[x]And you have my gratitude for enabling my continued existence.
[X] Planning his raid on Castle Einzbern
--[X] Explaining to Shirou where he's going and why, in case he failed and wasn't able to return.
Question: what would a person be without origin? From what I understand they would be utterly aimless and without any motivation. Having Avalon, a "pure" artifact, if ever there was one, shape Shirou's origin would be a good thing, especially when other influences are likely to be much more malicious.
True, but from what I understand he could develop a new origin on his own without being influenced by a mystical artifact.
and Avalon isn't that pure. its power isn't based off goodness or healing, its based of humans not wanting to live in a world where they have to struggle to survive, to work to provide for themselves. it's the dream of a world where everyone has all their wishes granted for them and no-one is unhappy, without actually having to work for any of it.
Also, the mentality its instilling in him? not based on being a hero or good. it's about being a disposable tool, a "sword" to be used to bring happiness to others.
He's in Fuyuki in a presence of a Green Sun Prince. There's zero chance of not being influenced. Also, I don't think that he could spontaneously develop an origin ex-nihilo, it would be determined by the influences of outside forces, I think. But that's mostly my philosophical thoughts on the issue.
and Avalon isn't that pure. its power isn't based off goodness or healing, its based of humans not wanting to live in a world where they have to struggle to survive, to work to provide for themselves. it's the dream of a world where everyone has all their wishes granted for them and no-one is unhappy, without actually having to work for any of it.
And this is bad how? No, let me correct myself: -I can see potential problems with that state of existence, but it would certainly be a tremendous improvement over the state the reality is in, in nasuverse, exalted verse or real life. So, yeah, it's 'good".
Also, the mentality its instilling in him? not based on being a hero or good. it's about being a disposable tool, a "sword" to be used to bring happiness to others.
And this is bad how? No, let me correct myself: -I can see potential problems with that state of existence, but it would certainly be a tremendous improvement over the state the reality is in, in nasuverse, exalted verse or real life. So, yeah, it's 'good".
didn't say it was bad, just that Avalon itself isn't a holy object of heroes and purity. it's an impossible wish made by lazy people who want to have cake and eat it too.
So, as I said, I have the first two parts of ES's malfeas re-write on my harddrive, does anyone want me to post it?
didn't say it was bad, just that Avalon itself isn't a holy object of heroes and purity. it's an impossible wish made by lazy people who want to have cake and eat it too.
So, as I said, I have the first two parts of ES's malfeas re-write on my harddrive, does anyone want me to post it?
Ok, you ask for it, ES wrote it (ages ago), and I saved it to my harddrive because at the time I was having internet trouble.
here's "The men of malfeas"!
EarthScorpion
Wednesday, April 25, 2012 11:01:56 PM(UTC)
#1
Yes, Compass of Celestial Directions: Malfeas retconned there into being a
toxic miasma which kills mortals in the demon city in seven days. Yes,
this work completely ignores it, because it wasn't mentioned at all in
Games of Divinity, closes off far more stories and setting than it
enables, isn't actually thematic for Malfeas (he doesn't use poisonous
miasmas; yes, maybe Ligier causes skin cancer, but that's something which
can be dealt with by covering up), and is frankly rather boring and
arbitrary, when the alternative of "men in an alien realm becoming alien
themselves" is far more interesting.
Part 1
Introduction
A Tale of Traitors and Teinds - the history, such as it is, of the men of
the demon city.
Part 2 - Coming Up
Living in a Living Hell - Life for mortal men in the city of immortal
demons
> Jailhouse Garb - Clothing and the need to cover up.
> Welcome to Hell - On the origins of souls
> Where Babies Come From (And How They Got There In The First Place) - On
the origins of babies
Oromlany, the Prayer-Prostitutes - the social role of the men of Malfeas,
independents, owned people, escapes, and other such things
Part 3 - Coming Up
Of Matters Base and Spiritual - Physiological changes in the Men and their
mutations, the legacies of uncounted generations of demonblood, the status
of souls, and how reincarnation works in world without Lethe.
Half-Men; Half-Demons - On the Felumber, Skinchangers, and the Po-Eaters
Part 4 - Coming Up
Hell is Other People - several sample cultures and settlements to use in
your games
The Men of Malfeas – Humanity in the Demon City
"Black-robed they live, aye, black-robed and dark-skinned. From the
warrens and the structures of that cursed place they emerge, hungry eyes
beneath tinted glass, teeth stained with the juices of demonflesh, their
tainted heritage clear in their twisted features. And then they see our
sigil of trade, and they back away as we pass, catcalls in the tongues of
demons whooping after us. I remind myself to sell their location to a
citizen I know who specialises in capturing those sorts, but still cannot
ease my disquiet. To see men like this, men who could be just another
serf-species of demon, is never pleasant, and too often brutes like that
have an edge of recklessness that even the most vicious blood ape will not
countenance."
Manen Vanetah, Guild Factor
All around, the cacophony of the city of brass and basalt grows louder
than ever, as the tomescu scream out at their foretold ends. Five days
away, a golden sun is rising over a world of greens and browns, under an
azure sky tinted pink by morning's first kiss. But that is meaningless to
the men of this place. Under a green sun which never sets, beneath a black
sky filled with dying stars and the random wanderings of a blood-red moon,
people are born, live short, dangerous lives, and die. The child who stirs
at the screaming, peeking out of the narrow window in the tenement in
which he squats, has known nothing else, and neither have fifty bearers of
his souls before him.
This is hell, and this is the closest thing that exists to the natural
state of mankind.
A Tale of Traitors and Teinds
Men have been in Malfeas since the very beginning. The tales of the First
Age celebrate the mighty Exalted, brave and valiant, who maimed the
Primordial King, who turned him inside out and who stayed there even as he
retreated across the infinite wastes of his sister to begin his endless
sentence. Heroic were the tales of those champions of men who fought their
way out of the prison they had just crafted, and no few Celestials
perished, exposed to the wrath of vengeful titans who they had now forever
bound outside Creation.
The tales do not mention the Primordial-loyal humans, the slave-races of
the Whispering Flame and the Lintha-children of the Great Mother, and all
those who had remained loyal out of fear and reverence to their creators
snatched up as toys as their masters were locked away. The scholars of the
First Age would have you believe that all men stood as one against the
horrors of the Primordials, that only vile traitors were individually
corrupted – such was the tale of Gorol, the Thrice-Damned whose treachery
cost the lives of his companions and who spread the fear of the akuma to
the Exalted host. But things were ever more complicated than that, and
though the most part of mortal men rose up, there were those who did not.
Many of them were caught in purges and targeted strikes, not least because
they too could be heroic in the service of their masters. But some
survive, and some were taken – no doubt at least in part as targets to
vent the wrath of now-crippled titans – to the newly forged Demon City.
