Sunday, September 29, 2019

The Silver Metal Face of Gyre


"All right, for all you cutters out there in the Big Ring, all you street people with an ear for the action, this is Argent with a special request..."

Outlaw broadcaster, street artist, vigilante, and possible demiurge, the mysterious Lady of Gyre, the city at the center of the multiverse, is known as Argent for the silver mask all her manifestations wear. She is always a she. Cis or trans women, certainly, but also gynoid automata, on occasion. Within those parameters, she can appear as anyone, and on rare occasions, multiple someones at one time.

To say the Lady rules Gyre isn't strictly true. Despite the number of bureaucrats, elected officials, and megacoporate CEOs, no one really does much ruling in Gyre--but Argent has ways of making her displeasure known. When rendered, there are no appeals from her judgments. The surest way to bring down her wrath is break one of her rules like trying to incarnate a god in the city, disrupting one of the portals to the Outer Planes, or starting an unsanctioned policlub. Occasionally some small thing will piss her off, though. Those are more random incidents, but dealt with just as severely. Some get unmade in a blast of light. Others get trapped in nonorientable topologies and shot into the Astral.

Those that make a pretense of ruling Gyre don't mention her much, though occasionally one will publicly deplore her tactics. None that plan to hold office wrong with do anything close to breaking one of her rules.

3 comments:

bombasticus said...

One of the strongest story seeds to come out of gaming. Could grow into an opera, great novel or something new. I like this form factor. Also it reveals that the "Abandoned City" Muth explored in Epic Illustrated is just another face of Gyre . . . only over there her agents called her The Voice, unless that's her secret brother or other masculine portion.

Trey said...

Thanks! I'm not familiar with the Muth work, but I will seek it out.

bombasticus said...

I'll be on the lookout. If you have a run of Epic you've seen the most Planescape parts.