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[Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
We started with eight, and now we're down to about 4 players, two of which can regularly post. I'd like to add 2 to 3 players to our little game.
Anyway...Campaign introduction:
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“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.” - Cormac McCarthy
The Realm is on the brink of civil war. The Regent is an ineffectual man incapable of doing more than furious self-gratification. The endless games of intrigue and chance that have been the bread and butter of the Great Houses have escalated as the prize turns from primus inter pares to the Scarlet Throne itself. The Anathema emerge in greater numbers than ever before, the Shadowlands grow larger every day, and the Fae have not been this bold since the Realm was crafted. And we stand idle while all this occurs, too secure and too split between multiple loyalties to band together and focus on what is important.
This cannot stand. This cannot be how this Realm ends, clawing at its own throat while the wolves circle in. It is they who seek to bring our end. It is they who strike at the fabric of our morality. It is they who are responsible for this decay that we see all around us, and do nothing regardless.
I have walked this land for far too long to let it slide into moral decay.
Therefore, by the power vested in me by the Immaculate Dragons, by the purity of my faith, by righteousness of my cause, I, Castus Alcibiades, do hereby decree this new permanent Wyld Hunt- The Cleansing! - Speech by Castus Alcibiades, Prefect of the Immaculate Order, given before the Deliberative, RY 790.
A Realm on the brink of civil war.
A demagogue attempting to unite it against a thinly scattered foe.
And all the while, the Lady and the Lowest prepare for the end.
industrious presents: The Return of the Scarlet Empress.
Welcome to my rendition of the Return of the Scarlet Empress. This game will begin shortly before her return proper, and will end when Creation is irrevocably changed in one way or another.
We will begin with a renewed Wyld Hunt, the last ditch effort of a demagogue to keep the Realm from falling into Civil War. Players who wish to play Terrestrials must begin as members of said Hunt; Sidereals are free to choose between Gold and Bronze factions, at least initially; those that decide to begin Bronze will join the Hunt under assumed destinies. For obvious reasons, other Celestial Exalts cannot be members of the Wyld Hunt.
Everyone must end up in Nexus. The current date is Ascending Air 15.
Character Creation Rules:
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There will be free excellencies and Ox-Bodies, everyone will be using the Solar experience table, and you will all start with some number of experience points.
That being said, right now, I'm not looking for numbers. Right now, give me your character as an individual. I want the story of an Exalt, in one form or another. I don't care about length, but make me care about them. Make me want to work his backstory, his Intimacies and Motivations into the larger campaign. Focus on that first. Then we'll talk about numbers.
At this point in the campaign, Abyssals and Infernals are no longer valid character concepts, and Dragon-Bloods will require a very good story to be considered. Nocturnals are permitted. To clarify: Solars, Lunars, Sidereals, and Nocturnals.
For various reasons, a large and extremely diverse group of Exalted, including a small group of Cleansing from the Realm, found themselves meeting at a small Lookshy border fort. While most of them were loathe to reveal their true natures, an attack by a necromancer of non-mortal but unknown origins forced several of them to band together, each still seeking to maintain their various covers. During this battle, the Sidereal Child of Steel and Ruby found the husband of an old friend of his murdered, and the sign of Mars left burnt onto various areas of the fort. After the battle, a mysterious note was discovered indicating that this was not the first such attack; at least two other Sidereal acquaintences had been targeted.
At the same time, the Sidereal Isa, a Chosen of Endings and Chejop Kejak's personal protege, received orders from Oversight to investigate this situation. In disguise in the midst of a Wyld Hunt, her group sought the advice of a local Dragon-Blood to bring a fifth member into their circle; unfortunately for the not-yet-sworn brotherhood, that fifth member was the Solar Triumphant Rose Guardian. Revealing her true nature, and inspiring the infamous Lunar bandit Skandi the Wolf to do the same, the Solar and Lunar fought off the Cleansing's attack, aided by the Abyssal Penumbra and Rose's Dragon-Blooded mentor. Child of Ruby and Steel reveals a connection between those on the list, and Skandi and Rose decide to set out to stop the serial killer. Joining them are the rogue Abyssal Penumbra, the rogue Infernal Aya Crystallis, and the Nocturnal Sierra.
The group, along with the Wyld Hunt, move then to Nexus, site of the next killing. Unfortunately, Penumbra's departure from the Walker in Darkness catches up with her, and as part of the group finds Rosacarnis Stormwrack, the child of Emerald Stormwrack, a washed-up Chosen of Secrets, they are attacked by a group of deathknights, managing to fend them off. Unfortunately during this time, Skandi is forced to go totemic, and is furture separated from the party. At the same time, Rose befriends Forsaken Starfall, a priest in the Cult of the Illuminated, who reveals himself dwhen attacked by teodezja following Aya. Aya's nature is then thrown open, and the Sidereal is, predictably befuddled. Isolated from the group, Skandi briefly teams up with Burning Waters, but quickly finds the man severely deranged; the figure is perfectly willing to burn down the city to save it. After a terse standoff, Burning Waters disappears.
Currently, the group is enjoying a rest from the excitement of their first day in Nexus, and are enjoying breakfast.
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
Since I've been stalking the game thread since its inception, I suppose I'll register my interest
Industrious, could I suggest that you list the current active characters, so people can tell what Exalt types and roles are currently in the group?
I'm currently thinking a Solar, most likely Eclipse or Twilight.
__________________ PCs:
Spoiler
Word:
Spoiler
Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Snark
I must not argue on the Internet.
Internet argument is the mind-killer.
It is the little death that brings total aggravation.
I will face my annoyance.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
When it has gone past I will turn my inner eye to see its path.
Where the irritation has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
I suppose I could do that. I'll edit it into the first post.
Also, in case the way character creation is done is unclear, you give me a story, or a snippet, or something to show off your character (an in-character work, not just you telling me), and then I'll PM character creation rules.
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
I am interested, having also been stalking the game since I first saw it. I'm presently trying to pin down a character concept that I reckon would be both interesting and fit in well with the party.
See, I was initially going to see about submitting for a Terrestrial (and admittedly am still somewhat drawn by the concept) but that has the twin problems of 1) I get the impression they're unlikely to fit in easily and 2) Since everyone else seems to be playing Sidereals or Celestials, I'd likely be severely less able to contribute on a meaningful scale. That about right?
With that in mind, I'm working on a Changing Moon socialite type concept. Will submit an in-character fiction piece shortly.
__________________
"Not trusting me might be the smartest decision you made since getting off of your horse."
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
(Nuts to it. The Terrestrial idea won't leave me alone, and I know better than to spurn a proper character idea purely for power gaming purposes. Fire Aspected solider from Lookshy, go!)
The sun was just starting to dawn over the horizon when the drill session began, a hundred new recruits stumbling from their barracks in motley disarray and rapidly forming into some semblance of a decent drill formation under the lashing tongues of their unit commanders. More than one of them was pale faced and sweating, still hung over from the impromptu party that they'd thrown the night before. Their sergeants, wise enough to know what had probably been coming, had restrained themselves, and now they demonstrated an almost sadistic glee in hurrying their charges along.
The man waiting for them on the parade square had not restrained himself - indeed, he'd made a great show of downing more than his fair share of liquor and whipping the recruits into a proper celebratory mood. Yet despite that, he didn't appear to be suffering from his indulgences in the slightest, watching the suffering men and women line up before him with a slight smile on his face.
He cut an impressive enough figure, the early morning breeze rippling his mane of black hair and catching at the ends of the heavy scarlet cloak that he wore. His armour was cleanly polished and worn with the sort of ease that comes only from long experience, and the magnificent Daiklaive sheathed at his waist caught the eye of more than one surprised recruit. The sight of it removed all trace of doubt over his identity - only a dragon-blooded could carry a sword like that.
"Good morning!" He said, a touch too loud for the ears of most of his audience. "We've already met, but I'd not be surprised if you've mostly gone and forgotten everything from last night by now, so I'll introduce myself again. My name is Kharal Zhou, your new instructor. I'm here to teach you how to be soldiers, be ause that's what your commanders are paying me to do, and by the time I'm done you'll be as good as any native son of Lookshy."
He looked back and forth down the lines of hungover soldiers, and grinned widely. "As for the first question I'm sure many of you want to ask, no, I'm not doing this to you because I'm a sadistic bastard. That is completely unconnected. I'm doing this to teach you the first lesson of being a soldier - the enemy is not going to fight fair, and neither should you."
He pivoted smoothly on one heel and began walking up and down in front of them, studying their faces as he continued talking, assessing each recruit in turn. "They will not wait for you to be sober, facing them on even ground in decent weather and balanced numbers. They will ambush you, force you to fight in sucking mud or driving drain, surround you with superior numbers and cut off your reinforcements. They will use every weapon at their disposal, be it magical or mundane, and they will not go easy on you just because you weren't paying attention!" He practically roared that last line into the face of one particular recruit who'd been visibly drifting, and waited for the frightened woman to get back into formation before continuing.
"And so should you. If the one thing you take from my instructions is knowledge of this lesson... well, you'll still have done appallingly, but it will be better than nothing. Fair fights are for idiots and the unimaginitive." He finished the brief inspection, moving back around to the front of the formation.
"To encourage the right sort of mindset, every week I'll be holding a sparring competition with any of you who cares to try their luck against me, and there will be a significant bonus to anyone who manages to best me. The cheeky bastard who did it last year laced my sleeping quarters with some sort of plant root the night before, which was incredibly irritating and naturally prevented me from getting any kind of rest. I fully expect one of you to top that."
He marked the ones who'd immediately started looking cunning as individuals of interest... and especially the ones who'd reflexively schooled their expressions into immobility. Still, he had their interest now, and if they didn't yet hate him enough to throw themselves into it, he'd change that soon enough. Respect would come later.
"Your first task, then... Is to run to that tree, over there. I'm told it's about a mile and a half away." He said, pointing at a tiny speck in the distance. "Last one back gets to do it again."
---
So yeah, Fire Aspect dragon blood. I went for Lookshy as his place of origin partly because their particular style of government and philosophy is rather interesting, and partly because they're much less likely to buy into the whole Anathaema and other Immaculate business.
His intimacies and motivations are mostly on display in that piece - he's very much a product of his culture, and spends a lot of time visiting other nations and cities in order to help train their soldiers and generally help out where he can.
The Motivation is likely to be 'Defend the people's of creation from all threats, and help them be prepared to defend themselves' Gives him a good reason to get involved in most things in the world, with particular emphasis on suitably large and sinister threats, without tying him too specifically to one region (since I don't know where the story will go from Nexus).
In terms of part roll, he should do decently well as both a combat and social character, and while he might not match some of the other party members in a fair fight... Well, see the above speech.
Thoughts?
__________________
"Not trusting me might be the smartest decision you made since getting off of your horse."
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
Just to update my plans: making an Eclipse, Thorns background, she's likely to be pretty positively disposed toward the Dragon-Blooded and very negatively disposed toward Abyssals. Sample scenes should be in shortly.
Also a mix of social and combat, as currently envisaged (favoreds are likely Resistance, Integrity, Melee, Investigation, Presence)... I could potentially move my favoreds over to more Twilight or Night-oriented stuff, if the other new applicants have a social focus, but there's a somewhat important backstory point involving the Eclipse anima that I'd be loath to give up.
__________________ PCs:
Spoiler
Word:
Spoiler
Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Snark
I must not argue on the Internet.
Internet argument is the mind-killer.
It is the little death that brings total aggravation.
I will face my annoyance.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
When it has gone past I will turn my inner eye to see its path.
Where the irritation has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
Putting down interest for this (Solar, Eclipse cast), as well as a story snippet.
Story example: Lotus Ensconced in Starlight, Twilight Caste Artificer, and new Martial Artist
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WHAM.
"If the nature of evil is betrayal, failure, and self destruction, why then do men fall so easily to its charms?"
WHAM.
"This indicates some greater quandary: either mankind is weak, and without purpose, or evil itself is not as we know it."
WHAM.
"Which then is the case?"
WHAM... tap tap tap, sssss.
"Ah, my friends forgive my philosophizing, the wonder of worked steel can make me speak with looser tongue then I prefer." Rising from her forge, the smith hands a reworked plow to the farmer standing before him "This should last for a while. And don't worry about the payment, sometimes its nice to remember what real smithing feels like." Somehow, Lotus forgot to mention she was using her hands.
Stretching, Lotus stood, gazing around at the world, and not for the first time wondered what she was doing there, why she was who she was. Then, smiling to herself, she shrugged, casually flipped her anvil onto her back, into its special case, stamped out the fire she had made to ward off suspicion, and continued walking down the long road she had set up "shop" on.
Walking the rest of the way to Nexus took hours. Lotus had the time.
Entering Nexus was interesting as always, but Lotus was prepared. She payed like everyone else. Not that she had much left afterwords.
She walked to the market, found a place, set up her shop again. This time she pulled out her tools. As she waits for work, she flows from one practice form to another. A few months ago, after the world changed, she had decided to learn how to fight, for some reason, it was just so easy.
Ah! Steel was again placed before her. She worked subtle wonders upon it, drawing out the soul of the metal, and reforging the most exquisite cleaver that particular butcher would ever use. This time, payment was asked for. Again, she stood and moved gracefully from form to form, occasionally just stopping, frozen in some impossible stance to look with wide eyes at the city, and the world it hid.
She was careful, but sometimes, that is nothing like enough. A few guards wandered over. She pointed out that she was a smith, and she was waiting for work. They asked where her furnace was. She smiled and said that metal just needed to be asked correctly. They left, but were clearly going to return.
"Bugger." She quickly picked up her anvil (it was lighter then it looked) and fled into the crowed.
Yeah, so fairly young, very naive Twilight Caste. Favored will probably be Martial Arts, Dodge, Resistance, Integrity, Performance.
This is by the way assuming that Craftsman Needs No Tools does not require a workshop. If it does, then I can revise this.
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I am an
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INTP Myers-Briggs Personality Type
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The Introverted Intuitive mind typically creates a unique vision and arrives at unique insights about things, phenomena, or people. It strives to discover the essence of things and fill in the missing pieces of a puzzle.