So from the moment when that first layer of Malfeas closed around his
green-burning heart, there were men there. And when the first one died,
that was when the first revelation was made. Malfeas was too far from
Creation for new souls to be drawn to it, bound and warded and sealed as
it was. But by the same measure, it was five days from Creation and any
soul that fled to Lethe and the surcease of memory would have to travel
that distance, for it is impossible – no matter what some claim – for the
infinities of Cecelyne to be crossed in less time
And when a would-be-hollow infant was born in Malfeas, a new life born
into imprisonment, the fleeing hun and the body-bound po were drawn into
it, forcefully reunited for another lifetime without the nepenthe of Lethe
to wash away memories nor the chance for the po to ensure that it was
buried properly. This was the true genesis of the men of Malfeas.
But they have not remained static. Though their role in Malfeas has always
been in the background, for the most of the level of the common serfs or
as currency, they have endured and in enduring changed. For five thousand
years, they have been in the city of demons. In the mass-deaths as two
layers slam together, souls have fled the City, even as captive mortals
are stolen away. The felumber have come into being in the vitriolic
atmosphere of the realm of demons, and teind ghosts have been the subjects
of much experimentation – and they too have fled, either out across
Cecelyne or into new bodies. They have bred with demons, aye,
miscegenation blending their lines with the demonic, and they have become
demons in their own right – and the demonbloods sired by a demon who was
once mortal are strange. And always, in this place without Lethe, these
trapped souls have accumulated memories, thaumaturgies and the corrosive
power of vitriol doing a weak mockery of that all-consuming nepenthe of
forgetfulness.
Under a green sun, in a world that beats to Primordial power and the
corrosive transformative power of theion to, men have become demons,
demons have become men, and all have become other than what they once
were. The peoples of Creation would say that the men of Malfeas are not as
men should be.
Living in a Living Hell
The men of Malfeas are men as any other man. They live, they love, they
hate and hurt and hunger. And if there can be no love without pain, no
silence without death, and no power without ambition, well, is that so
different from how most of the dwellers in Creation spend their days?
Yes. Yes it is.
Three things fill the passage of the days of men; three things above all
else. Man must eat, man must drink, and man must sleep. And in that, the
dwellers in the Demon City are no different from those who live in
Creation. All three pose unique problems, too, for Malfeas is not a place
made for human beings, and so the people who live here must face things
that no Creation-born must tolerate.
Of these, the most dire is water. Under the baking light of Ligier, most
humans have at most a couple of days before dehydration proves fatal, and
before that, the impairment may well be enough to finish what the lack of
water started with life what it is in the Demon City. However, in the main
body of Malfeas, there are not the rivers and streams and lakes of
Creation; for the most part, there are not even wells unless one would sup
on the waters of Kimbery. Some twisted men can indeed do so, but for most,
it is not an option. Though a few bodies of water exist, they are the
private possessions of mightier demons – or, indeed, part of their corpus
– and so at best those owned by those citizens and Unquestionables may be
permitted to drink from them. Only a fool would sup from the fetid swamps
of Metagaos, and though there are springs and waterfalls upon the slopes
of Qaf, to venture onto his heights in pursuit of water is something that
only the desperate would do.
As a result, the main source of water for the men of Malfeas is simple.
Alcoholic beverages in Malfeas do contain water, and as a bonus, the
chances of catching some disease from strong alcohol are greatly reduced.
Demons are great drinkers, too, and hence in inhabited areas – the ones
some people might laughably call 'civilised' – there is always a way to
get a drink. If, that is, one has the capacity to pay. Owned humans thus
have a reliable source of water, not least because prayers are hard to say
through parched lips, and those who have some level of status among serfs
– or prayer-prostitutes who take their pay in drink – can survive.
Away from such sources, water is a far, far more pressing issue. Some men
set up their own crude distilleries, set-ups in basement taking Kimberyian
waters and the metal vegetation of the Demon City to produce a
vile-tasting spirit known as fangmelt that burns when it goes down and
slowly dissolves the teeth; access to other ingredients can make things
more palpable and less toxic, but fangmelt is always an option. The
glasmen who haunt the wastes of Cecelyne and the outer edges of Malfeas
are cultists of the Endless Desert, and they are desert creatures, who do
not drink and do not die, gleaming iridescent eyes in deep-sockets, ringed
by paper-like parched skin. Many of the men of Malfeas are blooddrinkers;
many species of demon have potable blood, and though it may not be
possible to do it all the time, it is an act of opportunity. To knock a
demon-harpist or some other less combative species of demon out and secure
the cooperation of a stomach-bottle bug (paid in fangmelt, for those
creatures find it delectable) to prevent the blood-loss from killing it
can keep a small family alive for potentially years – and if any children
born have hair that moves on its own, or, when they mature, are driven to
play music... that's the price of life. And a talent for music is always
welcome in the Demon City.
Next, therefore comes the need for food, and that is more comparable to
life in Creation. Again, those humans who are kept slaves, or who have
income, can obtain food by one means or another. The principle of caveat
emptor applies when buying from the restaurants and market stalls of the
Demon City, for there are things that men should not eat beloved of some
species of demon. There is also the more subtle problem that while demons
like to eat, they do not need to. Hence, food is a luxury good to a
certain extent, and demon society is not structured around the idea that
meals are needed every day – though they still hunger. In this, the
prayer-prostitutes fair better than many, for worship is a better
indulgence than food for demonkind, and an hour of veneration is often
considered to be more than worth the price of a meal charged by a human
provider. In the food courts and stalls of Malfeas there are things both
horrible and wonderful, and in many ways the citizens of this place
experience a breadth and width of foodstuffs not seen outside Yu Shan.
Strangers to the city have problems adapting to the diversity and getting
used to strange things eaten (and learning what is safe and what is not),
but to natives, they are acclimatised. Demonmeat makes up a sizable
percentage of the diet, but there are strange crops in Malfeas, too. The
lambent moss that grows around the entrance to catacombs, warding off
those touched by Erembour, makes an odd, self-raising bread that bleaches
the skin, while the strange plants which bloom on rooftops when Hegra has
passed are both delicious and highly hallucinogenic... and drugs, indeed,
see massive use among the humans of the Demon City, so to mix them with
one's meal is just an added bonus. And for those who pray to Ceceylne,
those rare, beloved times of plenty when she deigns to grant locust-mana
are times of glory, and perhaps the capricious whim of the Lawgiver is
pleased to see mankind degrade itself in heartfelt reverence for such a
meaningless gift.
