TGG2 Update #71/72 – Sisters: A New Video, and New Stories

And now, more TGG2 Heroine backgrounds, and another video, this one featuring the Sisters:

If you like this video, you can download a high-rez version from this page.

Watch this space for more video coming up.

After the Heroine's background stories, you'll find a recap of the Fantasy and Sci-Fi Sisters' background.

Ardanna, Pillar of the Faith

Ardanna is without a doubt the most loyal Servant of the Chalice. She's the epitome of paladin-hood. She will never fail you. No one can shake her faith and her unflinching courage inspires even the worst Unbelievers.

She may be wearing an armor, but she has always refused to wear shoes or sabatons. She says that walking barefooted serves as a perpetual reminder that she is nothing but an humble servant in the service of the Mothers.

Stern and taciturn, when Ardanna does speak, her words cut like steel. And the most hardened liars break down under the strength of her clear blue gaze.

But her steadfast and pure soul could also be her downfall: Ardanna's rigidity and righteousness make her unable to imagine the dark side of things happening within her own Order. How will she cope when she discovers that there lurks darkness and wrongdoings?

Sister Celenia

Sister Celenia is a Sister scout. The Sisters prefer to use the term “scout” but in fact, such scouts most often act as assassins...

Very subdued, an introvert, Celenia carries out her missions without any exuberance or emotion but with a laser-focused attention to detail and to work perfectly done.

Yet what secret hides behind this inconspicuous and composed appearance?

Doralys

The Sisters of Eternal Mercy discovered the power of True Resurrection a long time ago. However, being resurrected is a daunting experience, and one that can sometimes deeply transform the resurrected in most unpredictable ways.

A bit like Santa Dolores (another Sister character), Doralys' resurrection was a traumatising experience that turned her into a powerful psychic seer. Her reborn virgin spirit seems now irrevocably attuned to the sufferings of the living. She endlessly roams through the tangled fabric of time and souls, anticipating all the dreadful and painful things that will happen around her.

She can use this gift either to predict future events, or to turn the despair she lives in into a wave of psychic energy that will transform her enemies into hopeless wandering souls.

Rythali-in, Expiatrix

Repentant sinners are often rigged with weaponised pillories, then dispatched to the front lines of the battlefield to try and earn a chance to be forgiven. Expiatrixes are at their side: they make sure repentant sinners stay in line and do their penance.

Like most Expiatrixes, Rythali-in has a very dark past and has been more than once on the receiving end of the whips she now carries. Her masked face, her spikes, her blade-covered outfit are a perpetual reminder that, even after long years of penance, a sinner of her magnitude should never be too closely approached.

Vladimir the Virtuous and Tobias the Tenacious

The Terrible Twos! Vladimir the Virtuous and Tobias the Tenacious are the Sisters' mascots. Vladimir is a little owl-griffin with a twitchy eye, and Tobias is a wolpertinger with a perpetual frown.

It is hard to be small and fluffy and cute when all you want is to be a mighty creature that instills fear and respect in the heart of your enemies.

Vladimir and Tobias ardently wish they could be gigantic beasts who kick ass on the battlefield, and nothing gets them more annoyed than when the Sisters and the Orphans squish and squeeze them and ruffle their fur or feathers and call them by sweet endearments.

The only way they found to vent their frustration and live their dream of grandeur is to boss around the Minions, the small subdued demons who perform the Sisters' lowly tasks. You can often see gangs of Minions scatter in terror whenever the Terrible Twos appear.

Background of Sisters SF and Sisters Fantasy

Most of what follows was covered in early updates during the campaign, so we thought it was time for a slightly updated refresher. It also serves as an introduction to the background of our upcoming game.

The Sisters of Eternal Mercy: the Birth of Cathedra

If you followed our previous Kickstarter The Toughest Girls of the Galaxy, you know that the Iron Empire was built by a human colony: they were the first humans who chose to flee a dying Earth and try to find a new place for themselves. Sadly, their expedition was doomed from the start. Radiation, sickness, catastrophic hardships: colonists and crew were decimated. The last few survivors managed to land in extremis in a far-away belt of asteroids, where they stumbled upon the relics of a very ancient Egyptian-like civilisation. And hidden away deep in the Pharaonites' tombs, necromantic knowledge enabled the colonists to raise from the dead their deceased companions.