Because sometimes, saying that you are a 3rd level CG Elf Wizards doesn't say anything at all
Sometimes, just sometimes, i really wish "I hit it again" was a viable option in real life.
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Avatar by the excellent Kymme
Last edited by OracleofSilence : 10-08-2012 at 10:40 AM.
Reason: forgot to change Name
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
Hmm, I thought there were instructions to PM character backstory stuff, but looks like I was wrong. So here, for the leisure reading of the rest of the potential group, are the vignettes I wrote.
Introducing the-Eclipse-formerly-known-as-Tepet-Ireva, and her big sister Tepet Firada. The first two of these take place 9-10 years ago, the third is a couple of years after that.
Vignette 1: On The Beach
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A driftwood fire, burning on a pebbled shore at dusk. Low purple clouds lie along the horizon, a brewing storm. At the water's edge, thigh-deep in the white-ruffled foam of the breakers, stands a girl. Or perhaps a woman, if you approach close enough to see her heart-shaped face; she is small and thin, but her forest-green eyes have seen much. Her smile is bright and innocent, though; only a little weary. Her dark hair is cropped short, and crusted with white salt; where it's not covered by her ragged trousers and shirt, her skin is pale, burned red by the sun. A long white scar twists down one arm; smaller scars criss-cross her arms and her legs beneath the rolled-up trousers.
She's speaking quietly to a long low shadow in the shallows. The tongue is ancient, although her accent is modern - and odd, to anyone well-schooled in such things. Somewhere there's what remains of a pure Dynastic accent, but it's buried by a heavy overlay of the street. She bows, and reaches out to caress the dolphin's smooth grey skin. On her forehead, a double circle of light flares briefly.
The water fountains away as the dolphin transforms, glittering droplets sheeting off the tall man's skin as he stands up in a single graceful motion, unhurriedly drawing a kirtle of seaweed around himself. He smiles down at the girl - a rather seductive smile - and offers her his hand.
"It's been a long time, Chosen. What did you say your name was?"
She smiles a small shadowed smile. "Still working on that. Call me... oh, Eris, for now. It'll do." She nods at the fire. "But if you would..." There's a slight strain in her voice, audible anxiety.
"Of course."
The girl leads the way to the bundled form that lies beside the fire. It moans a little as their shadows fall across the shroud. She kneels and gently moves the cloth away from the other's wounds. Not deep, but angry and red, radiating black streaks; the flesh around them seems to be rotting.
The dolphin-god reaches out to the injuries, and then pauses, frowning. "Dragon-Blooded?"
"My sister, as I said."
"Would she accept that appellation?"
The Solar nods, shortly. "She gave up everything to protect me, Baiji."
"Ah." He lowers his hands to the wounds, not touching yet, just tracing patterns in the air above them. His eyes close halfway. "What did this?"
"A deathknight's blade. Soulsteel."
He turns back to her, raising a silver-gray eyebrow. "You have interesting enemies. So is that the accent of Thorns I hear?"
Eris' face is still, difficult to read. She inclines her head slightly to him, smiling just a little. "You'll have your story, as promised. But first -"
"Yes, I know. My part of the bargain. Although I would usually ask a greater price, for one of them. The Immaculates do not... appreciate... me and my kin."
"A greater price than a Solar's secrets? You value your healing highly..." A hint of laughter in her voice, but then it firms, to an edge of steel. "But we have our bargain, sealed and sworn." She looks up at him through salt-crusted eyelashes. "Although I can sweeten the deal a little, I suppose. I'll throw in a kiss. On the cheek."
The baiji laughs. "All right, Quicksilver Falcon. I'll heal your... sister. But I expect an even better story, now."
His Essence is silver and green and blue, running in a soothing waterfall across the angry wounds. The Solar watches, her hands clenched tight, not bothering to hide the tension anymore. As the god lifts his hands, she leans closer, and breathes a sigh of relief at seeing the now-unblemished skin.
She folds the cloth back into place, and draws the light sun-veil away from the other woman's face. She's older, and taller, with the same pallid skin, although hers has a greenish tint as well as the red of sunburn. The overall effect is of a rather unpleasant disease. Her hair is pretty, though, so dark a green as to be almost black, and braided in an intricate coil. Her face is more square than her sister's, the features stronger, but the family resemblance is plain.
"Firi?" the Solar murmurs, brushing a stray hair back from the Wood Aspect's forehead. The woman's eyes open slowly, the same mossy green as her sister's. One hand reaches reflexively for a sword; Eris reaches down to grip her wrist. "It's all right, Firi. We're safe. Or safe for now, anyway."
"How did you...?"
"After you went off on your own, Janya came and let me out, and gave me your daiklave to take to you. What were you thinking, raiding that place on your own?" There's a thread of anger in her soft voice, overlaying a profound relief. "You knew it was one of their labs, we all did! And if you had to go, why in the Dragons' names didn't you take your sword?"
"Was a rescue mission," the Wood Aspect mutters, her voice scratchy. "Water...?"
The Solar has a waterskin at her lips almost instantly. The Wood Aspect swallows a few times, and then waves weakly. Once the waterskin is taken away, she continues, her voice strengthening, "Yes, I knew it was theirs. So what good would my daiklave have done? Only to draw attention... I didn't go unarmed."
"There was a meeting, at the court; we'd heard all the deathknights would be there. Had a lot of people keeping an eye on it. It seemed like the perfect opportunity - get in quickly and quietly, get out the same way. And if we could get Dance out... they hadn't had him for that long. I thought there was still a chance."
"You could have sent someone else."
"Would anyone have gone? After -" She cuts herself off.
The Solar's breath catches. For a moment she looks down, tears beading in her eyes before she wipes them away. She glares at the Wood Aspect. "You were doing it to prove you weren't cursed by the Dragons. To have a victory to show them, to compensate for me."
"I was doing it to save Dance. That's all." The Wood Aspect's voice is firm. "Now tell me what happened."
Eris swallows, and her voice steadies, the hurt mostly hidden. "I took the coin and weapons Janya gave me, and your daiklave, and took Winding North Nine to the corner two blocks from the lab. The streets were empty; you were right about that, at least. I sneaked up - too late. Saw him binding you. Waited for a moment when he was most distracted, since you were unconscious and it didn't look like he was about to kill you... and then he woke you up. What did he say to you?"
That breaks the Wood Aspect's calm for a moment; she winces. "Never mind. Really!" she emphasizes when Eris opens her mouth. She pushes herself up to a sitting position. "I feel much better. Better than I should..." Her gaze catches on the man. "Who's your friend?"
"He's a baiji, a dolphin-god. He saw I was Exalted and asked if I needed help... he healed you, Firi."
"In trade for what?" Her gaze on the god is cool and distrustful.
"Only my story. How I Exalted." Eris smiles slightly. "After all this time, sister, you still don't trust me to strike a good bargain?"
"Heh." The Dragon-Blood laughs a little, before it goes into a fit of coughing. She clears her throat. "And an Exalt in your debt, god?"
The man opens a hand. His voice is deep and measured. "No debt, Terrestrial. But it's good to have friends, in these troubled times. Don't you think?"
"Apologies, Baiji - what is your name? My failure to ask earlier..." Eris interjects. She doesn't want these two to be at odds.
The baiji smiles slightly to her, inclining his head. "I am Swift-Fire-Over-Water, Chosen. Swift will do."
"Thank you, then, Swift. Firi... all right. So then he started casting his spell - all his attention was on you. And it didn't seem like I wanted to let him finish it, and I didn't think I'd have a better chance, so I jumped up and rammed your daiklave through his heart. And the spell shattered, and you passed out."
"And then? How did we get here?" Firi glances around at the beach. The horizon seems to draw her attention, and she stares for a long moment at the clouds illuminated by the setting sun. "And where is here, anyway?"
"We're up the coast, quite a way. I got the chains off you - the deathknight had the key - and took you to the Stowing Lanes. Managed to persuade Ro to move a scheduled departure forward. Your anima had flared, above ground, and we'd killed a deathknight... I figured we had a little time because of the meeting, but that could only buy us so much."
"How long has it been?"
"That was last night. We ran up the coast all night and day, and they dropped us off in a boat here about half an hour ago. They said there's a Realm outpost not too far away, for you." Her voice remains steady, even at the last.
"And you?"
"I'll find another way." Eris takes her sister's hand. "Firi, you've protected me since I was four years old but I'm a grown woman now. You go... home." And her voice does catch at that. "Find our mother and father. Tell the Realm about Thorns. Maybe we can still do... what we tried to do, for all those years."
The Wood Aspect pulls the smaller woman into her arms, stroking her salt-crusted hair. It's a very un-Dynastic display of emotion. But then, from what's been said already, they're not quite Dynasts.
"Do you remember them, at all? Our parents?"
"You never asked me that. In all those years..."
"I didn't want to hurt you. But I wondered."
"I remember... scents, sounds, more than sights. Flowers in her hair. The timbre of his voice. There's one image, one of them in armor, for some formal function... but I don't know if it's a true memory or imagination. I was only four." She takes a long breath. "I do remember that night, when it happened. Although again, mostly other senses. Darkness, breathlessness, screams. The smell of blood and rotting flesh, heavy on the air..." She stops, and adds quietly. "Holding onto your hand as if it was a lifeline. As it was."
Her sister had been trained in all a Dynast child should know, by then. Her parents' trip to the Isle had been to seek out the best primary school for her. Firi had told her that, when she asked why their parents had abandoned them. She'd been so angry at them, at first, for not being there... or she thinks so. But perhaps that's another false memory. In later years, she came to be grateful that they'd escaped. Her first sight of the Patchwork Regalia, when she'd visited the court for the Resistance, had cemented it.
"The last thing Mother told me, before she left, was to take care of my little sister." The Dragon-Blood's voice is low. "I remember that day, the sunlight, the flowers in the spring... I did my best."
"You did everything for me. I know, Firi, do you think I don't remember?" She'd kept them both alive, in the nightmare streets of Thorns, doing whatever she had to do. Stealing, selling herself, killing - buying her sister's innocence at the cost of her own.
"Not enough." Her voice is bleak. "I couldn't stop -"
"It wasn't your fault!" Eris cuts her sister off abruptly. They both know the words unspoken there. Anathema, and all that had followed from it. Discord, misfortune, the ruination of their hopes.
"Terrestrial." The baiji leans forward, his voice cold. "I have my bargain with your sister, but take this truth for free. The Solar Exalted are not demons. They are the Chosen of the Unconquered Sun, ordained to protect and rule Creation. You should be honored that your sister was found worthy." The Wood Aspect shakes her head slightly, but doesn't respond, looking at Eris.
The Eclipse sighs. "... who knows where the future will take us? Me, anyway. For you, Firi, it'll take you home."
"I'll be fine. I have to tell Swift his story, and then... you taught me well. There are a couple of cities in this area, if I remember correctly. I've got a decent weapon, I know people in the Guild."
She hugs her sister again. "You looked after me, better than anyone could've dreamed. Dragons, we saved each other from Thorns! We got out, Firi, as we told each other we would, when we were children." They'd lost sight of that dream after Firi Exalted, cast aside for higher ambitions. "But now... we need to go different ways."
"When did my baby sister start to sound like a priest?" For the first time, the Wood Aspect is nearly crying. "Iri... I'll send word to you."
Eris - Iri? - nods. "I'll look forward to it. But now it's time for you to take care of yourself. Here. Have some dried fish, the captain gave me a package..." She's proud of herself, for keeping her voice calm, unbroken. For not letting it show, the wracking jealousy at the thought of home. Mother, father... the scent of flowers, and the timbre of a deep warm voice. Before the shadows came. But that's not for her, anymore.
And it hits her, then, the thought of being alone. For as long as she can remember, through darkness and horror and terror and pain, her sister has been the one constant in her life. When they ran from the fires and the terrible laughter on that night of madness, when they went down into the darkness of the Undercity, when they joined the first gang, or the second, when they fell in with the Resistance... for all of it, they'd been together, guarding each others' backs.
But it hadn't really been that equal, had it? She'd always been the one protected - first by virtue of age, and then because her sister was Exalted. Firi had made the sacrifices, every time. When Eris gained her power, only disaster followed in its wake. But still Firi had not turned away, not allowed her to die...
Now it's time for her to give something up. Give something back. And so she smiles at her sister, unwavering, and hands around the dried fish and the hard bread and the waterskin. And enjoys a breeze with no scent of rotting flesh, and the light of the setting golden sun, and these last hours together.
In the end, she can't bring herself to say goodbye. And after all...
"Do you remember when we were kids, and you told me stories of Exalted heroes, how you always began?"
"Once upon a time, when the world was different... that? I haven't thought of that for years."
"That's right. So... not goodbye. Only... fare well, until we meet again. When the world is different."
Fifteen hundred years of enmity is a hefty barrier to overcome. But when it stands between her and home, between her and her sister...
They survived the invasion of Thorns and its aftermath when they were both mortal children less than ten. They brought the Resistance together behind a single leader, before they broke it apart. They slew a deathknight, and escaped a Deathlord's grasp. So what does impossible mean, in the end, or the beginning?
"When the world is different," Firi echoes, and kisses her on the forehead before turning to lope away.
Some would see that statement as fatalistic. But even if she believed the rift between them was inherent in the nature of the world -
"Then we need only change the world," Eris whispers to the sea and sky. And turns back to the campfire and the baiji, to give him his promised story.
Vignette 2: Eris' Story
Spoiler
She'd watched her second sunrise, and wondered if she would ever get tired of the sight. She'd farewelled her sister, and watched her head off northward - Swift had said the outpost was only a day's march away, through the hills. Now Eris walks along the beach with the dolphin-god, idly picking up pebbles and shells. Their colors and shapes are so different from anything she saw in the Undercity, and they glitter like jewels in the morning light.
"So you grew up in Thorns, since you were... four?"
"Our parents were administrators for the Realm garrison. They'd been posted there for a few years, although we were both born on the Blessed Isle. Firi said they'd been talking about going home, but short of that they wanted to make sure she had a proper education." She shrugs. "I don't remember the Isle at all -" Her voice catches for a moment, because of course, that's not strictly true. "Not from this life, anyway."