To obtain food for one's self is harder. Mankind sits near the bottom of
the food chain in Malfeas, and to be quite frank, most things within the
prison of the Yozis can eat them, rather than the other way around. Much
like demonkind, most humans in Malfeas are opportunistic cannibals –
though 'cannibal' is not the right term for the scavengers who pick over
the streets full of bodies when demons war, hacking off cuts from the dead
before the Promise Wind can move away. There are still cannibals, both
culinary and ritualistic - and ritual cannibalism of the dead is doubly
useful, for if it is expected it wards off hungry ghosts as well as
ensuring those who survive have a better chance of hearing the tomescu
scream again. In the light of Ligier, meat when treated properly dries in
a way which leaves it edible for years. Demons and mortals alike run in
butchery gangs. It is strongly recommended that one obtain a stomach
bottle bug if one wishes to eat from the demonic dead, though, not least
because a battlefield where vitriolwands see use is liable to leave toxic
byproducts smearing a potential meal. By and large, there are no farms
like in Creation, and where they do exist, they are the projects of
citizens. Some humans may be able to hold a tree in a courtyard or a small
herd of plant-like demons, though, usually in the name of another demon
who gives them leave to eat from it in return for both service and
prayer-rent. In truth, the closest thing to 'wild crops' that most humans
get in Malfeas are the waste bins behind eateries – this is not intended
merely as a statement of their low social level, though it is that – no,
other lesser things are attracted to them, and fungi and mosses grow in
the detritus. Weirdly, in such places can sometimes be seen the closest
thing to a Creation-native ecosystem in all of the Demon City.
Compared to these two great banes, the issue of sleep would seem minor –
it is not. Malfeas is, above all, a city, and in its mad streets and
nonsensical layout, one can usually find a place to squat. That is not to
say that one can find a place to squat safely. Though swathes of Malfeas
are indeed unclaimed, to claim land away from the food-markets and away
from the safety of noise is even more insane for humans than it is for
demons, and that is no mean feat. Only those who are sure that they can
obtain food and water would do such a thing, and Adorjan has carried away
many who misjudged her perverse tendency to show up when least desired. To
claim a dwelling is troublesome, for humans are weak and pathetic, and to
hold one's home from a gang of blood apes is not something that even the
nomadic tribesmen can do, let alone a smaller group. No, most free men
rent in one way or another, and that is wise, because to have a
human-renter is an asset for a demon. As in all things in Malfeas, it
comes down to prayer, and that rent buys some measure of protection – more
than most demons get.
The Green Sun is bright and burning, though, and man dwells by-and-large
in the depths of the city, where he does not shine with the gentleness he
may spare for the dancehalls and banquets where the Unquestionable and
citizens beg his attendance. And man was made for a world where the two
suns would rise and set together. While those in Creation may be content
with the Daystar, which keeps to the patterns of rising and setting, the
men of Malfeas live in a crippled titan whose heart is eternally overhead,
and where the eternal racket clatters and clangs to prevent the Silent
Wind from descending on them. Ligier's light casts no shadows, and the
noise never stops.
And that is a problem, for men cannot sleep and cannot live in such a
manner. Many must use sleeping drugs to rest properly. Some men descend
into the very highest levels of the catacombs where Ligier does not deign
to shine, though only those who have some surety that the beasts which
dwell down there will not come for them risk it. Others make – or have
made for them – swaddling bandages, warded against the light, and wrap
their heads in them to quieten and blind themselves. Some go mad, others
sicken and die in a world where they cannot sleep. Among those whose
ancestors have dwelt here the longest, or otherwise been altered by
greater powers, there are adaptations and mutations akin to those seen in
Northern wyld-mutants who live where their twisted realm means the sun
will not seem to set for days on end. These fortunate souls – or, rather,
fortunate bodies – can sleep without the cares of other men for times of
day, grabbing sleep when they feel safe. The same goes for the light and
the noise, though the shallow sleep which ensures can still leave them
prone to madness and breakdown. Even among those who live, there is
fatigue, and in the Demon City, such can be lethal.
(Incidentally, the reason to start with this? Because proper
world-building is done with limits. Limits make things interesting, and
inspire creativity. By clearly setting down the most basic human elements
that the men of Malfeas live under, this sets the fundamental groundwork
for what any later details will have to conform to. Malfeas is not a nice
place, but even here, echoes of Chiaroscuran and Nexan street rats may see
this as a little bit familiar. Set down the limits first, and thus you
avoid Lookshys and Haltas; define places by what they must struggle
against and how they transcend them, and what they can accomplish despite
that, rather than starting with what you think is "awesome" and then
tacking on flaws.
And then you realise that... yeah, blood-drinking is a good source of
water, and that any sensible human in Malfeas will want a stomach-bottle
bug. There's actually something almost akin to Mordor Orcs about these
men; many would call them wretched, little different from the demons.
But... is that such a bad thing? If men can be reduced to this, does that
not say that First Circle demons are reduced to something similar? That
the demons born into jail here are more akin to the men born there than
most Creation-born would like to think.)
Golden Demon wrote:
And now I want some demon lord to have a lesser elemental dragon of water
imprisoned in his fiefdom, veins laid open so that its endless river-blood
can nourish the citizen's human prayer farms.
Yesssss, yessss. Perhaps a Solar-loyalist elemental that fled to Malfeas
to avoid immediately post-Usurpation 'unpleasantness' [1], and had three
hundred years of valued-stranger-hood with a Second Circle they knew,
before more unpleasantness led to them being impaled through with a mobius
strip of black Malfean lead, and hung from a pyramid of Szorenyian wood
such that the water runs up the silver frames, to form clouds which are
trapped in a massive bowl-like crater the demon lord has blasted into the
Malfean landscape and lined with gold so Kimbery cannot contaminate it and
the Grinding Wind cannot break the waters.
The omen weather alone generated by this is astonishing, even before its
use in attracting humans who will pledge service for guaranteed clean
water, and feeding their pre-existing prayer farms.
[1] Those Dragonblooded are mad dogs! They're irrational monsters, holding
a grudge for perfectly normal services it had done for one of its friends
and his research into the nature of the Terrestrial Exaltation, and his
perfectly exquisite parties afterwards! Why, they'd made sure that every
one of those Dragonblooded volunteered for all it.
Jailhouse Garb
In the minds of occultists, the Demon City is a place of bared flesh and
depravity, where skyclad demons flaunt their wicked ways and skin is
something to decorate with abundant piercings and tattoos rather than
cover up. That may be true, at least in some areas, but mankind in Malfeas
cannot take part in such things easily. The light of Ligier, ever-present,
burns even those from the deep South, and so men must cover up least they
suffer. Some have been modified to survive in the light as a demon would,
and they are blessed, but most have no such luck. There are diseases of
the flesh which can only be caught from prolonged exposure to Ligier's
light, mightiest among then Green Sun Wasting, and though a hero who
ventures to the Demon City to search for exotic ingredient for a project
might not have to care about these long term consequences from mere weeks
of exposure, those who dwell in that place would rather not die in agony
as flesh sloughs from bone.
For those who are owned by demons, this is a method of control, and so
they are provided with scant clothing, kept inside out of direct light,
told that to escape will lead to their deaths even if they escape the
hunters of their owner. Their garments are what their master decides, and
if they are presented with the illusion of choice, it is a mere illusion,
something tolerated as an amusement by their master. Fundamentally, a kept
human, whether a slave, a pet, or even a child, will not usually be
dressed in a way which protects against the Malfean sun, for there is no
need.
