To the Concord, feeling is physics. Emotion is not just a mood; it is a resource, a weapon, and a sacred current that can reshape matter, minds, and history. They do not ask what is “wise” or “sustainable.” They ask only “Does this burn bright enough?”
They operate from a web of Heart systems and semidivine Rift realms, but their most iconic anchors are the Heart-Forge, the Emotional Dynamo within the Rift, and Nova Lux, their blazing heartworld. Publicly, the Concord is a rumor, a cult, a subculture. In reality, their fingerprints are on many a riot, revolution, and avant-garde movement that scars or beautifies the Starfall.
Crimson Concord Faction
Primary Devotion: Passion (Red)
Core Themes: Emotional Sovereignty, spectacle, radical creativity, ecstatic liberation, reckless destruction
Public Image: Freedom fighters, cult of personality, extremist artists, war-performers
True Nature: Galaxy-spanning network of passion cults, revolutionary cells, war-bands, and performance-engineers aligned to the Heart-Forge’s Red current
The Crimson Concord embraces a Maximalist, dangerous beauty:
Baroque starships painted in deep scarlets and black, trimmed with neon runes and living graffiti.
Armor and weapons as statement pieces: engraved with lovers’ names, battle-poems, and burnt-in performance data.
Cities soaked in neon twilight, rooftop carnivals, impromptu parades, ritual duels projected live across whole districts.
No “standard uniform”—only shared intensity. The only taboo is dullness.
The Concord’s creed can be summed up in three tenets whispered like a prayer before a riot or a kiss:
Feel without leash.
Burn without apology.
Make it unforgettable.
Goals and Motivations
The Crimson Concord’s strategy flows from a single, obsessive philosophy: liberation from emotional and structural constraint.
Emotional Sovereignty
The Concord teaches that every sentient being holds an inviolable right to act on their strongest, truest feelings, unshackled from external judgment, bureaucratic law, or outdated moral codes. Any system that dampens or redirects those impulses is considered an enemy of Passion.
This makes them natural enemies of:
Cold technocracies that treat people as resources.
Dogmatic faiths that demand emotional suppression.
Hyper-regimented militaries that punish disobedient conscience.
Cultivating Radicalism: Creative Cells
Across the Starfall, the Concord seeds, funds, and protects Creative Cells—small, fanatical clusters of artists, engineers, memeticists, and military theorists whose work must challenge some aspect of the current order.
A Creative Cell might:
Design a weapon that also functions as a concert instrument for riot orchestras.
Build a viral AR opera that incites laborers to tear down their own corporate logos.
Prototype starship tech that trades safety margins for raw, terrifying spectacle.
Each cell is promised three things: protection, patronage, and a stage.
Performance Warfare
Where others wage war to win, the Concord wages war to perform.
Performance Warfare is their signature doctrine: every operation is choreographed for maximum psychological and emotional impact on enemies and the watching masses.
A Concord strike is likely to:
Synchronize orbital bombardments with live musical scores.
Broadcast helmet-cam feeds as art-film propaganda in real time.
Use lighting, sound, and timed detonations to create set-piece “scenes.”
Victory is measured in hearts turned, not just bodies dropped.
Aesthetic Warfare
The Concord’s engineers and artificers are notorious for over-engineering technology for spectacle:
Sonic disruptors doubling as performance instruments, capable of both crowd control and concert-grade sound.
Plasma weapons tuned to leave temporary luminous graffiti across starship hulls and city walls.
Armor with reactive pigments that flare, crack, and burn in response to the wearer’s emotions.
Within the faction, there is no hard line between “weapon,” “instrument,” and “installation piece.”
Virtues and Vices of Passion
Passion, as the Concord embodies it, is neither inherently noble nor vile. It is an amplification of love, rage, courage, and cruelty alike.
