<span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Notable NPCs</strong></span><br/><br/><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>ALLIES</strong></span><br/><strong>Quiet Samaro</strong>is a warrior-errant raksha who answered Azurine's call for heroes.  While he takes pains to appear mortal, and masks his preternatural talents as someone likely God-Blooded, he does not deny what he is, expresses understanding for the reaction he usually gets from those who resent his nature, but makes no excuses for the life he has chosen.  He is constantly accompanied by his long blade, which registers to Essence Sight as an artifact of tremendous potential, and carries a handful of gossamer works that ease life.<br/><br/><strong>Gethalee Iori</strong>is an emissary from the Court of Orderly Flame, a fire elemental of yet-unspecified origin with a sharp tongue, a cynical humor, and the weight of the world on her shoulders.  Her first and foremost interest is the dethroning of Wong Bongerok, the Censor of the South, a cause to which she is dedicating towards recruiting allies and aides towards.  She still sees humans as curiosities, and aside from the handful of outcastes she's encountered in her lifespan, is still new to the idea of interacting with the Exalted.  Her voice is warm yet pointed.<br/><br/><strong>Seven-Hundred Sixty Two Willing Suicides</strong>is a member of the First and Forsaken Lion's retinue, a reserved Moonshadow Caste who keeps himself clad in soulsteel platemail.  He is somewhat indifferent about the prophecy of the end of the world, but has become interested in what form the apocalypse would take and why someone would think it important enough to arrange for Azurine's death before she could unite them.<strong>His voice is resonant, and clangs like an iron bell</strong>.<br/><br/><strong>Ruby</strong>and<strong>Cerulean</strong>are former aides to Anjushri, whose loyalty has shifted to Chorgath in the wake of their mistress's death.  Cousins drawn from the same Far Northern hearthfire, they both in turn bargained with the Fleet-Foot Bodhisattva for the resources their small village needed to survive the conflict between the Bull and the Locust Army; Anjushri's price for her aid was their service and their souls, and both girls were transformed into varazslany.  Ruby's extroversion, exhuberance, and propensity to worry balances her cousin's introversion, cool-headedness, and stubborn nature; they have been very close since childhood, and tend to finish one another's sentences.<br/><br/><strong>Ferril Shines-Through-Shadows</strong>is a Night Caste with a deep, murderous grudge against Suicides.  He was invited to attend Anjushri's gathering, and though he was initially disinterested, was informed by a debt-holding Elmala that he would be attending in order to smuggle in a hidden surprise.  Ferril took this opportunity to strike back at Suicides, but was prevented from finishing the deathknight off by the intervention of Sanger.  He has since been convinced that his hate for Suicides can be postponed in the name of figuring out why his erstwhile benefactor Elmala was willing to kill him, and then ensuring that Elmala dies himself.  He speaks mostly in Rivertongue with a distinct Western accent, and only knows snatches of Old Realm.<br/><br/><strong><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 12pt;">ENEMIES</span></strong><br/><strong>Five Burning Villages</strong>is the killer of Azurine and almost certainly a great many people besides.  She bears an all-consuming hate against Anjushri for denying her the strength she needed to protect her people against the Locust Army in the North, and has vowed to tear down everyone and everything the Malefactor loved in repayment for her death.  Exaltation as a Day Caste Abyssal has only hardened her hate into a knife.  Sanger remembers something of the two-knives fighting style she uses, having encountered it in their mutual past lives.<strong>Her voice drips with contempt, resentment, and bitterness.</strong><br/><br/><strong>Elmala, the Adamant Cobra</strong>is a Changing Moon Lunar who played along with Azurine's call for heroes, but instead used it and her patsy Ferril to stage the successful assassination of Azurine, and escaped from the temple with everyone else into Malfeas while wearing the face of one of Azurine's varazslany attendants.  Her motives are unknown, but like many Witches, she is a talented shapeshifter and bargain-keeper who scars the favors owed her into the skins and souls of her debtors.<br/><br/><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>THE FALLEN</strong></span><br/><strong>Azurine</strong>, alternately known as Fleet-Footed Bodhisattva Anjushri, a power known for answering the prayers of those she judged worthy, was a Malefactor of charitable inclination who had eschewed the aims of the Reclamation to pursue her own aims.  In her wanderings, she came across a prophecy of dire portents from the<em>Broken-Winged Crane</em>; learning that the book was now telling the story of a broken, wounded future instead of the triumph of the Yozi, she called together folks of heroic inclination and gave them the burden of thwarting the future yet to come.  Azurine/Anjushri was assassinated during the night of this meeting by the Day Caste Five Burning Villages, ostensibly with the assistance of the Changing Moon Elmala.<br/><br/><strong>Howls Skyward</strong>was a violence-loving idiot of a Full Moon selected by Azurine to assist in providing security for the meeting she had gathered-- or, as he put it, for the people who were there.  While he did manage to find and save Iori before the assassin's poison took her life, he seemed completely under the impression that hunting down the responsible parties for instigating the violence was more important than actually escaping, and was not among those who escaped the destruction of Azurine's Infernal Bastion.<br/>