Wouldn't that lead to Zurin effectively killing a Deathlord, since as a proper Immaculate the Mask of Winters would need to let go of his worldly tethers and allow his soul to renter the cycle of reincarnation?
...Dragon-Blooded monk slays Deathlord by converting him to a religion that compels him to pass on. Yeah, that sounds properly Exalted. Good Plot indeed.
No, you see I thought about this and very technically this is less heretical than other things.
The Immaculate Order has five Noble Insights and Diligent Practices as the core of the faith:
First Noble Insight: All beings in Creation are constantly dying and being reborn, ascending and descending the Road of Enlightenment. Those who Exalt are very close to the end of the Road, while insects and plants are near the beginning. Most sentient mortals are somewhere near the middle.
Second Noble Insight: As beings approach the end of the Road, they approach the infinite perfection of Essence that is the Elemental Dragons, who hold Creation together.
Third Noble Insight: Working in solitude and striving to surpass their lot in life, all beings in Creation draw away from the perfection of the Elemental Dragons. Working together and accepting their present incarnations, all beings in Creation mimic the Elemental Dragons and approach their perfection.
Fourth Noble Insight: The Dragon-Blooded, disciples and children of the mortal incarnations of the Elemental Dragons, lead the Immaculates toward that degree of perfection.
Fifth Noble Insight: The Anathema, who reject the Elemental Dragons and obey only their own ambitions, draw Creation toward despair and ruin.
Now, from these five noble insights, there is nothing which explicitly denies ghosts; only Anathema. The most literal reading possible would not render the Mask of Winters an Anathema, although beings which are almost certainly Anathema serve him. If we were to now assume that the Mask of Winters works together with the Immaculates, donates of his vast wealth, builds temples, does conversions etc, one could most certainly place him as a sort of righteous ghost, working to make up for a life of sin in undeath. Sure, it would be an unorthodox reading of the Texts, but hard times make for hard measures.
In addition, the Mask of Winters, while not being on the Road of reincarnation currently due to being stuck outside it as a horrid shade from beyond life, could almost certainly have guidance if assigned an experienced monk or nun to aid as a sin-eater and take his sins upon themselves; a great, excruciating work certainly, but there is great reward for selfless sacrifice.
The Mask of Winters is currently neither being dying or being reborn, this means that he is technically outside the mandates of the other Noble Insights, marking him as someone who should be judged as a spirit rather than a man or woman. Now, unlike other ghosts, the Mask of Winters here chooses of his own accord to work with the Immaculate Order after a conversion. Spirits are normally obligated to simply perform their allotted tasks; gods perform their duties, ghosts pass on and demons obey sorcerers and stay within their prison. However, should a ghost promise it's aid in the service of the Immaculate Faith, would it not be to turn it away from righteous action and penance for it's sinful life if one were to hinder it?
I know this is a slightly unorthodox reading Brother Ichypa, but bear with me here.
The Diligent Practices are thus:
First Diligent Practice: Hear a recital of an Immaculate Text at least once a month, in the company of at least 17 other followers of the Philosophy.
Second Diligent Practice: Respect and honor spirits only according to the calendar and in the specific rites set down by the Immaculate Order, giving each spirit its due only insofar as it serves the harmony of Creation. Worship no spirit, elemental, small god or Anathema at all.
Third Diligent Practice: Imitate in word and deed the honorable behaviors of the five Immaculate Dragons, the mortal incarnations of the Dragons of the Elements. Emulate the thoughts appropriate to your incarnation as decreed by the Immaculate Dragons.
Fourth Diligent Practice: Obey the Dragon-Blooded, the descendants and disciples of the Immaculate Dragons, who are so close to enlightenment that their commands cannot cause a soul to stray from the Road.
Fifth Diligent Practice: Resist the commands of the Anathema to the fullest degree of the abilities of your present incarnation, and do not fall into despair.
Again, is the Mask of Winters capable of listening to a recital of the Immaculate Texts at least once per month? Definitely, this can account for both him and his personal honour-guard who can listen to the sermons of the experienced monk or nun I recommended be sent as an attache. I am sure that as a new convert, the Mask would be delighted to take part of such. Now, as for the next Practice, the Mask of Winters is already a spirit and does not demand any worship at all, so forbidding it will not be a great step, nor will the tokens of appreciation demanded by the calendar, so there are again no clashes between doctrine and practicality.
For the third Practice, any king and war-leader would certainly see great benefits from imitating the Immaculate Dragons, especially the noble words of Mela and Pasiap both. And indeed, the Mask of Winters as a creature of the dark underworld should find great kinship with the message of Danaa'd who swam down to imprison the Anathema at the end of the Glorious Uprising. Certainly, for a creature of death, one would assume that there would not be much else, but even the dead can learn to sow life, and even those without breath can learn to control their excesses.
The Mask of Winters is not just a ghost, but also a ruler, and as such is offered the same degree of leniency in obeying the Dragon-Blooded as other such figures often are, in addition, as the Mask of Winters already stands away from the Road, disobeying the Dragon-Blooded could not cause him to stray farther than already. As such, one should instead imagine the Dragon-Blooded as noble advisors to this ancient spirit, for while he cannot stray further, their advice could certainly lead him closer. And finally, the Mask of Winter has not shown any inclination to follow the commands of the Anathema, and has instead shown great talent for commanding their kind. I am certain that this is the mark of a being of supreme self-discipline such that even the wicked demons beyond the coils of time must obey his will.
Thus, as vartabed of the temple in Ample Pace Prefecture and lama of the Fourth Coil of the Dragons, I recommend sending forth a delegation of monks to aid this missionary.
(I spent thirty minutes writing this post and they are the best thirty minutes ever spent.)
So I haven't homebrewed in forever but there is a game I may be running in the short-term future, and so I needed to put down some notes as to the setting for players to make their characters, and uh.
It kinda ran away from me. In particular I have lost any skill I might have had at keeping things concise and neatly ordered
So have this.
The Grave of Swords
A curse is a living thing, and all things that live must die; and all that dies must be buried, lest evil be invited upon the world. Thus, a graveyard was made for curses.
There lies in the Southeast of Creation a valley astride civilization, yet outside it. The jungle stretches to its north east, while its south and west are bordered by great ochre mountains, jagged as knives, and the last stretch of a distant river, nameless in this forbidden land waters its fields. Grass grows green and brown and tall as a man's knees, relentlessly cut around cities and villages to make place for fields of maize and squash; meat is a rarity, and the feathered strider-beasts are ever a threat to those who drive their herds of goat or sheep too close to the jungle. At the heart of the valley lie the last remains of a broken dragon of metal and stone, and in the cage of its ribs has been built a city.
Riches abound in the valley. Eastern leylines bring fertility to the too-harsh soil, and spices grow besides staple crops. The salt quarries in the east have yet to run empty, and in the great city looms built out of the dragon's gears weave flax without end. But that is not the true wealth of the Grave of Swords; this land glitters with metals of mystical power, weapons planted into the earth like memorial stones. Burial mounds sit foreboding, each one a question - dare you risk my danger for the power intombed within me? And too many already have answered yes - this is the time of the Plague of Swords, when mortals and Exalts and stranger things yet wield weapons that were meant to be forgotten and roam the valley carving their fate at the tip of the blade.
Records of the First Age are myths and legends, the gods shy from sharing this story, and those things which would gladly tell it must never be trusted.
This is known: when the Exalted of the Age of Dreams grew into their power but before hubris consumed them, they forged tools and weapons of which they themselves were afraid. An uninhabited valley in the southeast of Creation was made into a crypt for these failures. There they were buried, and five monoliths of jade engraved with orichalcum were set as seals to keep them from escaping, and a guardian was set to keep fools from stealing what was best forgotten. Over time, such a place found much use; Exalts made pilgrimage unto this forsaken land to bury relics of great power which had nonetheless failed to find grace in their eyes. Failed creations banished out of spite by craftsmen who would accept nothing less than perfection, swords which had taken the wrong life in an excess of passion and which their masters wept to look upon, and more still.
When the rule of the golden ones ended, the Dragons who had rebelled gathered many of their creations which were too dangerous to use and too resilient to destroy, and made journey to the Grave of Swords, and the guardian accepted this.
Yet in time war plagued the Shogunate of Dragons to such extent that they sought any weapon, any advantage against each other. Their greed overcame their hubris, and they broke one of the monoliths sealing the valley and set to plunder its tombs. Seven crypts they open; seven weapons they drew from the depths; seven evil spirits followed them, and brought ruin upon the dragons. The dragons sought no more the weapons of old, but they set watchposts to study the grave and learn from the ancient arts of the age then gone.
Then came the horde from outside the world, and there was no room left for wisdom, lest the Dragons all be wise dead men. An army of the Exalted, dying of contagion, brought the weapons of old to the light of day and wielded them in battle, bringing ruination upon the fae and themselves both. Another of the monoliths was shattered, the guardian himself perished in battle, but the children of the Wyld were halted there, long enough for the Sword of Creation to be plunged in their heart from a distant isle.
Silence came upon the valley. In time, mortals were born among the ashes of the world, enough that some found their way to this accursed graveyard, and made a city out of the corpse of its guardian, a dragon of brass and gold and jade. Like worms they made its mighty body their abode, tore at its wires and its bones to make hollows for themselves, pried its scales to build houses and forge armors, dug furrows for their fields with the shards of its claws. And this was the first city of the Grave, which was called the Hearth.
For five centuries the Grave had existed in the shadow of the Realm. When the armies of the Empress came to seize the place and claim its rumored power, they found it ruled by a man who had made himself one with the heart of the dead guardian, who spoke to them dire warnings. The Scarlet Empress heeded these words, but could not fully pass on the great opportunity at hand. The Grave was made a satrapy held in her personal name, and careful ledgers were kept of which ancient weapons were taken by her chosen - never for more than a few decades at a time, always eventually returned to the valley. For when this was not done, evil surely followed, and the seven spirits still haunted the Grave.
But now the Empress is gone. Many of the soldiers holding the valley in her name have pulled back to fight distant wars, some officers unwisely taking forbidden arms with them - they will come back in time. Those who remain eye the Hearth's throne hungrily, and ask themselves why they have not taken it yet. The dragon-man on this throne sees the light in their eyes, and musters forces of his own. Merchants from the Scavenger Lands world who have made a fortune trading the riches of the valley now weigh the profits of war against the stability of peace, and make different choices each. The Great Schools are going to war with mystical fighting arts. New Exalts whose awesome power surpasses that of the Dragons flock to the valley, many of them claiming forsaken blades and working designs of their own. Surely disaster is at hand; surely this is the Age of Sorrows.
Sample Cursed Sword: Searing Glory
In a remote corner of the Grave, there is a small village of farmers, eking a living from maize crops and turkeys. Between two of their fields is a crater, and at the bottom of that crater is a sword, stuck blade-first as if it had fallen from the heavens. This is Searing Glory, an orichalcum daiklave two-thirds as long as a man is tall, its golden blade adorned with a vein-like pattern of red. None of the villagers touch this sword, for they know it to bring only misfortune.
Searing Glory brings power to the one who holds it, even the lowliest of mortals. It is not merely a blade of incredible size and sharpness that can be held as lightly as a twig, but a font of sun-like might which flows from its hilt into the body of its owner, filling them with divine strength and alacrity. But the mortal body cannot easily handle such energy, and once a master has bonded with Searing Glory the bond cannot be broken; every time they draw the blade, their body is consumed a little more from the inside. Inevitably the daiklave's power becomes too much to bear, and Searing Glory's wielder becomes one with the sun's fire, one moment of glorious power leaving behind nothing but ashes.
The last time Searing Glory was held was a century ago, when a rot came over the village's crop and starvation threatened. One girl stepped into the crater, drew the sword, and went to raid another village for food. Their parents wept and mourned as if she was already dead; even as she saved her village, she saw in her people's eyes that there was no place among them for a doomed girl wielding the sun's sword. She left, plied her services as a warrior, and went to fight the mountain-folk. A year later another woman who had become her lieutenant brought the sword back to the village along with all the war-spoils the girl had gathered, and a small urn containing ashes. The sword has been untouched since.
The Hearth
This is the city which rules the Grave of Swords: wide paved streets, curving red-tiled roofs, stone-and-moss gardens, wide villas housing vast extended families, guards in shining bronze armor. This is the city which rules the Grave of Swords: a palace built out of the hollow skull of a copper dragon, the last whole remnant of the valley's guardian, a stone wall built between its protruding ribs, textile mills as vast as palaces housing its repurposed muscles and tendons. This is the city which rules the Grave of Swords: a sprawling maze of winding streets and ramshackle houses leaning against the walls and expanding a little more each year, beautiful canals colored by the mesmerizing patterns of dyes and other poisons, great fortified camps where foreign soldiers watch over slaves whose freedom is only a wall away, deep mining pits where the natives of the valley extract copper from the sunken limbs of a dead dragon, which they smelt for bronze.