Virtues
Revolutionary Liberation:
The Concord are often the only ones willing to ignite the match. They topple tyrants, shatter calcified hierarchies, and give voice to people crushed under centuries of fear. Their uprisings can restore agency and spark ferocious, authentic cultures in places long smothered.Creative Genius and Ecstasy:
Unrestrained emotion turns into breakthrough art and science: new media forms, psychoreactive architecture, cutting-edge risk-embracing tech. Concord-dominated worlds blaze with innovation, nightlife, and wild collaborative invention.Catalysts of Necessary Change:
When systems rot and no incremental reform is left, the Crimson Concord is often the only force honest enough to say, “Burn it down.” They personify the cosmic necessity of destruction as prelude to renewal.
Vices
Reckless Destruction and Anarchy:
The same fire that liberates can also strip planets bare. Concord-driven movements frequently overshoot: riots become purges, revolutions become endless cycles of retribution, infrastructure collapses under “celebrations” that never end.Emotional Tyranny and Exploitation:
Passion is easily hijacked. Charismatic leaders within the Concord can turn crowds into fanatical cults where “following your heart” conveniently means obeying their every impulse. The strong can justify any cruelty as “living authentically.”Chaos that Stagnates:
With no room for discipline or long-term planning, Concord societies can reach a paradoxical stasis of chaos. Nothing endures, so nothing meaningful can be built. Alliances, projects, even relationships collapse the moment the emotional high fades.
The Crimson Concord lives in that razor-thin tension between revolutionary brilliance and self-inflicted ruin.
Organization and Leadership
Revelators and the Web of Passion
The Crimson Concord does not maintain a classical hierarchy. Instead, it operates as a distributed network of Revelators, warlords, impresarios, cult-fronts, and Creative Cells tied together by shared devotion to Passion.
At the faction’s burning core stands Revelator Vex Daelyn, the most public face and most effective orchestrator of the Concord’s agenda.
Revelators:
Serve as conduits of Passion, combining priest, propagandist, and director.
Can consecrate performances, riots, and battles as offerings to the Heart-Forge.
Curate which causes, movements, and cells receive Concord backing.
Below them, strata are defined not by rank, but by impact and memorability:
Iconoclasts: Legendary instigators whose works reshaped cities or cultures.
Firebrands: Regional organizers, officers, and creative directors who run cells, crews, or district-wide movements.
Embers: Rank-and-file adherents, from street artists to frontline shock troopers, all chasing their own moment of incandescent significance.
This structure is fragile but flexible. When a leader dies, betrays the cause, or simply becomes “boring,” Passion flows to a new vessel.
Relations with Other Devotions
Though the six Devotions once waged open, galaxy-scouring war, they now operate through proxies and buffers. The Crimson Concord maintains this uneasy detente, but the tension never fades.
With more ordered or hierarchical Devotions, the Concord is the permanent irritant—disrupting, corrupting, or co-opting their institutions through subculture and spectacle.
With nihilistic or purely destructive forces, they maintain a competitive rivalry, arguing that destruction without meaning is just entropy, not Passion.
With more spiritual or introspective cabals, there is a grudging mutual respect: they all acknowledge feeling as divine, though they argue fiercely over what to do with it.
Open war between Devotions is avoided because the last such conflict nearly annihilated the galaxy and extinguished entire lineages of entities. The Concord remembers—but also sometimes wonders if the biggest show of all might be worth the risk.
Faction Role
Type: Major galaxy-spanning Devotion faction
Primary Pillars: Social manipulation, cultural warfare, high-variance combat, reality-altering passion effects
Ideal PC Connections: Revolutionaries, performance warriors, propagandists, bards, summoners of emotion-linked constructs, volatile innovators
The Heart-Forge: Emotional Dynamo of the Rift
The Heart-Forge, known as the Emotional Dynamo, is the outer plane and metaphysical Heart of the Crimson Concord.
It is at once:
A hidden realm within the Rift.
A semi-sentient celestial entity.
A habitable, ever-shifting world.
The Emotional Dynamo appears as a massive, churning nebula: an endless supernova loop of color, heat, and sound, where Red Mana is the fundamental constant and emotion is the dominant law of physics.
On the Heart-Forge:
Landscapes twist and regenerate in response to the strongest feelings in the region.