For free humans who lack some mutation which protects them, therefore, the
imperative is to cover up. Exposed skin can and will be burnt, and so
all-covering robes are worn if possible. Long sleeves hide gloved hands,
thick veils conceal faces, and thin silk or Cecelynian glass goggles cover
the eyes, so not one square centimetre of skin is exposed to the light.
The robes come in all colours for the denizens of Malfeas are ingenious
with their dyes, though yellow is the colour of a prayer-prostitute and
those who wear prominent patches of it are treated accordingly. The very
best ones are the dark black-grey of the lead of the demon city, the metal
treated by the heranal to be almost as light as cloth, for such garments
block even the light of Ligier, and provide protection above that. Most
cannot afford that – though more than might be thought, for the fervid
smiths have their lusts and can be paid in that way – and so a variety of
lesser fabrics are used. Demon leather is near ubiquitous, of course,
available all over the bazaars, and often protective, but it is hot and
often heavy. Silks are the cheapest fabric by far, for the uncounted
species of demon spiders – and the silk papers of the cannibal bureaucrats
– flood the markets with their wares. Though the protection they offer is
scanty, by layering they can do their jobs, and it is an irony that of the
men of Malfeas, only the very poorest wear silks in numbers that a Dynast
would view as respectable. But there are as many different sources of
fabric in the Demon Realm as there are types of food, and so most end up
wearing a tatterdemalion mix of things, carapaces and skins, cloth woven
from the silk of the great maggots found in the borders of Metagoas's
swamps and chainmail woven from the metal vegetation, and a thousand other
sources.
For those who have garnered immunity to the Green Sun, whether by
birthright, blessing, thaumaturgical creams (which dye the skin a bloody
crimson with extended use), or donning a peronelle, all such requirements
are gone. Those who are proof against his burning rays dress as the demons
around they do, treating flesh as a canvas and a place to hang jewellery.
Those who retain some common sense are not fools enough to shed protective
clothing without replacing it with some other form of warding, though, for
the uncounted hazards of Malfeas and the other Yozis strike at the weak
flesh of man more than those of demons, and an acrid shower which stings a
blood ape may make a human's flesh burn as if scalded.
EarthScorpion
Thursday, May 10, 2012 11:01:45 PM(UTC)
#25
Aleph wrote:
... oh, wow. I have love. So much love. A scarred, stunted boy, swaddled
in tattered silks of every colour, with hair the colour of blood that
twitches and writhes as if alive. His eyes a poisonous green, he squats in
a cellar looking warily out at the streets so as to avoid the rowdy blood
apes carousing above, drinking the blood of an agata in sips to stave off
dehydration and breathing shallowly as the heady liquid brings mild
hallucinations and euphoria...
If writing sci-fi (and I mean proper sci-fi, the kind which goes "how
would this affect humanity", rather than being all about the laser blasts)
has taught me anything, it's that the best way to make a place alien is to
look at the things that any human being has to do to survive, and change
those. Everything else flows from there.
Aleph wrote:
What kind of fun probably depends on how attractive "food, clean water and
somewhere out of the sun to sleep" sounds to them when I find them, of
course. But I'm pretty sure that it'll be some sort of fun regardless. ^_^
Oh, yes. See... this is what Infernals Chapter 1 doesn't get. Scenes of
gratuitous body horror like canon!Lilun are just running off shock factor,
and are shallow and trite. The way to tell people that the Yozis escaping
(if they could do that) is bad news is to show what it really means.
That's why my Lilun is a beautiful woman who shows her heritage in he
features, and looks just a few months pregnant, who's a prosthetic soul
for all the Reclamation Yozis and the vessel which they speak through when
they wish to command the Allthing, and whose geography-body is the
Allthing. Because she's the nice face, the beautiful, tempting, friendly
one who genuinely believes that the best thing possible for everyone is to
free the Yozis.
To see what the Yozis would mean for humanity, leave her perfect enclave
of beauty and civilisation, and the Ligier-designed areas of city that
surround it, and head to a more normal level. Seek out the scarred,
stunted boy who hides in a cellar and gets his water from blood and
spirits, whose teeth are stained with unspeakable juices, whose family
tree only has a direct female lineage because the male roles are taken by
various demons, and who thinks of himself as a weak kind of demon rather
than a separate order of being because... well, demons come in lots of
forms. And his father was a teodozija, anyway, and sometimes he can hear
the whispers.
If you spoke to him in the Malfean dialect of Old Realm which is all he
speaks, he'd tell you a lot about what it means without meaning to.
Because what this stuff is really intended to do, in part, is provide a
glimpse a world more akin to the world before the Primordial War than
anywhere else in the setting.
Welcome to Hell
Of the mortal inhabitants of hell, much can be said. Their diversity
equals and indeed exceeds that of Creation or Autocthonia, because, in
their scattered weakness, they have no great unifying power or spread of
culture. They are like dust on the wind compared to the power of the
Unquestionable, and less than that should they accidentally get in the way
of a Yozi. Whatever petty lord of the Demon City rules where they dwell
will set the terms and conditions of their existence, and one who dwells
in the show-city built by the Green Sun himself will have a considerably
different existence from one who lives in the vast empire of Octavian, who
will be different again from the spoilt child of a Green Sun Prince or
Unquestionable, whose existence is unimaginable to a prayer-prostitute who
lives on the mean streets from meal to meal.
Malfeas is bound five days from Creation, and thus five days from a source
of fresh souls -- which, anyway, was warded against the callings of those
who created it. As a result, every soul, every last hun and po must be
bought to Malfeas in some way or another. The Yozis have the capacity to
create human souls, yes, but they rarely do. This is partly out of their
petty spite and a rather more sensible decision during the First Age not
to play with fire and risk the Exalted breaking their side of the
surrender oaths out of some fear that the Yozis might try to trap all
Exaltations within themselves -- a fear which would have been grounded,
for the Great Mother alone made several attempts to that end in hidden
pockets within her depths to precisely those ends. It is informative,
though, to look into the Yozi mind and realise that their masks of spite
and fear conceal a deeper inability. The creation of the souls of any
free-willed being not born of a soul hierarchy was a product of the
Primordials when they were free, with access to the wonders of the Wyld to
forge into shape. Sealed within the body of their king, they have only
themselves. Denied to them is the possibility that they could truly craft
mortal populaces like they once could have. Oh, some mortals within the
Demon City have never known Creation, for their souls were forged here,
but their numbers are slight, and the best number of them have their
origins in the Principle of Hierarchy, who will endlessly waste -- as
others may see it -- precious materials of the Wyld smuggled across
Cecelyne trying her simulations as she tries, again and again, to work out
what went wrong.
