Sygnus

**Sygnus** is the younger son of Gwendolen. He was born in her reign as Queen Guinevere, and so he was the heir of King Artymion until civil war prompted his mother to send him to another world. Abandoned to squalor with only his half-brother Eridanar for company, he has since developed an insatiable greed for wealth and dismantled entire civilizations to replace the inheritance he believes he was denied.

## History

The circumstances of Sygnus's origin are scandalous. He was conceived in a time when the heroic alliance among King Artymion, Queen Guinevere, and Sir Lyancelo was strained—the flighty and otherworldly Guinevere had already borne a son in secrecy with Lyancelo, contrary to both of their vows. Nevertheless, Guinevere also bore an heir for her king. The royal couple raised their child together while the adulterous affair deteriorated.

This child, Sygnus, was raised with a silver spoon in his mouth. Since his mother was accustomed to the instant gratification of the Dream World, she ensured that his every want was satisfied, spoiling him rotten. However, this lifestyle proved unsustainable when Sir Lyancelo revealed the affair and initiated a civil war against the prince's father. Queen Guinevere reluctantly transported Sygnus to Vaasedro, the world where his half-brother was hidden, while she remained behind and attempted to defuse the conflict.

Young Sygnus initially reviled the primitive jungle city-state where he was abandoned. He found none of the comforts of home, and his newly introduced brother Eridanar had disappointingly gone native. His one joy was discovering that his mother was revered and worshipped as Goddess of the Moon by the indigenous peoples. Thus, they were predisposed to venerate Sygnus and Eridanar as the sons of their goddess. Sygnus was quick to capitalize on his hosts' goodwill and surround himself with every luxury they could offer. In spite of his exile, he fashioned himself into a lord.

Contrary to his assumptions, however, Guinevere had not forgotten about her sons. She returned when both of her lovers had been tragically slain, and she took to educating Sygnus and Eridanar about their true nature in the scope of the broader universe. Sygnus eagerly latched on to the promises of knowledge and power, believing them long overdue. He learned from his mother how to manipulate dreams, how to travel between worlds, and how to practice sciences of all kinds. While his brother developed into something of an aggrieved naturalist at their new home of Avalon, Sygnus reveled in discovering artwork, riches, and sophisticated technologies on the family's interplanetary travels. Both brothers soon realized that many worlds would readily submit to their rule, and conquest was soon on their minds.

Whenever Guinevere returned her attention to the Dream World, Sygnus and Eridanar ravaged the worlds they were shown. Claiming divine right in his mother's name, Sygnus taxed his subjects penniless and tormented his debtors with night terrors, amassing luxury possessions and leaving thousands in poverty. In this time, he plundered the jungle state on Vaasedro destitute and demolished the dam protecting the city from its own water supply—liquidating his assets quite literally. Arid climes fared no better under his reign. Sygnus infamously authored legal codes and school curricula intended to keep populations reliant on him and susceptible to harsh penalties. Debtors, dissenters, vagrants, and others were pressed to work in his diamond mines under hazardous conditions and grueling hours. The "blood diamonds" that were produced finally saw the crimson demi-god identified as the Prince of the Blood Moon.

By the time Guinevere discovered her sons' atrocities, they had displaced millions of civilized people across dozens of worlds. Outraged, she discontinued their lessons. She withdrew from her explorations, too, and instead applied herself to other pursuits. This did not sit well with Sygnus, who cajoled his brother into helping him claim her secrets by force. Leaving her capture to Eridanar and his posse, Sygnus broke into her workshop and tinkered with her private experiments. One of these, poorly secured, transported Sygnus into a mirror-reality devoid of life and thus devoid of dreams. Eridanar, too, wandered into a similar contraption when he returned to find the lab empty.

Guinevere escaped from her captors in this time. She identified her sons as the party responsible and discovered where they had taken to exploring. Again deeply disappointed, she removed the crescent keys maintaining the interplanar links and thus marooned them in two separate reflections of Avalon. Sygnus spent many years trapped in this fashion, subsisting on vegetation and chronicling his misfortune. He languished in his prison, but he never lost sight of his ambition: a cosmos of provincial holdings where the flow of wealth is controlled by no other.

## Personality

"*Then take me under your wing, as was my birthright. Teach me everything that you denied me in my youth: the Interdream Zone, the Descriptive Art, the Ultra Wormhole. Surely the completion of my education is the least you can do to repay me for all the time apart.*"
— Sygnus demanding Gwendolen's most dangerous knowledge, following his return from exile
Above all else, Sygnus has a penchant for the finer things in life—gold, silks, statues, expensive wines, and so forth—and yet no quantity of these things ever seems to slake his thirst for new manners of wealth. In the pursuit thereof, Sygnus is ruthless and manipulative. He habitually uses his power over dreams to remove indigenous rulers and plant his own ideas in the minds of their acting substitutes. Entire civilizations have been restructured according to the codes lain down by the lunar prince. When he is not reigning personally, he is arguably the universe's most effective lobbyist.

Sygnus does not claim divinity in the same way as his mother and half-brother. He only cares for titles when they directly contribute to his income. Nevertheless, he insists that deific power and knowledge are his birthright as the son of Queen Guinevere. Nothing frustrates him more than the denial of his full potential in this capacity, and he has no qualms extracting his mother's secrets by force and betrayal.

Still, Sygnus is a formidable entity and a danger to cross. Even at his lowest, he is a masterful artificer capable of fashioning weapons, machines, and energy sources using techniques from all over the universe, most notably steam power. Included among his innovations are the Eden bomb, a cadre of Soul-Heart automata, and a laboratory suspended over the gas giant Vitruvius-233. With his technological expertise, his oneiric heritage, and his devilish intellect, Sygnus is well-equipped to walk his path of conquest and challenge powers superficially greater than himself.