Armed with this necromantic magic and the many artefacts found in the tombs, the colonists set about rebuilding a new society. But, unsurprisingly, the radiation they endured during their journey had lasting effects: most of them had become sterile, with the colony unable to renew its population. When the Iron Empire's leaders decided to forcibly enlist their few fertile citizens into a breeding programme, many went into hiding rather than become breeding slaves, while other tried their luck once more and, with stolen space transports, left their home again. But the Iron Empire pursued, mercilessly killing many of the very people who could have been their future...

And yet, some managed to get away, among them, several pregnant mothers-to-be, of which seven became leaders of the exodus. When they reached an habitable planet a year, later, they were the one to name this new world Edenia, when it downed on them that this world had been the one the original colonists had been searching for.

Once settled near a large river, the new settlers felt revived. In fact, they were in better health than ever. Some probably believed that their bodies had been longing for a real planet rather than a cold asteroid.

One night, all 7 mother-leaders had the same strange dream: a cryptic message, delivered by a being of light, telling them to go forth and explore. And so quest teams set out to see and map their world. Some went far and away. Others stayed closer to home to better understand the area around Cathedra, their new home settlement. One such team set out looking for the source of the river that fed their home town. This led them to a large cave from whence the river emerged. As they explored it the cave narrowed down to a small passage. Abandoning their vehicle, they walked, then crawled through the diminishing stone corridors. The water flow was running thin, like a small stream seeking to merge with the rest of the river... Hours later, cold and shivering, the questers emerged into a gigantic subterranean cave. And then their hearts nearly stopped: the cave was a field of giant crystals running tens of meters high, with myriads of stalactites and stalagmites appearing to hold the ceiling.

And in the middle of the cave, a group of stalagmites stood on a small hill. The questers, uneasy, approached in silence as the seven stalagmites' shapes increasingly evoked those of 7 pregnant women... And at the feet of the 7 stalagmites, there was a natural basin from which the water came. One of the quester slowly pulled a cup from her bag, and scooped up some of that water to bring back to Cathedra.

It didn't take long for the people of Cathedra to relate their good health to the sacred water. When completely pure and drunk from the source, this water could literally bring back to life what things had been dead. Not in the dark way that the Iron Empire necromancy could. This water meant real life, the holy grail that the Iron Empire couldn't find.

Should this transcendental knowledge and power be shared with the Iron Empire? The seven Mothers and their Council argued on and on. But in the end, they could not forgive or forget the past.

And this would be their curse... (to be continued)

The Order of the Sisters of the Orphanage (Fantasy)

The Order of the Sisters of the Orphanage, were at first a small religious non-fighting order dedicated to helping the poor and teaching the illiterates. Most of them were organised in small churches and took care of street urchins and orphans, which is how the order became known as the Sisters of the Orphanage.

But when times grew hard, these women, who were mostly teachers, nurses and pacific religious souls were left to fend for themselves. Some got serious about their weapons training and gradually, the order developed into a full-blown knighthood order.

Today, it is a gigantic military force. Yet a few nuns still live among the common people and have maintained their tradition of protecting, teaching and fighting. Their founder was Mother Superior Augusta, a woman you don’t want to mess around with. Augusta has now joined the ranks of the Regular forces, but she'll sometime come back and side with her fellow nuns when they are in dire need of extra striking power.

Sadly not all of them have kept a pure heart. As the Order grew in power, its organisation became more and more convoluted, ripe with internal rivalry, secret societies and political agendas. To think that the Order was only made of chivalrous, pious and pure individuals would be a very naïve misconception...

Do tell:

Quick questions:

• What do you think about the Sisters?
  
  
• What else would you like to know about them?
  
  
• And if you were to have an army of them, would it be more of
  
  - a streetwise team protecting the poor and the weak?
  
  - a heavy military force enforcing a moral code with an iron hand?
  
  - a troubled political power navigating in the shadows?
  
  - or even another option of which little has been said: a rebellious faction that fights to restore the original values and spiritual secrets of the Sisterhood?