.... *static*
*silence* *skrt* JESUS CHRIST IT'S... *static*
Fleeing from a hit squad of extraterrestrial assassins, Mackenzie Cube took refuge in the subway, hoping to evade pursuit. She had been seriously injured and was on the verge of passing out when a young boy came to her aid. Jiro respected Macks' plea that no ambulance or police be called and he performed first aid himself, under her direction. Jiro was on the run too, from a neglectful foster-home. Mackenzie gave him a gift of an alien hunter's pistol and the two became fast friends.
Two young hackers known by the handles 'The Professor' and 'Trump' were able to create a cloaked backdoor channel into Omega Station 6, the site of a secret cloning program. Over the course of three years, they slowly and delicately tinkered with the system and were able to re-program one of the clones. They left the combat and tactical coding intact but altered the motivation from obedience to rebellion. When the techs at the Station activated the clone she broke loose and escaped. Some time after, Mackenzie Cube located the clone and began guiding her in her new life as a renegade. The clone eventually chose the name Francine.
Goner joined the local anti-government rebels at a young age and grew up participating in protests and acts of civil disobedience. As the government became increasingly oppressive and their tactics became more violent, the rebels' activities became more radical and militarized. Goner struggled personally with the direction the rebel movement was taking; she was, however, first and foremost, loyal to her friends. Until the government launched Operation LEGACY and infiltrated the rebels with sleeper agents, eventually turning the movement against itself. Goner's cell was targeted in a large-scale assault; she was the only survivor, rescued by the mysterious Magnus Magenta.
Angst earned his nickname from a local sports announcer for the feeling of dread that he would cause in the opposing team whenever he took to the field. His college football career was on track to be legendary until he suffered a sudden and severe nervous breakdown. Hospital records describe Angst experiencing paranoid delusions and claiming that he could read people's minds. After an intensive treatment of psycho-pharmaceuticals and ECT, he was released. Shortly after, he disappeared. Angst was last seen in the company of a woman later identified as Mackenzie Cube.
Magnus has been sighted in a wide variety of locations throughout history. The theories as to his origin and true nature are many. A common one is that he is in fact an alien from an advanced civilization sent to Earth to protect the innocent, punish the guilty and guide humanity along its evolution to the stars. He is a brutal warrior and rumoured to have psychic powers. Magnus is rarely seen without his blade or a helping hand for those in need.
Mackenzie was a top-level psychologist with the Omega Station 12 program. She was responsible for monitoring the mental health of the test subjects and administering treatment as necessary. After years of failed results the project finally produced an agent who was capable of combining Omega Magic with Neo-Linguistic Programming. In her final session with the agent before their deployment, Mackenzie shot them and escaped the facility. She took with her numerous documents and psychoactive compounds relating to the Plureality research. Her current agenda is unknown.
Sometimes The Professor finds you first. Cryptic signs and
mysterious messages. Clues and riddles. Tuning you into the different
frequencies that reveal secret worlds hidden in plain sight. The
Professor gives you guidance.
Sometimes Morganfokker finds you first. Painful surgeries and
terrible sacrifices. Injections and dissections. Implanting you with
the knowledge that everything you know is a lie. Morganfokker tests
you and experiments on you.
Sometimes Maggie finds you first. Her hand on your shoulder,
gentle and strong. Standing watch over you while you stare in shock
as the world turns to ruins around you and demons charge forth from
your darkest places. Maggie protects you.
Sometimes Max finds you first. He makes a joke, tells you a story.
He probably has some crazy theory about what's happening. One minute
he's ranting, the next he's tearing up when you play him your
favourite song. Max makes things stranger or more normal or both.
No matter who finds you first, or who comes next, to clean up the
mess or bind the wounds or offer explanations, to make you feel
better or worse about it all, once you are in it you are in it for
good. The only way out is to get dead, and even that might not last –
just ask Suki or Goner.
And, of course, because that's the way of things here, you could
be found first a few times, by a few different people, different
combinations, different versions, some you remember and some you
can't but they're all still somehow yours. They're all still somehow
you.
I was abducted from the Eighth Tribe on a planet far away from
Earth by an army of Fokkerbots; Max rescued me. I also went to
college and met a girl named Maggie who got me into role-playing
games and introduced me to the Professor. I might have been part of a
girl named Kitty. Sometimes I've been here since the beginning, and
other times I'm the newest recruit.