"Do you remember much of the last time?" His voice is very careful as he asks that question.
Eris shakes her head. "Almost nothing. And I'm not sure how much of it is real and how much just dreams, anyway." She tosses a stone into a rock-pool, trying to skip it, without success. "Thorns... yes, I was four when the invasion came. I only survived because of Firi; my parents had made sure she had a proper Dynast child's training, so she could look after herself. She tried to teach me, but she said her teachers were tougher on her than she ever was on me." She scratches absently at the scar on her arm, brushing a shower of salt free. "We lived on the streets for a few years - ended up moving down into the Undercity. Safer there, with the purges, although it had its own dangers."
"Criminals?"
"And stray zombies, and Wyld zones... although the shadowland suppressed those, to some degree. People said they were worse before the Mask came."
"You sound very educated, for someone who grew up on the streets."
"Firi, again. Well, and other people. We joined a few gangs when we first went into the Undercity - well, Firi did, and made it clear we came as a package deal - but we ended up working mostly with Resistance cells. Less chance of getting your throat cut for a bit or a bet, albeit more chance of ending up as soulsteel. Quite a few of the city's former upper class ended up down in the tunnels, although a lot of them died in the first six months. And they were kind to me."
"Firi was always better with weapons; she had a much longer reach, and was stronger, and her early training was a lot less haphazard. So I... watched people. Learned to smooth things over, to sort out arguments, to find out what other people wanted, so we had leverage. And people were usually happy to see me, and talk to me. Not many kids made it through the invasion, and most of them were pretty traumatized, but I'd had Firi to protect me." She'd learned how to use that seeming innocence - half feigned but half real - to her best advantage.
"She wasn't Exalted then, though?"
Eris pauses for a moment to scramble over a seaweed-slick outcropping of rock, and grins at the baiji, who simply walks through the surrounding water. The flash of that smile is captivating - surprisingly sweet, bright as sunlight. "Tell me if I'm talking too much. But you bargained for my story..."
"Not at all. Please, go on."
"She didn't Exalt until she was... nineteen, I guess? I hadn't really expected it... I'd never met an Exalt and it just seemed like too good to be true. That someone you loved would just get power, as a gift... everything has a price, you know? But then it happened."
She sighs softly. "And I could see how it could be. The Immaculate faith is pretty strong, in the Resistance - it's a unifying force, it gives people something to fight for." She frowns slightly at the god. "That's why Firi was upset, last night. The Immaculates are good people. Even if they're... wrong about some things. But anyway, having Firi Exalt, when she was already known and respected in the Resistance... I thought she could become a symbol of the old Thorns, a rallying point. There was a lot of infighting, and a lot of gangs who didn't like the Mask but didn't think the Resistance had a hope, but with an Exalt leading the way... it seemed like a blessing not to be squandered. A sign of the Dragons' favor."
"So I worked on that, pulling together alliances, checking out potential contacts in the city. I talked to people... men and women who had lost hope of anything more than survival, and feared being forced into an unwinnable war. People who'd been poor or criminal in the old Thorns, people who would've feared to speak with my sister. I spoke with drug-merchants and thieves and heroes, and wrote letters to pass to the outside world, through friendly or at least bribable Guild representatives. We were very cautious at first, but the Mask didn't strike at us, and we were gaining strength every month."
She smiles wistfully. "They called her the White Rose of Thorns. And I was her... herald, I guess you'd say."
"How old were you?"
"She's five years older than me, I was fourteen when she Exalted. I'm... twenty, now? Twenty, I guess. Huh. Should've marked that..."
"So when did that -" He nods at her forehead, "- happen?"
"A few months ago." A flash of some complex emotion crosses her face, grief and anger and regret. "There was a meeting."
They'd been the last two hold-outs; they'd done well for themselves in the new Thorns, with many followers and not-inconsiderable resources, and they'd feared losing what they had. She'd been working for months to bring them into the fold. Their aid would mean more troops, weapons stockpiles... and one of the leaders was rumored to wield sorcery, and have communication links with the world outside. The other was the head of a long-standing family operation, with close ties to numerous ancestor ghosts. And once they'd declared themselves, she'd been sure the remaining independents and minor gangs would follow suit. The Resistance could have been truly unified, a clenched fist to strike unexpected at the heart of the Mask's domain.
It had been difficult to coax them to the table, but she'd persuaded them at last. And in the long night of negotiations, everything had gone right. Where Firada was blunt, she'd smoothed things over; she'd smiled and spoken words of reassurance and inspiration and defiance. She'd offered them their dreams, and phrased her requests in return delicately, and in the end she'd seen them caught up in her vision.
She describes it in simple bare terms for the baiji. Only one moment of emotion, at the end, when she says, "It was like a dream come true..." And she remembers - the last moments before she became Eris, back when she was still Tepet Ireva.
----------
The room is small. Private. The walls and floor are stone, but unusually smooth, for the Undercity: old construction. A square wooden table, and two chairs on each side. A lamp hanging from a hook in the ceiling.
The three other people in the room are all visibly tired, dark bags under their eyes, but they're all smiling as well. Ireva cleans the ink from her quill, taking a moment to savor her triumph, as she looks down at the neatly written scrolls of parchment, and the three signatures on each. She'll take them around to the Princess and the other prominent people in the Resistance, later, but these two signatures are the critical ones. Years of work, and now, for the first time in - how long? Years? Ever? - the myriad factions of the Undercity are all pointed in the same direction. Under her sister's leadership - the White Rose of Thorns.
She can't remember when she's been so happy. Even after the long night, she doesn't feel tired at all.
Firada holds out her sword-hand to the other two, across the table, and they clasp hands with her, still smiling. The exchange of spoken oaths is a formality now, but one that has symbolic power. And then Firada turns, and grins at Ireva, and beckons to her with her free hand.
She'd never been sure if her idolized sister recognized how she served their cause. She knows she'll never be the fighter Firada is, even without taking Exaltation into account - and that's looking very unlikely, for her, at this point. But that smile, that beckoning... it says her work was noticed, and appreciated. It says Firada's offering her credit for this, a share in the victory.
She stands up and steps forward, laying her hand on theirs, as they speak formal oaths of loyalty and allegiance. And her sister returns them confidently, her voice high and sweet, promising protection and loyalty in return. She sounds like a leader, Ireva thinks, that anyone would rejoice to follow.
The clasp of their hands tightens as the last words are spoken, and Ireva squeezes as well. Wishing, with all her heart, that the promise of these oaths be fulfilled, that no betrayal mar them. That this bright beginning find an equally bright ending, in the sunlight of the world above, on the day of their long-delayed victory.
She doesn't understand, for a moment, when the world turns white around her. A weapon, a hallucination...? Her eyes sting furiously. She hears the shouts from the others, their hands snatched away from the clasp, the rasp as people reach for their weapons. She blinks furiously against the sudden...
Sunlight.
Outshining the lamp, bright and white and golden, rays of light illuminating every mote of dust like sparkling fire. A kind of light you never see in the Undercity. A kind of light you never see in Thorns. A kind of light that part of her remembers, from long ago, in a time of flowers...
And though she thought she'd stopped crying for lost family long ago, suddenly something in her wants to wail to the heavens for the loss of that light. That brighter past. Imagination, only, but still her ears are ringing, as with the sound of screams. Why?
Something's strange. Something's changed.
But she finally makes out the words, and the shapes around her, as her pupils contract and the ringing in her ears subsides. Two of the three silhouettes have weapons in hand, and they are shouting...
"... this the Dragons' honor, then? To shelter a Deceiver and have her work her foul magic on us? Was this your plot all along, White Rose of Thorns?" The title, given in such hope, becomes a curse on his lips.
And from the other, the matriarch, "Anathema!" She spits the word. "You Dynasts might call us criminals but Dragons guard us we never consorted with them."
The room seems to dim a little more. Are her eyes adjusting, or is the light fading? Part of her doesn't want it to go. But more of her is looking desperately for her sister, no no it can't be true, it can't be me...
Firada's hands are on the hilt of her daiklave, ready to draw. But she stands frozen, staring at Ireva.
For a moment, Ireva looks within and without at once.
Within, a white light burning. Light of sun and moon and stars, of the bright heavens of a world she no longer remembers. And looking through the lens of that light, at her sister's face...
/ Thorns and flames and sea-spray and tumbling stones and lightning, a maelstrom sur- / feel my heart beat against the jade, purest pain, in the moment before the fires - / traitors, smiling, weeping - / don't go, love, don't leave me to die alone...
She gasps and stumbles in front of Firada, between her and the two with their drawn blades. She may not be sure of anything else but some things never change.
Her sister's arm locks around her chest, pulling her close. "Put up your blades," the Wood Aspect says, steel in her voice.
"Do your duty and kill the Anathema and perhaps we will." The woman's voice is chill as ice.
"Fir- White Rose." Titles now. No informality. She breathes quickly, thready. "Is it true? Am I..."
Firada turns Ireva around and touches her forehead with one finger. Her face is so white. White as chalk, white as sheets, white as a story of snow. As if all the blood was drained away, and all the life.
"... it's true then." Her voice is very small.
Firada nods, swallowing. Her eyes are windows into desolation.
"Your sister is dead, Lady. I'm sorry," the man says from behind her. "But she's gone, no bringing her back. Do your duty. Plenty of us have had to, for those whose bodies and souls were taken by the Mask."
"... Iri?"
Ireva swallows, but manages, "Yes." She chokes, and then goes on, "He's right."
She can only see one path out of this that preserves the coalition she built. One path that saves the bright dream.
"I... Firi, please." She leans forward to whisper in her sister's ear. "You can save them. All of them. If you kill me now, they'll follow you, we won't lose the Undercity..." She stops to swallow back a sob. She so wanted to see that day of victory. "You can still win this. For me. And if I, if I'm really Anathema, if I'll turn into something like the deathknights, I... Firi, please. I would have died for you, for this, this isn't any different..."
Firada holds her sister close for a moment, and then sets her to the side, pushing her down into one of the chairs. She eyes the two leaders, and folds her arms. "The last trust my mother ever gave me was to care for her. Ireva is still my sister. Maybe that won't always be true and on that day perhaps I'll do what you call my duty. But for now she is still herself. And if her life's the price you ask for your support then it's too high a price to pay."
"No!" She could see it even then, all the lines of disaster leading from that moment. So much easier, just to die...
"Yes." Firada pushes her back down in her chair. "My call, Iri. Trust me, if you can't trust yourself."
The man makes one last try. "Lady, they deceive, always. You know the teachings as well as I do - better than I do! They can seem - can be - kind, and gentle, and fair-seeming, at first. But it's a lie. Your sister is dead."
"My judgement." Her voice is unyielding as stone.
For a long moment, they meet her eyes. And then they sheathe their weapons, and turn and leave. The woman stops at the door to spit on the floor and say, "Malfeas take your oaths, and the Dragons curse your bloodline." The man doesn't speak, but the same condemnation is in his eyes.
----------
"... and that was pretty much the end of the Resistance as a unified force. For now, at least." Eris' tone is still steady, as she picks her way between rock-pools. "And it got worse from there."
"My sister had me confined to her quarters, for my own protection. The word spread, and soon every temple in the Undercity was calling for my death. Some of them for hers, too, but most of them thought I'd taken control of her mind. Many of her followers stayed loyal to her, at first, but then she led an attack that should've been straightforward, and it went catastrophically wrong. She was wounded; all but two of the others were killed. The whispers began to spread that she was cursed, that the Dragons had withdrawn their favor because of me. And then the two people who'd been in the room with us died - the woman got picked up and taken to the Penitentiary, the man took a fever from an infected wound. Neither should have happened, they were both very careful or they wouldn't have survived so long. So then the whispers grew louder, that I'd laid some evil magic on them, in retaliation for their courage."
The baiji takes a breath, and pauses. He looks... awkward.
"... what is it?"
"... Chosen, don't you know what your anima does?"
Eris stops, still, on a stretch of stony beach. For a moment she stares out at the horizon, girding herself. "All right. Tell me."
"The Eclipse caste has the power to sanctify oaths, in the sight of heaven. Any who break them are accursed. When they most need fate and chance to be with them, it will turn against them." The dolphin-god walks on another few steps, and turns to look out at the sea with her. "... I'm sorry."
"... heh." She laughs, a small painful sound. "This name was more appropriate than I knew, then. Discord..." She shakes her head. The flicker of anguish in her eyes was brief, and quickly suppressed. By an effort of will, she doesn't look southward. "But it's in the past, now." It sounds forced.
"And the rest, well, I guess you can infer it from our conversation earlier. My sister went out on her own, trying to prove something. I guess... if the curse was still on her that explains why it went so badly. One of her friends was worried about her and came to let me out of her rooms - gave me weapons and coin and food, gave me her daiklave to take to her, and cleared a route for me to sneak out. Firi got captured by a deathknight, I caught him by surprise in the middle of sorcery and managed to take him down."
"So you said. And the bit you skipped?"
"... yeah. It wasn't that hard to persuade a Guildsman to smuggle us out of town. He'd been pretty impressed with Firi. And I could... tell he wasn't lying." She shrugs. "Or I thought I could, and it wasn't like I had much choice at that point. We couldn't stay in the city."
"He did this for you for free?"
"Of course not. But for Firi's sake, and for a future favor..." She shrugs. "He's a decent man. I don't mind owing him one."
"And that brought you, in a little coracle, to my bay - with an unconscious Terrestrial in the boat with you. A Terrestrial who's now heading homeward to the Realm. So what will you do now, Eris?"
Vignette 3: Some Things Never Change
Spoiler
On this still summer night, the air is warm and heavy, soft with the taste of rain. The faint fragrance of flowers drifts into the shrine, although it is overwhelmed by the scent of burning incense. The floor and pillars are polished stone, mosaics depicting ancient heroes.
A woman sits in meditation before the symbols of the Dragons. Her eyes are closed. The lamplight glitters on her shaved head and the folds of her immaculate white robe. Her hands and face are scarred, ragged white lines on pallid skin, still a little sunburned. She's spent more time in the sunlight in the past year than in all her life beforehand.