The Hearth is a city of great wealth and power which cannot do anything with it. The Hearth rules the Grave, but the Hearth is only one city with no authority over its sister-cities. The Hearth is ruled by a draconic Steward, but it is a Satrapy answering to the Realm. The Hearth is wealthy, but its wealth is harnessed by merchants from the Scavenger Lands. The Hearth has some of the greatest champions of the Southeast, but it has no army. The Hearth obeys the Realm's law under the Satrap, the Grave's common law under the Steward, martial law under the Legion, and the Great Schools scoff at obeying any law other than their codes of honor.
The Steward
One man rules the Hearth. But he is not truly a man, and he does not truly rule. At the foundation of the city, the Steward seized the brazen heart of the long-dead dragon that once guarded the Grave, and pushed it into his chest, where it devoured his heart of flesh. The Steward has skin of hepatizon and bleeds dark oil, his breath is smoke and his eyes shine like furnaces. All his existence has been spent trying to hold together his volatile city and managing all its power players. He is a pragmatic man. He is a compromising man. He is getting very tired.
The Steward answers to the Satrap of the Grave, and the Satrap has grown apt at knowing how far she can push her theoretically-absolute authority before she finds the city sabotaging her every effort with no hint of open rebellion. She resents his influence, but accepts it as a necessity; the alternative is martial law, and making herself a puppet of the Fourth Legion. The Steward has no true army, but his word and his law are enforced by a corps of hepatizon-clad champions who abandoned their Great Schools to serve him; a worse betrayal can scarcely be imagined and they are loathed by all seven schools. The opinion of those to whom the Steward's guard is the only recourse against the schools' claims to authority is more nuanced.
The Seven Great Schools
This is true: the swords of the Grave are dangerous to wield and cannot leave the valley for long. Often they bring doom to their wielder. This is also true: one of sufficient skill, strength, or luck, may master one such weapon and survive its danger. Thirteen heroes in the history of the valley have not only picked up a sword, but mastered it so thoroughly has to create a Sword Art, a martial art style originating from this one weapon. These heroes went on to build the Great Schools, passing down their teachings to pupils who wield mundane weapons that emulate the design of their founding Artifact, which was passed from master to master. These were once mere dojos where a single master oversaw a dozen pupils. Now the schools are factions in their own right, numbering dozens of masters and hundreds of pupils, vying for influence over the city, running entire neighborhoods according to their whim and their arcane codes of honor and glory.
Of the Thirteen Great Schools, seven remain. One was never a school; in each generation it numbers only one master and one student, and it is unclear if there is a current generation alive today. Two were defeated so thoroughly and utterly that their founding Artifact was surrendered to another school, and their Sword Art absorbed into that school's own style. Three suffered the most dire fate; when the Fourth Legion asserted its authority over the Hearth, the Great Schools chafed, and years of unrest and street-fighting almost led to a crackdown which might have seen all the schools wiped out. As a result, the three most disliked schools were made scapegoats, blamed for their rebellion, and banished from the city, all while the remaining seven promised in secret chambers that they would no longer trouble the Dragon-Blooded so much. These Banished Schools now dwell in the other cities of the Hearth, and harbor a resentment as deep as the history of the valley's cursed blades.
Sample Great School: The Steel Antler School
Other schools sneer at the Steel Antler, calling its style passive, reactive, lacking in initiative; they say it fails to show any skill, instead utilizing its opponent's flaws. At the same time, they value the school's existence; duels with the Steel Antler's students are an easy way to show their own pupils the dangers of thoughtless aggression. The Steel Antler style focuses on rapid movement at very close range, confounding circular patterns of avoidance, and lightning-quick parries. It is said the Steel Antler master disarms her opponent twice: first by stepping inside his reach too close for him to use his weapon effectively, then by actually tearing the weapon out of his grasp. Its weapons are the deer horn knives, always wielded in pair, as difficult to master as they are confusing to face. It is a style appealing to the Grave's men, who are often taught not to seek individual glory or act aggressively but to be calm and studious.
Hassan Sword-born is the current master of the school, and he wields the titular Steel Antlers, a pair of deer horn knives forged out of starmetal. Their wielder is endowed with the ability to see patterns and flaws; the motion of a coming blow is outlined to him as trails of light in the air, and his opponent appears as a shining pattern where weak points are blazing dots. But the Antlers were flawed in their conception, or perhaps too successful; that power eventually bleeds into every aspect of their wielder's being, until they see the flaws in all things - systems, philosophies, structures, people. Like every master before him, Hassan Sword-born is a jaded, cynical man, and this affects his school. Where once the Steel Antler were protectors of the Hearth's common people, they now still grant that protection - but at a price. Mere students form small gangs running simple protection rackets; but masters tend to make a philosophy of their cynicism, and the price for their help is often chosen for painful irony, seeking to show outsiders to the school the futility of their cares and worldviews.
The Hook Syndicate
The Fish-hook Gambler of the Night Caste once challenged a demon whose name is now forgotten to a test of skill. The demon stole the Solar's very own soul from his body; but the Solar outmatched him by stealing his own theft from the pages of history, such that the demon could only know that the the Gambler had bested him but never how. By the terms of their agreement, the demon became the Gambler's slave for a year; but tricking him, the Exalt used that term of service to forge the demon himself into two hook swords channeling his excellence at thievery - when the term was up, the demon was technically free, but swords cannot go anywhere under their own power, and so he served the Gambler for much, much longer.
For over a thousand years the Gambler's Hooks have hungered for freedom. When the dominion of the Solars fell, they thought their time was at hand; time and time again their voice has brought gullible souls to them and convinced them to wield their power, then tried to guide them through the steps of destroying the valley's seals. Time and time again, they have failed. The thieving demon does not appreciate failure. A sullen weapon, it has abandoned the frustrating hope of escape, and built an empire of crime through the proxy of mortal wielders.
The Gambler's Hooks rest in a shrine in a villa of the Heart, a front owned by a placid riverborn merchant. Through this house pass legions of thieves, gamblers, smugglers and racketeers, all taking their orders from the swords, and offering it sacrifices to bolster their power. Only the best of this little syndicate are allowed to wield the pair, and only in the pursuit of a crime exceptional not merely in its profit, but in its daring, taking special pleasure in enraging the Satrap and the Legion - for they are Exalted. For decades the Hooks have been satisfied with this arrangement; but of late the demon has been feeling a strange bond, broken for ages and now renewed - somewhere in the world, there is a soul to which he claimed ownership through its greatest feat of thievery. That soul could put him into slavery again - or it could be his hope of true freedom at last.
The Merchant Lords
If one listens to the riverfolk merchants of the Hearth, then all the valley's wealth is their doing, for they saw opportunity where natives saw only a motive for complacency. The truth is rather more than the riverfolk came from the Scavenger Lands with their plunderer's wealth, their retinues of slaves in a place where there were none, and their divine-blooded and Exalted mercenaries, and took over much of the industry and trade of the valley, not in one bloody coup but in a progressive but no less destructive encroaching. Though the merchant lords may harvest more resources out of the valley than the graveborn did, this is less a factor of skill and more the result of their web of trade letting them import manpower and money from family and investors in the Scavenger Lands.
Most riverfolk (those who are not slaves, anyway) either came to the Grave as part of a merchant lord's retinue, or are descended from one who did. These bonds endure, forming the loose connection of a "merchant house," where everyone is patron and client to someone else. Even a lowly laborer whose name will never be known to the lord of his house can find in others of his status a kind of support network, and may hope to become client to one less lowly than he is. These connections make the riverfolk stand apart from the graveborn, whom they see as lacking in social tissue and connection - a bias which often hides how deeply hierarchical and ossified riverfolk houses can be.
Slaves without Numbers
Slavery has always been a contentious subject in the Grave, as the institution had been banned ages ago when the merchants first came, and the graveborn find it loathesome both for the bondage that it is and for the pressure it allows merchants to exert on them. Out of pragmatic compromise - some say weakness - the Stewart of the Hearth has instituted a system of licence allowing riverfolk to keep and work slaves as long as they remain within specific delineated areas and follow specific routes. Thus, the overwhelming majority of slaves work the salt-quarries of the northeast and the lumber exploitations of the northwest, as well as some plantations around the Hearth. These bring the merchants great wealth; but if a slave is ever to step out of the boundaries allowed to their owner, they are free forevermore. Thus slave camps are heavily fortified and guarded against escape, and the merchants grumble increasingly loudly at the costs this imposes on them. Some merchants deal with it by eschewing slavery altogether, most notably the flaxen princes running textile meals, while others agitate for reform - by violent means if necessary.
The life of a slave is a harsh, and often short one; slaves are not born in the Grave (for a slave's children are free) but imported from the Scavenger Lands, to be put to harsh and long manual labor. Slaves find themselves stranger among strangers, neither riverfolk nor graveborn, kept in enclosed camps. Merchants try to discourage any kind of community in their property and the harsh labor goes some way to help it, but people are people, and each of the three domains of slavery - plantation, salt-quarry and lumber - have their own peculiar culture, communicated in languages their guards rarely understand. Slaves sing of their homeland, tell the stories of how they were captured (often at war), and draw salt-circles or glyphs in the trees to ward away the ghosts of those slaves who died before them. Advice and skills are a precious commodity, one of the only things slaves can trade between each other; one who can teach the others how to sleep better on hard soil or keep warm at night often becomes a revered figure for as long as they survive the harsh conditions.
Sometimes, more often than they like to admit, the merchants do not realize that one of their newest purchases was an officer in some defeated army, one whose tradeable skill is how to endure, fight as a group, and move through the night. Then come escapes. As soon as a slave steps out of their camp, they are free - though of course, the merchants rarely abide by this rule if they can avoid it. Once free, however, the slaves find themselves most foreign of all the people of the valley, more even that the riverfolk or the Realm. Some try to convince graveborn communities to accept them, and rarely succeed. Some trek all the way to the Hearth and offer their services to the Fourth Legion, who rarely ever looks at a man twice before taking him in. Others form small communities of their own at the edges of the valley, and are often willing to raid the burial mounds for their sacred weapons in order to defend themselves. When curses do not strike them down, these free men have much to be angry about, and the power to do something about it.
Many graveborn do not acknowledge the status of slaves as such even under the terms drawn by the Steward, though few care to act on this. Still, every so often groups of like-minded graveborn, especially those from the towns outside the Hearth, band together to strike at the merchant lords' slave business. This is not always good for the slaves; some consider them to be free men unrighteously held captive and work to help them escape their camps, but other consider them to be simply be outlaws, non-men existing outside society and used to pressure the graveborn into poverty or service under terms that are slavery by any other name. For those groups, the best solution to the problem of slavery is the death of slaves, much easier to arrange than their freedom.
Fourth's Redoubt
Centuries ago the Scarlet Empress claimed authority over the Grave of Swords, but she never made a true conquest, for there was no battle. The Steward surrendered, but spoke dire warnings, and the Empress was wise enough to heed them. One of the Throne's own Legions built a fort within a javelin's throw of the Hearth, and since then Throne Legions have been cycling in and out of the valley. For the last five decades the Fourth Legion has held this redoubt, and it is now far more than a military fort. "Camp followers" have become a population of their own, and generations of soldiers have spent the entirety of their service in the Grave.
Once the Fourth could have claimed to be able to subjugate the entire valley through force of arm if need be, and would have been believed. Now it is barely at half-strength. Many of its Exalts have gone back home as their Houses prepare for war, taking personally loyal soldiers with them. Without their leadership, soldiers have deserted, blending into the local population. What remains of the Fourth has been called the "Stray Legion," for its bizarre insistence on staying behind when the Realm decides its future.
The legionlord of the Fourth is not amused. Soon, she fears, the people of the Grave will rebel against her, or the Houses will come to claim the valley's wealth in their own name, or the barbarians will invade, or all at once. With her officers she already draws plans to address these issues before they manifest, by whatever means necessary. Even the Satrap now worries about her ambition.
Shards
The shards of the valley are the many villages dotting its landscape. Typically small in size, they are connected to the Hearth by a lattice of beaten-earth roads. Away from the spills, their lands are more fertile, and their crops are coveted by a city which is ever hungry; the Satrap's agent are ruthless in collecting taxes, and the people of the shards are cunning in concealing their belongings. Many of the shards exist near tomb or crypt, and their people are avid practitioner of hedge magic to ward off their influence; every village has a wise one or more.
Of the shards, three are powerful enough to influence the valley as a whole, straddling the line between town and city.
Forgetfulness is the largest settlement outside of the Hearth; a town spilling out of a now-empty crypt, it is home to a council of Blind Ones, wise men who dwell in the crypt and never see the sun. They read the murals of the burial chambers to divine the history of the valley, and through it its future; even the Satrap's men, who scoff at superstition, fear their powers. More dangerous than their rumored magic, their knowledge lets them know which of the Grave's Artifacts may be wielded safely and how, a knowledge they prize dearly and trade expensively. Yet rumors abound of dissent in Forgetfulness; it is said that the Brave Ones, most elite of their warrior-women, have entered a word-feud with the Blind Ones, and none knows what this could mean for the town, or the rest of the valley.