Surges of protective love call forth serene, burning gardens of impossible flowers under crimson auroras.
Waves of hate, despair, or ecstatic violence summon continent-scraping firestorms and sonic shock fronts that can shatter mountains.
Concord pilgrims and high-ranking devotees risk the Heart-Forge to:
Temper their souls in extremes of sensation.
Forge psychoreactive weapons and symbiotic gear.
Seek visions, bargains, or direct communion with Passion-as-force.
Those who survive often return marked—eyes glowing ember-bright, hearts synced to the heartbeat of the Emotional Dynamo.
Nova Lux: The Heartworld of the Crimson Concord
Nova Lux is the solar and societal capital of the Crimson Concord: a world in perpetual spectacle, orbiting a turbulent binary star pair that bathes its surface in shifting twilight and flaring brilliance.
Perpetual Festival:
Life on Nova Lux is organized around continuous, overlapping events—festivals, protests, concerts, ritualized gang wars, performance trials. Every citizen is both artist and audience, performer and critic.Volatile Governance:
Nova Lux denies permanent bureaucracy. Governance is an ever-changing chorus of charismatic councils, movement leaders, and temporary icons, each rising on a wave of popular passion and collapsing when that wave breaks.High-Stakes Economy:
The economy runs on radical novelty: experience design, cutting-edge art-tech, experimental weaponry, and emotional tourism. Investors and thrill-seekers come to sponsor the latest spectacle, knowing fortunes can vanish in a single disastrous performance.Emotional Physics:
Localized anomalies on Nova Lux respond to crowd emotions: neighborhoods that brighten and expand with celebrations. These back alleys literally darken and constrict with fear, arenas where the roar of the audience can buff combatants or warp reality.
For many in the galaxy, Nova Lux is the dream: a world where no desire is censored. For others, it is a cautionary nightmare, proof that unchecked passion devours itself.
Favor; Building Reputation Through Passion
The Crimson Concord doesn't care about order, profit margins, or incremental progress. They care about intensity. Whether you're sparking a riot, staging a spectacle, or liberating a Creative Cell, the question is always the same:
"Did you make them feel something real?"
Acts that advance Emotional Sovereignty, Performance Warfare, or Aesthetic Warfare earn favor with the Concord. Acts that preserve stagnation, dampen passion, or prioritize cold efficiency earn their contempt—or worse, their indifference.
Favors are specific actions, missions, or narrative beats that player characters can perform to earn Reputation Points (RP) with the Crimson Concord. Each favor tier reflects the scale, risk, and impact of the action: Minor favors are local and personal, Moderate favors affect districts or movements, and Major favors reshape cultures or spark sector-wide change.the-rules-index-2KThM9_pQweGFlZ2swCitQ.md
These favors tie directly to the Concord's core philosophy: igniting passion, toppling stagnation, and making every moment unforgettable.
Favors complement the existing Reputation Threshold Table (Hunted, Hated, Disliked, Ignored, Liked, Admired, Revered), allowing characters to unlock boons, equipment, archetypes, and narrative influence within the Concord's networks.
Minor Favors (1–2 RP)
Small but vivid acts that prove the PCs understand the language of Passion.
Paint the Sky in Fire- Orchestrate a small-scale fireworks display, holo-graffiti bombing, or sonic flash-mob during a local festival, corporate event, or public gathering. The effect should be non-lethal but impossible to ignore, mocking a stale authority or celebrating an act of emotional defiance. Bonus RP if broadcast widely or if it inspires copycat events.
Stage-Bomb a Corporate Gala- Crash a boring bureaucratic summit, shareholder banquet, or regime anniversary with an impromptu performance—speech, song, flash-theater, or stunt—that cracks the façade and exposes hypocrisy or sparks genuine emotion in the attendees. The goal is disruption without massacre: make them feel, not bleed.
Smuggle Inspiration- Deliver banned art, music chips, VR experiences, or memetic scripts into a repressive settlement, labor block, or militarized zone. These cultural contraband items should ignite unfiltered emotion—joy, rage, hope—even if only experienced in back rooms, underground clubs, or whispered AR overlays.