As a result of this, most of the mortal souls in the Demon City were
bought from Creation. The very oldest are born of the Primordial-loyal
humans who were locked away with their masters, the Lintha who followed
the Demon Sea -- and died, though their uncleansed souls sometimes produce
oddly Lintha-like characteristics in mortals -- and the mortal and Exalted
heroes who perished, as the gates of Malfeas closed in on themselves. From
there on in, there was an endless trickle of new souls in. Demons raided
even the territories of the Solar Deliberative to bring mortals back to
the Demon City, and this trickle increased in volume in both the Shogunate
and again in the Second Age. Mortals, lost in the desert, who stumbled
into Cecelyne, and cultists seeking their masters found their way there.
Much as one might hate to admit it, the souls of the Exalted are
overrepresented in the ones trapped in short, brutal lives in Malfeas, for
not all who venture to the jail of their old enemy return intact. And
there are darker trades; First Age Lunars who exported towns to hell,
renting territory from the Unquestionable to break the Deliberative's laws
on soul experimentation, Solar champions who unthinkingly threw those who
thwarted them into a world of brass and basalt and those fools who cast
entire regions into the light of Ligier for pettiness, and Dragonblooded
willing to trade mortal men for demonic technology.
In the modern era, the source of fresh souls for Hell second only to the
actions of demons is the Guild. In some regions of Creation, far from the
Wyld but with convenient gates to Malfeas, slaves are not sold to the Fair
Folk, but to the citizens and princes of the Demon City. Where profit is
lost in the lack of Dream-Eaten, it is gained in the markets of Malfeas
and, to be frank, the fact that demons are usually marginally more
reliable to trade with than the Fair Folk. They may attempt to cheat you
in the deal, but at least they understand the value of gold, of artifacts,
and of exotic reagents. Hell also maintains trading ties with the
Underworld, too, buying both ghosts and hungry yidak, but trade with that
stagnant place has fallen off since the post-Contagion glut of slaves
emptied itself.
EarthScorpion
Saturday, May 12, 2012 10:37:06 AM(UTC)
Revlid wrote:
I like the idea that the Underworld's slave-economy entered an economic
crash during the Contagion.
Well, that's how economies work... and the Contagion was in the long run
about as bad for the Underworld economy as Aztec gold was for the Spanish
one. It produced an immediate glut of so many new ghosts, with no
connections, ties, or even proper burials, leaving them destitute. Those
ghosts were easy to enslave, and lacked the resources to properly
participate in the Underworld economy except as labour... which forces
down the price of labour massively. And then the fact that Creation has
been lessened so much and how the population was anti-decimated (10% of
people survived), means that in the long run the labour and capital inflow
to the land of the dead was going to be much-reduced.
But in the short run, you have a horrible glut of slaves and labour.
And... oh my, hell's traders are buying all the ghosts they can get, and
trading solid capital goods for any ghosts at all, no matter their
quality, the workshops of hell entirely unaffected by the Contagion. First
Circles working as agents and front men for their Second Circle masters
made personal fortunes and connections on this, making contacts, and
taking the chance to set up cults in ruined Creation - these are one of
the major building points for the modern existence of Sodalities in hell,
because this economic trade set up elements of an independent First Circle
citizen class.
When things have stabilised, you find that across the Underworld millions
of ghosts have been sold to Malfean traders, clanking columns bound in
iron chains, and now labour costs are rising again, and Creation hasn't
anywhere near recovered to its old peak. The entire exercise essentially
functioned as a wealth transfer mechanism, to Malfean capitalists from the
labour-based slaveholders. Because hell-wrought goods have a low value in
Malfeas, made from the bounties of the King of the Yozi, using serf labour
to make them in the dark satanic mills, while ghosts are souls, both
hun-ghosts and po-yidak, and so provide prayer or can be used to make new
mortal if you pair them up. The Malfean side wasn't playing the game with
the same rules as the Underworld side.
And in this, we see the ability of Capital to exploit Labour extends even
to the lands of the dead and to hell.
Where Babies Come From (And How They Got There In The First Place)
There is no love without pain in the prison of the exiles. That is one of
the three things that even a basic student of the occult can tell one
about Malfeas. And that is something that holds just as true for the men
of Malfeas as it does for demonkind. Yet there is still love, pained
though it may be, and there is lust and all the tenors of the acts
associated with procreation. And in that, humanity stands apart from most
of demonkind, for its acts of reproduction are constrained by the
peculiarities of the limits imposed by the finite number of souls (See
Chapter~\ref{chapter:OMBaS} for more details), and the fact that they have
no Second Circle patron who provides an increase in their numbers without
their own actions. Still, the diversity of the demons of hell is beyond
measure, and the idea that a kind of demon might need another of its kind
to help make more of itself, and that it only works irregularly, is by no
means unique.
For the captives of the prayer mills, their reproductive cycle most
resembles those of the Creation-born. Oh, sure, their masters may pair
them off with another human following some mad demonic logic or carrying
out strange eugenics programmes, but arranged `marriages' (which are even
sometimes allowed to be sustained) are far from rare in Creation. The very
fact that they have a good chance of being paired off with a human, rather
than a demon, alone is enough of an oddity -- but then again, it has been
found that pure-blooded humans have an increased prayer-yield over those
with demonblood or other forms of Enlightened Essence, so perhaps it is
not much of a surprise. Beyond that, the conditions of the prayer-mill and
the preferences of its owner is what sets what room for love, lust and
passion are permitted; a citizen who chooses to pamper his prayer-slaves
(and most likely is going for quality over quantity) will likely be much
more lax with what he permits of them compared to a slave-driver who has
contracts to meet.
For `wild' humans, things are rather different. The urban poor, the
independents and the walking prayer-prostitutes live in small groups at
best, running with demon gangs or freelancers who work for anyone who will
pay them. As a result, though they are free from any grander eugenics
programmes, they are also free from such protection. The lines of these
men of Malfeas are, within a generation or two of their escape or freedom,
demonblooded, and it is hardly rare for any given family tree to have as
many demons in it as mortals. Compared to the prayer-cattle of the mills
(or indeed, normal Creation-borns), bred and kept `plump' to optimise
yield, their tainted blood and enlightened essence reduces how much
Essence they give from prayer, making them akin to some kind of rangy
savannah ox. However, unlike with normal human populations, there is not a
minimum population size for a viable community. Demonkind can breed with
man, and though a demonblooded pregnancy can be risky, Malfeas possesses
no shortage of demons who have some form of medical skill. As a result,
tiny clusters of humans are spread throughout the Demon City, renting from
some citizen or associated with a Sodality, breeding with and living as
just another kind of demon.
Indeed, in some cases among independents, the human reproductive cycle
does not involve sex at all -- at least not with other humans. Much as
demonkind uses the neomah to increase its numbers, so can mankind. A
neomah will take pay in prayer and flesh to make a child (and enough
prayer might dissuade it from making improvements), removing the necessity
for a pregnancy which would take nine months and put the mother at risk
for the uncertain chance that the child not be stillborn, lacking a soul.
