players: Jay, Jason, Sylvia, Ben
June 30, Cafe Racer

First time Polaris for everyone else, so we stuck with the stock setting. Our themes turn out to be "unappreciated" and "unworthy", respectively.

Zaurak (Jay, antagonist Jason) -- A valiant but unappreciated knight-captain, determined to vindicate the bitter defeat at the Battle of the Azure Floe.

Circinus (me, antagonist Sylvia) -- He wears the highest decoration of his city, the Corona Aurora, but does this less-than enthusiastic knight deserve it?

Circinus' story turned out great. Sylvia did an excellent job antagonizing, and both Jay and Jason played great Moon characters throughout. Circinus has endless accolades heaped upon him despite his fairly mild (and some would say lucky) heroism. When his newborn son is possessed of a demon, he hides it and swears his faithful former page Segin to secrecy. Together they journey to a sacred crystal stonehenge in the icy wastes to drive out the demon... which works great, except it destroys the ancient holy place in the process. Oops. Segin again keeps the secret, and Circinus makes lemonade out of demonic-lemons by bringing a remaining crystal shard back to the city and using it to make a sacred barrier to keep demons from entering the city ever again. Win! Who's the saviour now? But the "but only if" hook is that to power the crystal there must always be a knight bearing it and feeding it his very life force. More than a decade of Pax Circinus follows, with the knights now little more than acolytes, volunteering in turn to bear the crystal and maintain the magical barrier. No one goes out and fights anymore. Circinus saves the city from the demon threat, but reduces the once-great knights to a cowardly sheltered order. Society turns inward and slowly dwindles...

On the other hand, I'd say Zauruk's story was fairly bumpy. We discussed it a bit afterward and the crux seemed to be that because he got caught up in so many battles, there was less chance to build personal connections that would matter to him. It's a little deceptive, because as a knight your job is to go slay demons, but of course that's never really the interesting part of the story. He had a couple of brief positive connections (to his comrade-in-arms Angetenar and the widow Diphda) but nothing lasting. Jay and Jason, as the protagonist and antagonist, what did you guys think?