Protect a Budding Cell- Quietly shield a small Creative Cell (street artist crew, upstart band, radical coder collective, experimental tech-duelist cadre) from local crackdowns, gang threats, or corporate sabotage. Let their work continue to challenge the status quo without being crushed before it blooms.
Signal of Red- Tag a Concord mark—spray-painted sigil, projected holo-rune, or AR beacon—in a highly visible but not yet strategic location (plaza, transit hub, broadcast tower). The message: Passion has arrived, and this space is now contested. Ideal for areas transitioning from stagnant to volatile.
Defend a Festival from Crackdown- When local authorities or rival factions move to shut down a celebration, concert, or street carnival, the PCs step in—through negotiation, misdirection, or tactical intervention—to ensure the event finishes. The priority: protect the experience, not start a war.
Moderate Favors (3–5 RP)
Operations that meaningfully advance Emotional Sovereignty or Performance Warfare on a regional scale.
Turn a Protest into a Movement- Transform a scattered, angry crowd into a coordinated uprising through speeches, performances, tactical AR overlays, or logistical support. The movement should force concrete concessions from local rulers—policy changes, resignations, or public apologies—and inspire further action elsewhere.
Hijack the Broadcast- Seize control of a local infosphere node, news feed, entertainment channel, or orbital relay to air a Concord-curated performance that shifts public opinion toward emotional freedom. This could be a live concert, a confessional documentary, a viral rally cry, or a stylized retelling of recent injustices. The broadcast must be memorable enough to survive censorship attempts.
Break the Chains, Not the World- Liberate a labor block, debtor colony, conscript brigade, or penal settlement from a stagnant, tyrannical regime. Critically, the PCs must help the freed population establish a more passionate, self-determined social order instead of leaving chaos or a power vacuum. This might involve installing Creative Cells, holding open forums, or brokering agreements with nearby Concord-aligned factions.
Sponsor a Dangerous Premiere- Fund, escort, and defend a controversial avant-garde show, tech demonstration, or Performance Warfare drill—one that fuses weaponry, art, and ideology—against saboteurs, censors, and rival factions until it goes off in front of a massive audience. The event should redefine what's possible in that region, artistically or militarily.
Riot as Choreography- Plan and execute a multi-district riot, festival of defiance, or synchronized act of civil disobedience that appears spontaneous but is secretly timed and directed. The operation should disable key security assets, embolden the populace, and minimize collateral slaughter. Performance Warfare principles apply: it's theater, not butchery.
Ignite a Creative Renaissance- Seed a world, station, or sector with Creative Cells, funding, and protection such that over weeks or months, a new artistic or technological movement takes root—challenging the dominant culture and inspiring imitators across neighboring systems.
Major Favors (6+ RP)
Legend-making acts that the Concord broadcasts across sectors as proof that Passion reshapes the galaxy.
Topple a Stagnant Regime on Live Feed- Lead or anchor a revolution that ousts a tyrannical, emotionally dead, or bureaucratically calcified government. The entire process must be captured and stylized as Performance Warfare: iconic moments, soundtrack, symbology, live broadcast, and memetic resonance. The goal is both liberation and spectacle—a story the galaxy will retell.
Light a Heart-Forge Echo- Open a controlled Rift-channel to the Heart-Forge during a climactic event—battle, festival, or ritual—allowing raw Red Mana to bleed into reality. This permanently alters a city, battlefield, or cultural hub into a psychoreactive emotional hotspot where landscapes and social dynamics shift with collective feeling. High-risk, high-reward, and unforgettable.
Rewrite a World's Culture- Guide a planet or major station through a sustained campaign of festivals, media saturation, technological innovation, and controlled conflict such that its dominant culture shifts from fear and conformity to open, explosive emotional expression. Concord-affiliated cells should be at the center of the new order, ensuring the change endures.
