Weather Factory

“Mrs Kille asks Morgen if she has ever considered ‘Medea’s path’. A silvery sadness glints in Morgen’s eyes; she says that it is barred to her, and unexpectedly quotes a passage from the Book of Suns about the commission of sins in twilight…”

(from HOUSE OF LIGHT)

Tomorrow is June the 28th, once again. What more could we become? I’m not sure Cultist‘s Aspirant ever considered running away to join an occult circus and sculpting a new world from the shrapnel of the old, but maybe she should have dreamed more. I think we could all become more acquainted with the goth jocundity of Rosa Mundi, the itinerant circus at the heart of Travelling At Night. So here goes.

Choosing where to pitch the circus forms a large part of the branching storylines of Travelling. From your starting point in Antibes, will you go north to Kionn, then Schloss Nagelsburg, to track down a contact in Vienna? Or will you hightail through France, cross the Incorporate bridge over the English Channel, and meet an old friend in Brancrug? Everywhere you stop, Rosa Mundi will encamp and begin to welcome visitors. Here’s a view of one Rosa Mundi settlement, in a pleasant green place. Not everywhere you camp will be quite as welcoming, though once you pass through the entrance the festoon lights and low, jolly music make you almost forget the bleak world outside…

There’s a lot going on here – may I draw particular attention to Tamarack the horse – but let’s talk about tents. The round top in the centre is where Rosa Mundi performs its climactic theatre pieces, merging commedia dell’arte with the Secret Histories into something Mr Agdistis would be proud of. Another belongs to Arun Peel, who may sell you useful and only slightly suspicious medical and narcotic supplies. A third will be your own, where you’ll be able to change clothes, plan your next steps and recalibrate before choosing where next to send the circus. More on the remaining tents and their occupants later down the line.

There is one person you should meet now, though. Here’s Medea, the ‘other’ manager of Rosa Mundi, a quieter but no less sinister counterpart to Nina, the poster-girl of Travelling‘s hero art.

Medea, the ‘only living ex-Ligeian’, used to run a chaikana under the walls of the Monastery of the Fifth Cup. Nina, the Witch of Lagasse, used her own (in)evitable Winter demise to troll Julian Coseley. I’m sure you can all imagine how cheerfully and amicably these two terribly powerful and ancient women cohabit with their definitely shared ultimate goals. The truth is, no-one knows who really controls Rosa Mundi. The best people have come up with is that Medea and Nina ‘share’ it, in the same way that a bull shark shares the ocean with a Portuguese man o’ war. Whom the shark and whom the jellyfish I leave to you. Spencer will have to choose between them in various ways, and I do not envy him.

Speaking of things I don’t envy Spencer for, he is a wounded gentleman with many visible and invisible scars. One kind of them are potentially useful augmentations known as Signs: you’ve already seen mention of these on the character sheet UI and the character creation screen. You’ll be able to bear a number of these, but your first one will be allocated automatically to you based on your chosen Passion, Skills and points allocation. Please remember that details may change over the course of development, but for now, here are the first nine Signs you can be afflicto-blessed with:

I wonder what people can glean about them and what they might do from their names and designs!

For our part, we’re celebrating June the 28th with a long weekend by a rocky sea. Normal service will resume mid-week. For now, all the blessings of the kinder Hours upon you. Thank you for exploring the Secret Histories with us, whether that was setting one foot through the Way of the Wood, reclaiming your birthright as an occult librarian, or reforging myth-wrecked Europe. More Travelling news soon.