She dreams herself back there, often enough - in the deep darkness that became home, and the fearful star-lit streets of the world above. Dreams of raids, of carefully planned attacks, where she wakes with her breath coming fast and the blood pounding in her veins. Dreams of that last night, and the black light, and the despair; when she wakes from those she feels as if her flesh has turned to ice, bound to silence and stillness so complete she can't even shiver. Dreams of a child tagging after her, green eyes wide and watchful, with a shy smile like a flower opening to the sun...
From those dreams, she wakes with tears on her cheeks.
Of such little steps are a life's journey made. And if some of those steps are off the edges of cliffs, taking you to someplace you hadn't expected at all - well, it moves you on. Albeit not without injury.
On the next morning she'll take her oaths and be formally inducted into the Immaculate Order. She's older than most of the other initiates, and without the full breadth of their education, even after the intensive remedial training - but she's also the only one in this group who's faced Anathema before. There had been some challenges, some testing, from the other postulants, but it had all seemed so foolish to her. She's fought the war against the Anathema since she was nine years old; what is schoolboy bickering compared to that?
Only one flaw, in her perfect dedication; one little secret held back, from the truth she gave them, when she returned to the Isle. One name she does not speak, except on the day once a year when she goes to leave flowers at the grave-marker. Tepet Ireva died in Thorns two years ago, in the Resistance infighting that spurred Firada's departure from the city. Her elder sister may still mourn her, and say prayers for her soul, but the greatest offering she can give is to fight well in the war against Thorns' usurper.
Firada remembers...
The air had burned, cool with the sickly glow of witchlight. Around their feet, water had pooled, stagnant and chilly. Ireva had been checking the side corridors, one hand on her shortsword and the other free to climb or steady herself against the crumbling rock walls. Her size had meant she could get into nooks and crannies that Firada couldn't, and she'd always loved exploring.
There had been the quick thud of footsteps from up ahead, splashing as they entered the shallow water. Too close, already. Ireva had dropped down to guard Firada's back. She'd been able to read the small signs of apprehension in her baby sister - the tension in her shoulders, the faint quiver of the blade in her hand, the momentary flaring of her already-dilated pupils - but to anyone else she would have looked like the epitome of deadly calm.
Fourteen years old. Firada had been so proud of her. Rarely voiced, of course, but Ireva had understood.
There had been eight of them, the smallest of them probably twice her little sister's weight - adult men, not girls who'd grown up picking through garbage for food. Rivals from one of the other gangs, most likely; there were plenty down here, looking for ingredients in the old Wyld-tainted areas, to sell to the buyers up above. And there might have been some personal vengeance in the mix as well: the word had gotten around that she and Ireva were Dynast born, and many people in the Undercity hadn't fared well under the old Autocrat, or resented the Realm's failure to send aid.
She'd felt her stomach drop as she gauged the odds, even as she stepped toward their onrush, chopping at the first one and kicking another in the belly. The close quarters and the slippery footing and her superior training would buy them some time, but not enough. Ten years of survival bought by means she preferred not to think about, and this was how it would end?
But she'd fought, still, and Ireva had fought at her back, and only gasped out a little when one of the men's spears gashed her arm and another left a long rent down her side. If those ten years had taught her anything, it was this: that life was precious, and every moment of it was joy to be savored, even if death seemed inevitable.
And then, in that dank dark deep place, where sunlight had never touched, where only pallid fungi had ever grown... there had come a breeze blowing, and the overpowering scent of roses, and a light that was the green of new growth in spring. From the green had sprung roses, white as a story of snow - and each one bearing black thorns, long and deadly sharp.
She'd understood, of course. The roses and thorns were only the outward manifestation of the greater change within, as if the lifeblood of the world suddenly flowed through her veins; energy and life, like a tree waking and putting out new leaves and flowers after a long winter.
She had heard her sister laugh, in wild exhilaration stuttering a little with pain and breathlessness, and she'd laughed with her, and leapt again to the attack.
The rest of her memory wasn't so vivid. The outcome had never really been in doubt, after that point. Except for one moment, afterwards, when her anima had died down, and she'd been bandaging her sister's injuries - from the spears, and from the vicious thorns. Ireva had been smiling at her, through the pain, her green eyes bright with adrenaline and excitement and tears.
"This changes everything, you know? Chosen of the Dragons..."
Firada had nodded. "It'll certainly give us an extra edge."
"More than that. People will rally to you." There had been a little nervousness in her eyes as she looked up, along with the wonder. "I... hope I can do as well. I didn't really believe in it, until now."
"No matter whether you do or not, you'll always be my little sister, Iri." Firada had hugged her, gently, taking care not to put pressure on the wounds. "I'll always take care of you; some things never change."
Firada shakes herself from the trance of memory. She can't drift into dreams tonight. And why does she press on these old wounds, now?
They'd called her the White Rose of Thorns. An old ghost had led her to a tomb and bade her take the jade weapons and armor that rested within, to bear again her panoply in defense of the city she'd loved. She'd been their hope, renewed.
And people had rallied to her, as Ireva had said they would. As the Resistance became more unified, as she had more resources to work with, as she developed her own skills, she'd been able to accomplish more. They'd re-established contacts in the court. Small strike teams had taken out several Thornguard commanders. Most risky, and cause for wild celebration when they succeeded, they'd launched a successful infiltration and raid of the Shackle Maw Penitentiary. Of course, they'd had losses and setbacks as well, but for the first time in a long time, it had felt like the long slow downward slide into despair had been halted and maybe even turned around.
Until... no, she can't blame Ireva. She should have been Exalted. It wasn't wrong of her to dream. Was it? Was it really her hope and pride in Firada that opened the way to...
She'd wrestled with those questions back then, and again outside the city, and again before she made the decision to join the Order. She'd thought of them again in the classes on history and religion.
She was the only one in her class who'd fought an Anathema. She was also the only one who'd saved one. And been saved...
She doesn't want to think about that moment of horror, when the world changed, and became a more hideous place. When everything she'd done, everything she'd sacrificed, was made meaningless, in the face of a threat that cared nothing for how much she loved her sister. Some things never change... So she'd promised, but it had seemed like a mockery, a cruel foreshadowing, on that morning.
And after that everything crumbled. And led in the end to a rainy moonless night, and a necrotech laboratory...
It's hard to link that world to this one, here in the warm peace of the shrine. But it's important that she not forget, that there is the world they endure still. All the people who put their trust and their hopes in her, in dark Thorns.
She'd thought the lab was empty. She'd been wrong. She's still not sure how she'd missed seeing him, but she had. Then she'd thought she had a chance; he was a necromancer, after all, not a warrior. She'd been wrong there, as well; his attacks had been impossibly fast, hammering past her defenses, as he chanted a litany of ancient crimes in a language she only half-understood. She'd thought, in the end, coughing up blood as she lay on the floor, that the worst he could do to her was kill her and forge her ghost into soulsteel - and she'd been wrong there, for a third time.
Why sacrifice an Exaltation, after all, when you could turn it to your own purposes?
The cold bite of the soulsteel at her wrists, the tearing pain of her wounds, the horror of his quiet words, and the dark light burning around him... she forces her breathing to calm, to stillness. Not to forget though. Never to forget.
The Anathema had told her what he was planning to do, taunting her. The words and gestures of the spell had been mellifluous and utterly incomprehensible, but she'd seen the ropes of orange and yellow light twining about her, digging into her skin. An odd note of color in the rain-washed dark.
And then they'd shattered, erupting in a crystal arc of rainbows that burned like acid on her bare skin, as the necromancer had choked, and fallen forward, surprise in his eyes. In the moment before she'd passed out again she'd registered the familiar blade protruding from his chest, and the familiar green eyes burning in a mud-darkened face behind him. Silly girl... you don't thrust with a daiklave...
When she'd woken up again they'd been on a beach. Leaving Thorns hadn't been so hard, in the end - although she'd never asked her sister the details of what she'd paid, to gain them passage.
She remembers a farewell, in the wilderness. Her arrival at the Realm garrison, being bundled onto a ship to the Isle that same day. The reunion with her parents, their disbelief and joy. (And the hope in their eyes, that guttered and died when she told them that Ireva was dead. Take care of your little sister, the last thing her mother had ever said to her, before the long separation.) The delight of meeting her twelve-year-old brother and four-year-old sister for the first time. The long days of debriefings, sketching maps of every part of Thorns, lists of contacts in the Resistance, what she'd seen in the Shackle Maw. Standing before a council of Elders and pleading with them to send reinforcements, arguing passionately for the threat the deathknights posed... to no avail.
She wasn't the heir her parents needed her to be; she'd never even been to primary school. But the story that she'd survived Thorns and slain a deathknight spread, and the Order let it be known that she'd be welcome in their ranks.
This dawn she'd take her oaths, and begin the training that would give her the weapons she needed, against the horrors that walked Thorns. So she'd chosen. Little steps.
And if you meet Iri, out in the Threshold? Will you go back on the decision you made in the Undercity, when she begged you to kill her? Take care of your little sister.
For a while she is still, turning over the question in her mind.
"No," she says eventually. Very quietly, to the silent air. No turning back. But she can hardly protect Iri if she's not there.
She sinks again into the wordless peace of meditation, feeling the spring-tide surge in her blood. New growth, new life, new beginnings. But some things never change.
__________________ PCs:
Spoiler
Word:
Spoiler
Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Snark
I must not argue on the Internet.
Internet argument is the mind-killer.
It is the little death that brings total aggravation.
I will face my annoyance.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
When it has gone past I will turn my inner eye to see its path.
Where the irritation has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
Kharal Zhou looks great, Maugan (even before you mentioned the awesome party buffing) As does Lotus Ensconced In Starlight, Oracle. I need to come up with a nice elaborate Solar name for Eris... one that is less self-hating than Discord.
Maugan, yes, if we both get in, I imagine they'd have interesting interactions. Eris' Motivation is the reconciliation of the Dragon-Blooded with the Celestial Exalted (I know, brick wall, meet head); she's been keeping a low profile for the last decade or so, until the resurgence of the Wyld Hunt forced her to be more active (not directly, but as a threat to her long-term goals). Learning more about Lookshy could be a hopeful thing for her. She'll probably be pretending to be an outcaste, at least initially; there's a good chance she has her sister's jade daiklave ("You need this more than me") and she knows Wind-Carried Words Technique and has the typical Wood Aspect appearance, so she can fake it reasonably well to casual inspection.
She also still reflexively thinks Dragon-Blood when someone says Exalt (having internalized a lot of Immaculate dogma), and was basically her sister's second-in-command for years, which could mesh interestingly with Kharal's soldier's-soldier attitude
__________________ PCs:
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Word:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Snark
I must not argue on the Internet.
Internet argument is the mind-killer.
It is the little death that brings total aggravation.
I will face my annoyance.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
When it has gone past I will turn my inner eye to see its path.
Where the irritation has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
Always good to see less self hating. As a side note, while I was picking out a Supernatural Style for Lotus, I realized that her personality literally exactly fit that espoused by Celestial Monkey. Only problem is, after reading through it, I hate that style.
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I am an
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INTP Myers-Briggs Personality Type
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The Introverted Intuitive mind typically creates a unique vision and arrives at unique insights about things, phenomena, or people. It strives to discover the essence of things and fill in the missing pieces of a puzzle.
Because sometimes, saying that you are a 3rd level CG Elf Wizards doesn't say anything at all
Sometimes, just sometimes, i really wish "I hit it again" was a viable option in real life.
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
Character sheet for Eris, work very much in progress.
EDIT: Mostly done. Couple of things left to write up (manse descriptions and meetings with Contacts mostly) but this should be enough to make a judgement on the character.
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Name: Eris Stormcrow, aka Untimely Orchid, aka Tepet Ireva Exalt Type and Caste: Eclipse Caste Solar Anima: A great white-gold tree in the midst of a storm of wind and lightning. (More details in spoiler.)
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When Eris' anima burns totemic, she seems to stand before a massive ash-tree, its branches spreading wide above her, and its great roots reaching down into the earth. Its bark is white but brushed with gold. The tree's branches have no real end, vanishing into hair-thin twigs that trail golden Essence at their distant extremities, still reaching outward and upward. Unlike normal ash trees, this one has long clusters of filmy golden flowers hanging from its branches.
The branches shake furiously, as if tossed by a mighty storm, and bolts of lightning fork constantly out of her anima to strike the tree, lighting it with the searing white radiance of the sun's corona.
Motivation: Reconcile the Dragon-Blooded with the Celestial Exalted.
Appearance:
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Nine years after Thorns, the woman who was once called Tepet Ireva and now goes by Untimely Orchid is still barely five feet tall - no prosperity will ever make up for that early malnutrition - but once-pallid skin is now a healthy suntanned brown. The old scars are still visible, but they've faded. She's filled out, and now is trim and fit, wiry muscle cording her arms from long hours of sword-practice. Her long hair is a dark green, nearly black; she often rinses it with a wash to bring out the green highlights. She sometimes wears it loose or partially so in the city, but in the field she always braids it up to be out of the way, and present nothing for an opponent to grab onto. She often weaves colored (usually green) silk cords through her hair. She is pretty rather than beautiful, with a youthful-looking heart-shaped face. Despite her diminutive size she possesses a commanding presence, and her smile can light up a room. Her voice is low and pleasant.
She wears a wide range of outfits when in the city, although she prefers silk dresses or kimonos with patterns of flowers or vines. Outside the city, she usually wears a green coat with small flowers embroidered around the hem and cuffs, over dark trousers and her breastplate. She carries her bow and a quiver of arrows slung over her back, and a shortsword and knife at her belt. The bow is usually the finest weapon she has in plain view, and taken together with Wood Aspects' reputation, people tend to assume she's an archer unless they're very observant; this is a deliberate misdirection.
More inspiration for the sisters:
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Background:
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Early life (short version, see vignettes up the page):
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Born Tepet Ireva, Eris was trapped in Thorns by the Mask's invasion when she was four. Her five-years-older sister Firada managed to keep them both alive, in the streets and then the Undercity; their parents were visiting the Isle at the time of the invasion, investigating schools for their firstborn.