Holiness is a sacred town, whose size belies its influence; it sits at the foot of the mountains, astride the nameless river which runs from its peaks, and so controls one of the main routes of commerce out of the valley while holding back the fearsome goat-herders who would raid villages every year if they had their wont. At its center is a ziggurat-palace built around one of the three remaining monolith-seals protecting the world from the valley; there rules the Sister, priestess-queen protected by a champion wielding one of the valley's forsaken weapons. She has only ever paid allegiance to the Hearth out of respect for the Steward's strength, and she watches now to see if he shall fail and leave her free.
Dryness is less a city than it is a town-sized slave camp; hundreds of workers toil in its misshapen salt quarries, plagued by desiccation and haunting dreams, to feed the Salt Lords who rule over them. The quarries are at the easternmost edge of the Valley, a wound in the jungle; a small army of mercenary is on retainer to thwart threats from the woods and the lands beyond the Grave, for at the heart of the quarries is the broken base of a monolith which no longer protects anything. Strange dreams haunt the town of Dryness, for their salt is not wholly natural, and echoes of the Wyld hang over the quarries like miasma.
Places of the Wild
Swordbleed
One cannot bury a hundred and a hundred more cursed blades in one valley and not expect these dead curses to rot and foul the land. The monoliths bind their power and the ley lines of the Grave are strong, but two of these monoliths now stand broken, and the swords do bleed. Rarely is a single Artifact enough to cause such taint; but when proximity or geomantic alignment causes their energies to blend, then the Swordbleed unravels the skein of Fate. The most potent but least dangerous of these are isolated locales; a grove where all the trees have daggers for leaves, a burial mound whose dead rise on each new moon to ply a sword's hunger for battle, a crimson pond whose water makes the blood turn to red jade in one's vein. Worse yet, sometimes the taint comes alive, and trees rotted with curse usurp a Forest King. These are places of powerful magic, but easily avoided.
The true Swordbleed is more insidious, and yet more beautiful also. When the curse-flow of blades contaminates a stream of water, that water flows easily but shines with the color of magical materials. Such water taints the land it passes through in subtle ways and twists the flesh of men over years or decades. The wise one often draws this water for use in rituals and thaumaturgy, for it is potent; all the same it must not be allowed to reach the Grave's pure rivers. For this reason, worship of the Sobeksi elementals is wide-spread in the shards; mortals offer them worship and sacrifice in exchange for their help cleansing the streams.
Those Sobeksi which stanch Swordbleed by purging it out of the water consume great amount of powers and become lean and hungry beasts, needing ever more prayers, whose scales are engraved with warding glyphs and whose breath can purify illness. Those who keep the water clean by drinking the curse-flow themselves become twisted into weapon-beasts with scales of magical materials and teeth like daiklaves, imbued with an echo of the Artifacts' powers; these guardians need little nourishment, but their minds grow strange and twisted, and their nature far more than elemental.
Isojichi
No one remembers what the purpose of Isojichi once was, nor the meaning of its name, though records may yet exist in those places which call themselves remnants of the Shogunate. Those few daring enough to venture into the Grave's only shadowland, a place of dessicated shrubbery, bone-trees and treacherous will-o'-wisps, up in the mountains at the edge of the valley, speak of a place small as a village but built as strong as a palace. It has lain forgotten for ages, yet still lights blink in the night, sending messages which people have forgotten how to read.
Isojichi is a place full of treasures, but these treasures cannot be grasped by mortal hands. An intricate web of advanced technology of which no single component makes sense in a vacuum, its corridors are haunted by whispers and warnings for no one to hear, and its perpetual scrolls write and erase new messages every day. There is something buried at the heart of Isojichi, but no adventurer has yet managed to access this treasure and come back; most are content with stealing the shiny, glowing trinkets of its steel-and-wire apparatuses, and selling them to cunning merchants who can derive some purpose out of them. The wise do not linger long enough to find a true prize, for cold-eyed soldiers with body of mist and iron come every night, walking patrol routes that no longer make any sense.
The Carved Ones
The Blind Ones of Forgetfulness know the lore of the Grave and its swords; but such knowledge cannot come from simply dwelling in an ancient crypt. Some must go out in the valley, collect the stories of the shards' folk, study the forsaken weapons in close proximity, record the taint of Swordbleed. This is the task of the Carved Ones, who belong to no shard. These wandering lorekeepers have burned glyphs of warding into their skin, and can be recognized with one glimpse of their face. They are ascetics, pursuing dangerous knowledge for the sake of the valley's people, and as such are granted hospitality without question wherever they go.
The Carved Ones rarely meet the fate of mortal men. Exposing themselves to curses over and over, dealing with ancient and tainted spirits, they find the curse bleeding into their flesh until it changes them. The fortunate die young, their body unable to endure such transformations. Those who are strong enough may live for over a century or even more - changing until they are unrecognizable as men. When such ancient ones finally die, their ghosts invariably rise as tormented beasts of terrible power; for this reason, Carved Ones on their deathbeds are sealed within bronze coffins and buried in the Chasm of Shades at the foot of the mountains. It is rare for these ghosts to escape their coffins - but not unheard of.
People of the Valley
The graveborn are the oldest native population of the valley, and by far the most numerous. They tend towards light brown skin, curly black hair, and eyes which range from brown to gold to red. They favor sharp-lined tunics and skirts dyed in geometric patterns of warm or dark colors. The more recent outsiders consider them an uncouth, superstitious people, and gloss over the fact that they have been learning the valley's dangers and opportunities for long before they came, and that it is they who harvested the dead dragon. Graveborn of the Hearth consider themselves a sophisticated people, wise with the martial wisdom of the Sword Arts and the industry of the city; graveborn of the shards see the city as a tumorous growth which enforces unearned authority over the valley and is the vector through which the Realm can control their lives. Oral storytelling holds a great importance to the graveborn, as it is the means through which they track the history and threats of the valley's countless artifacts.
The riverfolk are the descendants of the greater entourage of merchants from the River Province, largely found in the Hearth. They tend towards bronze skin, straight hair ranging from black to auburn, and pale-colored eyes, and dress in long, flowing clothes; long nails and thin hands are considered a token of prestige among them. They have forged the connections between East and South that run through the valley, brought many foreign goods and exported the unique wealth found therein, and as such consider themselves to be the clever, ambitious people who turned a backwater into a thriving place. Graveborn instead tend to look at them as arrivist and scavengers who do not understand the dangers of the valley and would despoil its wealth in a century when it has lasted five so far. Many riverborn consider themselves merchant-princes in the making, even those who toil in manual labor, and all but the worst-off outcasts belong at least nominally to a "merchant house," the retinue of a given merchant that came to settle the Hearth - even when that merchant is long-dead and they are merely the fourth-removed daughter of a cattle-driver working for that merchant.
Raptorfolk come from the jungle; unlike their sicklefolk cousins further north, they are of diminutive size, but their talons and fangs are sharp while their feathers are magnificent. In the Hearth they are considered an adventurous but naive people, taking dangerous jobs normally reserved for children in the textile mills. Those raptorfolk dwelling outside the city are wholly unlike this picture; a semi-sedentary people splitting their year between the grass and the trees, they harbor deep resentment for the once-common practice per which the valley's people would hunt them down like animals for their valuable feathers. Beyond their forest dwellings is Heart-upon-Stone, capital of a sicklefolk nation, whose people are rarely seen in the Grave but are nonetheless the subject of lurid tales of blood-worship.
The mountainborn are a people from outside the valley; they are herders of goat and sheep who dwell in the rocky cliffs that line the Grave to its west and south. They are needed and yet dangerous; they bring the meat so valued by the elites of the city and towns, and yet every year some of them come down the slopes to raid and plunder, pelt-clad berserkers and slate-eyed slingers moving too fast for any army to fight effectively. Merchants passing through the mountains pay them tribute during ritualized false raids, never sure when the tribe charging them down the mountain slope will actually stop and heed the agreements.
War in the Valley
Warfare has existed in the Grave for as long as humans have dwelled in it, but it has often taken a peculiar form. The Grave lacks a tradition for large armies, and could not have withstood the Realm's conquest even if they had tried. Instead graveborn culture emphasize the role of individual champions, and battles between the cities of the valley often took the form of skirmishes between small group of warriors where each individual woman seeks to claim personal glory by finding and defeating the most prestigious opponent on the other side. To kill one's enemy in war is seen as a less worthy victory than forcing them to yield, taking their weapons, honor, and ransom.
Such emphasis on champions is partly born out of the Grave's small population and partly out of the very nature of the Grave of Swords. No city would go to war without at least one champion yielding one of the valley's ancient magical weapons or armors, and the duel of these magically endowed warriors tends to be the centerpiece of any skirmish; battle often ends when a relic-bearer is at a disadvantage and chooses to retreat. When they cannot or choose not to and their opponent defeats them and claims their blade, this often ends the war.
Those who are not so fortunate as to hold Artifact weapons are clad in bronze, for the valley is poor in iron but vastly rich in copper harvested from the dragon's corpse and natural mines in the mountains, and imports tin through the river. The most elite of champions are typically clad in hepatizon, their armor and weapons bearing an unmistakable purple-black cast.
It has been years since the last true battle between the Hearth's cities, although fighting against mountainborn raids are constant. The Fourth Legion casts a looming shadow over the valley; its soldiers are clad in steel and fight in close ranks rather than seeking individual glory, while being led by true Exalts whom most relic-bearers cannot hope to defeat - and by the standards of the valley, their tactics are horribly lethal. This is not to say the Legion has brought peace; though their conquest was bloodless at first, there have been periodic outbursts of violence when the shards rebelled against the Satrap's authority over some point of tribute or unwanted law. Now as the Fourth Legion bleeds soldiers to the Realm's brewing civil war, the champions of the Grave look at it and wonder whether the time has come for another challenge.
Ashuri Pillar-born, Champion of Forgetfulness
Ashuri, daughter of Ashuri, daughter of Ashuri, born under the sign of the Pillar, is blessed by carrying the name of heroes three generations old. Her eyes are red as blood and her armor the color of a deep bruise, and she bears a necklace of boar tusks, each from a beast she killed alone. She stands foremost of Forgetfulness's Brave Ones, their elite of warrior-women, and holds great sway over her sisters. Through her prowess in battle she has earned the right to bear the Azure Thorn, a spear without blade, a straight haft of unadorned blue jade coming to a piercing point. The Thorn endows its wielder with the speed of lightning and can be hurled like a thunderbolt, always coming back to its mistress's hand.
Ashuri tires of fighting rebellious spirits and monsters from the Swordbleeds. She longs for true battle in which she may claim another warrior's weapon. It is her belief that she is a match for a Dragon-Blood, but she is too wise to test that belief with a hasty war - for now. She believes Forgetfulness can be made the equal of the Hearth in power and wealth, if the council of Blind Ones were willing to use their mystical lore to conquer the surrounding shards and absorb their warriors into one army equipped with weapons that have gone unused for far too long. Then, with a dozen of sisters as powerful as Ashuri herself, the Exalted could be driven from the valley.
Spirits of the Valley
The Realm brought with it the Immaculate Order, who has ever since tried to convert the Grave to their ways. Yet the monks are few in numbers and find little purchase for their proselytizing. From their point of view, the Grave is plagued by spirits who claim unearned authority and resources, and its long history of cursed weapons and honored champions is rife for Anathema-worship. But to the natives, it is unthinkable to live in such a magically polluted place without relying on gods and elementals. Even the smallest shard village has a tutelar god protecting it, and often consorting with mortals; their god-blooded offspring often become revered wise ones. Said wise ones deal not only with earthly spirits, but also seek to call upon the wisdom of ancestors whose names each family records on a stone altar. Elementals are found around every settlement, and mortals bargain with them for blessings of fertility on their crops or clement weather, seeing them less as spirits and more as features of the land.
Some spirits, unfortunately, are not helpful, but hazards to be mitigated. The wilder sorts of elementals often feed on the power of buried Artifacts, and in doing so transform into sword-beasts of great power and warlike instincts. Hunting such monsters is many a young warrior's chance to earn her fame. Some of the Grave's relics are also sentient, and seek to be wielded once more - unfortunately, they were made to serve Exalts, and the path down which they lead mortal wielders is often one of doom, even when they do not mean ill. And of course, whenever mortals need the aid of spirits to survive, there are those who will take this opportunity to take as much as they can get away with, knowing the mortals have no chance but to comply. Greed is as prevalent among gods as it is among humans.