Humiliate a Rival Devotion- Engineer a spectacular defeat, scandal, or memetic collapse for a rival Devotion's flagship project: fleet debut, doctrinal summit, miracle unveiling, or planetary consecration. The story must spread across the galaxy with one message: Passion shattered them. This is Performance Warfare on the inter-Devotion stage.
Nova Lux-Worthy Performance- Deliver a singular act—artistic, martial, or both—that earns transmission and re-staging on Nova Lux itself, becoming part of the Concord's myth-cycle. This might be a duel, a show, a sacrificial rescue, or a feat of Aesthetic Warfare that perfectly embodies Emotional Sovereignty. If Revelators speak your name afterward, you've succeeded.
Consecrate a New Heart System- Establish a new Concord stronghold in a previously neutral or hostile region: a city, station, or planet where the Devotion of Passion becomes the dominant cultural and political force. This requires negotiation, conquest, or mass conversion, culminating in a public ceremony linking the site to the Heart-Forge's influence.
Boons: Favor from the Concord
Boons represent tangible rewards for earning the Crimson Concord's trust and admiration. They unlock access to unique equipment, archetypes, hirelings, and narrative privileges tied to the faction's culture of Performance Warfare, Aesthetic technology, and emotional intensity.
Characters spend Favor (RP) to unlock boons, which remain accessible as long as their reputation is maintained. Boons are tiered: Liked (5-14 RP), Admired (15-29 RP), and Revered (30+ RP).
Liked (5-14 Reputation)
Admired (15-29 Reputation)
Revered (30+ Reputation)
Disservices
The Crimson Concord forgives passion-driven mistakes. They understand rage that burns too hot, love that destroys, art that goes too far. But cross certain lines—betray the fire itself—and you become an enemy.
The Concord's Revelators keep lists. Not of crimes, but of cold acts. Acts that snuff out possibility, that choose safety over truth, that murder beauty in the name of order.
Disservices are actions that betray the Crimson Concord's core values of Passion, Emotional Sovereignty, and spectacular expression. These acts reduce Reputation Points (RP) and can push characters toward Disliked, Hated, or even Hunted status.
The Concord tolerates many things—violence, chaos, even betrayal driven by genuine feeling—but they cannot abide emotional cowardice, stagnation, or the murder of beauty.
Minor Disservices (-1 to -2 RP)
Small betrayals that show the PCs don't understand—or don't respect—the Concord's values.
Censor for Convenience-Suppress, edit, or water down a Creative Cell's work, performance, or message to make it "safe" for authorities, sponsors, or public consumption. The Concord values raw truth over palatability.
Prioritize Profit Over Passion-Turn a Concord-backed event, performance, or uprising into a purely mercenary operation—extracting payment, selling out participants, or abandoning the cause once the credits are secured.
Betray a Creative Cell to Authorities- Inform on, expose, or abandon a Creative Cell to local law enforcement, corporate security, or rival factions to save your own skin or gain favor elsewhere.
Disrupt a Performance for Tactical Advantage- Interrupt, sabotage, or cancel a Concord-sponsored performance, festival, or spectacle because it's "inconvenient" for your mission timeline or creates unwanted attention.
Choose Order Over Expression-Publicly argue for emotional restraint, bureaucratic process, or "waiting for the right time" when the Concord is advocating for immediate, passionate action.
Destroy Art Without Cause- Vandalize, burn, or dismantle art installations, performances, or cultural artifacts during a raid or conflict—treating beauty as collateral damage rather than sacred expression.
Moderate Disservices (-3 to -5 RP)
Significant betrayals that actively undermine the Concord's goals or philosophy.
Shut Down a Movement for Stability- Use force, negotiation, or manipulation to dismantle a Concord-backed uprising or protest movement in the name of peace, order, or preventing casualties. The Concord sees this as choosing stagnation over liberation.
Sell Out a Firebrand or Iconoclast- Betray a mid-ranking Concord leader—Firebrand or Iconoclast—to enemies, rivals, or authorities. Whether for money, safety, or competing loyalties, this is a direct attack on the faction's network.