Some women will go as far as to deliberately sterilise themselves with
various compounds obtained from the markets of the Demon City, to remove
totally the chance of an unwanted pregnancy, and rely totally on the
neomah and other related species should they wish for a child. The same
unfair risk does not apply to men, though some female demons who ask for
more than just prayer from male prayer-prostitutes sometimes demand that
their partner be sterilised. Others do not; the chance of your own
demonblooded child -- and the prayer it can give when it gets older -- is
considered a risk worth taking, and such children when they are not
stillborn often form nucleation points for another tiny cluster of
mankind. That so many generations go by without the involvement of a human
womb and often with only one human partner just makes the wild Men
stranger, more akin to demonkind in spirit and mind.
Finally, the groups which might be described as tribal have conditions
which depend entirely on the tribe. The glasmen of the sandblown ruined
areas of the City try to keep their lines as pure as possible, breeding
only with each other and certain things born of Cecelyne's depths, for
they worship the Endless Desert and their iridescent eyes show the favour
that keeps them alive without food or water, and demands that they cleave
only to themselves. The Erembour-twisted once-men, still with human souls,
who dwell in the catacombs rut with the beasts down there freely, but some
have descended deeper, and there they have found Kimbery and her mutagenic
depths. Sometimes she will make them into mockeries of the purebred
Lintha, strong of limb and powerful, but wracked with degenerative
conditions such that in her eyes within a single lifetime the Lintha fall
to the depths of agony. Of course, the fact that some will breed with less
twisted men up in the city, or give their flesh to the neomah, means there
are strange lines of almost-Lintha which exist in Malfeas, and whose
reduced lifespans mean little when the normal life expectancy of a human
in Malfeas is considered. There are tribes which are more akin to large
groups of independent men, banded together for safety, and there are ones
which run with a single species of demon; red-furred apes side by side
with ape-like men who, in time, will become apes too -- the peculiarities
that such things introduce to the Malfean populace, like notably clusters
of female blood apes, have been noted by some particularly adventurous
sorcerers, and there are some misleading texts in even the Heptagram which
suggest that certain species of demon (not the ones who actually do) take
pleasure in corrupting men into more of their kind. All that can be said
is that, by and large, a single tribal group will tend to be made of
related individuals, or at least ones produced mostly by the same
reproductive methods.
EarthScorpion
Saturday, May 12, 2012 2:23:30 PM(UTC)
#36
Omicron wrote:
How valuable is a single pure-blooded human whose only notable asset is
prayer?
When properly implemented in a high-value-extraction prayer set up, things
work off the Roll of Divinity II "Sacrificing high value objects" thing as
well as the normal Cult set up. As a result, one of the main functions of
humans in those prayer mills is to basically function as a conversion
component, converting sacrificial goods to Essence. A human is a key
component of that, but there are running costs associated with maximum
yield; all in all, a high-production prayer mill human, including the
steps needed to keep them working at max yield, is probably Resources 4
for a child, Resources 3 for an adult, with Resources 3 running costs, if
they are adapted to the Malfean diet - a similar equivalent value to the
cost of a Skilled Slave according to the core.
We also have to take the rarity of humans into account. By my estimation,
there are probably, including humans and near-human things (separate from
ghosts, however), of the order of 5 million humans in Malfeas, and the
First Circle Demon population measures in the trillions [1]. There is one
human in Malfeas for every million First Circles, and their population is
very clumped, into some fiefdoms. As a result, in some areas, humans are a
lot cheaper than others; an area with good trade links with the Guild or
the Underworld will be paying a lot less than a place which lacks those
ties. Moreover, the number of demons who'd rather steal them, whether by
killing other people's humans and trying to get the souls in their own
neomah-made babies, or just by actually stealing them, is pretty high. And
purebloods require lineages and breeding and can't pick up the Malfean
adaptations so have a much more limited diet, so have to either be bought
or bred specially; by contrast, the demonblooded mongrels are less
valuable, and, more importantly, rather more troublesome because if they
escape, they know how to survive, have Charms, and can eat the food.
So... certainly, the Guild traders who sell slaves to Malfeas are doing
well out of it. An owned human is basically something only a citizen could
afford to buy, and a serf who "obtains" one has it as the most valuable
asset they have. By contrast, in areas where there are prayer-prostitutes,
their service can be as low as Resources 1 + the cost of the sacrificial
goods. Trying to capture a prayer-prostitute if you're not a Second Circle
is the sort of thing which starts riots, though, because in the poorest
areas where they tend to be able to remain free, the local gang-lords tend
to grasp that a small piece of the cake is better than no cake at all, and
in wealthier areas, they're the clients of someone more powerful and by
attacking them you might attract their master's attention.
A lot of prayer-prostitutes are associated with Sodalities, because
they're one of the best bribes a leader can use to favour loyal workers,
and the whole "delicate balance of power" and "more like a weak specialist
species of demon" things work a lot better around First Circles than
Seconds.
[1] Note that I subscribe to a "Malfeas is FUCKING MASSIVE" reading,
though, with Octavian's empire the size of multiple Directions (1/8th of
one of the largest layers), and the densely populated urban Malfean
landscape still split up by areas which are far less inhabited, where the
buildings are "natural", and Adorjan blows frequently. By my
interpretation, practically speaking any large fiefdom has First Circle
administrators running parts, as lesser lords who owe loyalty to a more
distant master; as a result, a lot of things can pass under the nose of
the nominal Second Circle lord of a place.
Chained Upon the Wheel of Reincarnation
There are only so many human souls within the Demon City. Though they may
outnumber the souls of the Yozis, they are but a drop in the ocean
compared to the countless hordes of the demonic created races. In all the
depths of hell, there are perhaps five million humans, unified with hun
and po, and perhaps a million more ghosts and yidak, separated from their
other half. Every single one of these souls has been stolen from Creation
over the course of five thousand years -- or given freely to hell, chief
among these the extinction of the city of An Yak (see
page~\pageref{sec:AnYak}), cast into hell by the Solar sorcerer-prince Tai
Kaang to impact upon the slopes of Qaf, where its corroded ruins sit to
this very day. Compared to the height of Creation in the First Age, this
population is but a drop in the bucket -- and if Creation has been
lessened by catastrophe and treachery and plague, such that the human
population of hell is around one percent that of Creation; well, the Yozis
would but say that such a thing is inevitable without its true rulers.
Despite the self-evident righteousness of the once-rulers of Creation, it
still stands that there is no parallel to the Well of Souls within
Malfeas, and even if there was one, the lack of access to the Wyld would
leave it dry. Save when the Yozis themselves stir themselves to operate at
the scale of a single mortal soul -- and that is rare -- there is no
source of new huns or pos. And the lower soul will disintegrate given time
and proper burial, or rise as a hungry ghost, while the higher soul
attempts to flee Malfeas if it does not form a ghost, called back to
Lethe. From this, it may be seen that there should be a constant
haemorrhage of souls from the Prison of the Exiles.