None of these wild monsters and cursed blades, however, comes close to the Seven Evil Spirits. They were there long before even the Graveborn, unleashed by unwise Dragons of the Shogunate, and their legends are whispered in hushed towns around the campfire. A wolf with a fur of storm wiping out an entire village, an oracle whose every foretelling is one of death which always comes true, a ghost fooling mortals into worshipping him as an ancestor so he can devour their souls when they die, such are some of the manifestations of the Seven. Decades may pass between any of the Seven being seen or heard of, for it is said that they slumber in burial mounds for years at a time; but when they act, they invariably bring ill upon the valley's folk. Prayers and sacrifices are made to ward them off, and a grand festival is made each year in which the whole of the valley abjures them; but at the same time these rites push them away, they also feed their strength as worship would. The Seven do not seek the death of all men; rather they seek to force them into miserable bondage, always fearing their strength and giving them prayers in hope of mercy. Thus the Seven never bring the whole of their power to bear, and the true extent of their strength is unknown.
Ain't no wedding like a Yozi wedding. Malfeas is mad because the caterers brought sun chips and is screaming at them, Cecelyne is mumbling about the class differences between bride and groom, Swillin has binders full of plans to make it the perfect day and hits anyone who disagrees with them, Adorjan's fallen in love with one of the participants, and the Ebon Dragon won't stop cackling long enough to read his damn vows.
Well then. It was a tumultuous time to get this going, but @Aleph pulled through to run a double-session and we were on our A game here. A lot happened, slewing through multiple different mechanical niches and tones, all in the span of a pair of game days.
Without further delay, Session 33 of Sunlit Sands!
Now, before we figured out the scheduling, we were orignially planning on doing a google docs Play By Post session because we were just that far behind- but the scheduling all cleared up at the last minute. But, the planning for that session is still relevant here.
Last Session, Inks rolled to get a lead on how to deal with Xandia and Etiyadi's conflict, the results of that roll in summary-
Etiyadi and Xandia's conflict (from Xandia's side) stems primarily from Religion, Luxuries and Punishment.
Religion - Etiyadi Fire-in-Earth is the godsdaughter of an influential and overpowered volcano god within the Coxati region. She aggressively runs out rival cults. This is likely the least likely thing to be removed, maybe modified.
Luxuries - Etiyadi is the ruler of her court and likes the perks that come with it.
Punishment - She also enjoys the power and influence granted to her by dint of being the judge and authority on all punitive actions. It's not that she likes putting people to death, but more that she likes what people do to avoid her sentencing. She does promote witchhunts though.
Now, the leverage Xandia can provide is limited, more that she doesn't want to give Etiyadi any more than she has to. One potential lever is the dam Inks noticed, which if fixed, can be used to choke a river that runs through Etiyadi's lands. This is not something Inks would want to do lightly though.
Scene #1
The session opens with Pipera, and she is one of the underlying goals of the Coxati arc- to put her on camera and to build up her character and dynamic with Inks. To more firmly establish her as the 'Pepper' to Inks's Tony.
During pre-game planning, I wanted to invoke Pipera's contacts and DB communication magic to get an update on Gem, which the log describes more in-depth. It's notable that as of this scene, Inks has been gone for a bit more than a season- that's 3 months; 28 days to a month in Creation, adding on a week or two.
Remember further that this is not the age of aircraft and easy travel- when a diplomat goes to another country, they do so on an indefinite basis and empowered as heads of state abroad. Not that Inks is acting as a head of state, but this kind of diplomatic and economic scale is normal for most of Creation.
Pipera occupies an interesting space in terms of NPCs. Part of the psychology I'm used to dealing with as ST opposite players, is that of 'covetedness', not necessarily in a negative sense, but the tendency for PCs to adopt NPCs on whims. It's the urge to pick things up the storyteller or GM drops, intentionally or not. Anyone familiar with the story of 'Noh' should understand the feeling here.
So my good-natured conflict is that the 'PC plan' approach to Pipera is to invoke all of my game and system mastery to make her fess up and/or illuminate all the mysteries. To 'solve' her, as a puzzle, or conquer her like a game objective. Or, on the other side (which Inks tends to follow), approach Pipera like a character who is entitled to her privacy same as Inks is, to actually be a person capable of establishing meaningful relationships outside of Exalted scales.
This is why I haven't leaned on Pipera a lot to figure everything out- not through lack of knowledge- I remembered 'Nanda's description of Pipera's tattoos (less so their IO history), but through more an understanding that... hell, 2e corebook covers it neatly:
Unnatural mental influence is magical mental influence. Targets recognize the supernatural force behind the character's actions. If this influence is hostile, inappropriate, or used against targets who value their liberty and independence, unnatural mental influence makes enemies.
Not that Inks has much in the way of UMI, but to the inexperienced or unwary, the luminary genius offered by an Excellency is still perfectly awesome.
But all of this leads to another piece of the puzzle that is Pipera- that she hates the dead (and wants Inks to actively campaign against them), and that she considers her own tattoos as sacred and not to be openly flaunted.
My theory is that being rooted in Immaculate culture, followers of that cult do not approve of accurate representations of the Dragons or any god- they want symbols, not portraits. So there is a non-zero chance Pipera has a religious/culturally significant tattoo. Knowning Aleph's read Otoyomogatari as much as I have, I feel this is a 'can't see an unwed woman's unbound hair' thing.
Setting that theorizing aside, I am again pleased/impressed when Aleph includes little touches about how Inks is influencing the people around her, either in opposition or emulation.
One thing I regret not doing more of myself (Aleph had enough on her plate), was embelishing the specific scene. This conversation while rich with charcter detail, was fairly 'talking heads'. I attempted to adress that with the 'walk and talk' sequence.
Here we also move on and Inks finally gives a more fleshed out account of her Exaltation and more importantly (to her), she got her tattoo. I've had Inks's family more or less fleshed out since the third major attempt at her character (this is actually the fourth time I've tried to play her), so when I joke that she's a runaway mafiya princess, I'm being 100% accurate.
On that note, it's worth noting that I made a point to write Inks as estranged from her family (and that was key on her terrestrial station sacrifice), not that her parents were dead, which is a common trend in these sorts of games. It's not to say that her family can't show up in Sunlit Sands, but in practical terms they probably won't. Further, Aleph knows that attacking distant dependants is an annoying ploy- and there are far more nearby accessible targets anyway.
I don't go into it a lot directly in text, because over-writing visual description makes the narration akward and/or sound like a bad erotica, but for contrast, Pipera basically keeps herself covered neck to toe. Inks essentially wears backless gowns with high slits up the thighs. Bare arms, bare legs, and she is not living in permissive modern earth or blase anime fashion land (even if Creation is designed to enable awesome anime fashions.)
Scene #2
I'm labeling these as scenes, mostly because we've been using softer transitions in this game versus the hard ===== bars i'm used to- this is largely a stylistic thing and likely a result of being a 1:1 game. The important thing is that were still implicitly following the definition of scene change- moving through time and space.
Moving on to Xandia's meeting, this scene went a lot quicker because it was less characterization and more procedural game resolution. I was presented with a challenge, arriving at a plot-enabling decision point. Inks was essentially a tiebreaker.
This was a really well done thing, because even though it had the conveience of 'Plot time', it flowed neatly together and Aleph focused the majority of the 'play' on making a creative decision vs time and resource management. Further, she left the descriptions of the locales and arguments open-ended enough that I was inspired.
She definitely learned her lesson from Hinna, seeing my plan as I laid it out and agreeing that it was not only viable but worth pursuing. The decision to grant a +3 stunt is important here, because every time Aleph's given me one, it's a ringing gong in my ears saying 'DO MORE OF THIS'.
Scene #3
While not a particularly hard scene change, the move to sending the message to Etiyadi was itself a new scene in my mind. Since we're using Anchors, I had to cast Infallible Messenger through Maji. Secondly, Aleph hews much more closely to the text of the spell, in that it does have a travel rate of 100 mph, not 'instantaneous'. Most games I've run or played treated it like a text messaging spell, alibet one that can record a long speech.
Unfortunately due to Xandia's request, Inks could not send a message to Gion just yet saying 'Guests must behave respectfully!'
Scene #4
While likely not far removed in location, the period describing the reply was itself a new scene- and Aleph does a good job of foreshadowing for later with Etiyadi.
Scene #5
Here we try again our improvised travel rules- Note that by RAW any sort of roll to proceed is not required or outlined, Aleph just made this up for Inksgame as a logical way to mark progress. Doing so has forced Inks to lean into Survival more than I expected, but it's an enjoyable diversion from her core competencies, and it segues nicely into how I want to invest in Maji.
Sadly, I could not game the system right yet to get a fast dot of Survival.
In either case, we took the time to make sure the two survival rolls were useful characterization, particularly of Maji. I had spent the prior evening watching tiger videos on youtube for ideas. For good or ill though, I defaulted to a more Hobbesian approach.
What followed is a wonderful comedy of errors, and is largely killed ded by rampant optimization. I'll let the logs speak for themselves...
But what ho, oh dear? Has Aleph gone round the bend? Is she? SHE IS!
Scene #6
HereWeGo.jpg, it's time for 2nd edition Exalted Combat!.
It's been about a year since I've run combat, and when I last did, it was during a 3000xp solar game. Inks is about as far from that game as can get before just not having any combat dice at all.
But, I have also played in over 10+ games over the years, and most of them did dip into combat. Plus my essays and all my ruminations on the system... but enough about me, Aleph's the star of the show here.
First thing's first- while she did not do so in-character, she took the time to describe the combat arena (the hard curve of the switchback road). There were clear boundaries- a cliff on one side, the mountain implicitly on the other. I wasn't sure how WIDE the road was, to be fair, but I imagine wide enough for one cart at least, less than two I bet.
Thinking further I imagine that depending on the angle of the road, there would've been no way to see around the bend, hence the ambush kerfluffle.
In anycase, Aleph established the locale in concrete terms that made the rest of the scene flow amazingly well. Like crystals, a seed must be set before the combat scene can grow around it.
Anyway, we start with Join Battle, and Aleph was pretty on top of things- though in the future, I suggest we adopt the approach I picked up from #suptg- putting the reaction count in our IRC channel topic- It's fairly easy to handle.
On the one hand, I could spend some time explaining how Join Battle works, but I'd rather not glut the postmortem- I'd be happy to expand upon it if someone has a specific question that the logs don't address or in too little detail.
One notable thing is that Aleph assumed Maji and Inks shared a Join Battle roll- which I personally was not expecting (and would assume they'd have separate rolls), but at the same time, I did not want to burden Aleph further, so I did not demand it and it worked out fine either way.
A key point to remember here also is that... I honestly don't know how much Aleph has run 2e style combat, and I know for a fact that she did so out of considerating for me. I feel the love, so much. But the point I'm making is that there are dozens of knobs to twist and we run through most of them, not because we're trying to be pendantic, but because we both understand that the emergent nature of combat relies on these clauses.
Even then, we forget things, slip and slide around.
Tick 0: Tricerabadger
Case in point, Mounted Combat!
Inks has 0 ride dots. Windroarer as a bonded Simhata has a Control Rating of 0, which means mechanically, Inks can ride him no handed, all ride-based actions to control him are reflexive unrolled. In practice this means that if Inks had stayed on him, she would have been able to run around on a lion horse cleaving dudes from mounted luxury.
Alas, that was not the case.
Now Aleph in my favored ruled that Windroarer granted her his DV. I appreciate that in the moment, but I'm going to have to advocate that we stick to the RAW rules again, because it throws a lot of wrenches in tracking applicability and charm supplemented actions.
Of specific note, is that I said very clearly in OOC that I was not worried. Why was I not worried? Because I knew that even though Aleph is likely not going to pull a mechanical punch with me, I was also confident and trusted in her that the tone of the game we were playing would not gut-punch Inks out of combat.
My confidence held even in the face of 6 damage levels. I shall now enumerate to you Inks's total combat suite.
Dodge DV of 3, most of that from her Permanent Essence
PDV of 6, largely due to her Style.
Soak of 1L/2B; she has no armor. I've played this entire game without it. 33 sessions.
1st/2nd Melee, Call the Blade, Summoning the Loyal Steel.
That's it. No other Melee Charms. No Resistance Charms, Dodge. Nothing. Not even an Ox Body. We're not even using the 'Extra Ox Bodies' houserule, as common as it is.
Inks's major defensive asset is her un-errata'd twilight anima, that I used to life-saving effect here.
Having reduced down to 3 HLs, Inks is now in her last -1 HL, taking -1d to all actions. On paper wound penalties subtract 1 from static/derived values, but we'll get into that later.
The more important/interesting thing is that the Tricerabadger inflicted knockback.
This is an oft underutilized mechanic, largely because most people experience it with the aggressively powerful Solar Hero suite of Heaven Thunder Hammer/Crashing Wave Through. Most KB effects though are more like this- you get flung, are rendered prone, and you have to spend extra flurried actions to get moving.
Or in this case, you get half-gored off your mount and thrown off a cliff. Good thing for Graceful Crane Stance!
Before I move on, I should point out that a lotof time spent in IRC games are these sorts of Q/A beats trying to figure out who does what. This gets faster the more you do it, so the key is getting over that initial effort hump. I've already done it, having internalized a lot of these fiddly rules.
