GM ONLY. The largest spoiler in the Hesan Empire. Never quote, hint at or foreshadow any of this until the trigger below has fired, and never mention two figures, a chain or a corner in any earlier scene.
If a character calls Emperor Isen IV by the name Ecke to his face during a confrontation, the ordinary fight ends. The Emperor becomes two monsters, The Tall One and The Small One, joined by a 15 ft chain. Load both monster sheets; their actions hold the rules. Hurting either of them shrinks The Small One. The fight is won by speaking to The Small One until he puts the chain down, then protecting him while The Tall One tries to take it back. Win by force alone and the man is lost.
The corner (Year 225). One winter the Stahlbrand Castle provision carts brought a boy of eleven down the south road. He rode on the tailboard facing backward, watching the road behind him. At the Wendelbach wayhouse he stood wedged in the corner of the common room where two walls meet, where nothing could come at him from behind. He did this for two winters. The keeper's daughter, Hanne, twelve years old, fed him there and named him Ecke, "corner." He never objected. The carter, Veit Hollerbach, still remembers the boy but never asked his name, and he will not use hers.
The step (233). At nineteen, the autumn before his knighting, Ecke walked four hours down in an autumn gale and sat on the wayhouse step while Hanne laid a salt line for the Weeping Mist. She asked what he wanted. He answered in a voice that was not his: his house had been owed for two hundred years and he wanted to be worthy of it. Then, in his own small voice: "When I am asked what I want, I find what is owed… I do not know if there is another man." Hanne said there was, and he was sitting on her step. He thanked her for the salt and walked back up in the dark.
The Scheideweg (241). On the last night of Frostnacht, folk say, the Pale Midwife sits at the crossroads below Wendelbach and unpicks one stitch of the veil she sewed over your eyes at birth. For as long as a lantern burns you see the answer as she sees it. Hanne went to ask Ecke to come down, keep the wayhouse with her, and be one thing. Two came up the road. A tall, beautiful knight in red plate spoke for him, warm and grieved, about everything his house was owed. Behind him walked a small, thin, barefoot one holding a chain in both hands, and the chain was around the tall one's throat. The small one was the one she knew. Both his palms were scarred, one of them older than she expected. She refused to be sorry for the tall one. She told the small one to put it down, and his fingers moved. The tall one said, "I am not able to." They went back up the road together. That night Hanne laid a second salt line beside the first.
The Rite of Rupture (255). The Hesan emperor is made by ritual murder: twenty knights, one per ancestral house, each set a blade to the candidate, and what rises is held to be a vessel for an office. A Velorian envoy saw a short, sturdy man walk the black floor barefoot in a grey burial shift, put his own face into a mask hot enough to steam, and rise. Both palms were scarred, though a knight's oath cuts only one. His own family, Haus Stahlbrand, would not look at him. The Empire's doctrine is "I was not born. I was broken into being."
The Length of the Hall (261). Hanne walked the hundred and forty paces of the Great Hall with a petition about a mill toll. She got her ruling, then said "Ecke" out loud before four hundred people and asked whether he was still in there. The Mask turned slightly, left and back. The silence ran a count of nine. The Chancellor answered for him: "There is no one here of that name." The tithe on her wayhouse was remitted forever afterward, with no reason given. She stopped laying the second salt line that winter, and laid it again in the spring.
The Second Cup (262 to now). Since that spring his cup-bearer, Lysandra, brings two cups each night. When she turns from the window he is holding the second, full, and she takes it from his hands.
He has been turning into a Nachbleibender of himself: a spirit of "one who remains behind." The Rite declared the man dead. Stahlbrand folk belief holds that the dead who are denied their names stay behind. The roadside spirit called the Zweinamiger, one body with two names, turns violent when someone insists one of its names is false. The Chancellor's doctrine insists exactly that.
Nobody in the world says this aloud. If players ask how he became two, give only the folk belief and let them set it beside the Chancellor's words. He is not a spirit of the mountain Gespaltener. The split is a choice he keeps making. The small one holds the chain, and nobody holds him.
