nine needles

Deep in the last old-growth forest of Europe, there is a vampire. One imbued with the spirit of ancient trees and deep underbrush, the last of her kind. In times of myth, there were others like her, who defended their woods and practiced mysticism far away from the churches and inquisitions of the mortal world. Tales alternating from many sources paint different pictures; mages and vampires say they were some of the few allowed near caerns without wounding the very earth, Garou say that they drank the very earth dry such that nothing could ever live or grow again for many years. Perhaps, in some effect, those tales were true. Perhaps the spirits within the Lhiannan grew more like Banes with the touch of the Kindred beast.

But not the Crone.

The originator of her bloodline was once a mere Gangrel, in ancient times. She was imbued by a power spirit of forests in a pact with eight others, designating her the defender of an artifact great and terrible – a needle, pinning down the Wyrm himself. She was gifted the powers of true shapeshifting, and of shamanism a Theurge would go green with envy to see. In that forest, unknown to eyes both mortal and supernatural, she waits with a mission from Gaia herself.

She waits for the hero who carries vials each the blood of the Eldest Tzimisce and of Saulot, that that hero might pull the needle and lead the world to the end of the darkest era. When that hero appears, the Croatan will rise, and the End Times will begin.

–

Deep in the inhospitable depths of Centralia, Pennsylvania, there waits the progenitor of a lineage. Verne Frankenstein, the monster of the book, lives in isolation, guarding the last sacred place in a scarred land overtaken by the Wyrm. He fights the slaves of the Black Spiral away from the very center of the lost town, where a needle lies deep under the earth, within the burning mines. He has been here since the land was pure, hidden away from the humans that have lived here, waiting and watching. He could be one of them, were he not given such a dire mission.

At one time, he was the brain-child of a mad scientist, who still believed in the honeyed words of alchemy over the sciences of physics and chemistry. Determined to prove himself right, that mislead scientist brought an amalgam of bodies to life before him, inadvertently imbuing them with a touch of the Divine Fire, carried through lightning storms. Verne became a pariah to the scientist, and to others around him – a slave to the Disquiet and to the throes of torment. He was not the original bearer of his torch – that one was slain when the Black Spiral Dancers came to the Americas. But he was tasked by Gaia herself to guard what would otherwise have been claimed by their worst.

He waits for the hero who carries the Divine Fire in their hands, pure and raw, that that hero might pull the needle and end the fires in the mine that threaten to choke the earth herself. When that hero appears, Centralia will be pure again.

–

Somewhere in the deepest cave on Earth, in Abkhazia, Georgia, there is an Avernian Gate. It leads not to the very cusp of the Underworld, but to a hidden away copse somewhere in the Fourth Ring, facing out against the banks of the river Ereshkigal. Hidden here is a Sin-Eater with power nearing a Kerberoi, older than anyone alive in her home city. She remembers the dread tales from hundreds of years ago. She remembers her death at the hands of an enraged being of lightning, and being nursed back to health by a Kindred who wielded the flames she was supposed to fear. She remembers the woman’s lament over the loss of her friends and a child, both.

The Speaker of Death was called by the whispers of the earth into the deepest of places, where the walls of reality grow thin to those touched by the Reaper. She crossed into the Underworld at the banks of the fourth river, in an unguarded hollow. Here, she was approached by a young ghost who radiated a power beyond that of the ordinary dead. Here, she was approached by what must be divine; a Messenger, a herald. The Speaker was asked to guard the sacred needle that lay here, and here she stayed, becoming a being untouched by the needs of food or water.

She waits for the hero who carries the mark of the First Kerberoi, the Balance Wyrm itself, that that hero night pull the needle and end the unending stasis upon the denizens of the Afterlife. When that hero appears, the ceiling of the Underworld will crumble away, and the dead will see the sky above for the first time in eons.