There is not. Even the gentle call of forgetfulness cannot cross Cecelyne
in fewer than five days, and so the hun soul must travel, drawn at
infinite velocity across infinite distance, to its final destination five
days away. And this is where the second trickery of Hell comes in, for if
a new child is born before the soul has escaped, the soul is drawn back,
compelled by numinous conflagration that calls to its deepest nature, to
be drawn into the child as they take their First Breath. A po -- any po,
not necessarily the one from the deceased -- too, is snatched from the
corpse it guards, screaming in agony as the vitriol that suffuses Malfeas
scourges it, a pale comet beneath the dying stars. And if there is both
hun and po, a new child draws breath, and the unearned sentence of another
life in Hell begins anew.
Sometimes, a soul escapes. Sometimes five days pass without the fleeing
hun being called back, and it can escape, vitriol-pitted, tired, to sink
into blessed Lethe. But the Demon City and its human population is large
enough that the normal attrition rate of life in hell more than binds all
free souls. Indeed, there is a shortage, a paucity that means many, many
lives are stillborn, no souls to make them breathe, and a few take a
breath despite their lack of a po soul, as one of the strange creatures
known as the Felumber (see page~\pageref{sec:felumber}). It is only when
Malfeas smashes his levels together in piquant rage, Adorjan blows through
a prayer mill with many thousands of slaves, or other such wide-scale
human deaths that the birth rate does not manage to account for all the
free souls, and so some slip out, going to a better place -- and Creation
is full of places better than Malfeas; even life as a Nexan street rat on
the edge of the Firewander District can be an improvement.
But even forgetfulness is denied to the Men of Malfeas. For their souls
have not passed through Lethe, and though the vitriolic atmosphere of
Malfeas may burn at them and the light of Ligier scorch -- not to mention
the horrors that the mere presence of a Yozi might inflict on an
unprotected human soul -- it is but a pale substitute; a
beating-into-unconsciousness rather than a gentle sleep of forgetting, to
extend the metaphor. Only those souls which pass through Metagaos escape
that fate, for in his endless hunger the Thousand-Toothed Blossom will
devour even memory, leaving them cleansed of all that they were before.
All others, to some extent, are affected by their uncleansed souls.
To put it another way, just as the unclenched keter souls of the Green Sun
Princes bear the memories of luminaries of the First Age, voices from ages
past who bring memories unremembered, thoughts not one's own, and sights
unseen, so do the Men of Malfeas bear their own, rather less prestigious
past lives burned into them. Very, very few live long enough for the
memories to have any true sense of identity burned in, and among most, it
merely functions as a much more noticeable trait. One whose past life was
an alcoholic will be drawn to drink with a strength that is almost already
addiction -- a great savings for the prayer mills who addict the human
slaves to various Malfean drugs, although in truth drug use is widespread
enough among men (and demons) that this is rather less noticeable than it
would be in some areas of Creation. But tastes, old hates, even sexual
preferences are carried over, and in this, the Men are made more akin to
the demons they dwell among, made less strange because of it, for demons
know too of inbuilt preference and drives. Among some, those souls longest
dwelling in hell, or those who have managed extended life (and some do,
for there are wonders within the realm of demons), these are more than
alien drives. For them, they are memories of lives once lived, and the
attendant risk that they might overtake the self. Rules for the Past Life
Background used by the Men of Malfeas can be found on
page~\pageref{sec:humancondition}.
Niiice. Awesome stuff, and strong on transhumanism. I think what it really drives home is this "Hell is not a place for humans. To survive, they must become both less and more than human." And when even demons prefer Creation to Malfeas, this is saying something.
But then, Hell was never meant to be an appropriate living environment.
There are actually three different kinds of Nasu demons.
True Demons, is the term used for dwarves, Oni, satyrs and so on. they are inhuman races different from nature spirits, but still relying on Nature.
Imaginary Demons, are creatures born of human wishes and emotion. think the monsters in the persona games. they are conglomerations of similar thoughts that gain a life of their own, and try to fulfil the wish the created them, often in horrific and unfortunate ways.
Primordial Demons, are basically Lovecraft Old Ones, Elder Gods, and Outer Gods. horrific inhuman alien things that can melt minds just by knowing about them, and exist only in dimensions other than this one.
The ones that use reality marbles as part of their basic existence are the Imaginary variety (well, Primordial Demons do as well, but making deals with Cthulu is not a good idea...).
There are actually three different kinds of Nasu demons.
True Demons, is the term used for dwarves, Oni, satyrs and so on. they are inhuman races different from nature spirits, but still relying on Nature.
Imaginary Demons, are creatures born of human wishes and emotion. think the monsters in the persona games. they are conglomerations of similar thoughts that gain a life of their own, and try to fulfil the wish the created them, often in horrific and unfortunate ways.
Primordial Demons, are basically Lovecraft Old Ones, Elder Gods, and Outer Gods. horrific inhuman alien things that can melt minds just by knowing about them, and exist only in dimensions other than this one.
The ones that use reality marbles as part of their basic existence are the Imaginary variety (well, Primordial Demons do as well, but making deals with Cthulu is not a good idea...).
more accurately, Phantasmal Beasts are basically any kind of legendary magical creature that's known throughout the world, with the more cultures having legends about them making them more powerful, like how Heroic Spirits and Noble Phantasms work. Dragons are the most well known, and most powerful, example.
Faeries on the other hand are either True Demons, Imaginary Demons, or Nature Spirits, depending on which ones your talking about specifically.
Hmm.
When Kiritsugu gets Sorcery, spells he should probably pick up are:
Emerald Countermagic: Requirement for any sorcerer, doubly so for the Magus Killer
Demon of the First Circle: Almost a requirement for an Infernal Sorcerer
Assassin's Fatal Touch: The name says it all
Some kind of long term defensive spells (to replace Bounded Fields)
The rest don't really fit his MO
@Walker of the Yellow Path
Are you using the 'three specialty dots max' per ability rule, or going with 'only three specialty dots used per roll' rule?
Exalted may buy as many Specialty dots as they wish, but can only use 3 dots per roll.
Azzaria is not aware of this fact, besides her own basic knowledge of Exalted Excellence.
Also, Votes locked, and heres the Count
[X] Don't thank me, thank the Yozi.
[X] Planning his raid on Castle Einzbern
Ridiculously Average Guy, Alexander89, Unelemental
3
[X] Don't thank me, thank the Yozi.
[X] Planning his raid on Castle Einzbern
--[X] Explaining to Shirou where he's going and why, in case he failed and wasn't able to return.
Yog, Broken25, ScrewFate, Loktarogar
4
[X] Don't thank me, thank the Yozi.
