Tales of Perpetual Peace/RDDloresheets

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Starting Entanglements

• Characters may access two District Lores free.
• Characters may access the Dancing Red Demon Lore (below) free.
• Characters may access the Vile Rain Cult Legend Lore (below) free; in addition, characters may choose one of the options listed under 'Why You Believe'.
• Characters may choose one of the options appropriate to their Archetype in the Life in Perpetual Peace Lores.

Dancing Red Demon

The first accounts of the plague appear in Imperial reports dated around 8 months ago; though those files have since been destroyed, they comport with accounts from travelling merchants who had been in the west around the same time. A caravan -- none can agree whence it came -- in Only Six Devils was stricken with what appeared at first to be a violent lung infection; the disease then progressed to a form of wasting sickness, leaving the infected nearly catatonic for days on end. But it was the next stage that proved the most disturbing, and which gives the illness its name: the stricken patients each seemingly enjoyed a full recovery. And not just recovery, but an overabundance of health and energy. Within three days, however, that overabundance leads to fever, mania, hostility and lust; within another three, it culminates in a bloody scene of bodily disintegration.
Within two months of those initial cases, Only Six Devils was a ghost town; the few who avoided the grisly embrace of the Dancing Red Demon fled, spreading tales of a city that surpassed the Ten Hells in its horrors. Perhaps traveling with those refugees, or perhaps emerging by some other means, the Dancing Red Demon has struck cities across Shen Zhou since: Magnificent Ink, Thrashing Minister, Gathering Clouds -- all have been visited by the Demon, and if they have escaped the nightmare tableau of Only Six Devils, it has only been because so many city-dwellers have fled to their ancestral villages.

• The Disease Itself As stated above, the disease proceeds in four stages. The first is a Minor Metal Condition that leaves the afflicted short of breath and prone to constant coughing fits; once infected, you can make a Recovery roll at difficulty 60 every 2 days. If you succeed five times, you have weathered the disease, and cannot be affected again. If you fail three times, the disease progresses to the second stage. The second is a Major Water Condition that deprives the afflicted of energy and in constant need of deep, near-comatose sleep; once infected, you can make a Recovery roll at difficulty 60 every 2 days. If you succeed five times, you have weathered the disease, and cannot be affected again. If you fail twice, the disease progresses to the third stage. The third is a Major Fire Condition that drives the afflicted to constant activity and leaves them swinging wildly between exuberance and rage; once infected, you can make a Recovery roll at difficulty 80 every 12 hours. If you succeed three times, you have weathered the disease, and cannot be infected again. If you fail twice, the disease progresses to the fourth stage. The nature of the fourth stage is believed to be a Major Wood Condition, but is otherwise currently unknown.
  • 3 Status: You have already put a tremendous amount of study into the disease, and have gained a reputation among your fellow Doctors and the Imperial Bureaucracy as an Red Demon Expert. You must have the Secret Arts of Medicine loresheet to purchase this option.
    • 0 Bonus: You have a +5 bonus to any Learning or Medicine rolls relating to the disease.
  • 8 Destiny: Where the greatest medical minds of Shen Zhou have failed, you will succeed. You will cure the Dancing Red Demon! There is much to be done before you can announce success, but you have already gained a key insight into the sickness that will allow you to vanquish it.
    • -3: This discovery will come at a heavy price -- at some point, you must become infected yourself before you can discover the cure.
    • -2: You will not get the whole of the glory; a rival pursues the same end, and will -- if not stopped -- find a cure of his or her own.

