Courts Sagas are the main story of Courts Unbound: player-driven, death-enabled events whose outcomes change Prythian. A saga is any conflict big enough that its result touches many players: an invasion, a coup, a hunt for a relic, a throne changing hands.
Proposing a saga
- Post the pinned template in #saga-board, tagged Proposed.
- Staff and @Storytellers review it in #story-workshop: stakes, risk, fairness, timing.
- Approved sagas are tagged Approved, announced in #events with a @Saga Ping, then tagged Active when they open.
Any approved player may propose a saga, villains especially. The best sagas have someone willing to lose.
How a saga runs
- Intro: the saga's post in #saga-board is the hub. Characters gather, learn what is happening and choose sides there or in the opening location.
- Branches: when conflict breaks out, it splits into branch posts in the location forums, tagged Saga and titled
Saga name · what is happening. One fight per branch. - Zones: Tier 1 and 2 characters fight in skirmish branches, apart from the main battle, so new characters can matter without being swatted. Moving to another branch puts you last in its posting order.
- Conclusion: a final thread settles what happened and what it cost.
- Chronicle: staff write the saga as a chapter in #chronicle. It becomes Prythian's history.
Saga threads are death-enabled unless the proposal says otherwise. Every DE rule in Combat applies, including the 72-hour entry limit.
Saga rewards
- Saga threads are graded ×1.5 for active participants (see Renown, Bounty & Marks) and credit two abilities (see Progression).
- Renown at Peril value, or Nightmare for the main battle.
- Proposers may offer prizes: Marks, items, a student's place at an academy. Staff approve them.
- Losing a saga can be a beginning: see Remade below.
Challenges
A challenge is a formal, death-enabled contest for something specific:
- a Cauldron Shard (see below);
- a unique relic;
- a title: House Head, an Inner Circle seat, or a Keep.
Thrones are never won by challenge, only through an approved saga.
Rules:
- Post the challenge template in #saga-board, tagged Challenge.
- The challenged party has 7 days to answer. Silence forfeits what was challenged.
- The challenger's abilities lock at issue. The defender's, and any spectators', lock 48 hours later.
- The winner takes the prize. A challenger who loses forfeits anything they staked.
The Seven Cauldron Shards
When the Cauldron was made, seven shards broke from its rim and fell into the earth of the seven courts. Gathered together, they let the Cauldron answer one wish.
- Scrying: with a scrying bowl and seer's oil (Market), scry once a week while in Prythian. Post the scry in your purse. Staff roll 1 to 7; each number is one court's shard. An unclaimed shard is yours.
- Shard challenges: if you roll a shard someone holds, you may challenge them. They have one week to hand it over in a thread, or defend it in a DE challenge, which risks every shard they hold. Silence forfeits them all. A challenger who loses forfeits their own shards. After a challenge, the challenger waits two weeks before the next; after a scry that misses, one week.
- Joining: a third player who rolls a shard held by someone already in a challenge may join that thread. Nobody else may help.
Holders:
- can never hide their shards, and are always open to challenge;
- may give shards away in an in-character thread, but never to dodge a challenge;
- can never destroy them;
- cannot leave Prythian while holding one.
Holders receive @Shard-bearer. #shard-tracker shows every shard.
The Cauldron's Boon
Whoever holds all seven shards may call on the Cauldron, which grants one wish:
- Restore life: one person, or a group of the same allegiance.
- Surge: one ability rises two tiers, ignoring rank caps.
- A Cauldron-born servant: a free Retainer III or a Paragon guard.
- Riches: 50,000 Marks.
- Restoration: a ruined place returns, with its people.
- Passage: send anyone, willing or not, anywhere in the world.
- Remaking: become Made, without a quest.
Calling the Cauldron starts a saga: for 48 hours anyone may come to stop it. Any other wish needs three staff to agree, and opens the same 48-hour window. Once the wish is granted, the shards scatter and lie dormant for four months.
Unique relics
Wondrous, dangerous objects, one in play at a time (see Claims). Each arrives with its own rules. For example, the Thornbound Seed, planted in a court, bears a fruit every two days, each worth a free progress thread; on the fifteenth day the land around it dies. It can only be destroyed by beating its owner in a challenge, and the owner must answer within 72 hours.
Remade
A character killed in a saga and brought back, by a Boon or by life-gift, may return Remade: touched by the Cauldron, carrying the Cauldron-Making power without its quest. It is a way back, never a reason to die.