After Firada Exalted as a Wood Aspect when Ireva was fourteen, taking the title White Rose of Thorns, Ireva devoted her energies to unifying the Resistance behind her sister's leadership. Six years later, her final triumph led to her Exaltation as an Eclipse.
Unfortunately, the Immaculate faith has always been strong in Thorns, and Ireva's transformation into Anathema led to calls for her death. When Firada refused to let her be killed, the alliance they'd built broke apart. Worse, since the alliance had been sealed by Ireva's anima in the moment of her Exaltation, the repercussions for oathbreaking fell on Firada and the leaders of the other factions, further undermining Firada's support and leading to accusations of vile Anathema magic. It is for this reason that Ireva took the name Eris, which means Discord.
Trying to reclaim her supporters (and prove to herself that the Dragons hadn't turned away from her), Firada went on a solo rescue mission to a necrotech laboratory in Thorns, trying to rescue a Resistance operative who'd recently been captured and taken for experimentation and torture by the Daybreak who ran the lab. Unfortunately (and likely due to the oathbreaker's curse) she failed to notice that the Daybreak was still there - having chosen not to attend the party at court that evening. He defeated the Wood Aspect in combat, chained her in soulsteel, woke her up, and was casting Threefold Binding of the Heart on her when Eris put a jade daiklave through his back. One of Firada's remaining allies, a woman named Janya, had released her and given her some supplies and Firada's sword, telling her where her sister had gone.
Eris got them both safely out of the city, via a Guild contact. Firada headed off to the nearest Realm outpost, and returned home to the Blessed Isle, where she argued fruitlessly for relief for Thorns, and eventually ended up taking vows in the Immaculate Order (while very surreptitiously keeping in touch with her little sister).
In the nine years since her escape, Eris has been keeping a very low profile. She's been building a life outside Thorns, trying to understand the politics of the Scavenger Lands, and slowly developing alliances and contacts. However, the advent of the Cleansing has pulled her out of hiding - not for her own safety, but because it provides both a threat and an opportunity for her long-term goals.
Life after Thorns:
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After Firada left, Eris stayed with Swift for a while. He told her a bit about the history of the world (carefully edited; Swift has his own agenda), and the nature of her Exaltation. He also brought her to a manse he guards, the Shrine of the Sea's Song (see below), in part to get it to analyze her Essence to make sure she was what she seemed to be, and in part to propose a deal to her.
To whit, he would allow her to attune to the manse and take its hearthstone. In exchange, she would seek out the other manses built by the same Exalt, let him know what artifacts and relics of the First Age she found there, and deliver one such item of his choice to him. He believed (correctly) that, as the hearthstone bearer for the Shrine, her dreams would give her clues to the locations of the other manses networked with it. Eris agreed, and sealed the bargain with her anima power.
After she felt she had learned what she could from Swift (or rather, that learning from Swift was no longer worth putting up with the constant teasing and flirtation), Eris headed further north, and then along the first great river she came to. She got work as a guard on the barges heading upriver, and sought word of the Guildsman Anaxos Ro; she eventually found him in a riverside trading town.
She paid off her debt to him quickly enough, via a few jobs that he gave her to test her abilities. The ability to perfectly discern someone's intentions and half-truths proved useful in negotiations, as did (in other contexts) access to perfectly encrypted letters and perfectly concealed subliminal messages. After she easily identified the spy in his office who'd been passing on information to a would-be business rival for months, Anaxos decided that he wanted to keep her friendly, and started inviting her to parties and putting her in touch with potentially useful contacts.
Anaxos had decided not to head back to Thorns, for the moment, given the cloud of suspicion hanging over him due to his somewhat-earlier-than-expected departure from the city on the same night that a Daybreak vanished without trace. He considered himself lucky, and wasn't going to push it. Instead, he intended to shore up his trade networks elsewhere in the East, and his position in the Guild hierarchy. Consequently, he remained in Nexus for an extended period, and helped Eris get settled in the city.
She began a low-profile business as a scribe, translator, cryptographer and information broker. Most of her customers thought she was a God-Blood or Outcaste; only Anaxos knew her true identity (or at least, only Anaxos revealed his knowledge). During this period she lived very modestly, in a tiny attic apartment; it had a large window and a view of the open sky, and that was mostly what she cared about. She also practiced the sword with the Guild mercenaries, and gained a reputation for near-inhuman skill, although she mostly used an ordinary blade rather than her very-distinctive daiklave.
When she felt ready, after a year or so in Nexus, she went to Anaxos Ro about financing an expedition into the hinterlands to seek out an ancient manse. She implied the clues came from ancient memories; in fact, they were transmitted to her through the hearthstone.
They agreed on a bargain: Anaxos would supply funding, a team of experienced scavengers and a geomancer, and in return be entitled to all artifacts found within the manse. Eris would claim the manse itself; the Guild lord preferred more portable and fungible assets. The expedition was successful, finding the small Earth-aspected manse called the Waystone, in a deserted hillside in the Hundred Kingdoms. The travel and unearthing of the manse consumed the better part of two years.
On returning to Nexus, Anaxos found a message from Tepet Firada awaiting him, requesting a brief meeting. He replied, with a hidden message from Eris concealed in the envelope, and a few weeks later the sisters had their first meeting since their escape from Thorns. Firada told Eris about their new siblings, and about her training in the Immaculate Order, and taught her a Charm to allow them to communicate privately over great distances.
Anaxos was extremely pleased with Eris after the manse expedition, which had yielded a number of pristine First Age artifacts. His standing in the Guild rose rapidly, and the social circles to which Eris was admitted as a result of her association with him grew increasingly lofty. Her reputation spread, quietly - among those who bought and bartered information and were willing to pay a premium for accuracy, and those who valued privacy and discretion and speed in their communications (of course, these groups tended to overlap quite a bit). Financiers, merchants, mercenary captains, those involved in political intrigue... she met many interesting people in interesting lines of work, and took the general approach of trying to remain useful yet unthreatening to all parties.
Slowly, she began to feel more secure in Nexus. With the income from her investments and business, she bought a comfortable apartment in the Cinnabar District, one where she could entertain guests. She began rinsing her hair with a dye to bring out the green highlights, and taking a slightly more visible role at parties and functions, becoming known as one to turn to for a quick and witty summary of the latest gossip. She allowed some mercenaries to see her practicing with her daiklave, and then accepted an invitation to train with the Hooded Executioners; their leader, the outcaste Dragonlord Johoda, has offered her a job a few times, and while she's consistently turned him down, they've had polite conversations on more than one occasion. Previously she had avoided the Dragon-Blooded; slowly and cautiously, she began to approach known outcastes where their social circles overlapped, trying to learn more about them.
Slowly, she developed a reputation in certain circles as a well-informed woman, one who could usually tell a newcomer to the city of all the latest goings-on, and put them in touch with someone who might be able to assist them - for a price, of course, albeit usually measured in favor rather than in coin. She runs a salon of sorts (in the Renaissance sense, a place for meetings and discussion) from her apartment, where once a week whichever of her contacts happened to be in the city might meet to discuss matters of mutual interest. She has quietly let it drop that the areas of greatest interest to her include Thorns and the Anathema - of course, she is very far from the only one in Nexus with interest in those topics, and the latest news regarding them frequently features in the discussions at her apartment. She goes by the name Untimely Orchid, and is listed on the Guild's books as a reliable external contractor.
She usually leaves the city at least once a year, for periods ranging from a week or two to several months. She lets her contacts know that she'll be out of town, rents out her apartment, and leaves. Her longest expedition lasted for a year and a half and took her far to the northeast, in search of another manse in the network; this time, she wanted to see if she could figure it out herself, since the Waystone had been rather harmless.
On the way, riding alone, she saw a flaring Lunar anima banner. She went to investigate, and intervened in a fight between a young casteless boar-Lunar and three (also fairly young) Dragon-Blooded. They had been on a hunting party that hadn't gone quite as intended. The Fire Aspect was already unconscious and on the verge of death; the Wood Aspect and Air Aspect were both also injured, and were trying to defend each other and their fallen brother. The Lunar wasn't looking much better, though. Eris rode up and managed to convince the Dragon-Bloods that they should leave to heal their wounded brother and report the encounter, while she challenged the boar-Lunar to single combat. The Lunar was happy to fight one Dragon-Blood rather than four, and accepted.
Once the Dragon-Bloods were out of sight Eris sheathed her grand daiklave and demanded to know what the Lunar was doing. It eventually came out that he'd been sent to speak with a No Moon who was meant to be in this area, regarding moonsilver tattoos. They headed off to find the No Moon, an ice-weasel-totem woman originally from the far north named Three Drops, with only a brief detour to hunt down a boar and burn its body (Eris reported her victory over the Lunar, and that she was burning the Anathema's corpse to prevent any chance of regeneration, to the Dragon-Bloods via Wind-Carried Words Technique).
Eris had some interesting conversations with Three Drops, including one regarding a certain half-broken and looted manse, and its insane construct guardian. Eris sighed and accepted the young Lunar's offer to accompany her, to discharge the debt he owed her for extricating him from the fight with the Dragon-Bloods.
She managed to talk down the insane construct guardian (the Eclipse caste mark helped), and together they cleaned up the manse; it had been a workshop once, and the underlying structure was still intact, just all the First Age tools had been looted. Fortunately, Eris was still carrying around a complete set of First Age tools - albeit blood-encrusted dark metal tools with a distinct tendency toward skull motifs. Where would she have sold them, after all? She made a deal with Three Drops that the No Moon could attune to the manse, and use the workshop and tools when Eris didn't have need of them (although the construct-guardian is stubborn, and still sulks when a Solar is not in residence); Three Drops had led a nomadic lifestyle ever since leaving the north one step ahead of an angry member of the Bull's Circle, but she'd been thinking about developing a territory for some time. Eris also claimed the orichalcum breastplate they found in one of the secret compartments in the secret compartments, apparently the one thing the earlier searchers had missed (the fact that it was the compartment directly behind the not-quite-sane guardian construct's preferred resting spot might have contributed).
Eris spent some time speaking with Three - although the sorceress enjoyed being cryptic - before heading back to Nexus and resuming her previous life there. And that brings us, more or less, to the present day - and more specifically, Eris' worry at Lookshy's announcement of their support for the Cleansing. She was always more comfortable in the shadows, and she's been safe there for nine years, as she learned her way around the world outside Thorns and gathered resources and prepared... but now the world is turning, and she can no longer remain on the sidelines, lest all she hope for turn to ash.
Draft of discussion on names with Three Drops:
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"A name? For you?!" The woman laughs uproariously, for several moments. At the end she wipes her eyes. "Oh, sister. Your problem isn't that you need a name. Your problem is that you don't like the one you already have."
The Eclipse raises an eyebrow, from where she sits cross-legged on the floor of the tent. She idly passes a - necklace? - between her hands. A narrow chain of silver, set with a single yellow gem. "Is that so? How very interesting." Her voice is perfectly polite, no hint of boredom or sarcasm in it. Its very earnestness demands suspicion.
The No Moon twists herself around a chair. Human joints should not bend like that, nor should any human woman be so thin, but Three Drops seems more than willing to flaunt her nature when in her own domain. Her white hair looks more like a pelt than a woman's tresses, and her teeth are sharpened to points.
"And are you grateful for my insight, Quicksilver Falcon?"
"Oh, very much so. But sadly, if what I came to trade for is no longer on the table, then all I have to offer is my gratitude." She sighs a little, and stands, and bows politely. "I thank you for the tea."
She waits for it, as she turns to go. And sure enough, with a peal of laughter, and a well-concealed edge of worry and anger behind it,
"- Discord is your name."
The Solar looks back, turning one palm upward. "A possible answer, to be sure. You give names for past accomplishments, no? But I was told that here I might find one who could help me shape future deeds."
"Strife is your lot. Do you think you can escape it?" The Lunar laughs, high and sweet and dancing on the edge of sanity. "To sow it, to reap it, to end it... wherever you are, Solar, there will be strife. Whether of your doing or undoing."
Eris smiles in brief appreciation at the wordplay. "Inevitably?"
"Do not forget, child, that we were made for war." The Lunar's voice becomes chill - and brittle, as ice over black water. "Each and every one of us. Diplomats, they called your kind, emissaries. But your role, back then, was to build the alliances that would win a war - and subvert and betray and turn against each other, all those who would not follow. Just as it was ours to walk strange boundaries, to seek the mysteries hidden away from the moon's light, and bring back the power we found there to turn to our mates' and allies' cause."
"Why are you surprised, Discord? It's only who you are. Who you were. Who you've always been. What else do you want to be?"
The No Moon smiles a red scimitar smile, like the bloodied edge of a crescent moon. "You want a name like ours? Like mine?"
"The Ogre, Three Drops - so named,
For dancing, laughing, in passion or in mirth,
Should she strike, her victim's life is fled
Ere even three drops of blood can fall to earth."
"Should I strike? I did. We don't give deed names for wishful thinking, Discord. If you want to defy what you are, come back in a hundred years, and tell me what you've done."
"I didn't come here for a name." Eris smiles, faintly.
"Ah. Is this the tiresome part where your hired assassins spring out of the woodwork? Or are you planning to do that bit yourself? I really would advise against the latter."
"Hardly. I just wanted to meet one of Luna's Chosen. Find out what you think you are, and I am. And now I know." She bows to the No Moon. "Thank you."
The Eclipse gently lays the necklace down on the rug. "Your payment, as promised. Until we meet again, Chosen."
The Lunar snatches at it, a movement almost too fast to see. But her hands are very gentle as she cradles the crystal.
"... Stormcrow."
Eris raises an eyebrow.
"Payment promised for promised payment; I owe you no debt, Solar." The Lunar's voice holds a paradoxical joy, and a simmering of wrath. "You are a harbinger of strife. The clouds of war will follow in your wake. Since your kin returned, the world has been turning toward chaos and destruction, and it turns still."
"The prison broke open and spilled light and darkness alike back into the world. How close is your reflection in the mirror, daughter of Thorns? How close is your shadow?"
"Perhaps you'll come with peace and harmony in one hand, to balance the promise of future strife held out in the other. But you cannot avoid that strife, that conflict. Look to your own nature. The tree draws the lightning."