Tick 1: Inks, Maji, Xandia + her's Guards, Pipera
Remember what I said about trust? Trust is a treasure. Trust and confidence separates okay games from great games. In most of the games I've played/run, trust is so low, that players must fall back on the core rules and only manipulate what has a concrete, objective value. I admit I've been worried or confused sometimes by Aleph's decisions, but I've been able to trust her more often than not to be consistent.
Trust is why I felt confident enough to go for a gutsy stunt as opposed to a staid, practical one. Three paragraphs describing a single swordstroke is not worth +2 dice, let alone +3.
A good stunt, beyond invoking the environment, +2 or +3, must have stakes. It's a gambit, a desire to rise above the strictly defined. Looking cool is secondary to doing cool.
Which is why I got a +3 for using the tricerabadger as a springboard for a diving slash.
Amusingly, out of nowhere, Aleph gives me this gimmie of Grand Daiklaves being able to hit multiple targets- I sure as hell ain't gonna complain. Cleaving one raider in half and knocking a second one out of the fight in one go? Hell yeah!
Another important note here is that Aleph is happy and willing to invoke valor rolls- it's just that our raiders are some hotshot badasses.
Pipera... sadly she is not the most martial of DBs.
Now, the first concession here was the abstraction of Raiders vs Xandia's guards- on paper this should not have happened, but this was an ambitious first-combat scene by any stretch, so I understand completely that the encounter being streamlined for proper spotlight focus is important. Somedays it's funny when joe extra kills the enemy... but doing it every time is boring.
In this game, I tend to control Maji during combat, and unlike Inks, a lot of his traits are fairly static at the moment. Sadly his character sheet is very hard to read, so there was a lot of faffing about. Regardless, I make a decent showing, trying to be clever. The dice are not with Maji though.
Tick 2: Raider Sword x2, Raider Bow x2
Move actions are curious, because they are Reflxive Speed 0, and depending on your interpretation, they can be attempted Every tick, for the duration of your Action. So you have [X ticks] of Move Actions in any direction. This means Exalted combat can be pretty frentic if you keep it in your head. Most games treat movement as straight lines though.
In any case, the raiders are taking their move actions on their acting ticks, moving [Dex - mobility/wound penaties] away. Note that reflexive actions take no penalties from whole classes of sources but those two. Regardless, they're moving around. Note that Inks is dex 2, so she moves 2 yards per tick. In hindsight, I probably couldn't have jumped the badger...
This kind of thing is why 2e combat is both a joy and pain to run. 11 yards away at move speeds... Hah, wounded as she was, Inks was moving 1 yard per tick. So it would've taken her 11 total ticks to move there, or... 1+6 yrds/tick during a Dash action, which would've been another action in her Flurry... In any case it was still Possible but I did it wrong.
Now, in practical terms, movement rules being what they are, you can't by default use absurd Movement rules like Scourge dashing to evade attacks directly- an attack coming in happens As/While/Before you move unless some other rule helps out.
Anyway! The swordsmen choose to Guard, while the bowmen attack Inks, sadly Inks is squishy sorcerer, and has to tank the shots on her anima again- but this time I flare it totemic as per mote reactor rules. As of now I've spent about 25m of my 45m pool or so.
Further advise- when in doubt, stunt your anima. Stunt it hard. Stunt it like it owes you money, like you wanted revenge.
Tick 3-5: Raider Sword x2
Not stated in the actual game, but they would've acted again here if they waited the full 3 ticks.
Tick 6: Tricerabadger, Inks, Pipera, Maji
Going for the carts (unintentionally at least), the badger is threatening out Stuff. That's a quick way to get wrecked- or for Maji to be best hero.
The important thing here is that Aleph is making me make choices in combat, choosing to spend my actions on not attacking, to add texture to the scene and prevent whiteroom antics.
Maji of course succeeds.
Alongthe way, the wits+occult roll finally comes through and we realize this badger is an Elemental of sorts, bestial perhaps, but still a spirit of some power.
Now the Badger attacks properly, charging at Maji- and here again I'm going to take you to stunting school- even if I screwed up on the actual charm rules.
Remember that you can take Move actions off your acting tick, and I gambited enough that Maji could move to play this out. I fully intended to write the stunt, but Aleph offered me the chance to roll for the perk anyway and I got it.
LOOM STRIDE
Cost: 4m; Mins: Essence 2; Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Combo-OK
Duration: Instant
The spirit replaces its normal Move action with a special Move action that doesn't require it to cross space. This Charm must be invoked on a tick on which the spirit acts. The spirit focuses on a point within (Essence x Conviction) yards, and its player rolls (Wits + Conviction), taking into account vision and cover-based penalties as though the spirit were making a ranged attack.
With a successful roll, the spirit instantaneously moves up to (Essence x Conviction) yards. The spirit cannot dash or reflexively move until its next action. Successes on this roll constitute successes on a roll for the spirit to reestablish surprise, which is resisted normally.
Now, I thought Loom Stride could be used as a Dodge, but I was wrong. Aleph allowed it anyway for likely this one session, but it earned me a... third +3 stunt.
Either way, the badger flies off the side of the cliff and we're reminded that Fall Damage is absolutely terrifying.
Tick 6: Inks, Maji, Pipera, Raider Sword x2
You'll note that I tried to staunch the wound here- Exalts can do that reflexively with sta+res at Diff 2. I forgot I had res 3, so I could've rolled more dice, but alas. Fortunately, bleeding rules work on Minutes, not Actions. Every [Stamina] minutes the wound was left untreated, Inks would've taken an auto lethal level.
But I want to underscore something here. Inks is a stacked hot woman wearing a sexy dress not suited for the weather and wielding a giant sword as tall as she is. In this scene she's got a bloody gash ripped in her side if not a hole- and she's shrugging it off like a champ. She is not a combat character. She doesn't look like a combat character.
That aside, we carry on- I tried something ambitious again, flicking the ruins of the trap wire as an improvised bola- I tried to be too Dawn for my own good and failed. It was still a good stunt though.
The Sword Raiders were now able to act as well- having spent their ticks guarding. I think if we had a clearer grasp of the reaction count, Aleph would've had them Coordinate on Tick 3-5, and swung five ticks later. Fortunately Inks's action lands 'before' theirs...
A coordinated attack would've really ruined Inks's day too.
As far as stunting goes, this was not as ornately ambitious, I admit, but I was still proud of it. Maji can teleport-pounce.
Having killed the swordsmen, the combat ends properly, with the archers having spent more time dashing away to disengage. I have never had NPCs run from a combat in my experience. They stay til death unless valor rolls prompted by a player action force them away.
Scene #7
We deploy Maji on a brief solo adventure to track the archers, and though he could have disobeyed orders and pursued, he is best and noble tiger prince and came back to his mistress.
It was a good introduction to the tracking/evasion rules, and I look forward to using them again.
In this same scene, we have Inks recover from combat- note that she was the one who got hit the most/hardest out of everyone. Pesala, confronted with Inks's mortality again decides to be a brave tiger-daughter heroine. It's adorable.
The major plot twist here is that these raiders are supsiciously... unadorned. Anonymous. And briefed for a specific threat. There is a non-zero chance Rankar sent them, but Inks hasn't voiced these suspicions either. I hope to ask Piercing Sun if he would recognize the gear, later on.
But we didn't lose any people, or time really. Or supplies. But the major thing is that by our mote reactor rules, flaring totemic counts as 10 hours of strenuous activity. By RAW again, Inks should've been knocked out within moments of letting her anima die down.
Fortunately neither of us were going to try and poke those rules hard just yet- but later yes. Inks treated her own wounds, and made a point to cast Water from Stone on a nearby rock for fresh supplies- mostly because I wanted to keep using Sorcery more casually.
From here we segue...
Scene #8
Here we are introduced to the first on-camera demesne of Sunlit Sands! Ahh, fond memories of Demesne weeks.
Aleph did an excellent job of establishing the overwhelming magical nature of the place- though I admittedly think it sounds much higher rating than it actually is. Like, this kind of thick, pervasive mutation and reshaping sounds more like a 3-4 dot demesne to me.
After a bit of discussion, we figure out what to do with Raising the Earth's Bones- I've been using the of the Emerald Circle spell rewrites for these, so they're not the exact same as the White/Black Treatises versions.
Having done that, Inks conks out again because strictly speaking, Sorcery requires totemic anima flaring... all the time. This might need to be adjusted?
Scene #9
Etiyadi arrives- I did not want to say this in game, because I'm a firm believer in keeping to vocabulary guidelines. Modern slang or jargon generally doesn't belong.
However, here in this postmortem, I am more than willing to call Etiyadi what she is- thirsty.
She's also kind of an entitled brat and a bit smitten. So that's cool.
I was actually pleased though with the inclusion- and the foreshadowing I mentioned earlier. The implication being that Inks left such a positive impression on Etiyadi that I'm pretty sure Inks was the major reason she even bothered to show up.
For good or ill though, Inks had to maintain a pretense of impartiality, so no fun times just yet.
Scene #10
A quick discussion with Pipera segues into a banquet fit for lords, which is appropriate, and we use that time to sound Etiyadi of 'today' out, preparing for the final scenes of the game.
These last few scenes are a bit light on post-mortem detail, because we've covered the kind of content before. I'm also getting somewhat tired, so I may have to expand this later...
Anyway, we're nearing the end of the session, Aleph and I have both put in a huge solid chunk of gaming, but we're in that critical home stretch....
Scene #11
The talks, part 1. This is sort of a culmination of the 'Methods/Approach' style gameplay that Aleph's been trying to tutorialize. Though in hindsight, I don't think we really ever settled on the Exact plan. It ended up that Inks is acting as reasonably impartial mediator, with an eye towards polishing up all of the concessions and arguments on both sides that they all get what they want.
Now, despite my epic desperate crunking, I did not win the roll... and I barely beat Etiyadi- but fortunately, I did!
Scene #12
The last roll is almost a formality, negotating the final end contract of the agreement. As Aleph points out, there are a lot of things Pipera CAN do that she hasn't done, and she's been trying to do that more, but we've agreed now to just give me a list of things to invoke if I see fit.
Regardless, two excellent rolls from Inks and Pipera seal the deal, and I have shaped the fate of nations without having to daiklave anyone or fight a big bad evil guy.
Wrapup
The last few notes of note is that Inks now will have Ally X with both Xandia and Etiyadi, and Backing 4-ish I think with the unified polity of Xandia-Etiyadi , which in turn segues neatly into the arranged for trade route that Inks wants to set up. Depending on how the rest of the Coxati arc goes, since Xandia is the more central kingdom within the greater Coxati area, it'd be great to have most goods shipped there, then east to Etiyadi where they get shipped to Gem proper.
But that hasn't been set up yet, the rest of the routes I mean.
Now, The Coxati arc has mushroomed into an expansive thing, beyond I think the scope Aleph and I originally envisoned. That's cool- we're experimenting, and this happens with IRC games a lot more than voice/table games, I feel.
But, I've more or less achieved the goal I set out for- developing new backgrounds to use as Anchors- I got 3 of them so far, two Allies and 1 Backing. There'll be some thematic restrictions, but now I feel more comfortable learning more infrastructure spells!
Now I gotta decide what Pres, Bur or Soc charm to get during this training time Aleph offered...
Ain't no wedding like a Yozi wedding. Malfeas is mad because the caterers brought sun chips and is screaming at them, Cecelyne is mumbling about the class differences between bride and groom, Swillin has binders full of plans to make it the perfect day and hits anyone who disagrees with them, Adorjan's fallen in love with one of the participants, and the Ebon Dragon won't stop cackling long enough to read his damn vows.
Meanwhile Oramus is conducting the orchestra, Szoreny is trying to steal their thunder by proposing to Isidoros in the middle of the ceremony, Metagaos ate the rings, Elloge won't stop bawling over how romantic it all is and Kimbery is trying to set up everyone who's present and single with her lesser souls.
Loving it! Totally going to unbury some cursed swords and give them to some hapless fool. Watch the Chaos. And I love the whole, mining the dead guardian thing. It's very Exalted and as an image it is very evocative.
So I haven't homebrewed in forever but there is a game I may be running in the short-term future, and so I needed to put down some notes as to the setting for players to make their characters, and uh.
It kinda ran away from me. In particular I have lost any skill I might have had at keeping things concise and neatly ordered
So have this.
The Grave of Swords
A curse is a living thing, and all things that live must die; and all that dies must be buried, lest evil be invited upon the world. Thus, a graveyard was made for curses.
There lies in the Southeast of Creation a valley astride civilization, yet outside it. The jungle stretches to its north east, while its south and west are bordered by great ochre mountains, jagged as knives, and the last stretch of a distant river, nameless in this forbidden land waters its fields. Grass grows green and brown and tall as a man's knees, relentlessly cut around cities and villages to make place for fields of maize and squash; meat is a rarity, and the feathered strider-beasts are ever a threat to those who drive their herds of goat or sheep too close to the jungle. At the heart of the valley lie the last remains of a broken dragon of metal and stone, and in the cage of its ribs has been built a city.
