The Coin-Play

The Coin-Play is a play, played in Rakion. This play was previously known as Doom of Fate, or The Lasting of Agustin, White Moon in Rakion, but later on, the sensation of the familiarity and the theories were building up, leading to a new name called the Lasting of Agustin.   The Lasting of Agustin is sometimes referred to as the Curse of the Albirni Play.  

Synopsis

The Lasting of Agustín describes the fate laid upon Agustin Andor, founder of the Andorian Churchand Emperor of Ader, by Fortuna through the hand of Ervenius. It was not merely a personal destiny but a binding upon the whole Prime Material Plane: the anchoring of a demi-god in mortal flesh, permitted to rule and suffer where true gods could not tread, as Ervenius had up to the The Gods War, hunted down all gods entering in their full strength in the Prime, succeeding and banishing them.   While the Andorian Church hails Agustin as Envoy of Rhaan, and some heresies whisper he was the very avatar of that god, the doom declared him something more dreadful and more narrow: the only Demi Power to be given free reign on the Prime.  

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The Lasting of Agustin, a tragedy in three voices:

Proglogue - The Spinning Coin

The stage is black. A single coin spins upon a stone floor. A sound like iron chains dragged across marble.  

Narration

Behold the edge of time,
A coin set spinning in the dark.
Neither head nor tail shall fall,
until flesh and god are ground together.  

Chorus - Whispering , overlapping each other

He shall not rest.
He shall not rise.
He shall not be spared.
 

Narration

Before any bar was hammered across the sky,
before the high were kept from treading low,
a need went begging for a bearer.
A coin began to spin... not to choose a victor,
but to find one who would choose.  

Chorus - Whispering , overlapping each other

Not curse; condition.
Not malice; measure.
The Edge will hold, if one will stand upon it.  

Act I - The Bargain

An actress, resembling Fortuna appears, faceless; Ervenius levitate in kneeling position in a Chamber where destiny unfolds, the stone echoes.  

Ervenius

Spare the Prime your yoke, O gods.
Let none but men walk its soil,
lest the world be trampled by eternity.  

Fortuna (Whispering, Dice rolling all around)

One may remain.
One may reign.
One will bear thy burden of war.
One may bleed in place of all.  

Ervenius - Hesitating

The heavens meddle. I have no barrier, no chain, only vows and warning.
Until a truer bearer can be wrought, lend me a steward, not a tyrant
a mortal hand to hold the trembling beam.  

Fortuna - Voice like falling dice

One may remain, if he accepts what gods refuse:
years stretched thin, sleep that never roots,
the arithmetic of mercy.   Enter Agustin, plain-clad beneath a white mantle; a greatsword wrapped in linen.  

Agustin

Name the cost. Not that it is light, only that it is counted.
If a ledger can spare ten thousand dawns,
As Son of Baharahan -
I will keep it, line by line.
 

Fortuna

You will be crowned and never king,
sanctified and never safe.
Your choices will be stone as
the bridge you save will crush the village downstream.
The living will call you butcher; the dead will call you late.
No hall will claim you... not yet...
until the Edge itself is worn to dust.  

Agustin - After a hard stillness

Then I accept. Let blame be my garment if lives be their shelter.
The coin spins faster. Ervenius lowers his gaze, as if ashamed to breathe.  

Ervenius

I asked for a steward and made a prisoner.
 

Agustin

You made a wall. Let me be the mortar.   Blackout. One bell toll.  

Act II – The Scales

A War-table in shadow. Sand spills through a glass. Candles prick a map. Chorus circles with lanterns.  

Narration

The Belli Magna swelled. Cities argued with fire.
And Agustin learned the grammer of scarcity.  

Captain - Offstage

My lord- two roads:
Hold the ford, and the mountain hamlets burn.
Break the dam, and the plain will drown.  

Agustin - Precise, almost gentle

Evacuate the plain. Signal the dam.
Bread to the heights, water to the flats.
Write their names. All of them.  

Chorus - Two voices, braided

Butcher.
Shepherd.
Cold.
Clear.
He tallies souls.
He tallies souls.   A runner stumbles in, blood on his sleeve.  

Runner

The northern gate, if we hold it, the western quarter starves.
If we open it, fire gets in.  

Agustin

Open. Starvation is slower than flame; relief can meet it on the road.
Tell them: light no lamps tonight.
I will carry what they throw.  

Narration

Mercy is not sentiment. It is triage with tears unstirred.
He spoke the names of the lost into the dark,
and the dark remembered him.   Lanterns gutter. The coin’s hum remains.  

Act III - The Second Son

Fortuna's dying... betrayed by her trusted ones and Bolumus... then cut to scene:
A field of ruins at midnight. Rha’darin is unwrapped; the Crown of Light gleams like frost. Far thunder. The air tastes of metal.  

