Entertainer
Entertainers are everything you want.
They are everything you crave. They are your heart’s desire. There is no hole
in the heart that they cannot fill and no quality in their possession that they
cannot make others long for. They are joy and brightness, forbidden lust and
blood-thirst, hungers, addictions, satiation and release. To the ghostly
Disciples of the Abyss, they are wisps of Oblivion. The pattern spiders at the
Loom see them as the woven shapes of Creation, Wyld
Essence in perfect obedience to form. To the Solar Exalted, the Entertainers
paint themselves as victims, patrons and, sometimes, monsters — the necessary
accouterments to the quests of epic heroes. To the raksha,
the Entertainers have a simpler name and wear a simpler mask. They are Need.
The symbol of the Entertainer is the
cup. Entertainers offer the drought that slakes the thirsts of the raksha. They are the grail, the gift of provenance that
offers completion, certainty and peace. Those who drink once from an
Entertainer’s cup long for it forever after — and even the greatest raksha, with dozens of master Entertainers at their beck
and call, sometimes think back to the cups they have drunk from and later lost.
The raksha depict the cup with a cracked edge. Those
who literally drink from an Entertainer’s cup cut their lip. Their blood
trickles to the floor, where the Entertainer can lap it up. In the Wyld, this is named Compassion. In like fashion, when the
Entertainer uses her performance to bind the passions of others, this releases
the Compassionate Essence that feeds her.
The Entertainers hate Creation because
it does not need them. They have sung to it, danced for it, written for it,
painted for it, told it stories and writhed in sexual abandon upon the naked
earth. Such deeds have won the hearts and affections of mortals, gods and
Exalts — but the great machine of the Primordials
pays them no heed. The world grinds on in callous ignorance of their efforts,
and the people that live within it are fickle. They forget. They move on. They
use their concepts of death, time and forgetfulness to escape the timeless
gifts of the raksha performers, and that is why the Wyld must wipe the very idea of Creation from existence.
Those who find themselves living in Creation
must come to terms with the indifference of the machine. They seek to draw
forth love and rapture from others’ hearts. Careful, stealthy parasites use
their arts to rouse mortals and spirits to a pitch of tempestuous joy.
Ravishers use cruelty to crush the soul, draining away all Compassion and love
of life until the victim sees neither beauty or value
in anything save the raksha’s own arts.
Caste
Traits: Entertainers
are practiced at service and subterfuge. Their Caste Abilities are
Investigation, Larceny, Medicine, Performance and Stealth.
Grace
and Virtue:
Entertainers feed on Compassion. They favor the Cup Grace and its Charms, which
channel Compassion and give them the parasitic power to subvert the will and
nature of others.
Controlling
Grace: Conviction
controls Compassion. The Entertainer’s art is strongest when allied to the
social order and weakest when shunned by it. Luminaries — noble Entertainers
augmented with a Diplomat’s skills — are the nobles best fitting the
Entertainer description above.
Associations: The western direction, the color black,
the place inside, the shinma Dharma, the mind’s eye
and dissolution.
Sobriquets: Shudra, The Desirable, Beckoning Folk, Pleasure Toys, Unmakers, Heart Eaters, Transforming Passions, Lananshee
I’m
sorry. I really am.
You
don’t have anything more to give me. You’ve used
it all up. Family,
power, talent, health — it’s all gone.
I know you need me. And I wish I could give
you
more.
But I can’t. All I can do is let you go, set you
free
of me, send you back to the cold dark world.
You
asked me for that once, remember?
It’s
what you wanted.