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A couple days ago, there was a girl, and it was time for her to become an adult, though she didn’t know it at the time. She ventured into the forest on no particular errand, with no particular goal but an afternoon’s diversion.
She stumbled upon a vision of herself, a selfish, lonely, hostile child. As her senses gave way to fantasy and the world tingled around her, she fought. She fought to stay conscious, but more than that, she fought to remain herself. She fought to keep that feral little girl in her heart, to make it through the ordeal unchanged.
When her failure was complete, she was grateful for it.
Welcome to Sword of Symphonies.
Special thanks to Bill from online!
Original music by Kathleen~!
You can find the Heroic Discord here!
There is something to be said for adversaries. Big or small, external or internal, adversaries help us find direction, help us channel our power, help us learn who we are and what we are capable of.
Amylte is, right now, a more peaceful place that it ever has been. But somewhere along the line, while people were forced to stop fighting wars against one another, they forgot how to fight themselves.
In the process, they turned their back on their most dangerous adversary.
Welcome to Sword of Symphonies.
Welcome to special guest Bill From Online!
Original music by Kathleen~!
You can find the Heroic Discord here!
Anyway, the life cycle of a relationship, if you squint, follows the same trajectory as the life cycle of any living being. The humiliating, invincible youth is a time spent building, growing, learning, with little thought given to the accrual of debt to be paid later in that life cycle.
Relationships, just like living bodies, reach a precipice of adulthood, where their internal systems are no longer as resilient, self-nourishing. That invincibility is traded for wisdom, maturity, higher reasoning, but also the ever-present terror that the best days might have already passed.
- An excerpt from the journal of Isabel Fontaine
Welcome to Sword of Symphonies.
Welcome to special guest Bill From Online!
Original music by Kathleen~!
You can find the Heroic Discord here!
This week, we don’t have a Kathleen, but we do have a lot to say about designing encounters!
Join Cat, Nick, Kathleen, and guest Bill as we talk combat!
Join our Discord!
Music by Kathleen!
Hundreds of years ago, there was a girl, and it was time for her to become an adult. Like countless youths before her, she ducked her head into the ritual space her family had built her. A cup of tea steamed in front of her, and as she drank she felt her body warmed and fortified. With a leaf fan, an elder blew a pinch of golden pollen at her, and as she breathed it in she began to feel her world slip away.
Before she could declare herself a woman, she had to face the ancient adversary and return. But her family was with her, her community was around her, and she would not fail.
Welcome to Sword of Symphonies.
Welcome to special guest Bill From Online!
Original music by Kathleen~!
You can find the Heroic Discord here!
There is this wonderful myth some people tell, the story of Progress. The mythical idea that everyone is moving forward, that we as a society know things now that we did not know in the past. Even in Amylte people look at the war and turmoil of the ages before the Cataclysm and tell themselves they are wiser than their forebears.
But there has always been knowledge and there has always been wisdom. Just because we are now and they are then does not mean our forebears were any more foolish than we are.
Welcome to Sword of Symphonies.
Welcome to special guest Bill From Online!
Original music by Kathleen~!
You can find the Heroic Discord here!
Nestled between the lava flats and a mountain they call Orchid Sister, there is a village called Pavillion. A traditional stilt-home village with a small reputation for traditional arts, built around an ancient stone amphitheater. Pavillion boasts the finest acoustic engineers on the continent, and productions that date back to before the Cataclysm.
The people of Pavillion raise crops on the dark volcanic soil, tend livestock, and gather regularly to celebrate the unique magic of theater and music , as they have for longer than even they know.
Like all villages in Amylte, they are not untouched by danger and tragedy.
But will they be touched tonight?
Welcome to Sword of Symphonies.
Welcome to special guest Bill From Online!
Original music by Kathleen~!
You can find the Heroic Discord here!
History is a game of telephone, twisting with each telling, twisting and warping until it’s another story. The only way to know it, truly, is to have been there. Even that’s sometimes up for debate.
Like any other story, history is powerful and beautiful and important. Like any other story, it is completely ephemeral. When next you tell the story, it will change again.
Welcome to Sword of Symphonies.
Welcome to special guest Bill From Online!
Original music by Kathleen~!
You can find the Heroic Discord here!
Whenever we learn something about the world, we leave marks on it, little handprints as a record of our clumsy exploration. We discover things as if we were the ones to bring them into being, lovingly name them, and leave our impressions as fact for the next person to follow our path.
The history of the world changes every time we discover it, as we change to meet it.
Welcome to Sword of Symphonies.
Welcome to special guest Bill From Online!
Original music by Kathleen~!
You can find the Heroic Discord here!
The world is always moving. Everything changes, whether those changes be cataclysmic or invisible. Every day we open our eyes to see a world that has never existed before, and before we know it, it has vanished into another new world. In the Coral Coast, one can watch the world change before their very eyes, and everyone living there knows that the present and the future are malleable.
Even the past, when we ourselves change, becomes uncertain.
Welcome to Sword of Symphonies.
Original music by Kathleen~!
You can find the Heroic Discord here!
From the publisher's feed
Cozy roleplaying in a haunted post-apocalypse.
Join Cobb, Tissa, and Penelope as they travel the pastoral continent of Amylte and try to help the world heal from the mistakes of its war-torn past.
Sword of Symphonies is the award-winning Actual Playtest of Heroic Chord, led by designer Cat McDonald and played by their excellent friends.