Genesis Lord Concept Test

HEARTWIND ISLE During the Primordial War, most of humanity united under the banner of the Exalted to overthrow their masters. They had so little that any destiny seemed preferable to continued suffering under the capricious cataclysms of their makers. Yet, there were humans who sided with the Primordials—some out of fear, some out of pious respect for the established hierarchy and some because they enjoyed a better standard of living than their brethren as favored pets of a particular Primordial. Those whom the Exalted could not convert to their cause, they massacred as enemies of the gods and traitors to humanity, continuing the slaughter when they encountered lingering Primordial supporters following the War. Heartwind Isle offered something of a special case among nations blessed by the world’s creators, however, since the inhabitants enjoyed the patronage of Gaia. Historians do not accurately record how the island came by this favor, though mosaics on the island seem to depict a tribe warning Gaia of a raksha plot to murder her with a weapon shaped from the shadows of her own nightmares. The depictions get more abstract after that point, but suggest that the Elemental Dragon of Water rose from the waves and devoured the assassins, dragging the weapon into the deepest crevasses of the ocean. In reward, Gaia birthed Heartwind Isle, a paradise of malleable life that would care for the tribe’s descendents for all time. Regardless of the truth in this legend, when the Exalted ships beached on Heartwind Isle, they found a tribe unswervingly loyal to Gaia with biotechnology more advanced than anything early genesis labs elsewhere could produce. Assertions of common cause and alliance with Gaia could not persuade the nation to join the Deliberative, which even dismissed the Dragon-Blooded as impure recipients of Gaia’s grace. Entreaties grudgingly turned to veiled threats, as the Exalted coveted the Heartwind biotech and would not be denied. Negotiations dragged on for years, as the Chosen couldn’t be sure how much favor the islanders actually held with Gaia or what the Primordial might do in retaliation if they tried to take the land by force. In the end, avarice won over caution and the objections of Terrestrial subordinates, especially after other nations began looking to Heartwind as an underdog inspiration to their own resistance. Citing the Mandate of Heaven, the Deliberative declared war on Heartwind by launching the first thousand-forged dragon. Unfortunately, the weapon proved too effective and exterminated most of the island’s ecosystem along with its inhabitants. Realm forces scavenged what they could and sterilized the island to prevent samples from making their way into the arsenals of rogue states, and the island remains a blasted wasteland to this day. The island’s only known legacy is the cry of “Remember Heartwind!” on the lips of Western dissidents, a battle cry Lintha terrorists have gleefully spread as part of their anti-Exalted propaganda.” Their potential current situation: “REMEMBER HEARTWIND! When negotiations with the Deliberative began to break down, the Genesis Lords of Heartwind began work on a contingency plan. They knew they could not hope to repel an Exalted invasion, but they could at least make sure that some part of their culture survived. To this end, they engineered two organisms without the knowledge of their chieftains, hoping strictest secrecy would buy them time to finish before war broke out. The first, a synthetic behemoth whale, carried a comprehensive biotemplate record of Heartwind technology within its own Shaping-resistant immortal physiology. They set this whale loose into the Wyld, hoping one day to retrieve it and rebuild if the worst came to pass. It has not been seen since. The second organism was far more insidious, a human-only plague imprinted with the neurological personality matrices of the Genesis Lords themselves. This disease has Virulence 6, Untreated Morbidity 6, Treated Morbidity 6, Difficulty to Treat 5 and is spread by physical contact with infected hosts or their preserved tissue. Victims infected by the disease show no outward symptoms, and the dormant disease cannot be detected even through magical diagnosis without a successful difficulty 10 (Perception + Medicine) roll. Only several dozen strains may be active at a time, one per Genesis Lord, at which point the disease still shows no symptoms but can be detected normally. Active strains do not harm their host body. Instead each month of active infection confers one dot in each of the following traits as a Training effect until all have a rating of 6 dots: all Mental Attributes, Craft (Genesis), Lore, Medicine and Occult. When all traits reach their maximum level, the victim’s Motivation changes to “Avenge and restore Heartwind” as the personality of a specific Genesis Lord overrides his own mind. The new incarnation magically remembers everything from its original life, all successive lives as an imprinted copy and the host’s life. Hosts cured of the possession lose all conferred traits, regaining any experience points paid to acquire them. Upon the death of the host or being cured, the Genesis Lord activates a random dormant strain infecting a non-Exalted host to continue the line. Since they do not control where they will emerge or what form they will take, Genesis Lords have developed a set of codes by which they can identify each other and coordinate their subtle, long-term insurgency.”