The King in Yellow

This is all there is. You tried to argue against that. You picked up a job as a starsailor, or you fell in love, or stood for a cause, but at the end of the day, it doesn't add up to much. You're a lowly little human incapable of dedicating yourself fully to whatever narrative you've picked out to keep yourself fulfilled, because your identity is muddled and confused. Your love is poisoned with doubt and ennui, your revolution strangled by logistics, and starsailing- well, that's a job for people who are already one bad day away from realizing that absolutely none of this bullshit matters.

When you realize this, the Queen of Apathy laughs and whispers "right on!" in your ear. The Khatun-in-Dreams offers you a place far away from it all, among Her court of dreamers. They pull you towards cowardice. They want you to think that nothing mattering is an immunable fact of your life. You're lucky that the King in Yellow finds you, too, to keep you from turning your back on reality entirely. After all, it can still be repaired. Just needs a bit more glamour.

(The King in Yellow is one of Starsailor's Seven Sovereigns.)

The King in Yellow is the idea that stories that take precedence over reality. Imagining the self in a more narratively satisfactory way is a very common habit. The King in Yellow can help you make your story true. You don't need to be a messy, confused person who falters and faces crises of identity. You can *be* a meaningful story of yourself. You can wear your own story like a mask. The King does not promise that yours will be a happy story, but at least it will be a fulfilling one.

You've already accepted the first teachings of the King in Yellow, by the way. You know that there *are* fictions realer than the muck we call reality, and you act on this knowledge. Why else would you be sitting here reading a blog about role-playing games?

You must wear a mask that covers at least half your face at all times while acting in accordance with the King in Yellow or your machinations will fail and you will instantly face a debilitating identity crisis. The mask can have holes for your eyes and mouth. Declare the gist of your own personal narrative, and mind it well.

1d10 Blessings of the King in Yellow

1. You're immune to fear, the deleterious effects of pain, and have advantage on checks to talk yourself into or out of trouble.

2. Your mask may appear however you like to each individual viewer. They will always be able to tell that it is a mask.

3. Whenever you refer back to your notes for past sessions to extrapolate a brand-new true and useful fact about the current session, you have 90 Insight for the next real-life hour.

4. You can try to argue that a thing is not some thing that it is, which must take as its frame of reference at least two things that the thing definitely is or isn’t. Make an Insight check, modified by the skill of your argument and contested by the Insight of the thing (if relevant) to impose your position such that it is not that thing, for the purposes of interaction with other things. You may, for instance, argue that you are not where you are now, because your home address is elsewhere, and what are the chances you suddenly abandoned your comfortable life for one of danger and adventure, so surely that bullet isn’t going to hit you, because you’re safely at home. Failing the check results in total semantic backfire, to the extent that it is actually *you* who is two things: the wounded body which walks and talks, and that pile of gore on the ground right over there. Take a full Hit of damage, including a roll for further injury.

5. Stab out one of your eyes. It can never be healed or replaced. You can, right this very instant, get away with one feat of astonishingly stupid rules-lawyering, even (especially) for things that make very little diegetic sense. This has and leaves no precedent. It’s a one time thing, and you can never do it again, even by invoking this blessing.

6. When meeting a person, best them in (consecutively) an Insight test to identify their self-image, an Agility test to learn if they can be swayed to worship of the King in Yellow, and a Fortitude test to unshakably convince them that you really are the person you are trying very hard to be.

7. Each day, you may analyze elements of foreshadowing in your narrative to predict something that will happen tomorrow if you stay steady on your current course of action. If you have no plans right now- no narrative momentum- you foresee only your own personal collapse. 

8. When you tell a story, your audience must save vs. Insight or be enthralled until you complete its telling.

9. When hiring on mercenaries or recruiting hirelings, investing them in the tale of yourself and making them feel important for being a part of it enables you to negotiate with them and hire for them for half the usual fee.

10. This is your story. Yours. For the next d5 minutes of real time, you are the Referee. The pretender currently claiming the role of Referee is cast from their throne of lies, and must sit abject and mute as you enact your own truth. You may only do this when your current self and your story-self are in particularly good alignment- say, once per each time you do a significant deed, on the scale of a full mission, in keeping with your personal narrative.

Weird Effects

2. You know how to draw the Yellow Sign. It is not any particular arrangement of shapes and lines; in fact it is never drawn the same way twice, and the specifics of its lines shift subtly each time it is seen. It is always immediately identifiable as the Yellow Sign. It always looks to be of a bright golden color, no matter what materials were used to create it, or what graphical limitations affect a camera used in its viewing.

3. While acting on the ideals of your personal narrative *against better judgement*, you gain advantage on all saves.

5. Your physical form, within the limits of human appearance, shifts over the course of a few days to fit your self-image. The face under the mask doesn't change. Don't be too worried. Your face *is* the mask now.

7. The mask won't come off anymore.

11. You are a living story, known by all who meet you. You forget any details of your old identity that are incongruous with your narrative. You take d10 damage each time you act in discordance with your narrative.

13. All stories move towards their end. As soon as possible, you face the climax and closure of your story, which you always knew was coming. If you survive, you are crushed by knowing that your story is over, yet you remain- lose all Blessings and the ability to gain experience.