• The Quarantine The response of the Imperial Bureaucracy in Perpetual Peace has been swift, decisive, and some say merciless. (Others, more inclined to the newly resurgent Legalist ministers in charge of the efforts, say prudent.) All those entering the city must pass through a makeshift cordon set up outside the city walls that allows specially-trained soldiers to observe travelers from a distance, and to have them inspected before they can approach the gates -- often by common criminals, pressed into the duty, or by the desperately poor -- if something seems amiss. If anything seems amiss (and 'anything' need not imply suspicion of Dancing Red Demon infection), the traveler is turned away at the tip of a crossbow bolt. If anyone tries to sneak past, they are shot on sight. Whether this has been effective, or whether Perpetual Peace has merely been fortunate thus far, is all but impossible to say.
  • 3 Bonus: For reasons righteous, malevolent, or merely mercenary, you've gotten to be an expert at making your way around, through, over, or under the Quarantine without undergoing inspection. This makes you an awfully valuable ally for those who value their discretion -- but also puts you in very real and near constant danger. You have a +10 bonus to any Finesse, Survival or Stealth roll involving evading the Quarantine.
  • 2 Fortune: You have connections among the poor unfortunates forced to inspect those going into the city; why do you hang around such people? In any case, they have a first-hand view of the government's efforts to keep the Demon at bay, and are privy to all sorts of interesting tidbits gleaned from the merchants and visitors approaching the city.
• Only Six Devils: Ground Zero? As far as anyone knows, the first appearance of the Dancing Red Demon was in the city of Only Six Devils, home to the most famous black market in Shen Zhou, and under the protection -- as it has been for centuries -- of the New Six Devils Gang. The city, never known for its welcoming presence, is now (again, as far as anyone knows) a ghost town. If the New Six Devils survived, they have not reappeared in the Jianghu, and none have dared come closer to the city than spyglass-range. There are those who say that such an iniquitous place somehow deserved its fate, that the evil of its rulers and the meanness of its citizens attracted evil to them. Whether that is a comforting thought to the inhabitants of Perpetual Peace or a bracing one depends very much on your point of view.
  • 4 Fortune: You are privy to some secret knowledge of the circumstances of the plague's arrival in Only Six Devils. Perhaps you know the identity of the first to fall ill, what became of the New Six Devils Gang -- or even why that city was the epicenter of the disease.
  • 5+ Treasure: One of the exotic treasures of the ruined city has found its way into your hands. Work with your Sage to determine just what it is that you have found, and how it came into your hands.
    • -3: Some measure of the disaster that befell Only Six Devils lingers on the treasure you hold. As long as you hold on to it, you suffer a Minor Curse of some type.

Vile Rain Cult Legend

Few among the Wulin -- and few more outside it -- think that the Vile Rain Cult is anything but a legend, a bogey used to scare the credulous and the naive. The notion of a corrupt society that practices human sacrifice, cannibalism, demon summoning, and worse(!), all while managing to escape the notice of the Martial Brotherhood at large can't help but appear preposterous. Now, some admit that such a baneful cult might once have existed, perhaps in the chaotic days at the end of the Han dynasty, or more recently perhaps in the Long Winter, but even then it is most often alleged that the so-called Cult was really just a few poor, deluded souls trying to emulate the tales of evil told around campfires.

Yet there are those who do believe -- and not without reason, either.

• 2+ Status: You are considered to be a Vile Rain Cult Expert; those who believe in its existence seek you out to share knowledge, receive advice, and to listen to their own theories. More than a few are cranks, but occasionally you meet someone with something interesting to say.
• 2+ Fortune: You have a contact, either in the Wulin or the Imperial Bureaucracy, who believes as you do, and -- while no more informed than you overall -- may be able to provide new information or insight into the Cult.
• 4+ Fortune: Once per story, you may declare that an NPC knows something of great importance about the existence and/or nature of the Vile Rain Cult, and its connection to the Dancing Red Demon plague. While your Wulin Sage is the ultimate arbiter of what the NPC knows, the information will be of great value.
• 0/5 Disadvantage: Among the Wulin and the Imperial authorities, you yourself are considered to be a Crank; no matter how strong your evidence, no matter how persuasive your arguments, past experience has led your peers and superiors to consider you prone to wild theories. Take one additional Destiny when your poor reputation causes you trouble.

Why You Believe

Why is it you believe that the Vile Rain Cult exists? You may pick one of the following options, or work with your Sage to design a new one.

