Editing Campaign:Forged In Fire/Auspicious Whispering Feathers (section)

== Background ==
In the areas of the Fringe, professing the Immaculate Faith takes a certain degree of... subtlety. The great openness to Anathema and lack of respect there has driven away many would-be missionaries—but that doesn't make it impossible. Those few who continue to try take a more private bent, keeping most of the philosophy proper to private sessions, using charity and public works to draw in outsiders. One particular method involves extravagant plays and performances put on during Immaculate holy and festival days, free to the public and very entertaining, but carefully slanted to the Immaculate point of view—with sympathetic but ultimately villainous Anathema, battled by Dragon-Blooded who are internally conflicted but nonetheless properly faithful. These extravaganzas, performed with a measure of actual Terrestrial Exalted power, are surprisingly effective at drawing converts, and while each upsurge tends to die down after a while, there's almost always a small but permanent increase in proper membership.

It was in one of the Realm tributaries on the edge of the Inland Sea, during the months leading up to the past year's Calibration and its attendant festivals, that the woman now known as Auspicious Whispering Feathers, at that time a slave, was purchased by one of the Immaculate monks. She hadn't been picked out for any special talents beyond basic literacy, for use as a stagehand and general assistant—but the monks and acolytes soon found that under her quiet and cooperative demeanor lay a surprisingly solid core, and that when driven to it she showed a distinct degree of animal grace and charisma, enough to fluster the Immaculates with occasional softly cutting remarks when her patience ran out. One of the monks also discovered, though more than an accident with a left-behind playbill than anything intentional, that she had a particular natural talent for the stage; it wasn't enough for more refined roles, but she could produce the roaring volumes, exaggerated body language, and general projection of charisma needed for intentionally-overblown dramatic pieces.

The decision to use an effective unknown for Anathema roles in the Calibration was an uncomfortable one, but counterbalanced by the fact that, well, none of the Immaculates wanted to do it—and an unenlightened slave like herself could certainly be excused for portraying one of the Anathema. Getting her trained was relatively easy (after all, most of the roles involved pure stage presence, something she managed to pour out in droves), and it seemed to be something that had finally struck a chord in her normally-quiet demeanor. In fact, she took to the roles well enough to slightly disturb the Immaculates, though by that point it was too late to properly set up another person.

It was on the last day of Calibration, with the greatest of the performances for the year—a grand spectacle involving Dragon-Blooded Charms, Terrestrial and mundane martial arts, and even fair amounts of merely "mundane" pyrotechnics and special effects—that something really downright ''strange'' happened. The woman not yet known as Auspicious Whispering Feathers had managed to gain something of her own fan club in the four exhausting days that had passed already, and they as well as the rest of the audience watched in awe as the performance started to ''change'', warped by the slave's impromptu changing of her lines and actions. The Immaculates could do little but try to keep up and not lose face as the content of the play shifted so that the masked and costumed Anathema became a heroic character, fighting against the misunderstanding and close-mindedness of the Dragon-Blooded.

And then, at the climax—it wasn't the written one, but everything seemed to click at once—one of the acolytes, who had never been a man of cool temper or reasonable thinking—tried to strike her down onstage, thinking that the spectacle would keep anyone from seeing what was really happening. It was lucky for the slave that the stage weapons were not so sharp or well-balanced as the real things would have been, though they would have been enough to kill her, particularly as the other acolytes joined the attack to keep their brother's true intentions from being obvious. What they hadn't had a hint of expecting was that her own study of the Immaculates had lent a snakelike edge to her counterattack, and that her normally-reserved nature would transform into tempered steel, fighting on despite wounds that sent her to the edge of unconsciousness.