–

Somewhere, atop the high peaks of the Himalayas, there waits a Hermit of the most powerful kind. This Imbued is one of a long line of chosen guardians, who foresake society at the behest of the Messengers to guard the hallowed ground deep in the inhospitable mountains where only animals may roam. He is young, but he is among the most potent of his kind, able to achieve the very pinnacle of what his creed is capable of through his great deeds.

Outside his cavern home there is an ancient and storied graveyard, where the bodies of these chosen heroes are each buried. Some young, some old, each dying with the high honor of their duty. Some died of old age, and others went down taking out fearsome beasts, but each one fiercely defended their quarry – the sacred needle that must never be pulled by anyone but that of a well-meaning heart. The Quiet One has already dug his own grave, knowing from the voices that guide him that the time has nearly come to see his needle pulled.

He waits for the hero who Blazes with the power of the sun itself, who sees the supernatural for the individual, and not the collective, that that hero might pull the needle and call a long-lost goodness and rightness to the world. When that hero appears, the Messengers will call out in exaltation as the Messiah returns to the world to set right what his father helped ruin.

–

Somewhere in the deserts of Egypt, there waits an age-old fallen angel, one of the generals of the War of Wrath. Unlike his fellows, he was called by into the body of an innocent young human by a cult of Set, and granted his mind and conscience back from the depths of the Abyss. He guards an ancient, hallowed temple to Osiris, nearly desecrated by the snake cult, and has watched the cursing of two tribes and the rise of a horrible evil. He has watched for eons, protecting the innocent that have lived in this land from predation, and his devotion to protecting the world in spite of his torture has burned away the Torment on his celestial soul.

Ma’at, the Archon of Justice, saw the horrors of the Setites and smited them with the powers of light and wrath. They knew not that this sacred temple housed the key to either saving the world, or ending it, but Ma’at knew. He was not called to duty, no. He was present the day the Pact of the Needles was made, and merely returned to the duty assigned to him by Lucifer, to keep those truly depraved of them from ever touching this hallowed ground. Only the Morningstar knows his True Name – something akin to the howling of desert wind on a starry night and the drumbeat of an ancient tribunal.

He waits for the hero who brings the Morningstar with them, that that hero might pull the needle and finally cleanse Set’s taint from the earth of Egypt once and for all. When that hero appears, the twilight will regain a long-lost beauty, as the Child of Helios finally returns to his pure form.

–

Somewhere in the volcanic islands near Scandinavia, where the winter solstice takes away the sun for months at a time, there is a woman whose mind was shattered by trauma. The Dreamtime that rests just above the world in the Astral Umbra reached deep into her shattered mind, and let loose a being made of the mind, a protector spirit, a Nightmare made real. For decades, she has guarded the dreams of her Icelandic village, that no one would suffer like her. She has reached the stage of Acceptance through grit and determination, and become a fire-forged bastion of Dreams.

At one time, the Dream-Weaver was a German Jew, on the run from mainland Europe during a time when her people were being systematically wiped out. On the coasts of the mainland, she was caught by soldiers who tried to kill her on the spot for the patch she was forced to wear on her only set of clothes. When her mind broke open, it reached out into the minds of that platoon, trapping them in a hellscape of their own brains and affording her the chance to steal a boat and sail until she was shipwrecked, weeks later, on the shores of Iceland. She was shown kindness by the people of the fishing village where she landed, and decided that she would never let the harm she saw come to them. The earth called to her, and she came upon the abandoned settlement of what she learned was what she became, covered wall to floor in journals about the Nightmare condition. The Dream-Weaver found her needle in the crater of a closeby dormant volcano, and has defended it, and her village, ever since.

She waits for the hero who bears the mark of the Dreamtime on their very soul, the rebirth of the Original One’s closest guard, that that hero might pull the needle and release the Dreamtime from the Weaver’s webs. When that hero appears, the dreams of the world will grow vivid and beautiful, as they once were.