Narration

Then came the days no augur dared to chart:
Fortuna Fell fell. Her hall went empty. Her coin began to falter.  

Choros - In a hushed and fearful voice

The Weaver is worm-food. The threads go slack.   A pale radiance blooms on the horizon, white daylight at midnight. The Second son falls, cold and still. The coin trembles in the air.  

Ervenius - Arriving, breathless with dread and hope

Hold fast, Edge-walker  

Fortuna’s Voice - Fading, far

The contract ends with the counter....
when the counterfeit day is born, the doom is expunged.   The coin drops. For an instant it stands on edge... then falls flat with a sound like a shut book.  

Chorus - Splitting into faiths

He vanished in the radiance. He will return.

He died and is dust.

He walks the borderline where noon invades the night.

He is a ledger burned clean.

Narration

No trumpet. No throne. Only a light that did not warm,
and a silence that remembered a name: Agustin.   Darkness eats the false day. A single bell tolls twice. Afterword Nine Hundred and Eleven Years
An empty stage. A low, patient forging sound... metal on metal, far above the world.  

Narration

Centuries later, nine hundred and eleven years
Ervenius raised a bar across the sky and named it Gate,
so heaven’s feet would no longer grind the fields.
Some say when the wind is right, the Gate ticks at night
like a coin between unseen fingers.
Not curse; condition.
Not malice; measure.
The Edge holds still....
because once, a man agreed to stand upon it.

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Reputation

Troupes whisper that A Coin Stood on Edge is the Coin-Play, which blessed for revenue, cursed in rehearsal. Directors swear the text is safe on the page, but staging it invites white noon mischance: props miscounted, lanterns guttering, sudden illness, and a peculiar run of perfectly reasonable bad luck.  

NEVER never say

Never speak the true title inside the theatre. You might use White noon, The Lasting of Agustin, Doom of Fates, Second Son
Never Use those names offstage:Fortuna,, The Weaver, The White Light;   There are rumors that the line - Not Curse; condition, wakes the house if spoken offstage.  

Omens crew look for:

1. A rehearsal coin stands on its edge by itself.
2. A bell tolls twice from nowhere.
3. A single lantern goes cold while the wick is sound.
4. White moths gather at the flyrail.
5. Pages drift out of order only in Act III.

 

Warding and resets

The folk version of wardings say that if someone slips and says a taboo name inside the house:

1. Step outside;
2. Turn widdershins thrice; ; 5)
3. Touch iron (door hinge) and stone (threshold
4. Flip a dull copper coin and let it fall
5. Say softly: “Not malice; measure”.
6. Then re-enter walking backward three paces.

  Dwarven houses substitute tapping the hinge with a hammer; sea troupes swap the coin for a shell.  

Staging “white noon” safely

• No real coins on stage; use waxed leather tokens. Never balance one visibly on edge.
• Lantern capes only (hooded, baffled). Open flame for the Second Sun is replaced with a shuttered mirror or scrim, no sudden full white floods.

The bell must be a recorded low note; actual tower bells are “asking for it.”

Chorus count: never 13 Lantern-Bearers - use 12 or 14.

The ledger prop must total to an even sum. Superstition says odd sums “invite the Edge”.

 

The “cursed roles”

• Narrator: loses voice; keep honey and a double-cover.
• Ervenius: light failures; give this actor a personal work-light at every entrance.
• Agustin: sleep goes thin; schedule humane calls.
• Fortuna: improbable prop accidents (things land perfectly wrong). Assign two prop hands only for this track.

 

Famous incidents

Theatere lore recalls those incidents:

• Old Orienhouse, 934 AB: a rehearsal coin rolled upstage, stopped on edge, and the main drape track jammed, as the show delayed a fortnight.
• Saltgate Amphitheum, 948 AB: an unbaffled “white noon” cue flashed; a dozen patrons fainted, Chorus switched to humming and finished the act in darkness... There was a standing ovation, three sprains.
• Stonegate Playhouse, 971 AB: bell rope snapped on the second toll; company finished the scene with body percussion. House tradition now forbids any real bell rope in the building.
• North Quay, 1006 AB: accounts mis-tallied to an odd number; the set ledger got “corrected” mid-show by an unseen hand (later found: a junior prompter with nerves). The story improved in the telling.

 

How some houses “de-edge” the script

Swap one line in Act III: the Narrator’s “The doom is expunged” becomes “The measure is met". and they add a Lantern Liturgy: before half, Chorus circles the stage once, whispering the opening four beats of the Prologue... never aloud, never to the audience.  

Audience lore

• Don’t bring a single bright white lantern; wrap it in blue gauze.
• No coins stood on edge on the rail. (Ushers quietly lay them flat).
• During “white noon,” audiences in some cities do not clap; they hum one steady note until the light fades.