She stops, breathing hard. And then smiles, and says light-heartedly, "So if you want to know your name, there it is... Eris Stormcrow."
"I'm grateful for the information." The Eclipse's voice is near-perfectly serene.
"Beware the stars. They're always watching." The Lunar giggles. "Now go ride your stormwinds, crow girl. Tree girl. Lightning girl. Going to play with Terrestrials? Have fun. Bring me some jade, next time."
Social:
Charisma ●●●●●
Manipulation ●●●●
Appearance ●●● (+●●●● if Infinite Resplendence Amulet is active at obvious level)
Mental
Perception ●●
Intelligence ●●●
Wits ●●
Abilities (Specializations +)
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[Note: Place [C]aste and [F]avoured tags, for clarity.]
Total without BP/XP: 28/28
(If using Dawn Solution rules, 4 free specialty dots, and Abilities can be raised to 5 without BP)
Archery
Martial Arts
[F] Melee ●●●●● (+●●● Sword-Master)
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This is just a Swords specialty, to be clear.
Thrown
War
[F] Integrity ●
Performance
[F] Presence ●●●●● (+●●● Negotiation)
[F] Resistance ●●●●● (+●● Adrenaline Fueled), +1 sux to reduce or avoid the effects of deleterious environmental conditions, toxins or disease
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This is intended to be basically the "in combat" specialty from the corebook, just a little more evocative. It should never apply in social situations unless, say, it's a roll to stay awake and keep going in very high-stakes negotiations. It should not apply in combats where she doesn't feel that there's any danger, or when it's devolved into a long war of attrition and the adrenaline is wearing off. But for general purposes, "in combat" should be the dividing line.
Survival +1 sux to reduce or avoid the effects of deleterious environmental conditions, toxins or disease
Craft
[F] Investigation ●●●●
Lore ●
Medicine
Occult
Tepet Firada, Eris' older sister, is a Wood Aspect and a monk of the Immaculate Order. She joined the Order nearly a decade ago, has been initiated into Celestial Martial Arts, and studies the Wood Dragon style. While still very young for a Terrestrial and junior in the Order, her devotion to the cause - and the fact that she won victories against Anathema in Thorns, and even killed one single-handedly - has drawn the attention of her superiors.
Firada is slightly taller than average, strong and tough and whipcord lean; from when she was nine until she was twenty-five, her life and her sister's life depended on her skills with blade and bow and fists.
She was once known as the White Rose of Thorns, and her anima is a dense briar-tangle of vicious black thorns and many-petalled white roses. She is competent with swords and in unarmed combat, but prefers to take down her foes from powerbow range where possible, ideally without being seen.
Firada is devoted to her parents and siblings, but neither her friends nor her kin really understand, especially as she can't tell them the truth about Ireva. She and her sister were inseparable for sixteen years, and her absence still leaves a gap. She and her sister keep in touch secretly using the Wind-Carried Words Technique; she asked to be assigned to the East, and she tries to warn Iri when a Wyld Hunt might be near her location. Not that it's been a major threat, for most of the last nine years, but now...
Her feelings toward the Lunar and (especially) Solar Anathema are ambiguous; she hasn't completely rejected Immaculate teachings regarding them, only carving out an exception for Ireva, but there's doubt in her heart. Toward Abyssals, on the other hand, her approach is unambiguous and lethal; she'll take joy in any defeat she can hand them. And perhaps, one day, Thorns...
Major contacts (to be detailed):
(1) Anaxos Ro, a senior Guildsman who used to trade into Thorns, but focused his efforts elsewhere after his role in aiding the escape of the killers of Forger of Forgotten Nightmares. He is in his late middle age, and now spends most of his time in Nexus.
(2) Swift-Fire-Over-Water, a baiji who governs a stretch of water along the coast north of Thorns. Swift has a sanctum in that area, which he keeps very quiet; he is quite unhappy about Thorns as a result. He is one of the more politically powerful and well-connected of the dolphin-gods. He's been around since the First Age, and he is not fond of the Immaculate Order, but his attitude toward the returning Solars is somewhat less clear.
(3) Three Drops, an ice-weasel-totem No Moon mystic. Originally from the far north, she had a falling out with the Bull of the North's circle, and left in a hurry. She is at least a Terrestrial Circle sorceress. Getting straight answers out of her tends to be a difficult endeavor.
Manse ●● (Jewel of the Lawgiver's Authority)
Manse ● (Stone of Humble Glory)
Manse ●● (Mind-Cleansing Gem)
Artifacts and Equipment: Remembrance (Jade Grand Daiklave)
Spoiler
This massive blade was the property of a Fire-Aspected hero of Thorns, who died several centuries ago. Her ghost lingered, to watch over the city she'd protected. When a child of Thorns Exalted in the aftermath of the Mask's invasion, she contacted the Resistance; after bestowing her panoply on Tepet Firada, she passed into Lethe. When Firada and Ireva parted outside Thorns, the White Rose of Thorns gave Remembrance to her sister, telling her that she needed it more.
The great jade sword has lain in shadow for a long time, and taken on some of its aspect. Its blade shades from a dark lustrous green, through violet-hued evening-sky blue, into a deep wine-red along the cutting edges. The different colors of the jade ripple together, in swirling patterns reminiscent of waves and flames and smoke on the wind. Black jade twines through the patterns, depicting a stylized Elemental Dragon. Where the tail coils around the hilt there is a hand-guard, wrought as an intricate spray of flowers and twisting thorns in all the dark colors of the blade. Set among the flowers, one in the hilt and two at the base of the blade, are three gleaming circles of translucent clouded white.
Also hidden among the flowers of the hand-guard, lying flat to the jade and covered with a cap of thinly hammered steel shaped like a leaf, is the orichalcum adapter that Eris uses to easily attune the blade.
The Forger's Lab Coat Of Infinite Pockets (Orichalcum and Starmetal Infinite Resplendence Amulet)
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This smooth teardrop of orichalcum, suspended within a cage of fragile starmetal strands, was one of the most highly prized possessions of the Daybreak called the Forger of Forgotten Nightmares. Not so much for its properties, but for the story behind it.
Forger was a superlative crafter, but preferred to pursue his own research rather than attempt to satisfy the incessant - and insatiable - clamoring for artifacts from his so-called circle. He was not pleased when the political maneuvering of the Midnight called Darkness At Noon led to a direct order from the Mask that he supply her with the amulet she wanted, constructed of - of all things - orichalcum. Darkness was planning to pose as a Solar in order to try to lure in some new recruits, and wanted an artifact to help her manifest the appropriate golden glory. That was her story, anyway; Forger suspected something more going on. But the order had come directly from his liege, and so after several horrifyingly uncomfortable months spent in the burning sunlight of Creation away from his laboratory and creations, he delivered the requested artifact.
On returning to Thorns, it became apparent that certain of his fellow deathknights had taken Darkness' success as a demonstration of what was possible with sufficient persistence. If Forger wanted to be left alone, he was going to have to demonstrate the consequences of bullying him with extreme prejudice - but of course, while preserving deniability.
It took a non-negligible commitment of time and resources, although Typhon's assistance greatly accelerated matters. Such a shame, that Darkness' Lunar mate had been in the area; who would have guessed it? At least Typhon's operatives had managed to retrieve her panoply.
Forger claimed the amulet, mostly for the effect on his fellows; the torrent of requests for artifacts dried up remarkably after that. He didn't anticipate requiring the glorious Solar aura often, although it sometimes had amusing effects when dealing with prisoners, but a self-cleaning lab coat was convenient. A self-cleaning lab coat with an abundance of Elsewhere-pockets proved even more convenient, once he caged the orichalcum teardrop in a little of the starmetal salvaged from the dead gods of Thorns.
When the young Eclipse Eris killed Forger with her sister's jade daiklave, his body faded into nothingness, but his Lab Coat remained. As the one item in his panoply that didn't shriek with the pain of tormented souls, she took it with her when she fled. She got a nasty shock the first time she looked inside the pockets, though. The small lump of raw moonsilver, she used to pay for their passage out of the city; the fivefold resonant adapter was a pleasant surprise (well, the orichalcum original; the soulsteel copies were a bit more distressing, even if they did have notes pasted to them saying things like "Fails to attune properly; try more blood?" and "Works but leads to uncontrollable anima eruptions every ten minutes; bad for stealth"). The extensive set of tools, on the other hand...
She wasn't sure if they were for surgery or crafting, or even if Forger had seen a difference. It was hard not to vomit, when she first saw them, and matched them to what she'd seen in the lab. She kept them in the Lab Coat, not wanting them to fall into the hands of someone who might use them as intended; they came in handy several years later when she had to re-equip a workshop manse.
Below is the somewhat shorter and lighter version of this story:
Spoiler
you see, once there was a Daybreak researcher
he only wanted to be left alone to play in his lab and build hideous necrotech abominations
is that so wrong?
but his circle-mates harassed him constantly with demands for shiny artifacts
well, evil doomful artifacts, but you get the point
he said No in a hundred different ways, but eventually the Midnight went over his head and got the Deathlord to order him to make her the artifact she wanted
to boost her Appearance. ("It'll facilitate me posing as a Solar!" she said. "It's critical to my mission!" she said.)
So, with much grumbling, he said yes, and THEN he found out the damn thing had to be made out of orichalcum.
Several months in the burning, horrible sunlight later, away from his nice dark lab, he was a very unhappy Daybreak. But he gave the Midnight her amulet.
And then everyone else went, "Ooh, so we just have to be persistent enough and we can get artifacts? Sweet!"
The Daybreak realized that he needed to squash this line of thought fast.
So he teamed up with the Day caste to arrange for the Midnight to get ambushed and killed by her Lunar mate, who she'd had run-ins with before.
and the Day's agents brought back the amulet, and the Daybreak wore it around "in memory of our poor lost sister", and people stopped asking him for artifacts.
I mean, not that he needed appearance, but a self-cleaning lab coat was handy
and then he figured out that if he added starmetal to it he could make it a self-cleaning lab coat of infinite pockets!
Yay!
And it was a happy ending.
Until a stupid Eclipse stabbed him through the chest with a giant hunk of jade just because he was casting mind-control sorcery on her Dragon-Blooded sister.
Solars are jerks.
Manse: The Puppeteer's Toybox
Stone: Jewel of the Lawgiver's Authority ●● (socketed in Remembrance) [Oadenol's Codex]. Subtracts 2 from the difficulty of all attempts to sway others' opinions or beliefs (minimum 1). Applies to both speech and writing.
Spoiler
Creation Points: [(Value of Manse x2)+bonus from Manse Flaws] Flaws: Maintenance ●● (requires day-long simple maintenance once a month, usually performed by the Bound Servitor)
Manse: The Waystone
Stone: Stone of Humble Glory ● (socketed in Remembrance) [Oadenol's Codex p89]. +4 (average of Conviction and Temperance, round up) to any social roll where the character tells the truth without exaggeration or deliberate deception.
Spoiler
Creation Points: 2 [(Value of Manse x2)+bonus from Manse Flaws] Powers:
Network Node
Magical Conveniences
Manse: Shrine of the Sea's Song
Stone: Mind-Cleansing Gem ●● (socketed in Remembrance) [Oadenol's Codex p96]. +1 to Dodge and Parry MDVs, can break UMI on a touch.
Spoiler
Creation Points: 6 [(Value of Manse x2)+bonus from Manse Flaws] Flaws: Habitability ●● (this manse is not designed with habitation in mind, although you could camp in it)
Powers: Analytical Senses ●● Sympathetic Dream Link ●● Password Activations ● (harmonizing with the sea-song, see below) Network Node ●
There is a stretch of coast, some way north of Thorns, where even smugglers steer clear of the rocky shore. The reefs and rocks are treacherous in the extreme, interacting with the currents to produce a morass of foaming, swirling water, and the few meagre inlets offer little shelter from storms or watchers. On the land side, there are a few salt-tolerant plants clinging to the tops of the cliffs, and then unpromising scrubland.
The unpromising aspect of the coast is not entirely accidental. The baiji Swift-Fire-Over-Water keeps his sanctum here, and prefers that fact to remain unknown. He also watches over an ancient manse. Should the manse ever fail, Swift is prepared to move in and add the demesne to his holdings, but he refrains from destroying it himself out of a residual respect for the Exalt who built it (with whom he had a complicated but not hostile relationship). He's also become rather fond of the old place, over the years.
The Shrine of the Sea's Song is a cave system shaped like a spiraling shell, buried beneath the cliffs. Access from air or land is impossible for anything larger than a mouse, and would involve traversing a maze of narrow cracks through the rock. The easiest access is by swimming in; the shell's mouth comes down to sea level and opens onto the water, and it is possible to swim into that cave from the sea, if you know the way through the underwater tunnels. (Swift, of course, has had the route memorized for a couple of thousand years.) Attunement to the manse automatically grants knowledge of the route.
The beach where the mouth of the shell opens is of soft golden sand, carpeted with seashells of all shapes and sizes. Lifting one of the seashells to one's ear reveals a soft, ever-changing song, which gives the manse its name. Entering the manse itself, this song fills the air, almost imperceptibly at first and growing louder as one moves toward the center.
The walls of the manse resemble the inside of a seashell, fluted and pearly and opalescent; there is no interior lighting, the designer having apparently assumed that anyone visiting would bring their own lights. The light of a Celestial anima refracts brilliantly from the walls, sending rainbows scattering everywhere; at certain points in the manse, this refraction also reveals images or words worked deep into the nacreous walls, and invisible in normal light.
While the general layout is a spiral, the manse has many branches and passageways, with no obvious regular pattern. Deep channels of salt water run down every corridor; some rooms have additional pools, positioned to enhance the echoes of the sea-song as it reverberates off the surface.
The hearthroom is large, and alone of all chambers in the manse shines with its own faint pearly light. Here the deep channel runs into a series of natural-looking rock-pools that fill the back half of the room, while the front half is the same golden sand as the rest of the floor. The hearthstone forms randomly in one of the rock-pools; finding it can be a slightly time-consuming process, but one that the creator of the manse treasured, as a reminder of their childhood playing along the shore.