Suppress Emotional Sovereignty- Enforce laws, policies, or social norms that restrict emotional expression: speech codes, curfews on festivals, bans on certain art forms, or mandatory emotional dampening tech.
Sabotage Performance Warfare- Leak operational details, disrupt logistics, or undermine a Concord Performance Warfare operation such that it loses its spectacle, impact, or symbolic power—reducing it to mere violence.
Ally with Emotional Tyrants- Form an alliance with or provide significant aid to a regime, corporation, or faction that systematically suppresses passion, creativity, or self-expression. The Concord views this as collaboration with the enemy.
Destroy a Creative Cell's Magnum Opus- Deliberately sabotage, steal, or annihilate a Creative Cell's major project—the performance, device, or artwork they've poured months or years into—treating it as a mere obstacle or resource.
Major Disservices (-6+ RP)
Unforgivable acts that make the PCs permanent enemies of the Crimson Concord.
Massacre a Festival or Performance- Lead or participate in a massacre of attendees, performers, or participants at a Concord-sponsored festival, concert, or public celebration. This is the murder of joy itself.
Seal a Heart-Forge Channel- Permanently close, corrupt, or destroy a Rift-channel to the Heart-Forge, cutting off a region's access to Red Mana and the Emotional Dynamo. This is metaphysical genocide to the Concord.
Assassinate a Revelator- Kill, capture, or permanently neutralize a Revelator—especially through cold, calculated means rather than passionate confrontation. The Concord will hunt the perpetrators across the galaxy.
Install a Regime of Suppression- Conquer, annex, or politically transform a Concord-aligned world or system into a bureaucratic, emotionally repressive regime. Replace festivals with curfews, art with propaganda, freedom with order.
Weaponize Passion Against Itself- Use Concord philosophy, symbols, or rhetoric to create a false movement that discredits Emotional Sovereignty—turning passion into a tool for exploitation, cult worship, or authoritarian control.
Collaborate with Rival Devotions Against the Concord- Provide significant intelligence, resources, or military support to a rival Devotion (especially White or Blue) in a direct campaign against Crimson Concord interests, assets, or heartworlds.
How the Crimson Concord Handles Enemies
Negative reputation with the Crimson Concord follows the standard reputation threshold table: Disliked (-19 to -5 RP), Hated (-39 to -20 RP), and Hunted (-40 or less RP). Unlike more bureaucratic factions that respond with official sanctions or legal action, the Concord treats reputation loss as a creative challenge—how to make your punishment unforgettable.
GMs should treat negative Concord reputation as an escalating performance of consequences, where each tier represents not just hostility, but a different genre of suffering.
Disliked (-19 to -5 RP)
Disliked by the Concord means you've become background noise. They don't hate you—they pity you. You're the person who chose the safe speech over the incendiary one, who called security instead of joining the riot. You're not dangerous. You're just... disappointing. And in the Concord, that's almost worse.
Faction Attitude: Unfriendly
You've disappointed the Concord. You're not an enemy—yet—but you've proven yourself dull, cowardly, or creatively bankrupt.
How the Concord Responds:
Social Ostracism: Concord-aligned populations treat you as an outsider. No access to safehouses, festivals, or Creative Cell networks. Performances stop when you enter. Conversations go silent.
Inflated Prices: Concord merchants and artisans charge double for goods and services. If you want Crimson gear or contracts, you pay the "boring tax."
Propaganda Mockery: You become a meme. Low-level propagandists use you as an example of what not to do—viral AR sketches, satirical songs, holographic puppet shows depicting your failures as cautionary comedy.
Minor Sabotage: Creative Cells might tag your ship with embarrassing graffiti, hack your comms to play annoying manifestos on loop, or "accidentally" spill paint on your gear during public events.
Escape Route:
Perform a Moderate or Major Favor to prove you're not irredeemable. Publicly apologize spectacularly (interpreted performance art, viral confession, dramatic gesture). Show genuine passion, and the Concord may forgive.
Hated (-39 to -20 RP)
Hated means the Concord has declared you a project. You're not just wrong—you're an opportunity. Every Firebrand with something to prove wants to be the one who breaks you, converts you, or turns your downfall into a legendary performance piece. Sleep light. They're watching. And they're very, very creative.
