Dust-Shrouded Sun session 1

Somethings like an Introduction

(First writeup for the Dust-Shrouded Sun campaign)

So, the man I think of as a father sees me as some sort of horrible monster; my home city is filled with immensely powerful people who would kill me at the drop of a hat, and another group of vastly powerful people is putting the screws on my friends to cause trouble for the first lot. All in all, it's turning out to be one of those lifetimes.

I should probably start at the beginning. Well, a beginning, anyway. I'm not sure there really is such a thing as the beginning, unless you go right back to the very first one. And, depending on who you talk to, even that might not be. The beginning of it all, that is. Some say this is all a vast cycle, that this has happened a thousand and one times before, and will happen again, over and over, until we get it right. Personally, I think people who start talking like that have taken a little too much smoke. Let that be a lesson to you all: intoxication more likely makes a fool out of a philosopher, than a philosopher out of a fool. But I digress.

I am an Anathema.

It seems strange to see the words written down. I can feel a shiver running down my back; an icy finger trailing all the way from the nape of my neck to the base of my spine. Maybe someone walked over my grave. According to what I've learned, that's not as farfetched a proposition as it sounds. I've died at least once already. Not this body, but the soul fragment that now resides within it. The Dragon Blooded call it the Second Breath, but then, those pretentious bastards have a high-faluting capitalised term for just about everything. They probably refer to farting as "Expulsion of the Wind's Curse," or some such.

And I wander off the subject again. Still, this gives me an opening, of sorts. A place to begin.

When a child is born, it takes its first breath. This isn't just air. Life energy floods into the babe, turning it from a mere shell of flesh into a human being. The second breath—oh, excuse me, I mean Second Breath—is Exaltation. This is when a human is infused with the essence of a god, becoming something more. That's what happened to me.

I am Suriah, a solar exalted, chosen of the Unconquered Sun.

Sounds good, doesn't it?

The Dragon Blooded would call me and all of my brethren Anathema. I'm fine with that. This is my account of what it's like to be an Anathema. Hope you find it interesting, reader, whoever you are. Maybe you're no one. This isn't something I think I'm ever going to show to anyone, after all. It's more a matter of personal record. So, if someone is reading this, chances are you either stole it, or ripped it from my rapidly cooling corpse. If that's the case, I have something to say to you: good luck. With what's coming after you, you're going to need it.