Anyone entering the Shrine may attempt to harmonize with the music of the sea-song, requiring a Performance+Charisma roll. For the hearthstone bearer, this roll is difficulty 1, and only needs to be made once in the bearer's life unless their attunement to the manse is broken (failures can be retried using the normal rules; a botch requires a day's wait before trying again). For anyone else, the roll is difficulty 3, and must be made anew each time they wish to communicate with the manse; a botch requires a week's wait before trying again.
Once harmony is achieved, the sea-song provides a status report on the manse itself, other nodes in the network and any information the manse has stored regarding visitors. The Shrine automatically registers the echoes of the sea-song from any being or object entering the manse, and analyzes them to produce an Essence-signature. An Exalt harmonized to the sea-song can induce the manse to examine specific beings or objects.
The hearthstone bearer hears the song of the Shrine, quietly, even when he or she is far away. In sleep the music is clearest, and the hearthstone bearer can receive the same information she would from harmonizing with the song.
In the First Age, this demesne remained uncapped far longer than most, due to a pair of baiji that built their sanctums on it, and used all their considerable charm and influence to keep it as it was. They were assisted in this by a Celestial Exalt who was charmed by the song that issued from every sea-shell found in the demesne. Eventually, she persuaded the baiji to agree to her capping the demesne, but with a very particular purpose: to focus and enhance the sea-song. Since the manse's primary purpose was as an instrument of music, it is nearly uninhabitable and has few useful powers; its location is inconvenient and a fairly well-connected baiji (one of the original pair) still considers it his territory. For all these reasons, neither the Sidereals nor the Dragon-Blooded considered it worth the trouble in the aftermath of the Usurpation, and by now it has passed out of all mortal records.
Resources: ●●
Spoiler
Eris maintains a comfortable apartment in the Cinnabar district of Nexus. Her favorite feature of the place is the wide balcony, twined with vines that sprout lavish red flowers.
She lives simply; no drugs, no hard alcohol. Losing control would be too dangerous. Everyday clothing and party outfits are handled equally well by her amulet, and she keeps a week's worth of traveling supplies in the space accessed by the pockets, as well as hair dye and cosmetics, and her daiklave. If she needs to depart in a hurry, she won't leave anything important behind.
She has a modest income from investments, from working as a scribe and translator and message-transmitter, and sometimes from her business as an information broker; she prefers to barter in kind, there, but sometimes people have nothing to offer but coin.
-Exceptional writing kit (+1 to Linguistics rolls)
Spoiler
Eris' writing kit contains a fine inkstone, several high-quality ink-sticks of different colors, quill pens and replacement nibs, a full set of fine calligraphy brushes, a folding lap-desk, and a small book of haiku for inspiration.
-Fine self bow (Str ●●●, +1 Accuracy, typically slung over her back)
Spoiler
This finely constructed bow is made from a springy, naturally curved length of dark-stained yew wood.
-Quivers of all four standard arrow types
-Good luck charm (found)
Spoiler
to be detailed
-Collection of lucky rocks (Oadenol's Codex; always end up back in her possession within a few hours of being dropped or thrown)
Spoiler
Since becoming aware of the curious properties of these Wyld-tainted stones, Eris has been collecting them. She's sure she'll find some use for them in the future. At present, she sometimes uses them as a gimmick for customers; she gives someone a rock while they think over an offer, or drops the rocks in a basket outside her apartment when she leaves for the day. People wishing to talk with her can tie or paste a message to the stone and be sure she'll receive it within a few hours.
-Premade paper prayers, mostly for healing and good fortune
Spoiler
She's not generally one for bothering the gods, but you never know when you'll need them...
-Knife (typically worn at her belt)
-Short sword (typically worn at her belt)
-Walking stick / staff (typically carried, when out of town)
-Hammer (kept in an Elsewhere-pocket, used primarily as a tool)
-Axe (kept in an Elsewhere-pocket, used primarily as a tool)
Charms
Spoiler
Melee First Melee Excellency
Integrity
Integrity Protecting Prana
Presence Second Presence Excellency
Irresistible Salesman Spirit
Resistance
Durability Of Oak Meditation
Iron Skin Concentration
Spirit Strengthens The Skin
Investigation Second Investigation Excellency
Judge's Ear Technique
Linguistics Second Linguistics Excellency
Sagacious Reading of Intent
Letter-Within-A-Letter Technique
Wind-Carried Words Technique
Socialize Second Socialize Excellency
Mastery of Small Manners
Combos: (I know we don't need to buy them now, but I still like to define my combo displays) Unassailable Spirit Of The Ash (Durability of Oak Meditation + Iron Skin Concentration + Spirit Strengthens The Skin + First Melee Excellency)
Combo display: Eris' light brown skin becomes barklike in texture and takes on a deep golden-brown hue, as a wreath of golden Essence-flowers blooms in her hair, and her eyes glow green-gold from edge to edge. Should a blow strike her, it is blunted or stopped entirely by a tangle of thorns and vines; should she attack using Essence, there is the keening of wind through leaves, and she strikes out of the center of a ghostly image of ephemeral branches tossed in a wild storm.
I must not argue on the Internet.
Internet argument is the mind-killer.
It is the little death that brings total aggravation.
I will face my annoyance.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
When it has gone past I will turn my inner eye to see its path.
Where the irritation has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
And here's my sheet. For ease of reference, I went back through and added descriptions to all of the charms, explaining what they do.
[spoiler]Name: Kharal Zhou Aspect: Fire Anima: When Zhou goes all out, his fiery aura takes the form of a great Phoenix, it's beating wings setting everything ablaze.
Motivation: Defend and uphold the interests and beliefs of Lookshy, and exemplify its virtues through personal courage and honour.
Backgrounds:
Arsenal *** (Provides a set of Jade Hearthstone bracers and three dots worth of hearthstones, all issued from the private stocks of Gens Kharal)
Artifact ** (Sword and armour)
Breeding ***
Connections *** (Seventh Legion)
Connections ** (Gens Kharal)
Reputation ** (Zhou is known in Lookshy and several nearby militaries as a fine solider, if a bit impulsive, and for always being fair and honorable.)
Resources ***
Artifacts and Equipment:
Artifact: Red Jade Reaper Daiklaive Aurora
Location: Sheathed at Zhou's waist usually
Stats: Speed 4, Accuracy +4, Damage +7L/2, Defensive +1, Rate 3, Tags: O
Description: Aurora is Zhou's heirloom Daiklaive, presented to him by his father when he graduated into the Seventh Legion. It is a long, elegant blade formed of red jade, and those who look closely can see flames continuously burning beneath its polished surface.
Artifact: Jade Hearthstone bracers
Location: Usually worn, and issued by Gens Kharal.
Effects: Provide a +3 bonus on dodge attempts, and reduce the speed of hand-to-hand and ranged attacks by -1.
Stone: Jewel of the Flying Heart (In Daiklaive setting, rating 1)) [Oadenol's Codex]
Effects: Increases Dodge DV by one, and adds a dice to attacks with edged weapons.
Stone: The Monkey Stone (In bracers, rating 2) [Main rule book]
Effects: Reduces difficulty of athletics rolls by 1, doubles climbing speed and jumping distance.
Spoiler
Resources: 3 Zhou collects a wage from the legion and his family, so long as he doesn't disgrace their names. Most of this he saves.
Spoiler
>
Charms
Spoiler
Ability First Melee Excellency
Terrestrial Melee Reinforcement
Second Dodge Excellency
First Athletics Excellency
First Resistance excellency
Linguistics:
Wind-Carried Words (2m to whisper a message of 25 words or less to any known recipient within 400 yards. Every additional mote increases the range by a factor of 10.)
Lore:
Elemental Bolt attack (Fires a bolt of flames at a target up to 80 yards away. Base damage is 2L for every mote spent, up to a maximum of 3 motes, with a 1m surcharge and an additional 4L due to fire aspect. It is targeted with a total accuracy of 14.)
Melee:
Dragon-Graced weapon (May pay 1m to supplement my weapon with a +4L damage modifier)
Ghost-Fire blade (May pay 2m to make my attacks applicable against dematerialized ghosts for an action, or 4m to also make the attacks Holy and thus deal Aggravated damage to creatures of darkness.)
Portentous Comet Deflecting method (May pay 8m and 1wp in order to roll dexterity+Melee. If I score a success, I make a perfect parry against anything except attacks enhanced by charms, or sorcery attacks.)
Resistance:
Strength of Stone Technique (For 2m per individual, up to myself and four others, I may grant a bonus dot of strength and stamina for the scene. 1m surcharge)
Impervious skin of stone meditation (May increase my Lethal and bashing soaks by 2 levels for every mote spent, up to a maximum of 4 levels. Compatible with armour, 1m surcharge)
Fire Protection Form (For 4m, I may reflexively increase my lethal and bashing soak against a single attack by 10. If the attack uses fire or extremes of heat, I also reduce the post-soak levels of damage by one, to a minimum of one.
Athletics
Effortlessly Rising flame (May pay 1m to instantly rise from a prone position)
Falling Star technique (If the enemy is out of cover and vulnerable to a flank, I may pay up to 4m to supplement a hand-to-hand attack. Each mote increases the pre-soak damage of the attack by 2 dice.)
Presence
Glowing Coal Radiance (When I am attacked, either physically or socially, I may spend 2m to surround myself with a red radiance. Any attackers in that action take a -5 fear-based internal penalty to their test, unless their Dodge MDV is higher than 11)
Aura of Invincibility (May spend 3m as a simple action to increase my bashing and lethal soaks by 1 and gain three more -0 health levels. These last for a scene, and at scenes end, I heal up to three levels of bashing or lethal and then the bonus health levels vanish, transferring any further damage levels back onto normal health)
Virtues:
Compassion ****
Conviction **
Temperance **
Valor *****
Crazy Aspect Mode: In Limit Break, Zhou becomes an engine of destruction, his hatred overwhelming all reason or thought of negotiation.
Intimacies:
Lookshy (Patriotic pride)
Other Terrestrials (Comradeship)
Gens Kharal (Familial loyalty)
The Seventh Legion (Loyalty)
Celestial Exalted (Cautious respect)
Fair Folk (Hatred)
The Realm (Contempt)
Necromancers (Hatred)
Leaves room for six more
Languages:
High Realm (Native)
River-Tongue
Forest-Tongue
Old Realm
Bonus Points:
Raised Valour from 3 to 5
Raised Compassion from 2 to 4
Raised Willpower to 10
Raised Essence to 4
Raised all Aspect abilities from 3 to 5 except Socialise
Bought 3 levels of the Arsenal background
Total: 30/30
Xp:
Spent 12 to raise Stamina to 4
Spent 3 to raise Medicine to 3
__________________
"Not trusting me might be the smartest decision you made since getting off of your horse."
Kharal Zhou, Fire Aspect of Lookshy:
Last edited by Maugan Ra : 10-12-2012 at 11:42 PM.
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
General notes, mostly personality based:
- Yes, Zhou has a Valour of five and a Compassion of four. He's courageous and daring to the point of near-insanity, and believes that since he has Exalted, it his his duty to prove himself worthy by looking out for those less fortunate.
- His motivation ties into his patriotic pride. He believes that Lookshy is one of the greatest cultures in the world, and aims to prove its superiority by example. He's almost an ambassador of sorts, though not in any official capacity, but he tends to view every decision he makes through the lens of 'How should a true son of Lookshy act here?'
- Related to that, he doesn't like the Realm all that much. Or at least, how it's social structure works. As far as he's concerned, the Realm's Dragonblood are a load of decadent freeloaders who have been elevated to their lofty stations by blood alone. That they attempt to claim dominion over Lookshy doesn't help.
- He's not had a great deal of exposure to the Immaculate teachings, so he's yet to form a real opinion of them.
__________________
"Not trusting me might be the smartest decision you made since getting off of your horse."
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
Heh. My current Zenith in my main Exalted campaign has Compassion 5 + Valor 5 (and Red Rage of Compassion, of course). It'll be interesting to see how someone else interprets that combination of Virtues
Eris can probably recite the Immaculate teachings backward. The Immaculate faith was a unifying force among the rebels in Thorns (they were fighting Anathema, after all), and she pushed it pretty hard when she was trying to get people to rally behind a Dragon-Blooded leader (ah the irony).
That said, she mostly only cares about the Realm because of the people in it; she doesn't have any particular investment in their social structure being a good idea. Oddly, she might end up with a similar opinion to Kharal, although arriving there by a very different path; her sister felt pretty betrayed when she realized the kind of resources that were being poured into the succession conflict while Thorns languished, and Eris gets much of her Realm news from Firada.
__________________ PCs:
Spoiler
Word:
Spoiler
Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Snark
I must not argue on the Internet.
Internet argument is the mind-killer.
It is the little death that brings total aggravation.
I will face my annoyance.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
When it has gone past I will turn my inner eye to see its path.
Where the irritation has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
Clearly, our goal should be to invade the Realm, take the Throne, and establish a better and more cooperative social order throughout creation. For great justice and all that.
Alternately, use Zhou's pull in Lookshy to raise an army and retake Thorns from the Mask of Winters. That might not work so well, given that the Mask is ungodly powerful, but hey... Got to have ambitions, right?
Anyway. I'm not entirely sure how Kharal Zhou would get involved with the group presently in Nexus. He can be there easily enough, but I think they were keeping a low profile, so I might not have an easy justification for joining them. Well, I guess we'll see. This assuming I get in the game, naturally.
__________________
"Not trusting me might be the smartest decision you made since getting off of your horse."
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
I present Lotus Ensconced in Starlight
Basic Info
Spoiler
Name: Lotus Ensconced in Starlight Caste: Twilight Anima: A brilliant mandala in the shape of a four bulbed lotus. Motivation: To protect mankind from the excesses of the virtuous.
Backstory
Spoiler
Born into a craft-Helot family in Lookshy, the Solar now known as Lotus Ensconced in Starlight was trained from an exceedingly young age to be of use to the arcane industries of the Lookshy Academy. Her training was marked by a remarkable affinity for magical crafting, despite her low birth, and a positive genius for the crafting of mundane items. Assigned as an assistant to a young Dragonblooded Sorcerer attending the Academy, the soon to be Solar's life was an unending barrage of discovery. However, the sights and sounds faced by the young craftswoman was not the catalyst of her ascent.