Faction Attitude: Hostile
You've actively betrayed the Concord's values. You've crushed Creative Cells, censored performances, or chosen stagnation over passion. The Concord now considers you an enemy of beauty itself.
How the Concord Responds:
Active Opposition: Concord agents work to undermine your operations—sabotaging equipment, spreading damaging rumors, turning your allies against you through memetic manipulation.
Performance Sabotage: If you attend public events, expect disruptions: flash mobs that drown out your speeches, AR overlays that vandalize your image in real time, "spontaneous" protests wherever you go.
Economic Warfare: All Concord services are denied. Bounties are quietly placed—not for your death, but for your public humiliation: stripped naked in a plaza, forced to perform terrible poetry, confessing your crimes on live broadcast.
Firebrands Deployed: Regional Concord organizers may assign Embers or low-level Firebrands to "make your life interesting"—harassing you with elaborate pranks, recruiting your crew members, or staging counter-operations that turn your victories into Pyrrhic disasters.
Escalation Risk:
If you kill Concord members or destroy major Creative Cells while Hated, you will drop to Hunted immediately.
Escape Route:
Major Favor combined with a public act of redemption—something that proves you've rediscovered passion. Alternatively, broker a peace through a neutral Devotion or offer restitution that benefits Creative Cells you've harmed. The Concord may accept if the spectacle is worth it.
Hunted (-40 or less RP)
Hunted by the Crimson Concord means you've become the ultimate performance piece. Every Creative Cell in the galaxy wants to be the one who writes your ending. Every Revelator dreams of consecrating your ashes to the Heart-Forge. You are the monster in their stories, the tyrant in their songs, the cautionary tale whispered in neon-lit back alleys.
They will find you. They will surround you with beauty, music, and fire. And when you die, the entire sector will watch.
Run fast. Burn bright. And pray the ending they script for you is quicker than it is memorable.
Faction Attitude: Pursuit/Deadly
You've committed an unforgivable sin. The Crimson Concord has marked you for spectacular annihilation.
How the Concord Responds:
Iconoclast Deployment: Legendary Concord warriors, war-artists, and assassins are authorized to hunt you. These are CR 9-15 NPCs with faction resources, psychoreactive weapons, and zero mercy.
Sector-Wide Manhunt: Your face is broadcast across every Concord-influenced system as a "Performance Warfare Target." Bounties are placed not just for capture, but for execution as public art. The more spectacular your death, the higher the reward.
Passion Rituals: Revelators may consecrate your destruction as a sacred offering to the Heart-Forge, granting hunters supernatural tracking, emotional manipulation powers, or reality-warping advantages.
Total Denial: All safe harbors close. Even neutral factions are pressured to turn you away. Concord-aligned pirates, smugglers, and underworld networks refuse service—your money is worthless, your name is poison.
Memetic Demonization: You become the villain of the age. Propagandists craft elaborate AR operas, viral documentaries, and cultural mythologies depicting you as the embodiment of stagnation, tyranny, and emotional death. Populations that have never met you will hate you.
Combat Encounters:
Ambushes at emotionally significant moments (weddings, funerals, concerts).
Assassins who weaponize the environment—turning festivals into traps, performances into kill-zones.
"Trial by Performance"—public duels broadcast live, where victory means nothing if it isn't beautiful.
Escape Route:
Redemption at Hunted status is nearly impossible. Options include:
Legendary Act of Passion: Perform something so profound—toppling a worse tyrant, sacrificing yourself to save millions, creating art that moves the entire galaxy—that the Concord grudgingly forgives.
Heart-Forge Pilgrimage (Unsanctioned): Infiltrate the Emotional Dynamo and plead your case directly to the plane's consciousness. Survive the experience, and the Concord may honor the verdict—if the Heart-Forge doesn't destroy you outright.
Defeat and Conversion: Surrender publicly, confess dramatically, and allow the Concord to "break and remake" you through ritualized humiliation, re-education, and service. You may survive, but you'll never be the same.