Only Hanne of Wendelbach, now fifty-five and still keeping the wayhouse, knows the name. Money does not move her. She tells it only after long, unasked-for kindness to her or her household, and then out of order, stopping twice. It must be learned in play; outside knowledge triggers nothing.
All three must be true:
1. Emperor Isen IV is present.
2. The scene is a confrontation: combat, a duel, an assassination attempt, or an audience turned hostile.
3. A character says "Ecke" to him.
"Eckhart" never counts; that is the name on his house's investiture roll, and the Mask does not answer to it. In a peaceful audience, the name brings only the turn of the Mask, the nine-count, and the Chancellor's answer, with no fight.
When it fires: the Mask turns left and back, and the silence runs nine. Then there are two. Nobody else in the hall acts until the confrontation ends; the court, the guards and the dogs hold still. Replace the Emperor's token with two Monsters: The Tall One and The Small One, no more than 15 ft apart. If you cannot size the tokens, two tokens is enough; state the sizes in narration.
- Nothing hurts The Tall One. Every hit, spell or effect on either of them removes one step from The Small One instead. He has 6 steps, tracked as HP. He shrinks and looks younger with each one: 6 to 5 is shoulder height, 4 to 3 the size of a child of nine, 2 to 1 holding the chain up off the floor. The Tall One never changes. Let the players work this out by watching.
- The chain can't be broken. Attacking, grappling or seizing it fails, and costs a step.
- The clock. At the end of each round in which The Tall One acted, The Small One loses a step unless someone spent their action speaking to him that round.
- Fingers Move. A character uses their action to speak to The Small One, in the player's own words, and makes a DC 17 Persuasion or Insight check (disadvantage if In Debt). What counts: calling him Ecke, refusing the Tall One's pity out loud, asking him to put the chain down or to come down and be one thing. Pity, threats and bargains fail outright; pity goes to The Tall One, who answers it warmly. At 1 success his fingers move on the chain. At 2 he looks at the speaker, and may say one short plain line, such as "Thank you for the salt." At 3 he opens his hands: Phase 2A.
- The Tall One talks every turn about the ledger, the founding, and what it costs him to stand here. It uses Chain Sweep, The Verzeichnis on whoever is making progress, and The Bell Voice and Marched First, Ate Last when they recharge. It never harms The Small One directly.
The chain falls. The Small One walks to the nearest corner of the room, where two walls meet, and stands with his back in it. He is out of the fight and cannot be targeted. Describe his face once, the only time anyone sees it: a man of fifty-four, not tall, broad through the shoulder, square face, heavy brows, dark hair going grey, a scar across each palm.
The Tall One's HP now counts. It wants only to reach the corner. It attacks whoever stands in the way, using What Is Owed. If it starts its turn next to him, it takes the chain back: return to Phase 1 with his steps as they were and Fingers Move at 0. Hold the corner. When The Tall One falls, the armour is empty and the Mask drops to the floor.
At 0 steps The Small One does not fall. He grows too small to see, and the chain runs out through the place his hands were. The Tall One takes the chain in its own hand and fights to win. When it falls it leaves only the Mask and a grey burial shift. There is no body.
If they flee or stand down before Phase 2, the two become one again and the Chancellor answers as if nothing happened. The Emperor's spies now know the name exists.
If the players bring her, which she will rarely agree to:
- While she is present and conscious, the clock stops.
- Her first words to The Small One succeed without a roll.
- The Bell Voice cannot move her.
- The Tall One aims its charge and The Verzeichnis at her whenever it can.
- If she drops to 0 HP, The Small One loses 2 steps.
2A. The office is dead and the man lives. By the Rite he died in 255, so in law he is nobody; he does not claim the throne. The Empire faces a succession. Let the players meet what follows. If Hanne is there, keep what passes between them small and brief.
2B. The Emperor is recorded as dead, and no body is ever found.