The Radiant

The Radiant

A spirit character playbook for Blades in the Dark. 

Radiant trees are rare beacons of hope and warming light in the eternal night of the Shattered Isles. But there is a special kind of radiant plant that is self-sustaining and will keep glowing in the most glorious and warm light. Granted, to most they are little more than rumors or myths, but a handful exist in private collections, well-hidden from the hope-hungry masses. In the few collectors that can effort such a marvel they instill the conflicting urges to brag about their glorious possessions, while also wanting to keep their wonders to oneself.

Hardly anything is understood about how they work. But ever since one hushed up death involving a Doskvol matriarch suffocating in a closed room, while taking in the beauty of her cherished tree, a theory has been floating around: the trees are not creating the light that emanates from them at all. Instead, they are moving backwards through time and so do the rays of light that in the time before the cataclysm sustained them. That would explain, why radiant trees are shrinking over time; they in fact are growing in reverse.

These special radiant trees would be wondrous enough. And yet they can infuse an astonishingly potent change in people. Should a character on the doorway of death be laid in the nurturing light of the tree, and should he be given the sap of one of those rarest of rare radiant trees, one would observe a closing of wounds and healing of body and spirit. Almost as if the burdens of harm were being removed one by one. Try this with the common radiant tree and you will have added radiant poisoning and but hastened the approach of death.

From then on, the Radiant (as such a miraculous person is called) will be transmuted in important ways: a Radiant will hunger and thirst for only one thing – the fruit or other parts of radiant trees. A Radiant will grow younger and healthier by the day, should there be no shortage of radiant nourishment that is. They will perceive things differently, often be less surprised by things baffling those around them. Sometimes they might even act as if they had stepped back from an unfavorable future, choosing another path. And then there is the glow itself: some say that if cut, the Radiants wounds will shine with a light so warm it can rekindle hope and confidence. Warming light from a Radiant’s hand have been rumored to be able to heal. And some Whispers have spoken of Radiants’ eyes illuminating places sunken deep into the ghost field, bringing them back to the land of the living for as long as their gaze is fixed upon them.

Should the character stop their reliance on the radiant tree for more than ten days or so, they are in for a hard time and will have the trauma "time-chained" to contend with from then on. Even if they might regain access to a radiant tree, their traumatic memories and fear of future deprivation of the trees’ gifts keeps the trauma around for the rest of their unwinding days.

Since radiant trees are among the most valuable things in the world, and in high desire as a status symbol amongst the upper classes, this playbook usually needs to be sustained by a very resourceful person or group.

The admiring, plucking and consumption of radiant tree parts replaces all former vices and responsibilities.

Since this is a spirit character and as such is meant to operate outside the range of the normal BitD playbooks, please get buy-in from the group before playing a radiant; especially if you want to start a game as a tree eater.

Acknowledgements

• Artwork  by  Masha Raymers (https://www.pexels.com/photo/tranquil-young-woman-with-bunch-of-fresh-white-flow...)
• Original  layout  and  design  by  John  Harper. 
• Blades  in  the  Dark  is  property  of  John  Harper  and  One  Seven  Design.
• Many thanks for sharing the Scribus template to Emerson Harris (https://libercacophoniae.wordpress.com/2017/02/05/blank-blades-in-the-dark-chara...)
• Created  for  the  Unusual  Suspects  playbook  jam  organised  by  Justin  Ford at https://itch.io/jam/unusual-suspects-a-playbook-jam/entries
  
• Undying thanks to the player of the Laundry Crew of Six Towers.  You know who you are.