Riches abound in the valley. Eastern leylines bring fertility to the too-harsh soil, and spices grow besides staple crops. The salt quarries in the east have yet to run empty, and in the great city looms built out of the dragon's gears weave flax without end. But that is not the true wealth of the Grave of Swords; this land glitters with metals of mystical power, weapons planted into the earth like memorial stones. Burial mounds sit foreboding, each one a question - dare you risk my danger for the power intombed within me? And too many already have answered yes - this is the time of the Plague of Swords, when mortals and Exalts and stranger things yet wield weapons that were meant to be forgotten and roam the valley carving their fate at the tip of the blade.
Records of the First Age are myths and legends, the gods shy from sharing this story, and those things which would gladly tell it must never be trusted.
This is known: when the Exalted of the Age of Dreams grew into their power but before hubris consumed them, they forged tools and weapons of which they themselves were afraid. An uninhabited valley in the southeast of Creation was made into a crypt for these failures. There they were buried, and five monoliths of jade engraved with orichalcum were set as seals to keep them from escaping, and a guardian was set to keep fools from stealing what was best forgotten. Over time, such a place found much use; Exalts made pilgrimage unto this forsaken land to bury relics of great power which had nonetheless failed to find grace in their eyes. Failed creations banished out of spite by craftsmen who would accept nothing less than perfection, swords which had taken the wrong life in an excess of passion and which their masters wept to look upon, and more still.
When the rule of the golden ones ended, the Dragons who had rebelled gathered many of their creations which were too dangerous to use and too resilient to destroy, and made journey to the Grave of Swords, and the guardian accepted this.
Yet in time war plagued the Shogunate of Dragons to such extent that they sought any weapon, any advantage against each other. Their greed overcame their hubris, and they broke one of the monoliths sealing the valley and set to plunder its tombs. Seven crypts they open; seven weapons they drew from the depths; seven evil spirits followed them, and brought ruin upon the dragons. The dragons sought no more the weapons of old, but they set watchposts to study the grave and learn from the ancient arts of the age then gone.
Then came the horde from outside the world, and there was no room left for wisdom, lest the Dragons all be wise dead men. An army of the Exalted, dying of contagion, brought the weapons of old to the light of day and wielded them in battle, bringing ruination upon the fae and themselves both. Another of the monoliths was shattered, the guardian himself perished in battle, but the children of the Wyld were halted there, long enough for the Sword of Creation to be plunged in their heart from a distant isle.
Silence came upon the valley. In time, mortals were born among the ashes of the world, enough that some found their way to this accursed graveyard, and made a city out of the corpse of its guardian, a dragon of brass and gold and jade. Like worms they made its mighty body their abode, tore at its wires and its bones to make hollows for themselves, pried its scales to build houses and forge armors, dug furrows for their fields with the shards of its claws. And this was the first city of the Grave, which was called the Hearth.
For five centuries the Grave had existed in the shadow of the Realm. When the armies of the Empress came to seize the place and claim its rumored power, they found it ruled by a man who had made himself one with the heart of the dead guardian, who spoke to them dire warnings. The Scarlet Empress heeded these words, but could not fully pass on the great opportunity at hand. The Grave was made a satrapy held in her personal name, and careful ledgers were kept of which ancient weapons were taken by her chosen - never for more than a few decades at a time, always eventually returned to the valley. For when this was not done, evil surely followed, and the seven spirits still haunted the Grave.
But now the Empress is gone. Many of the soldiers holding the valley in her name have pulled back to fight distant wars, some officers unwisely taking forbidden arms with them - they will come back in time. Those who remain eye the Hearth's throne hungrily, and ask themselves why they have not taken it yet. The dragon-man on this throne sees the light in their eyes, and musters forces of his own. Merchants from the Scavenger Lands world who have made a fortune trading the riches of the valley now weigh the profits of war against the stability of peace, and make different choices each. The Great Schools are going to war with mystical fighting arts. New Exalts whose awesome power surpasses that of the Dragons flock to the valley, many of them claiming forsaken blades and working designs of their own. Surely disaster is at hand; surely this is the Age of Sorrows.
Sample Cursed Sword: Searing Glory
In a remote corner of the Grave, there is a small village of farmers, eking a living from maize crops and turkeys. Between two of their fields is a crater, and at the bottom of that crater is a sword, stuck blade-first as if it had fallen from the heavens. This is Searing Glory, an orichalcum daiklave two-thirds as long as a man is tall, its golden blade adorned with a vein-like pattern of red. None of the villagers touch this sword, for they know it to bring only misfortune.
Searing Glory brings power to the one who holds it, even the lowliest of mortals. It is not merely a blade of incredible size and sharpness that can be held as lightly as a twig, but a font of sun-like might which flows from its hilt into the body of its owner, filling them with divine strength and alacrity. But the mortal body cannot easily handle such energy, and once a master has bonded with Searing Glory the bond cannot be broken; every time they draw the blade, their body is consumed a little more from the inside. Inevitably the daiklave's power becomes too much to bear, and Searing Glory's wielder becomes one with the sun's fire, one moment of glorious power leaving behind nothing but ashes.
The last time Searing Glory was held was a century ago, when a rot came over the village's crop and starvation threatened. One girl stepped into the crater, drew the sword, and went to raid another village for food. Their parents wept and mourned as if she was already dead; even as she saved her village, she saw in her people's eyes that there was no place among them for a doomed girl wielding the sun's sword. She left, plied her services as a warrior, and went to fight the mountain-folk. A year later another woman who had become her lieutenant brought the sword back to the village along with all the war-spoils the girl had gathered, and a small urn containing ashes. The sword has been untouched since.
The Hearth
This is the city which rules the Grave of Swords: wide paved streets, curving red-tiled roofs, stone-and-moss gardens, wide villas housing vast extended families, guards in shining bronze armor. This is the city which rules the Grave of Swords: a palace built out of the hollow skull of a copper dragon, the last whole remnant of the valley's guardian, a stone wall built between its protruding ribs, textile mills as vast as palaces housing its repurposed muscles and tendons. This is the city which rules the Grave of Swords: a sprawling maze of winding streets and ramshackle houses leaning against the walls and expanding a little more each year, beautiful canals colored by the mesmerizing patterns of dyes and other poisons, great fortified camps where foreign soldiers watch over slaves whose freedom is only a wall away, deep mining pits where the natives of the valley extract copper from the sunken limbs of a dead dragon, which they smelt for bronze.
The Hearth is a city of great wealth and power which cannot do anything with it. The Hearth rules the Grave, but the Hearth is only one city with no authority over its sister-cities. The Hearth is ruled by a draconic Steward, but it is a Satrapy answering to the Realm. The Hearth is wealthy, but its wealth is harnessed by merchants from the Scavenger Lands. The Hearth has some of the greatest champions of the Southeast, but it has no army. The Hearth obeys the Realm's law under the Satrap, the Grave's common law under the Steward, martial law under the Legion, and the Great Schools scoff at obeying any law other than their codes of honor.
The Steward
One man rules the Hearth. But he is not truly a man, and he does not truly rule. At the foundation of the city, the Steward seized the brazen heart of the long-dead dragon that once guarded the Grave, and pushed it into his chest, where it devoured his heart of flesh. The Steward has skin of hepatizon and bleeds dark oil, his breath is smoke and his eyes shine like furnaces. All his existence has been spent trying to hold together his volatile city and managing all its power players. He is a pragmatic man. He is a compromising man. He is getting very tired.
The Steward answers to the Satrap of the Grave, and the Satrap has grown apt at knowing how far she can push her theoretically-absolute authority before she finds the city sabotaging her every effort with no hint of open rebellion. She resents his influence, but accepts it as a necessity; the alternative is martial law, and making herself a puppet of the Fourth Legion. The Steward has no true army, but his word and his law are enforced by a corps of hepatizon-clad champions who abandoned their Great Schools to serve him; a worse betrayal can scarcely be imagined and they are loathed by all seven schools. The opinion of those to whom the Steward's guard is the only recourse against the schools' claims to authority is more nuanced.
The Seven Great Schools
This is true: the swords of the Grave are dangerous to wield and cannot leave the valley for long. Often they bring doom to their wielder. This is also true: one of sufficient skill, strength, or luck, may master one such weapon and survive its danger. Thirteen heroes in the history of the valley have not only picked up a sword, but mastered it so thoroughly has to create a Sword Art, a martial art style originating from this one weapon. These heroes went on to build the Great Schools, passing down their teachings to pupils who wield mundane weapons that emulate the design of their founding Artifact, which was passed from master to master. These were once mere dojos where a single master oversaw a dozen pupils. Now the schools are factions in their own right, numbering dozens of masters and hundreds of pupils, vying for influence over the city, running entire neighborhoods according to their whim and their arcane codes of honor and glory.
Of the Thirteen Great Schools, seven remain. One was never a school; in each generation it numbers only one master and one student, and it is unclear if there is a current generation alive today. Two were defeated so thoroughly and utterly that their founding Artifact was surrendered to another school, and their Sword Art absorbed into that school's own style. Three suffered the most dire fate; when the Fourth Legion asserted its authority over the Hearth, the Great Schools chafed, and years of unrest and street-fighting almost led to a crackdown which might have seen all the schools wiped out. As a result, the three most disliked schools were made scapegoats, blamed for their rebellion, and banished from the city, all while the remaining seven promised in secret chambers that they would no longer trouble the Dragon-Blooded so much. These Banished Schools now dwell in the other cities of the Hearth, and harbor a resentment as deep as the history of the valley's cursed blades.
Sample Great School: The Steel Antler School
Other schools sneer at the Steel Antler, calling its style passive, reactive, lacking in initiative; they say it fails to show any skill, instead utilizing its opponent's flaws. At the same time, they value the school's existence; duels with the Steel Antler's students are an easy way to show their own pupils the dangers of thoughtless aggression. The Steel Antler style focuses on rapid movement at very close range, confounding circular patterns of avoidance, and lightning-quick parries. It is said the Steel Antler master disarms her opponent twice: first by stepping inside his reach too close for him to use his weapon effectively, then by actually tearing the weapon out of his grasp. Its weapons are the deer horn knives, always wielded in pair, as difficult to master as they are confusing to face. It is a style appealing to the Grave's men, who are often taught not to seek individual glory or act aggressively but to be calm and studious.
Hassan Sword-born is the current master of the school, and he wields the titular Steel Antlers, a pair of deer horn knives forged out of starmetal. Their wielder is endowed with the ability to see patterns and flaws; the motion of a coming blow is outlined to him as trails of light in the air, and his opponent appears as a shining pattern where weak points are blazing dots. But the Antlers were flawed in their conception, or perhaps too successful; that power eventually bleeds into every aspect of their wielder's being, until they see the flaws in all things - systems, philosophies, structures, people. Like every master before him, Hassan Sword-born is a jaded, cynical man, and this affects his school. Where once the Steel Antler were protectors of the Hearth's common people, they now still grant that protection - but at a price. Mere students form small gangs running simple protection rackets; but masters tend to make a philosophy of their cynicism, and the price for their help is often chosen for painful irony, seeking to show outsiders to the school the futility of their cares and worldviews.
The Hook Syndicate
The Fish-hook Gambler of the Night Caste once challenged a demon whose name is now forgotten to a test of skill. The demon stole the Solar's very own soul from his body; but the Solar outmatched him by stealing his own theft from the pages of history, such that the demon could only know that the the Gambler had bested him but never how. By the terms of their agreement, the demon became the Gambler's slave for a year; but tricking him, the Exalt used that term of service to forge the demon himself into two hook swords channeling his excellence at thievery - when the term was up, the demon was technically free, but swords cannot go anywhere under their own power, and so he served the Gambler for much, much longer.
For over a thousand years the Gambler's Hooks have hungered for freedom. When the dominion of the Solars fell, they thought their time was at hand; time and time again their voice has brought gullible souls to them and convinced them to wield their power, then tried to guide them through the steps of destroying the valley's seals. Time and time again, they have failed. The thieving demon does not appreciate failure. A sullen weapon, it has abandoned the frustrating hope of escape, and built an empire of crime through the proxy of mortal wielders.
The Gambler's Hooks rest in a shrine in a villa of the Heart, a front owned by a placid riverborn merchant. Through this house pass legions of thieves, gamblers, smugglers and racketeers, all taking their orders from the swords, and offering it sacrifices to bolster their power. Only the best of this little syndicate are allowed to wield the pair, and only in the pursuit of a crime exceptional not merely in its profit, but in its daring, taking special pleasure in enraging the Satrap and the Legion - for they are Exalted. For decades the Hooks have been satisfied with this arrangement; but of late the demon has been feeling a strange bond, broken for ages and now renewed - somewhere in the world, there is a soul to which he claimed ownership through its greatest feat of thievery. That soul could put him into slavery again - or it could be his hope of true freedom at last.