• They tried to recruit me! One night, while walking the streets alone, a figure cloaked in shadow approached you; his (her? its?) skin was sallow, with pale milky eyes, and foul breath. You were asked "Do you wish to be baptised in the Vile Rain?" and, whether out of incredulity, indignation, or disgust, you refused -- and before you know it the figure was gone. Perhaps, as you seek out this wicked creature, you may ask yourself why they tried to recruit you.
  • 0 Bonus: You have the equivalent of 2 Status: Marked by Darkness among Baneful Wulin.
  • 5 Destiny: Not only did a Vile Rain Cultist try to recruit you, but bringing you into the fold is one of their top priorities! Their efforts will be persistent and varied; they may attempt to seduce you, to blackmail you, to entice you with promises of power or forbidden knowledge -- whatever the method, they will not stop until they get their woman or man.
    • -2: Their efforts will be ongoing, but their patience has a limit. If you turn them down repeatedly (or violently!), the Cult will decide that if they can't have you, no one will.
  • 2+ Fortune: Though the one who attempted to recruit you disappeared, you nevertheless gained some clue about the activities of the Vile Rain Cult. Work with your Sage to determine what you inferred and how you inferred it.
• You have read The Gospel of Corruption. You picked up the scroll in a dusty corner of the library; was it simple curiosity that led you to read it, or was a deeper destiny at work? Whatever the reason, your mouth went dry and your stomach soured as you read the perverse tale -- a cosmogony of degeneration, a metaphysics of abjection, and a promise of salvation through evil. Whoever professes such a philosophy, to say nothing of the perverse soul who composed it, is a danger to all Shen Zhou.
  • 0 Bonus: You may take either a Learning Specialty: Vile Rain Cult Lore or a Wu Wei Specialty: Resisting Vile Rain Curses for free.
  • 3 Secret: In addition to its perverse philosophy, the Gospel also contains instructions for perverse applications of the Secret Arts! Work with your Sage to create a new Doctor's, Priest's, or Scholar's Tool; it should be appropriate to a text of such vile provenance, and it counts toward Corrupt Cultivation.
  • 5 Treasure: Not only did you read the Gospel, you absconded with the scroll, as well! This allows you to study the text in depth, but who knows what trouble it will bring? Work with your Sage to create a Minor Paired Influence/Curse Condition; the Influence can be any kind of Hyperactivity, but the Curse will be an Entanglement Weakness.
    • -2: Though it appeared forgotten, its original owner has not taken kindly to its disappearance, and he or she strongly suspects that you are the thief.
    • 0: You may take both specialties listed above, rather than just one.
• You have witnessed their rites. You did not go looking for evidence of the Vile Rain Cult's existence; their existence was thrust before your eyes. You stumbled upon one of their ceremonies, its celebrants dressed in parodies of Buddhist and Daoist priests, the room decorated with profaned objects of sacred devotion.
  • 0 Bonus: Once per chapter, you may ignore a Fears penalty when facing a Vile Rain Cult opponent; this lasts for one scene or one combat. You should describe yourself as drawing on something you witnessed in order to withstand the otherwise discomfiting opposition.
  • 3+ Fortune: You recognized one of the celebrants! You may not know the face or name exactly, but you've got some kind of identifying mark to go on. What you do with this information is up to you, but this is very dangerous knowledge ... to somebody. The cost of this option is relative to the prominence of the person you recognized.
    • -2: You were recognized in turn. You made yourself an enemy who is very motivated to keep you silent.
  • 3 Fortune: Such was your disgust at the sight of the ceremony, you were instilled with a Minor Wood Passion to destroy the Vile Rain Cult; this Passion is an action hyperactivity.
• You just know it to be true. Perhaps you had a dream, or a vision. Perhaps a series of coincidences revealed itself to be a warning. Or perhaps it has always been an article of faith, passed down to you from a father, a shifu, a mentor. But despite the disbelief of the rest of the Wulin world, nothing has dissuaded you from your conviction, and now -- for reasons perhaps just as mysterious -- you are sure proof is at hand.
  • 0 Bonus: You may take either a Confidence Specialty: Hard-Headed or a Wu Wei Specialty: Detect Corruption.
  • 4 Secret: Whether taught to you by a mentor or developed by sheer native talent, you possess the Picking Up the Scent of Putrefaction ability. You are mystically attuned to the particular spiritual corruption that hangs around those who have partaken in the Vile Rain Cult's rites (or perhaps you're unconsciously paying attention to physical and behavioral clues that are too subtle for others to see); you may take an Extended Wu Wei Action (requiring at least several minutes of proximity) to determine whether an individual is affiliated with the Vile Rain Cult. On a successful role, you have a strong intuitive sense, one way or the other; on a critical success, if the target is affiliated, you will also have a sense for the depth of the person's affiliation. The base difficulty is the same as that to analyze an opponent's style (corebook p. 175); opponents also automatically resist with the Confidence skill.
  • 2+ Fortune: You have an NPC ally who is similarly convinced of the existence of the Cult. For 2 Destiny, this ally is substantially weaker than you; for 3-4, he or she is roughly equal in abilities; and at 5+, he or she is more advanced.