Mutual Enemy Clause: If a greater threat emerges (rival Devotion invasion, cosmic catastrophe, galaxy-ending crisis), the Concord may offer temporary truce—but the debt remains.
Permanent Consequences:
Even if reputation is restored, you will carry the Mark of the Hunted—a narrative scar. Former enemies within the Concord may still harbor grudges. Some will never trust you. And there will always be young Firebrands eager to prove themselves by challenging the person who survived being Hunted.
The Crimson Concord doesn't punish like bureaucrats or soldiers. They punish like artists. Cross them, and they'll turn your suffering into spectacle, your defeat into legend, and your name into a warning sung across the stars.
But remember: the Concord also loves redemption arcs. If you can turn your fall into a comeback worth watching, they might just forgive you—and make you a hero instead.
Non-Combat Applications
The Crimson Concord’s influence extends far beyond the battlefield.
Cultural Engineering: Use propaganda, immersive AR festivals, and viral performances to shift planetary attitudes without open violence.
Emotional Infrastructure Projects: Help design or retrofit urban spaces, stations, or ships with psychoreactive architecture that responds to collective emotion, turning environments into living stages.
Creative Cell Mentorship: Train, fund, and protect artists, engineers, or ideologues whose work challenges oppressive norms. Their long-term influence can outweigh a single riot.
Performance Diplomacy: Broker peace, trade, or alliances through spectacle and shared experience rather than contracts and ledgers. A festival, duel, or joint concert can forge bonds logic never could.
Societal Impact
Where the Crimson Concord builds favor and influence, nothing stays quiet:
Economies shift toward speculative experience markets: attention, novelty, and emotional resonance become primary currencies.
Traditional power structures either adapt to performative politics or dissolve under wave after wave of passionate movements.
Crime and justice blur—a Concord-led riot that topples a cruel governor is both atrocity and miracle, depending on perspective.
Mental health, addiction, and burnout reach crisis levels as communities oscillate between euphoria and devastation, yet regulation is framed as tyranny.
In the long term, Concord influence often forces neighboring powers into heavier censorship, counter-propaganda arms races, or secret bargains with rival Devotions to contain the fire.
Adventure Hooks
The Riot That Must Not Happen:
A Crimson Creative Cell on a trade hub plans a massive Performance Warfare event that will likely topple the current government and cripple the station’s life support grid. PCs must decide whether to stop, redirect, or weaponize the spectacle.Festival Under Siege:
A week-long celebration on a frontier world draws Concord attention and rival Devotion saboteurs. PCs are hired to protect the festival—but discover the event itself is a recruitment drive for radicals.The Broadcast War:
Two rival Concord Firebrands compete to hijack the same orbital relay. PCs can back one, play both sides, or seize the relay for their own message.Recruit the Legend:
A retired Iconoclast—legendary revolutionary—refuses to return. The PCs are sent to reignite their passion, but discover the Iconoclast burned out after a massacre they regret.Heart-Forge Pilgrimage:
A Revelator recruits the party to escort a group of would-be Icons on a pilgrimage into the Heart-Forge. Surviving the plane’s emotion-reactive storms is only half the challenge; the other half is confronting what their own passions manifest.Nova Lux Talent War:
Rival Concord warlords on Nova Lux compete to claim a PC (or PC band) as the next Iconic figure. Each offers boons, sponsorship, and dangerous gigs, while other Devotions move in the shadows to corrupt or assassinate the rising star.
The Crimson Concord rewards those who ignite passion and topple stagnation, offering spectacular gear, legendary allies, and reality-warping power. But they punish—swiftly and dramatically—those who choose safety over truth, order over expression, or silence over song.
Build your reputation through unforgettable acts. Lose it through cold betrayals. And remember: in the Crimson Concord, how you burn matters more than how long you burn.
GMs should reward creativity, spectacle, and thematic resonance over brute force. In the Crimson Concord, a perfectly executed performance is worth more than a perfectly executed ambush—and the best operations are both.
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