[X] Planning his raid on Castle Einzbern
--[X] Explaining to Shirou where he's going and why, in case he failed and wasn't able to return.
--[X] During this time, he will use Insignificant Embers Intuition to check how Shirou's magic circuits are doing. Those flames had anti-soul properties, and it would be best to check and make sure that Avalon has healed the less obvious damage.
Xyzarach
1
[x]And you have my gratitude for enabling my continued existence.
[X] Planning his raid on Castle Einzbern
--[X] Explaining to Shirou where he's going and why, in case he failed and wasn't able to return.
Conjured Blade, landcollector, Enjou, Datakim, Satar, the DragonBard
6
[x]And you have my gratitude for enabling my continued existence.
[X] Planning his raid on Castle Einzbern
--[X] Explaining to Shirou where he's going and why, in case he failed and wasn't able to return.
"And I have to thank you. Had you not accepted, I would most likely not be alive." You give an appreciative strum of your harp.
He smiles, and then dismisses the Deception. He walks through the house, checking on Shirou as he does. The boy was sleeping soundly in his futon, splayed out messily over the covers. Kiritsugu smiles, and then frowns.
A thought has hit him. A prudent thought. How has Shirou been affected by the Grail's mud? And is Avalon still necessary for him?
Kiritsugu's mind clears, and you feel a hint of The King, demanding the world give him answers.
The sight will give you and Kiritsugu nightmares for the next few days. Dark and Light war within the boy's soul, the lingering traces of the Grail Mud being hunted down by the harsh and cold light of Avalon. The Shadow fights a losing battle, as the Light of Avalon is bolstered by the actual physical Artifact, but any thought of removing it are taken to the back, tied up, and shot in the head.
Kiritsugu sighs, and dismisses the Intuition. To his senses, Shirou becomes a normal boy again.
He does not sleep that night.
------|------
"Hey Old Man, what're you doing?" Shirou asks, looking over the map Kiritsugu has laid out on the table.
"I'm about to storm the castle to save a princess." Kiritsugu replies, not taking his eyes off the map. On it, he's drawn likely guard stations, the Boundary Field line, and marked down where the living quarters, laboratories, and other such rooms would be.
Shirou gives him a dubious look. "Huh?"
Kiritsugu smiles, and ruffles the kid's hair. "My daughter, Illya, is inside this castle. The owners, the Einzbern family, will not let me bring her back home."
"Are the Enzberns bad guys?" He asks.
Kiritsugu nods. "Very powerful bad guys."
Shirou smiles. "Then you should punch them in the face!"
The Prince laughs. "I don't think I'll be able to just punch them, but I'll keep that in mind." His mood sowers, and he frowns. "Shirou.... there's a chance I won't be able to win."
"Hm?" Shirou tilts his head, one eyebrow raised. "But you're a hero! Heroes always win!"
Kiritsugu laughs. "I guess you could call me a hero."
You feel the need to cut in. "You are definitely heroic." You leave out that you and Shirou have very different definitions for the term 'hero'.
"But these are powerful bad guys. I may not be strong enough to beat them. If I lose, stay with Fujimura and Taiga, alright?"
"Do I have to stay with Taiga? She keeps trying to abduct me." He frowns. "And her sword is scary. It's cool, but I think it might be cursed."
"You're just too cute for her." Kiritsugu teases. "And you'd have the same feelings about any shinai that girl picked up. It's the wielder, not the sword."
He stops to think. "Didn't she try to teach you how to use it?"
Shirou nods. "It was really fun to swing around!"
The practice sword had seemed to fit naturally in Shirou's too small hands, you'd noticed. It seems Kiritsugu had seen that as well. "You should ask her to continue your lessons. I think it'd be good for you."
He smiles. "Ok! And then I'll show you how good I am when you get back!"
Kiritsugu doesn't try to convince him otherwise.
------|------
The taxi pulls up to the house, and Kiritsugu steps into it.
"Airport, right?" The driver asks.
Kiritsugu nods. The weapons had been sent ahead by Raiga, to a small motel that was closest to the castle. Now all that was left was for Kiritsugu to get there.
"You mind If I put some music on?"
Kiritsugu nods. "Go ahead."
He puts on some song about a god and war and stuff (It's well put together, but you didn't really listen to the lyrics.), and it seems to somewhat annoy Kiritsugu.
------|------
You have a target.
Whilst the Einzbern family does rely on the Homunculi making most of their food, they do order materials and luxury goods from the world. Indeed, chocolate seems to be a particular favorite amongst the Younger Einzberns.
However, the Bounded Fields around the castle will not permit normal people through. So the only recourse is to send a Homunculi. A woman named Kristanna, also nicknamed the White Lady, a kind and generous young woman who seems to be rather ditzy with technology.
Kiritsugu identifies her as one of the combat type Homunculi, a well trained one as well.
In seven days, she'll return to receive a shipment of designer chocolate, some fine wines, and some thaumaturgical reagents.
How will you deal with her?
[ ] Write-in
Stats shown are based on Kiritsugu's understanding of Combat Homunculi, and may be inaccurate.
Abilities:
Melee: 3, Dodge 4, Stealth 2, Athletics 4, Martial Arts 3, Archery 3, Thrown 3, War 2 (Defending Castles +1) Resistance 3 (Reinforcement +1), Occult 1, Medicine 2, Integrity 5 (Serving the Einzbern family +3), Awareness 3, Ride 1 (Cars +1), Survival 2 (Forests +1)
Powers:
Reinforcement (Reflexive): Kristanna may spend up to 3 motes and roll Stamina + Resistance Dificulty 2. Success allows her to add (motes spent) dice to both Strength and Dexterity for one action. She may not add more than 3 dice to any roll. A botch will deal 2 Lethal dice of damage to her.
Hmm... Throwing ideas out there:
1) Pretend to be Irisiviel, in terrible distress and wounded. Say that something was wrong with the ritual, and Kiritsugu wished to have his wife back. Either stab the homunculus in the back when she least expects it, or subvert her
2) Pretend to be Justeaze, returned to life via the ritual amid the flames and death and destruction, and trying to return back to Einzberns. Either stab the homunculus in the back, or subvert her - something is wrong with the ritual, Kiritsugu could only think to summon the creator of the ritual to repair it, but died in the process.
3) Poison the chocolate (non-lethal poison, something to incapacitate them), ideally something airborne? Sadly we don't have craft for that. But still, an idea.
Loom-Snarling deception probably can fool the Bounded field in a roll-off, so killing Kristanna, disguising as a Homunculus and entering the castle seems like the most simple (And thus, effective) plan. Once inside we can start killing everybody one by one.
Maybe we can get some information out of the Homunculi. Do we have a charm to forcefully take out information from the homunculi of inside the castle ? I think that the Einzbern are prepared for Kiritsugu trying to get back his daughter and maybe they armed traps against him.