My name is Tatterdemalion and one day I will tell you the story of
how I destroyed the Metaplex.
If his calculations were correct.
If his calculations were correct this call would change everything.
Years of calculations. He had been doing this for so long - had he been a young man once? The development of the model of Noo-Mo-Omniism. The study of Plureality. The development of Omega Magic. Version Theory.
If his calculations were correct he would be making contact with the Prime Variable, the repeating cluster of data that recurred throughout all levels of the holoarchy, in all iterations of the fractal. The 'Cube', as he called it, a nickname referencing the act of raising a quantity to the third power, the transformation of something two-dimensional into something three-dimensional. That which transcends the plane it is drawn upon, like the way in chess that a Knight can move over/through other pieces who can only travel on the surface of the board... It made sense to him, anyway.
Years researching plexwave radiation, designing and building the Plexotron. And everything, and everyone, he gave up along the way. Carrying this desperate vision, this certainty that things could be other than what they are, this burden like Frodo carrying the One Ring to Mt. Doom.
If his calculations were correct this call had probably taken place dozens, maybe hundreds of times before, in different versions. It was a cause, an effect, a strange attractor. For him though, now, here, this call would mean the beginning of creating Continuity in a Fragmented system. The genesis of understanding. It would mean that the Cube would no longer be alone. And neither would he.
He took a deep breath and picked up the cell phone. Dialled the number calculated by the Plexotron.
Ring. Click. "Hello?" The voice sounded far away.
"Um... May I ask who I am speaking to?" he said.
Pause. "My name is Max."
"Max, this is the Professor."
Later in the Metaplex...
"One day he was gone.
"Max had already been burnt out by the time we stormed the Temple. All the shifting, all his 'cubed' experiences, all the stress and uncertainty. Then being trapped here. Losing Maggie, again. None of us were totally surprised that he left. Dex was bitter, Wraith was angry, Callan was resigned, but none of us were surprised.
"And I was the least surprised of all, because Max had told me that he was going."
Wraith straightened in her seat, her frame tense. This was new to her, a story she hadn't yet heard. Darius glanced at her as he sipped his tea, and continued.
"He had come to believe that he was the problem, that Morganfokker was behind all of it and that he was carrying Morganfokker's signal, his sickness, with him. He thought that he had screwed up and gotten all of us trapped here. And he realized that as long as he was around we might never find our way clear of all the bad weird shit. I know, it's pretty egotistical when you think about it, but he might have been right.
"So he said that he was going underground, that he would go into hiding, use some of that weird identity magic he knew, and we would see what happened. And that he would try and find a way to make things better, and if he did he would come back. I nicknamed it the 'Once and Future Cube' plan. Make no mistake, things were still bad after he was gone - the Demons were relentless - but... Things were less weird without Max around."
Wraith was shaking her head but it was impossible to tell what she was feeling behind the mask.
"So," Marshal said. "Why did he tell you? When he didn't tell anyone else?"
"I'm not sure," Darius replied. "I've wondered about that. Why do you think he might have told me?"
Marshal considered. "The way you talk about everything, you seem to understand a bit of what it was like for Max."
Darius considered, a glimmer in his one eye. "I like to think I did. I tried to. So is that why you decided to tell me?"
"What?" Marshal blinked.
Darius smiled slightly. "You can tell me now, why you decided then to tell me about the 'Once and Future Cube'."
Marshal took a deep breath. A strange look on his face. "I... I knew..." He wasn't sure if he was making things up or remembering them. "I knew that I would need someone's help to get back."
Wraith stood up. Darius asked, "And why would you be coming back?"
"Because there was a chance... A chance to make things better."
"And what would it be?"
He thought about everything he had studied in Haven, everything he had learned from the Arcana. He thought about what he had seen in the borderlands, the ruins, the Demons. The Dragons and the stories that Darius had told him.
"If... If you could use one of the Grids to take control of an Eye... You could fly the Eye through one of the Gutters, out past Frontline... To where the Demons come from. It must be a portal. That would be your way to get out. Or shut them down. Or both. And now that the bulk of their forces have advanced on Haven..." He blinked again.
Darius grinned. "Alright Max, let's try it." Wraith nodded. "And we'll see what happens next."