It might have been a joke, a sneer at his mortal helper. It might have been frustration with his own failings. It could have been any number of things. The Dragonblooded the as yet mundane Lotus was assigned to asked her to craft a totally original piece for his current project. It was fully mundane, but he had neither the parts, nor the time.
Faced with a block of metal, and an absurd wish, Lotus sat by the workshop's forge. At this point, the briefest flash of insight into the way to begin, a slight mental twitch, resulted in perhaps the quietest, least obvious exaltation of all time. The golden glow that suffused her melded with the lights of the forge. The thunderous crack of invested power mirrored that of an experiment across the hall, and the only evidence for the sudden transcendent genius that she imbued her work with was its total, perfect functionality.
Struck by profound vision for the first time, captivated by the wonder of the world around her, and still slightly numb from her sudden ascendance, Lotus left the city later that day. She still doesn't really remember why, or how. She had no plan, she had no money, she had nothing but the food she carried with her. By lucky chance (at least so far as she knows), Lotus was found by more experienced Lunar, staying with a clan of ascetics. She was trained as she wished, given a name in the Lunar fashion (this is where she was named Lotus Ensconced in Starlight), and imparted with a very un-Solar world view, and released into the world, after nearly 9 years of companionship.
Having only recently reentered the world, and having no experience with evading the Wild Hunt, Lotus lives as cautiously as her liberated sense of self allows, but recently, news of the Cleansing has forced her closer to civilization in a search for allies, and a way to protect those that are inevitably hurt when nations feel threatened: the common man.
5 points in Martial Arts
Raising Craft (Mundane) from 3 to 5
Raising Craft (Magitech) from 3 to 4
Raising Lore and Occult from 3-4
Raising Dodge from 3 to 4
Backgrounds, Essence, Combat Stats, and Possessions
Spoiler
Backgrounds
Mentor 2 (A relatively powerful Lunar who sheltered and trained Lotus in the months after her departure from Lookshy)
Resources 2 (A self made retreat 15 miles from Nexus. Income is that made by crafting for the residents of Nexus)
Artifact 3 (see items)
Charms
Spoiler
Ox Body Technique x2
2nd Craft (mundane) Excellency
2nd Craft (Magitech) Excellency
2nd Martial Arts Excellency
2nd Lore Excellency
1st Occult Excellency
Martial Arts Essence Flow
Durability of Oak Meditation
Spirit Strengthens the Skin
Craftsman Needs No Tools
Shattering Grasp
Crack Mending Technique
Integrity Protecting Prana
Shadow Over Water
Seven Shadow Evasion
Crimson Leaping Cat Technique
Striking Fury Claws Attack
Tiger Form
Intimacies:
Celestial Exalted (wary respect, but lack of trust)
Mundane Mankind (need to aid, and protectiveness)
Realm (deep dislike for its uncarring stance)
Deathknights/Deathlords (cold hatred)
Immaculate Faith (torn between upbringing and world view)
Creation (childlike wonder)
(leaving room for 4)
Essence: ●●●●
Personal: 18/18. Peripheral: 44/44
Bonus Points/Exp
Spoiler
BP
30/30
14 spent raising Essence to 4
3 spent on Shattering Grasp
11 Spent on Abilities (all points in Athletics, Dodge, Awareness, +2 points in Resistance)
1 Point spent on Willpower, 1 Point spent raising Valor to 2
Exp
8 Spent on Crack Mending Technique
4 reserved
__________________
I am an
Spoiler
INTP Myers-Briggs Personality Type
Spoiler
The Introverted Intuitive mind typically creates a unique vision and arrives at unique insights about things, phenomena, or people. It strives to discover the essence of things and fill in the missing pieces of a puzzle.
Because sometimes, saying that you are a 3rd level CG Elf Wizards doesn't say anything at all
Sometimes, just sometimes, i really wish "I hit it again" was a viable option in real life.
Spoiler
Avatar by the excellent Kymme
Last edited by OracleofSilence : 10-09-2012 at 02:22 PM.
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
Quote:
Originally Posted by Maugan Ra
Clearly, our goal should be to invade the Realm, take the Throne, and establish a better and more cooperative social order throughout creation. For great justice and all that.
Sure! Now where did I put those Glorious Solar Lookshy Propaganda Posters and my Taboo Inflicting Diatribe...
(Although Eris doesn't want to invade the Realm; people she likes might get hurt. This is Return of the Scarlet Empress, though...)
Quote:
Alternately, use Zhou's pull in Lookshy to raise an army and retake Thorns from the Mask of Winters. That might not work so well, given that the Mask is ungodly powerful, but hey... Got to have ambitions, right?
Still allocating BP, but I might end up having Guild influence/backing... I'll certainly have at least one Major Contact there. So might help with financing things.
On the other hand, you two both buying E4 is making me wonder about whether I should spend my BP on that. E4 takes so painfully long to train.
industrious, quick question on that front, are there likely to be any ways to stunt or speed up Essence training, or will we be looking for a three-month break if the game gets to that point?
In any case, I'll aim to largely finish my sheet tonight, although full artifact and contact descriptions may take a little longer. industrious, do you have a preferred deadline on this?
Quote:
Anyway. I'm not entirely sure how Kharal Zhou would get involved with the group presently in Nexus. He can be there easily enough, but I think they were keeping a low profile, so I might not have an easy justification for joining them. Well, I guess we'll see. This assuming I get in the game, naturally.
Skandi did flare a totemic anima banner the previous day, so that might be a justification for trying to find out where the Very Obvious Lunar went. I believe Lookshy has also just announced support for the Cleansing...
Quick question: I'm considering Limit Breaks for Eris and none of the Core ones really fit. The only Virtue I'm absolutely sure will be at 3+ is Conviction; maybe Valor, but while she's gone into some extremely dangerous situations for her sister's sake, she doesn't really have the can't-turn-down-a-challenge quality of 3+ Valor (and the Valor Limit Breaks are 'berserk rage' and 'charge thoughtlessly into combat', neither of which really fits her modus operandi). Heart of Flint would be easy but 'emotionless robotic automaton' is not the direction in which I think she would snap.
industrious, could I try to work out a custom Limit Break?
For the other (potential) players: if not, is Deliberate Cruelty something you'd be okay having around, or is that too dark? It doesn't fit her usual personality at all, but it does reflect some of her deepest fears (i.e. Oh Gods, I'm Turning Into One Of Them).
__________________ PCs:
Spoiler
Word:
Spoiler
Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Snark
I must not argue on the Internet.
Internet argument is the mind-killer.
It is the little death that brings total aggravation.
I will face my annoyance.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
When it has gone past I will turn my inner eye to see its path.
Where the irritation has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
Out of character, sure, deliberate cruelty is an interesting choice. In-character, Zhou might get deeply freaked out by the previously charming wood aspect/solar (Depending on how much he's discovered about her) suddenly developing marked sadistic tendencies.
If you want a custom limit break, I might suggest one that involves you fleeing and finding a place to hide away, preferably in a hole or small tunnel. Reminiscent of the time she spent under Thorns, mostly.
__________________
"Not trusting me might be the smartest decision you made since getting off of your horse."
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
Similarly, OOC I am always interested to see where people go with that particular limit break, bit IC, Lotus would be completely horrified by it. Compassion 4 and all. However, Exalted, particularly Return of the Scarlet Empress is full to the brim with dark. It would not be out of place.
Also, I am still a little uncertain about the Martial Arts thing. Would it be acceptable to change the Tiger style charms to early Quicksilver Hand of Dreams? I know its Sidereal, but the fluff specifically states that the first 4 charms can only be learned through dreams, so a teacher is unnecessary.
__________________
I am an
Spoiler
INTP Myers-Briggs Personality Type
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The Introverted Intuitive mind typically creates a unique vision and arrives at unique insights about things, phenomena, or people. It strives to discover the essence of things and fill in the missing pieces of a puzzle.
Because sometimes, saying that you are a 3rd level CG Elf Wizards doesn't say anything at all
Sometimes, just sometimes, i really wish "I hit it again" was a viable option in real life.
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ifni
Skandi did flare a totemic anima banner the previous day, so that might be a justification for trying to find out where the Very Obvious Lunar went. I believe Lookshy has also just announced support for the Cleansing...
So he did, and so they have. Interesting.
Actually, Lookshy declaring support for the Cleansing is an interesting one. Zhou is absolutely not going to approve of that. Like, at all. Siding with an Immaculate proclamation in an attempt to keep the Realm, perhaps their oldest enemy save the Raksha, stable? That's all sorts of nonsense, as far as he's concerned.
Fortunately, he has just the right sort of mindset to disobey orders like that without it conflicting too much with his own patriotism. He's loyal to what he thinks Lookshy should be, not neccessarily what it actually is or says. And he has no bloody intention of following any orders issued by the Immaculates...
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Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
Well invading the realm can't be that hard. We would just need to kill the magistrate, the heads of the great families, and occupy the Imperial Manse. What could possibly go wrong? I mean that's one job for each of us, and it can't be that hard...
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I am an
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INTP Myers-Briggs Personality Type
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The Introverted Intuitive mind typically creates a unique vision and arrives at unique insights about things, phenomena, or people. It strives to discover the essence of things and fill in the missing pieces of a puzzle.
Because sometimes, saying that you are a 3rd level CG Elf Wizards doesn't say anything at all
Sometimes, just sometimes, i really wish "I hit it again" was a viable option in real life.
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
Quote:
Originally Posted by OracleofSilence
Similarly, OOC I am always interested to see where people go with that particular limit break, bit IC, Lotus would be completely horrified by it.
Eris would be completely horrified by it, when she snapped out of it. Possibly suicidally so. (Because she grew up believing in the Immaculate doctrines, with a really clear example of what Anathema meant and why it was important to oppose them - and feeling an uncontrollable urge to do horrible things and enjoying it would remind her strongly of a certain necrotech laboratory.)
Mmph. We'll see what industrious says about the custom Limit Break, and I'll think about it. It could be interesting, but it could also go off in a really bad direction (possibly depending strongly on timing - a Deliberate Cruelty break before the other PCs have gotten to trust or like her at all could be really bad). I might prefer not to risk it, even if that means going with Heart of Flint and re-interpreting a little. Playing a day-long Deliberate Cruelty break could also be really hard just from a writing standpoint.
On invading the Realm / killing Dynasts and magistrates: no, no, I want to use my social charms! Also parents are probably in the Thousand Scales.
Anyway, going to get work done so I can finish up the sheet tonight
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Snark
I must not argue on the Internet.
Internet argument is the mind-killer.
It is the little death that brings total aggravation.
I will face my annoyance.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
When it has gone past I will turn my inner eye to see its path.
Where the irritation has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
But... but...
Ah fine. Silly artifacts will have to wait. First things first for me though: get much higher Resources. Because right now, being an artificer will be really difficult without a good workshop.
As for the Limit Break, it could be worse. At least Deliberate Cruelty lets you retain some control over your actions... well, sort of.
__________________
I am an
Spoiler
INTP Myers-Briggs Personality Type
Spoiler
The Introverted Intuitive mind typically creates a unique vision and arrives at unique insights about things, phenomena, or people. It strives to discover the essence of things and fill in the missing pieces of a puzzle.
Because sometimes, saying that you are a 3rd level CG Elf Wizards doesn't say anything at all
Sometimes, just sometimes, i really wish "I hit it again" was a viable option in real life.
Re: [Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ifni
Sure! Now where did I put those Glorious Solar Lookshy Propaganda Posters and my Taboo Inflicting Diatribe...
(Although Eris doesn't want to invade the Realm; people she likes might get hurt. This is Return of the Scarlet Empress, though...)
Still allocating BP, but I might end up having Guild influence/backing... I'll certainly have at least one Major Contact there. So might help with financing things.
On the other hand, you two both buying E4 is making me wonder about whether I should spend my BP on that. E4 takes so painfully long to train.
industrious, quick question on that front, are there likely to be any ways to stunt or speed up Essence training, or will we be looking for a three-month break if the game gets to that point?
In any case, I'll aim to largely finish my sheet tonight, although full artifact and contact descriptions may take a little longer. industrious, do you have a preferred deadline on this?
Quick question: I'm considering Limit Breaks for Eris and none of the Core ones really fit. The only Virtue I'm absolutely sure will be at 3+ is Conviction; maybe Valor, but while she's gone into some extremely dangerous situations for her sister's sake, she doesn't really have the can't-turn-down-a-challenge quality of 3+ Valor (and the Valor Limit Breaks are 'berserk rage' and 'charge thoughtlessly into combat', neither of which really fits her modus operandi). Heart of Flint would be easy but 'emotionless robotic automaton' is not the direction in which I think she would snap.
industrious, could I try to work out a custom Limit Break?
For the other (potential) players: if not, is Deliberate Cruelty something you'd be okay having around, or is that too dark? It doesn't fit her usual personality at all, but it does reflect some of her deepest fears (i.e. Oh Gods, I'm Turning Into One Of Them).
Deliberate Cruelty is a perfectly reasonable Limit Break, and the RP potential of your character snapping and then being horrified works beautifully. I'd also be willing to work out a custom Limit Break, provided it is up to the same level as the canon ones.
As for Essence 4; there will be a period for Essence training. But other than the Dragon-Blood, I see no reason for anyone else to have Essence 4 at Character Creation.
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Originally Posted by OracleofSilence
Also, I am still a little uncertain about the Martial Arts thing. Would it be acceptable to change the Tiger style charms to early Quicksilver Hand of Dreams? I know its Sidereal, but the fluff specifically states that the first 4 charms can only be learned through dreams, so a teacher is unnecessary.
It's Sidereal Martial Arts for a reason, I'm afraid. Perhaps the Celestial Monkey fix I linked to?
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[Exalted] Re-recruiting for Return of the Scarlet Empress - 2-3 players wanted
As does Lotus Ensconced In Starlight, Oracle. I need to come up with a nice elaborate Solar name for Eris... one that is less self-hating than Discord.