–

Somewhere along the Horizon deep in the Umbra, where Paradox no longer applies, there waits a masterful mage. Long, long ago did this mage shed the mortal coil, at the behest of a goddess of magic and learning whose name has been long forgotten in these final nights. He waits within a realm of his own creation, a place twisting with the pulse of Prime magic, that even the Triat can no longer truly touch. There is but one gate to this realm, and for ages untold, it has been fought over by the beasts without trying to learn its secrets, though he alone may arbitrate who takes more than a few steps.

The Willworker is one of the few who still remains who recalls the original Pact of the Needles, and entering into it with eight others. He remembers standing before his goddess and Gaia, and swearing to defend these artifacts from any that would pull it with an evil heart. He chose to move the needle that rested upon the Horizon into a world of his own making, in the name of the greater good. From his throne, in his strange realm, he watches the world shrink and grow, die and live, fall and rise. He judges the souls of those that find his gate, and many of those who squabble for entry never live to tell the wonders they have found within.

He waits for the hero whose blood runs with the threads of magic and wonder, that that hero might pull the needle, to loosen the Weaver’s threads and lessen the bounds of Paradox the world over. When that hero appears, magic will begin to return to the world, and the bounds of the Gauntlet will begin to thin.

–

Somewhere behind a long-forgotten trod, which bridges the world of reality and the alien realm of Arcadia, there waits one of what would now be called the Gentry. This True Fae is interested not in the kidnapping of the mortals, and does not think with the same alien architecture that her bretheren now do. Once upon a time, she was among the mightiest of the fae warriors who protected those trods and wildspaces in the name of their goddess. Now, she is merely the last relic, the final fleeting memory, of what was once a fickle and capricious people who meant no harm to Othersiders.

The Last Guardian watched her people fall from grace during the turmoils that shaped the world’s troubles. She watched her home fall from a mana-etched magicscape to a twisted, alien realm that no sane being could freely navigate without returning as a shell of their former selves. She watched her brothers, sisters, friends and cousins become unknowable beings who operated on the madness of fictional narrative and nonsensical law. She watched their magic grow uncontrollable, until they became as gods and goddesses of their domain, able to warp whatever they pleased. But in doing so, they lost their spark of creativity, became nothing more than unimaginative characters in a book of horrors. Some lost part of them longed for that creativity, so they stole the Othersiders to whom that spark still belonged. Only the Last Guardian was spared this fate, defending her trod as per her duty to the Pact of the Needles.

She waits for the hero whose determination could tear Arcadia asunder with a daring gambit and release the magic within, that that hero might pull the needle and bring her home back to what it once was. When that hero appears, the fae will walk amongst the people again not as predators, but as friends and brothers.

–

Somewhere, deep below a lost caern on a forbidden plateau, there is a Garou. He is the very last of his bloodline, more spirit than flesh, and the only remaining shard of a tribe thought completely erased. He walks among the people of the surface as an unassuming Wendigo, but he is so much more than the Older Brother tribe suspects. He is the very last of the Croatan, the tribe who famously died to keep the Wyrm itself from manifesting in the physical world.

His bloodline had guarded the needle for millenia, and he was proud to take on that task. Such an important task was it, that when the time came that the entire tribe gathered to stop that manifestation, he was asked to stay behind. Keeping that needle guarded was more important than even fighting back the Eater-of-Souls. He knew that if it was pulled, the Wyrm would rise in full, and the Apocalypse would be upon them all. Try as he might to revive his tribe, no matter how many children of which he was the sire, none would ever take as more than kinfolk. He was destined to be the last, and through his own force of will to keep his tribe’s spirit alive, he transcended the boundary of flesh and spirit, achieving immortality of a sort. His life force is now bound to his needle, and he can never venture off the shores of Vancouver Island.

He waits for the hero who bears the mark of Gaia and Helios and wields the gift that can give the gift of clarity to those maddened by the Wyrm, that that hero might pull the needle with the purest of hearts and bring about a new age. When that hero appears, the Wyrm will be released from his prison of webbing, and the state of the puller’s heart will determine the fate of the world.