The Merchant Lords
If one listens to the riverfolk merchants of the Hearth, then all the valley's wealth is their doing, for they saw opportunity where natives saw only a motive for complacency. The truth is rather more than the riverfolk came from the Scavenger Lands with their plunderer's wealth, their retinues of slaves in a place where there were none, and their divine-blooded and Exalted mercenaries, and took over much of the industry and trade of the valley, not in one bloody coup but in a progressive but no less destructive encroaching. Though the merchant lords may harvest more resources out of the valley than the graveborn did, this is less a factor of skill and more the result of their web of trade letting them import manpower and money from family and investors in the Scavenger Lands.
Most riverfolk (those who are not slaves, anyway) either came to the Grave as part of a merchant lord's retinue, or are descended from one who did. These bonds endure, forming the loose connection of a "merchant house," where everyone is patron and client to someone else. Even a lowly laborer whose name will never be known to the lord of his house can find in others of his status a kind of support network, and may hope to become client to one less lowly than he is. These connections make the riverfolk stand apart from the graveborn, whom they see as lacking in social tissue and connection - a bias which often hides how deeply hierarchical and ossified riverfolk houses can be.
Slaves without Numbers
Slavery has always been a contentious subject in the Grave, as the institution had been banned ages ago when the merchants first came, and the graveborn find it loathesome both for the bondage that it is and for the pressure it allows merchants to exert on them. Out of pragmatic compromise - some say weakness - the Stewart of the Hearth has instituted a system of licence allowing riverfolk to keep and work slaves as long as they remain within specific delineated areas and follow specific routes. Thus, the overwhelming majority of slaves work the salt-quarries of the northeast and the lumber exploitations of the northwest, as well as some plantations around the Hearth. These bring the merchants great wealth; but if a slave is ever to step out of the boundaries allowed to their owner, they are free forevermore. Thus slave camps are heavily fortified and guarded against escape, and the merchants grumble increasingly loudly at the costs this imposes on them. Some merchants deal with it by eschewing slavery altogether, most notably the flaxen princes running textile meals, while others agitate for reform - by violent means if necessary.
The life of a slave is a harsh, and often short one; slaves are not born in the Grave (for a slave's children are free) but imported from the Scavenger Lands, to be put to harsh and long manual labor. Slaves find themselves stranger among strangers, neither riverfolk nor graveborn, kept in enclosed camps. Merchants try to discourage any kind of community in their property and the harsh labor goes some way to help it, but people are people, and each of the three domains of slavery - plantation, salt-quarry and lumber - have their own peculiar culture, communicated in languages their guards rarely understand. Slaves sing of their homeland, tell the stories of how they were captured (often at war), and draw salt-circles or glyphs in the trees to ward away the ghosts of those slaves who died before them. Advice and skills are a precious commodity, one of the only things slaves can trade between each other; one who can teach the others how to sleep better on hard soil or keep warm at night often becomes a revered figure for as long as they survive the harsh conditions.
Sometimes, more often than they like to admit, the merchants do not realize that one of their newest purchases was an officer in some defeated army, one whose tradeable skill is how to endure, fight as a group, and move through the night. Then come escapes. As soon as a slave steps out of their camp, they are free - though of course, the merchants rarely abide by this rule if they can avoid it. Once free, however, the slaves find themselves most foreign of all the people of the valley, more even that the riverfolk or the Realm. Some try to convince graveborn communities to accept them, and rarely succeed. Some trek all the way to the Hearth and offer their services to the Fourth Legion, who rarely ever looks at a man twice before taking him in. Others form small communities of their own at the edges of the valley, and are often willing to raid the burial mounds for their sacred weapons in order to defend themselves. When curses do not strike them down, these free men have much to be angry about, and the power to do something about it.
Many graveborn do not acknowledge the status of slaves as such even under the terms drawn by the Steward, though few care to act on this. Still, every so often groups of like-minded graveborn, especially those from the towns outside the Hearth, band together to strike at the merchant lords' slave business. This is not always good for the slaves; some consider them to be free men unrighteously held captive and work to help them escape their camps, but other consider them to be simply be outlaws, non-men existing outside society and used to pressure the graveborn into poverty or service under terms that are slavery by any other name. For those groups, the best solution to the problem of slavery is the death of slaves, much easier to arrange than their freedom.
Fourth's Redoubt
Centuries ago the Scarlet Empress claimed authority over the Grave of Swords, but she never made a true conquest, for there was no battle. The Steward surrendered, but spoke dire warnings, and the Empress was wise enough to heed them. One of the Throne's own Legions built a fort within a javelin's throw of the Hearth, and since then Throne Legions have been cycling in and out of the valley. For the last five decades the Fourth Legion has held this redoubt, and it is now far more than a military fort. "Camp followers" have become a population of their own, and generations of soldiers have spent the entirety of their service in the Grave.
Once the Fourth could have claimed to be able to subjugate the entire valley through force of arm if need be, and would have been believed. Now it is barely at half-strength. Many of its Exalts have gone back home as their Houses prepare for war, taking personally loyal soldiers with them. Without their leadership, soldiers have deserted, blending into the local population. What remains of the Fourth has been called the "Stray Legion," for its bizarre insistence on staying behind when the Realm decides its future.
The legionlord of the Fourth is not amused. Soon, she fears, the people of the Grave will rebel against her, or the Houses will come to claim the valley's wealth in their own name, or the barbarians will invade, or all at once. With her officers she already draws plans to address these issues before they manifest, by whatever means necessary. Even the Satrap now worries about her ambition.
Shards
The shards of the valley are the many villages dotting its landscape. Typically small in size, they are connected to the Hearth by a lattice of beaten-earth roads. Away from the spills, their lands are more fertile, and their crops are coveted by a city which is ever hungry; the Satrap's agent are ruthless in collecting taxes, and the people of the shards are cunning in concealing their belongings. Many of the shards exist near tomb or crypt, and their people are avid practitioner of hedge magic to ward off their influence; every village has a wise one or more.
Of the shards, three are powerful enough to influence the valley as a whole, straddling the line between town and city.
Forgetfulness is the largest settlement outside of the Hearth; a town spilling out of a now-empty crypt, it is home to a council of Blind Ones, wise men who dwell in the crypt and never see the sun. They read the murals of the burial chambers to divine the history of the valley, and through it its future; even the Satrap's men, who scoff at superstition, fear their powers. More dangerous than their rumored magic, their knowledge lets them know which of the Grave's Artifacts may be wielded safely and how, a knowledge they prize dearly and trade expensively. Yet rumors abound of dissent in Forgetfulness; it is said that the Brave Ones, most elite of their warrior-women, have entered a word-feud with the Blind Ones, and none knows what this could mean for the town, or the rest of the valley.
Holiness is a sacred town, whose size belies its influence; it sits at the foot of the mountains, astride the nameless river which runs from its peaks, and so controls one of the main routes of commerce out of the valley while holding back the fearsome goat-herders who would raid villages every year if they had their wont. At its center is a ziggurat-palace built around one of the three remaining monolith-seals protecting the world from the valley; there rules the Sister, priestess-queen protected by a champion wielding one of the valley's forsaken weapons. She has only ever paid allegiance to the Hearth out of respect for the Steward's strength, and she watches now to see if he shall fail and leave her free.
Dryness is less a city than it is a town-sized slave camp; hundreds of workers toil in its misshapen salt quarries, plagued by desiccation and haunting dreams, to feed the Salt Lords who rule over them. The quarries are at the easternmost edge of the Valley, a wound in the jungle; a small army of mercenary is on retainer to thwart threats from the woods and the lands beyond the Grave, for at the heart of the quarries is the broken base of a monolith which no longer protects anything. Strange dreams haunt the town of Dryness, for their salt is not wholly natural, and echoes of the Wyld hang over the quarries like miasma.
Places of the Wild
Swordbleed
One cannot bury a hundred and a hundred more cursed blades in one valley and not expect these dead curses to rot and foul the land. The monoliths bind their power and the ley lines of the Grave are strong, but two of these monoliths now stand broken, and the swords do bleed. Rarely is a single Artifact enough to cause such taint; but when proximity or geomantic alignment causes their energies to blend, then the Swordbleed unravels the skein of Fate. The most potent but least dangerous of these are isolated locales; a grove where all the trees have daggers for leaves, a burial mound whose dead rise on each new moon to ply a sword's hunger for battle, a crimson pond whose water makes the blood turn to red jade in one's vein. Worse yet, sometimes the taint comes alive, and trees rotted with curse usurp a Forest King. These are places of powerful magic, but easily avoided.
The true Swordbleed is more insidious, and yet more beautiful also. When the curse-flow of blades contaminates a stream of water, that water flows easily but shines with the color of magical materials. Such water taints the land it passes through in subtle ways and twists the flesh of men over years or decades. The wise one often draws this water for use in rituals and thaumaturgy, for it is potent; all the same it must not be allowed to reach the Grave's pure rivers. For this reason, worship of the Sobeksi elementals is wide-spread in the shards; mortals offer them worship and sacrifice in exchange for their help cleansing the streams.
Those Sobeksi which stanch Swordbleed by purging it out of the water consume great amount of powers and become lean and hungry beasts, needing ever more prayers, whose scales are engraved with warding glyphs and whose breath can purify illness. Those who keep the water clean by drinking the curse-flow themselves become twisted into weapon-beasts with scales of magical materials and teeth like daiklaves, imbued with an echo of the Artifacts' powers; these guardians need little nourishment, but their minds grow strange and twisted, and their nature far more than elemental.
Isojichi
No one remembers what the purpose of Isojichi once was, nor the meaning of its name, though records may yet exist in those places which call themselves remnants of the Shogunate. Those few daring enough to venture into the Grave's only shadowland, a place of dessicated shrubbery, bone-trees and treacherous will-o'-wisps, up in the mountains at the edge of the valley, speak of a place small as a village but built as strong as a palace. It has lain forgotten for ages, yet still lights blink in the night, sending messages which people have forgotten how to read.
Isojichi is a place full of treasures, but these treasures cannot be grasped by mortal hands. An intricate web of advanced technology of which no single component makes sense in a vacuum, its corridors are haunted by whispers and warnings for no one to hear, and its perpetual scrolls write and erase new messages every day. There is something buried at the heart of Isojichi, but no adventurer has yet managed to access this treasure and come back; most are content with stealing the shiny, glowing trinkets of its steel-and-wire apparatuses, and selling them to cunning merchants who can derive some purpose out of them. The wise do not linger long enough to find a true prize, for cold-eyed soldiers with body of mist and iron come every night, walking patrol routes that no longer make any sense.
The Carved Ones
The Blind Ones of Forgetfulness know the lore of the Grave and its swords; but such knowledge cannot come from simply dwelling in an ancient crypt. Some must go out in the valley, collect the stories of the shards' folk, study the forsaken weapons in close proximity, record the taint of Swordbleed. This is the task of the Carved Ones, who belong to no shard. These wandering lorekeepers have burned glyphs of warding into their skin, and can be recognized with one glimpse of their face. They are ascetics, pursuing dangerous knowledge for the sake of the valley's people, and as such are granted hospitality without question wherever they go.
The Carved Ones rarely meet the fate of mortal men. Exposing themselves to curses over and over, dealing with ancient and tainted spirits, they find the curse bleeding into their flesh until it changes them. The fortunate die young, their body unable to endure such transformations. Those who are strong enough may live for over a century or even more - changing until they are unrecognizable as men. When such ancient ones finally die, their ghosts invariably rise as tormented beasts of terrible power; for this reason, Carved Ones on their deathbeds are sealed within bronze coffins and buried in the Chasm of Shades at the foot of the mountains. It is rare for these ghosts to escape their coffins - but not unheard of.
People of the Valley
The graveborn are the oldest native population of the valley, and by far the most numerous. They tend towards light brown skin, curly black hair, and eyes which range from brown to gold to red. They favor sharp-lined tunics and skirts dyed in geometric patterns of warm or dark colors. The more recent outsiders consider them an uncouth, superstitious people, and gloss over the fact that they have been learning the valley's dangers and opportunities for long before they came, and that it is they who harvested the dead dragon. Graveborn of the Hearth consider themselves a sophisticated people, wise with the martial wisdom of the Sword Arts and the industry of the city; graveborn of the shards see the city as a tumorous growth which enforces unearned authority over the valley and is the vector through which the Realm can control their lives. Oral storytelling holds a great importance to the graveborn, as it is the means through which they track the history and threats of the valley's countless artifacts.
The riverfolk are the descendants of the greater entourage of merchants from the River Province, largely found in the Hearth. They tend towards bronze skin, straight hair ranging from black to auburn, and pale-colored eyes, and dress in long, flowing clothes; long nails and thin hands are considered a token of prestige among them. They have forged the connections between East and South that run through the valley, brought many foreign goods and exported the unique wealth found therein, and as such consider themselves to be the clever, ambitious people who turned a backwater into a thriving place. Graveborn instead tend to look at them as arrivist and scavengers who do not understand the dangers of the valley and would despoil its wealth in a century when it has lasted five so far. Many riverborn consider themselves merchant-princes in the making, even those who toil in manual labor, and all but the worst-off outcasts belong at least nominally to a "merchant house," the retinue of a given merchant that came to settle the Hearth - even when that merchant is long-dead and they are merely the fourth-removed daughter of a cattle-driver working for that merchant.
