Chapter 1 · Mission One · the first night
The Singing Quarry
Page 1 · The Drop
Vega-7. A quarry that has been singing for three days without stopping.
A rogue Cantor has hijacked a Choir and is broadcasting to the Unsung.
Panel 2 · art pending
Interior of a living Obsidian dropship, ribbed like the inside of a coral whale. Two Colossi stand braced in the bay, lit by the drop lamps. Monolyth is a two-storey grey slab with shield and hammer. Orca is leaner, blue, holding a lance.
They were given their orders in order.
Stop the broadcast. Save the people. Save the holy site.
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The bay doors peel open on the top rim. Below and away, everything they want is downhill. Behind them, the worker barracks and the Keystones.
Nobody told them they could not have all three.
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Boots-eye. Both Colossi hit the top rim, dust blowing back off the barracks behind them.
Page 2 · Monolyth draws the room
monolythCome to me, then.
Panel 2 · art pending
Tight on two Drone Choristers — half machine, half corpse, mouths open in unison — as their heads turn together toward the grey slab.
They sing in unison. That is the whole of what is left of them.
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The Quarry Breaker fires. The shot goes wide, past the husks, into the terrace wall.
The kill was never the point. The line was.
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Both Choristers close to within a stride of Monolyth and stop, unable to reach. Monolyth does not move.
monolythThere it is.
And in the frame, something surfaced. A weakness, waiting to be needed.
Page 3 · Orca blocks the path
orcaEveryone behind me. Now.
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The Resonant Lance comes level on the right-hand husk. Charge building along its length.
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The shot goes catastrophically wide. The bolt screams off into the dark between the boss and its choir and hits nothing at all.
The first critical miss of the campaign. The table rolled to see what it hit.
The dice said: empty air.
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Orca does not flinch or apologise. It turns its head to Monolyth and speaks.
orcaMonolyth. One step deeper. The near Stone.
A commander tunes by leading and by shielding. Not by landing shots.
Page 4 · The Hollow answers
Then it did the cruelest available thing.
It let them go.
Panel 2 · art pending
Close on a worker's face inside a stripped frame, hands raised, walking forward because it cannot stop walking forward.
workerI'm sorry — I can't — I can't help it —
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The wave of civilians fills the lane. Priority two has become a moving wall of people you cannot shoot.
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The Hollow peels its head back and sings. The Drowning Song reaches past everything for the loudest voice on the field.
It went for the commander.
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Orca staggers a half-step. The lance dips. Blue light stutters across the frame's throat.
A point of Stress, pressed in. An action, taken away.
The pressure only wound the band tighter.
Page 5 · The Confession
Even its misses bite. The hammer is reliable that way.
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Orca, jammed and bleeding Stress, in the middle of a fight it is losing. It turns its head away from the enemy entirely, to the granite titan beside it.
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The held moment. Nothing moves in this panel. Give it the width of the page.
orcaI hope I don't betray you.
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The granite answers. Not the Cantor. The frame.
monolythI will not betray you.
Panel 5 · art pending
The Drowning Song breaks. The Hollow's broadcast stutters and tears as a Colossus voice cuts clean through it.
For the first time, the broadcast stopped.
Page 6 · What it cost
Panel 1 · art pending
Orca's band falls to zero. The blue drains out of the frame's channels and something steadier takes its place.
Resonance spent. A Bond token in hand. The jam gone, the Fracture gone.
The Truth Oath, lit.
Panel 2 · art pending
The boss answers. A hollow note shrieks back across the pit and catches Orca square.
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Orca down on one knee, half its lights out, lance planted in the quarry floor to stay upright.
Half its hit points, gone in one note.
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Behind the kneeling blue frame, Monolyth stands entirely untouched. The note never reached it.
The commander had bought the moment. That was what the moment cost.
Page 7 · The first Stone falls
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The same swing carries through into a Singing Stone. The teal pillar cracks from the base.
Panel 3 · art pending
The Stone shatters. Light goes out of it.
Panel 4 · art pending
In the rubble two enthralled workers drop mid-step, and then move differently. One of them puts a hand to their own face like they have not felt it in a while.
The Stones are the leash.
Break one, and someone wakes up.
Page 8 · Where we stopped
The broadcast is live again. Objective one is not met.
Panel 2 · art pending
Monolyth, healthy, standing behind its own walls, exactly where it decided to stand.
Panel 3 · art pending
Orca, half-lit, Bond token held, the Truth Oath burning steady in its chest.
Orca's turn resumes first.
Panel 4 · art pending
The thing in the air draws breath to sing again.
The held breath.
Adapted from the Antiphon Chronicle, Mission 1 Session I