In the aftermath, the acolytes thrashed and the performance ruined, her fans dragged her trembling and copiously-bleeding form from the stage before the rest of the Immaculates could show up, spiriting her away to a small actor's colony. She struggled against the edge of death, spending the whole night in a dreamless half-sleep and living—barely and precariously—through half-staunched wounds. It was in the last moment before the dawn that she awoke suddenly, twisting up as a vision overtook her... and a silver-iridescent anima flared, and shining feathers and scales and claws as sharp as the light of the hidden moon sprouted from her, and the lithe, beautiful god-thing she had transformed into fell into a deep and dreamless sleep, guarded by shocked warders.

Over the next few days, what had been an unofficial but growing fan club of hers turned into a proto-cult, convinced that what happened on stage and in what quickly became their communal home was the awakening of a minor deity out of a slain human spirit. When she awoke, finally, her electrifying presence and inhuman grace only made them more assured of it—and who was she to argue? She recognized the signs, barely, from the material the Immaculates had been using, though that was not enough but to convince herself that clearly that material had been wrong in the first place, for she certainly knew she wasn't an evil spirit.

It was there that she met her first fellow Lunar: a charmingly awkward young man who smoothly infiltrated the group and, in private, transformed to reveal his true self. With only a short time to say goodbye and for her to further entrance her would-be worshipers, the two of them stole away out of the city, traveling swiftly to the southeast and towards the nearest Lunar enclave. The new Lunar—who, interestingly, claimed to have already discarded her old name, though she hadn't decided on a new one—went through the tattooing process with only the merest sounds of pain, managing to stay composed enough to spin an elaborate and entertaining (and thoroughly false) tale of her life.

Feathers (for she'd started going by that cognomen to simply have a personal reference) was subjected to an interesting bundle of trials, all entangled with the local Gathering happening only a few spare days away. For one with such a clear attunement of voice and glance, she did surprisingly well for Mettle—through "surprisingly well" was still not enough to singlehandedly clear out the Outcaste bounty hunters who had somehow stumbled upon the half-cleared site. It spoke well for Cunning, though, when she lost the Outcastes and their retinue in the woods... and Succor, particularly, when she appeared again as a seemingly innocent girl herself lost and entranced the leader of the group. Wisdom she managed, though barely—convincing the Outcastes that the local region's great montsuoba tiger-bear was actually the Anathema they'd heard of in disguise worked, but not particularly well—and finally Glory fulfilled a litter better than she'd managed Wisdom, by leading the group down blind caverns and twisty passages all alike and then setting on them one-by-one after getting scattered by the montsuoba. The whole process took something over six hours—and the result somewhat stunned the lorekeeper, for she was the first new Lunar he'd heard of in quite a long time who had managed their first instinctual blood hunt on a human being rather than an animal.

Her moonsilver chain shirt was gifted to her by the lorekeeper for passing her trials acceptably, or so he judged—not exceptionally well, but well enough, and particularly interesting in the finish of it. For her performance, she was fixed as a Changing Moon, and in remembrance of the lorekeeper's comments she chose the deed name "Auspicious Whispering Feathers". Her vow was to protect free expression in Creation, that there might always be a jester or a trouper to speak the truth to the greatest king. 

Her fostering was an interesting ordeal, too: like most newfound Lunars, though she'd shown some natural talent, there were clearly skills she was lacking, and so she was handed into the care of a Changing Moon as the Gathering began. Her training was perhaps not as intense as a Full Moon might have received, but it was still far beyond any mortal could have endured and continued for months—though here, her longstanding patience and willingness to deprive herself helped.

And so here she is—turned loose, finally, as she's been judged able to make her way in the world on her own, at least for the time being...

=== tl;dr ===

* Slave purchased by Immaculates in Realm tributary, used as a stagehand
* Sudden discovery: stage presence!
* Used to play the role of an Anathema in religious-educational performances
* Twisted around the last performance during Calibration and defeated the Immaculate acolytes onstage
* Ran off using new powers
* Went through trials - ate a person as first heart's blood. Interesting, says lorekeeper.
* Trained in the ways of the Silver Pact by a Changing Moon

[[Category:Campaign:Forged_In_Fire]]