Raptorfolk come from the jungle; unlike their sicklefolk cousins further north, they are of diminutive size, but their talons and fangs are sharp while their feathers are magnificent. In the Hearth they are considered an adventurous but naive people, taking dangerous jobs normally reserved for children in the textile mills. Those raptorfolk dwelling outside the city are wholly unlike this picture; a semi-sedentary people splitting their year between the grass and the trees, they harbor deep resentment for the once-common practice per which the valley's people would hunt them down like animals for their valuable feathers. Beyond their forest dwellings is Heart-upon-Stone, capital of a sicklefolk nation, whose people are rarely seen in the Grave but are nonetheless the subject of lurid tales of blood-worship.
The mountainborn are a people from outside the valley; they are herders of goat and sheep who dwell in the rocky cliffs that line the Grave to its west and south. They are needed and yet dangerous; they bring the meat so valued by the elites of the city and towns, and yet every year some of them come down the slopes to raid and plunder, pelt-clad berserkers and slate-eyed slingers moving too fast for any army to fight effectively. Merchants passing through the mountains pay them tribute during ritualized false raids, never sure when the tribe charging them down the mountain slope will actually stop and heed the agreements.
War in the Valley
Warfare has existed in the Grave for as long as humans have dwelled in it, but it has often taken a peculiar form. The Grave lacks a tradition for large armies, and could not have withstood the Realm's conquest even if they had tried. Instead graveborn culture emphasize the role of individual champions, and battles between the cities of the valley often took the form of skirmishes between small group of warriors where each individual woman seeks to claim personal glory by finding and defeating the most prestigious opponent on the other side. To kill one's enemy in war is seen as a less worthy victory than forcing them to yield, taking their weapons, honor, and ransom.
Such emphasis on champions is partly born out of the Grave's small population and partly out of the very nature of the Grave of Swords. No city would go to war without at least one champion yielding one of the valley's ancient magical weapons or armors, and the duel of these magically endowed warriors tends to be the centerpiece of any skirmish; battle often ends when a relic-bearer is at a disadvantage and chooses to retreat. When they cannot or choose not to and their opponent defeats them and claims their blade, this often ends the war.
Those who are not so fortunate as to hold Artifact weapons are clad in bronze, for the valley is poor in iron but vastly rich in copper harvested from the dragon's corpse and natural mines in the mountains, and imports tin through the river. The most elite of champions are typically clad in hepatizon, their armor and weapons bearing an unmistakable purple-black cast.
It has been years since the last true battle between the Hearth's cities, although fighting against mountainborn raids are constant. The Fourth Legion casts a looming shadow over the valley; its soldiers are clad in steel and fight in close ranks rather than seeking individual glory, while being led by true Exalts whom most relic-bearers cannot hope to defeat - and by the standards of the valley, their tactics are horribly lethal. This is not to say the Legion has brought peace; though their conquest was bloodless at first, there have been periodic outbursts of violence when the shards rebelled against the Satrap's authority over some point of tribute or unwanted law. Now as the Fourth Legion bleeds soldiers to the Realm's brewing civil war, the champions of the Grave look at it and wonder whether the time has come for another challenge.
Ashuri Pillar-born, Champion of Forgetfulness
Ashuri, daughter of Ashuri, daughter of Ashuri, born under the sign of the Pillar, is blessed by carrying the name of heroes three generations old. Her eyes are red as blood and her armor the color of a deep bruise, and she bears a necklace of boar tusks, each from a beast she killed alone. She stands foremost of Forgetfulness's Brave Ones, their elite of warrior-women, and holds great sway over her sisters. Through her prowess in battle she has earned the right to bear the Azure Thorn, a spear without blade, a straight haft of unadorned blue jade coming to a piercing point. The Thorn endows its wielder with the speed of lightning and can be hurled like a thunderbolt, always coming back to its mistress's hand.
Ashuri tires of fighting rebellious spirits and monsters from the Swordbleeds. She longs for true battle in which she may claim another warrior's weapon. It is her belief that she is a match for a Dragon-Blood, but she is too wise to test that belief with a hasty war - for now. She believes Forgetfulness can be made the equal of the Hearth in power and wealth, if the council of Blind Ones were willing to use their mystical lore to conquer the surrounding shards and absorb their warriors into one army equipped with weapons that have gone unused for far too long. Then, with a dozen of sisters as powerful as Ashuri herself, the Exalted could be driven from the valley.
Spirits of the Valley
The Realm brought with it the Immaculate Order, who has ever since tried to convert the Grave to their ways. Yet the monks are few in numbers and find little purchase for their proselytizing. From their point of view, the Grave is plagued by spirits who claim unearned authority and resources, and its long history of cursed weapons and honored champions is rife for Anathema-worship. But to the natives, it is unthinkable to live in such a magically polluted place without relying on gods and elementals. Even the smallest shard village has a tutelar god protecting it, and often consorting with mortals; their god-blooded offspring often become revered wise ones. Said wise ones deal not only with earthly spirits, but also seek to call upon the wisdom of ancestors whose names each family records on a stone altar. Elementals are found around every settlement, and mortals bargain with them for blessings of fertility on their crops or clement weather, seeing them less as spirits and more as features of the land.
Some spirits, unfortunately, are not helpful, but hazards to be mitigated. The wilder sorts of elementals often feed on the power of buried Artifacts, and in doing so transform into sword-beasts of great power and warlike instincts. Hunting such monsters is many a young warrior's chance to earn her fame. Some of the Grave's relics are also sentient, and seek to be wielded once more - unfortunately, they were made to serve Exalts, and the path down which they lead mortal wielders is often one of doom, even when they do not mean ill. And of course, whenever mortals need the aid of spirits to survive, there are those who will take this opportunity to take as much as they can get away with, knowing the mortals have no chance but to comply. Greed is as prevalent among gods as it is among humans.
None of these wild monsters and cursed blades, however, comes close to the Seven Evil Spirits. They were there long before even the Graveborn, unleashed by unwise Dragons of the Shogunate, and their legends are whispered in hushed towns around the campfire. A wolf with a fur of storm wiping out an entire village, an oracle whose every foretelling is one of death which always comes true, a ghost fooling mortals into worshipping him as an ancestor so he can devour their souls when they die, such are some of the manifestations of the Seven. Decades may pass between any of the Seven being seen or heard of, for it is said that they slumber in burial mounds for years at a time; but when they act, they invariably bring ill upon the valley's folk. Prayers and sacrifices are made to ward them off, and a grand festival is made each year in which the whole of the valley abjures them; but at the same time these rites push them away, they also feed their strength as worship would. The Seven do not seek the death of all men; rather they seek to force them into miserable bondage, always fearing their strength and giving them prayers in hope of mercy. Thus the Seven never bring the whole of their power to bear, and the true extent of their strength is unknown.
This was absolutely stunning. You've managed to create an interesting, believable locatiolocation yet almost everything mentioned is a potential plot hook. I especially like the cursed swords, great schools, and deadly spirits and Isojichi.
This was absolutely stunning. You've managed to create an interesting, believable locatiolocation yet almost everything mentioned is a potential plot hook. I especially like the cursed swords, great schools, and deadly spirits and Isojichi.
I designed this place for a game, and it turns out that having "my players must do shit there" is a really good way of keeping your head stuck on "how does this create sessions and get characters involved" rather than drifting into writing setting information for the sake of information. Even so it's pretty rambly and unfocused but at some point I had to stop or it would have been twice the length.
It's much the same way as designing Charms is much easier when you are writing them for a player character with a defined style and personality rather than as abstract "cool ideas."
@Omicron that was an incredibly evocative setting. I love curses as living things and the idea that that leads to of a curse graveyard. The settlements and cultures and npcs are all really interesting and I like that it's filled with different cultures.
Always fun to read this.
The combat encounter was more than a little outside my expectations of Solar combat, which tends to be more along the lines of the glowing golden steamroller; here, Maji was really your margin of victory. Those flubbed rolls at the beginning made me kinda cringe.
Dunno why you think Rankar sent those guys; while Inks suffering an accident might be convenient, he doesn't have the comm network to arrange such an ambush at short notice, and had no way to know you'd be on that road at that time.
You should be looking at who expected you to be travelling that road lightly guarded; someone privy to the diplomatic plans.
That is, someone in either Etiyadi's or Xandia's courts.
Always fun to read this.
The combat encounter was more than a little outside my expectations of Solar combat, which tends to be more along the lines of the glowing golden steamroller; here, Maji was really your margin of victory. Those flubbed rolls at the beginning made me kinda cringe.
Dunno why you think Rankar sent those guys; while Inks suffering an accident might be convenient, he doesn't have the comm network to arrange such an ambush at short notice, and had no way to know you'd be on that road at that time.
You should be looking at who expected you to be travelling that road lightly guarded; someone privy to the diplomatic plans.
That is, someone in either Etiyadi's or Xandia's courts.
Most of my combat experiences are similar- the solar steamroller phenomenom- and that's... endemic of arms-racing and combat optimization to a point. I'm sure the old hands will trod out the game balance or lack there of arguments in short order, but I think the key takeway here is as follows.
Most players forget, willfully ignore or misinterpret combat mechanics during play and therefore do not play the game as envisioned by the developers (if the developers even had a vision of intended + a comprehensive understanding of those rules).
Speaking for myself, and this is something @Aleph understands, is that I am a firm proponent of Emergent gameplay, or in her particular shop-talk, process-based. I don't adhere to or advocate the fiddly rules out of some misguided rules-lawyer pedantry- I do so because I recognize that their inclusion (and ommission via Exaltation/Charm use) creates gameplay texture.
A lot of the 'steamroller' effect comes down to the idea of players being allowed to do things even when they shouldn't be able to. To use the prior combat as an example and I already broke this partway down- movement rates.
By my account, Inks could not by RAW have pulled off her leaping slash attack, because again, I could only move one yard per tick without dashing. With dashing, I could move seven yards per tick. Which would've still been 4 yards too short.
I forgot to account for this, but neither of us caught it in time, so we allowed it- and by allowing it, the combat proceeded as we saw in the log and the actual stuff that happened became possible. And I think that's the fundamental point here- Possible, Permission, do-ability is common.
Breaking it down further, I would have had to spend at least 2 ticks dashing (out of a speed 3 action). Note further that attacking happens on your acting tick, not when your DV refreshes after you've spent all of your dashing move juice. So Tick 1: Dash for 7 yards. Tick 2: Dash for 7 more yards. Tick 3: Dash for 0 yards. (Or whatever combination makes cinematic sense). Tick 4, Inks acts again, she jumps on the tricerabadger as a springboard, for her diving slash.
A further point I'm trying to make is that by RAW 2e, you are allowed to move during every tick. It's Reflexive (Speed 0) A set amount, no more than [Dex- wound/mobility] yards per tick, but you can! Across those 3 ticks, the raiders could have all spread out some 2-3 yards per tick Inks was using to dash up to them. In fact, if they had simply chosen to move backwards, Inks would have had to spend more time dashing to chase them down!
The key here is that Movement is a 'base' speed, and that you can only move faster once you've taken the Dash Action- that sets your per-tick speed to faster, which lasts until your DV refreshes; but it also hurts your DV hard.
This is why for Solars, Monkey Leap and Lightning Speed are extremely useful if uninspiring charms. Lightning Speed means that at Athletics 5, A solar can move 7 yards per tick- 2 yards better than a dex 5 gymnast or the more likely dex 2 soldier. Monkey Leap allows you to take Jumps (Str x Ath x2 horizontal)x2 as a reflexive move action - errata says once per DV refresh on your acting tick, but that still also gives you the other X ticks of your Action for basic Movement too!
Scourges are even more terrifying, because they're cranking their per-tick movement into ridiculously high levels- and they take advantage of it for multi-attack charms and similar. albeit abstracted all into a single acting tick instead of on-paper, each subsequent tick.
Shyft, I appreciate the point you're trying to make, but the real reason people "forget" or misunderstand those parts of the movement rules is that tracking per-tick movement is totally nuts. "Move on your turn" is a nigh-universal mechanic in games because trying to approximate continuous movement would drive people insane.
Shyft, I appreciate the point you're trying to make, but the real reason people "forget" or misunderstand those parts of the movement rules is that tracking per-tick movement is totally nuts. "Move on your turn" is a nigh-universal mechanic in games because trying to approximate continuous movement would drive people insane.
Sure, but allowing movement-on-turn generates nonsense results in context of the rest of the game. It's not a question of which is better- it's that something needs to be decided and then held to consistently.
Thus, as vartabed of the temple in Ample Pace Prefecture and lama of the Fourth Coil of the Dragons, I recommend sending forth a delegation of monks to aid this missionary.
I may steal this for a DB game. Certainly a group of monks sent as missionaries in the threshold would travel light, and be expected to deal with all sorts of strange things.
