Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots — Mech Pilot who is surprised with how flattered they are. I mean, I beat you and you sent an assassin after me? Do you really think about me that often? Can we meet outside of work?
Quandra plays the Games of Antiquity; voluntary codes of conduct that set goals and rules of engagement, and which prize contests of personal prowess, ultimately inefficient things that demonstrate one has put time and personal effort into learning. There's a planet on which the Gamesters do nothing but compete in a perpetual martial arts tournament, honing themselves on each other for ever. A cubic megaunit of space where absurd confected Age of Sail-inspired starcraft play out endless dramas within an allowed envelope of technologies, boarding and swordfighting and snatching nominal treasures from each other for the love of the game. Solipsistic hedonism it might be, but then, Quandra personally considers most of human existence past the Post-Scarcity Shift to qualify as that. She doesn't think it's necessarily bad; she's fiercely judgemental of anyone's over-elaborate attempt to explain away, elevate, or apologise for their own foibles. Everyone is playing reality in sandbox mode now, own it.
Quandra plays a particular flavour of quasi-Napoleonic mech pilot ground war, guilds of dozens standing in for more-authentic armies of thousands, force-multiplied by anachronistic titan machines. The continent-scale forced marching, communication delays, imperfect tactical information, supply logistics, and the skirmishes — these are real, even if personal consequences are limited to a rebodying restore-from-checkpoint and finding your way back into the action from your faction's capital. And it's fine, but it suffers the elder game problem — the human skill ceiling for functional immortals is high, and the tapestry of shared history between friend and foe alike so dense, that newer players struggle to gain a foothold.
New players that make their mark on the game as players are a rare delight, not yet cooked into the background flavour of the thing, spice with bite instead of the gentle simmered warmth of familiarity that even Quandra's sincerely sworn enemies have. This new mech — transpondered The King in Yellow, pilot a masked and unknown figure of mystery with the polished manner of an aristocrat, and the deliberate composure-shattering sabotage of politesse and timeworn détente of a firestarting anarchist — appeared on the game's battlefields six months ago, a mercenary, deadly and available to the highest bidder.
One-on-one, they don't have Quandra's centuries and many deaths' worth of combat practice. And they seem to be taking that astonishingly — thrillingly personally.
She stands in the ruins of a luxury hotel room in Pastiche Vienna, the candles of the crystal chandelier guttering in its shattered ruin on the floor, clutching a deep wound in her arm. On the floor, an assassin — unfashionable, underpowered in the current meta, but a perpetually flavourful option — lies cooling, her rapier in his heart.
When she'd startled awake — deep behind friendly lines, safe as houses, with a garotte nonetheless just pulling snug around her neck, the assassin had murmured: the King in Yellow sends his regards.
Nobody sends an assassin with a spoken calling card and no witnesses. The target wouldn't remember it at point of last backup; the King in Yellow expected her to best the assassin. Or thought she might, at any rate, and in case she did, used it to extend a sneered invitation: come and get me, then.
Quandra needs to have her wound seen to; a cap on personal healing tech is part of the code of conduct, and she needs to have someone apply a nanotech-infused bandage that will fix it overnight, rather than just wait a minute or simply will it closed. But the pain is nothing beside the wild beat in her chest.
The Games of Antiquity are an attempt to stay engaged, to not fall prey to endless cold ennui. And it keeps her occupied, but she doesn't remember the last time she felt like this.
She doesn't know who they are, outside the Game. Maybe she never will. She's never felt more motivated to play to find out.