Vampires infesting the mayoral office. Lycanthropes prowling the suburbs. Another kraken making its way upstate along the river. Crazed cultists masquerading as door-to-door religious nuts. Every one of them edging the world one more step toward the next demonic apocalypse.
In your line of work, that’s called Tuesday.
You are an agent of the Brotherhood of the Celestial Torch, hand-picked to serve as Earth’s first and last line of defense against the servants of Darkness. Oh sure, there are others in the Brotherhood who seem more hand-picked than you were, and yes, you probably only work out of a small office somewhere in Michigan or Wyoming or South Dakota, but when it comes to dealing out the damage to the infernal instruments of Hell taking over that shopping mall or the Craz-E-Mart, the buck stops with you.
My sire always told me, “There’s no instruction manual for being dead, strákur.” I believed her, because she was older and smarter than me, and we value knowledge if nothing else. Many sires spill a lot of poison into the ears of their childer, telling them the One True Way to be a vampire. Some vampires don’t even bother, kicking their errant progeny to the streets and letting them figure it out for themselves. A few smother their instruction in religious imperatives, philosophical tenets, or mystical confluences. But not one of them has a pamphlet with clear, easy instructions once you’ve become Damned.
Of course they lie. All vampires lie. But the best lies are those that are told between two truths, yes? Here are thirteen such truths, childe. They may line up with other things you know, or they might not. Sometimes the narrators present tantalizing rumors and conspiracies, while others digress into areas not often considered by many. Some of what they say have no facts to back them up, but not everything is a lie, either.
Let us find instruction from amidst the lies, together.
The Final Empire was built on the backs of the skaa — the downtrodden descendants of those who opposed the Lord Ruler’s ascension a thousand years ago. They are the faceless masses of Scadrial, tasked with plowing the barren fields, sweeping the ash-covered streets, tending the opulent nobility, and serving at the whims of their “betters.” But a few skaa cast off the chains of their destiny to be something more. They are thieves, Allomancers, firebrands, and rebels. They fight the system of oppression and brutality to give their people something they lost long ago — hope.
Skaa: Tin & Ash is an essential supplement for the Mistborn Adventure Game, designed for players, Narrators, and fans of the Mistborn novels. Developed in cooperation with Brandon Sanderson, this guide expands the canon of the novels, providing new insights into skaa throughout the Final Empire. Inside you’ll find detailed information on the history and beliefs of the skaa; the lives of city, canal, and plantation skaa; the skaa criminal and political underground; and famous skaa such as the Citizen, Mare, and the Survivor of the Flames.
In the shadows and between the cracks of our everyday lives hide the Chronicles of Darkness. Here lurk creatures of ancient myth and urban legend. Here lie the graves of angels and the bunkers of secret government programs. Here every malformed horror you’ve ever seen out of the corner of your eye has a home. And they’ve seen you.
Judge us not by our seemings for we are never what we appear.
Come hither, changelings and join the dream-dance,
lest the winter come and the Dreaming pass into memory.
Recall your heritage! Let the games begin!
Twenty years ago, White Wolf published Changeling: the Dreaming, the fifth of their promised five game-lines that together comprised the World of Darkness. Seen by some as a lighter, more fantasy-based setting in the modern-day, and by others as the darkest game White Wolf had yet created, players had to face the question of what happens once creativity and magic fades from their world.
Vampires infesting the mayoral office. Lycanthropes prowling the suburbs. Another kraken making its way upstate along the river. Crazed cultists masquerading as door-to-door religious nuts. Every one of them edging the world one more step toward the next demonic apocalypse.
