Exalted: Out Of The Eater

Your earliest memory is of whimpering, of sitting in the chair and squirming as your mother murmured to you and bound your blistered hands. Cool salve squishing against the raw, red, welts. Coarse linen sticking to the pale skin of your palms. Her own hands so strong, so massive in comparison that it seemed like she could pick you up and snap you in half; your arm, your spine, like dry twigs in her grasp. But she was only ever gentle with you, only ever kind, and even if her face is gone from your memory now, replaced by a smear of tanned skin and black hair, and even if her voice is just a low, indistinct murmur in the back of your brain you will always remember her hands cradling yours.

Dirt under both your nails, the soft ivory of your beds cracked and torn. The low banked fire smoldering behind her while a black iron pot bubbles. Thin skeins of smoke and steam rising, intertwining, escaping through the hole in the thatched roof. A night's sky worth of stars shining beyond and they are distant, cold things to you. Scarlet sparks and snowy white points and sapphire drops against a vast swirl of purples and pink; Mercury herself like a fat fleck of gold, a drop of yellow against the backdrop, beaming down on your dinner of rice porridge and meat scraps. Of stale bread and river-fish cooking in the coals. Your father (his whole outline a charcoal smear) in the background, your brothers, your sisters hazy silhouettes as they play with the children from the other family (or were there two). In your mind their laughter is the staccato echo of a stone tossed down a rocky gorge: ringing out and clattering against the sides, fading as it bounces away, vanishing from view.

Did you ask her then? You must have because you remember the way her hands stilled for a second and how she sank down to her knees on the packed dirt floor. Holding you by the trembling wrists; your fingers half crooked and curled in, a bit of blood welling up between the rags. You lifted your head and her eyes- you can't remember her eyes, you've tried so long and so hard and you think, you think sometimes that they must have been like yours. That same shade of muddy brown, loamy earth. Her hair dark as yours, worn to the shoulders and did it stick up in licks and spikes like yours too? Or is that all from your father, that broad-shouldered shadow?

"We're helots my love and this is our lot. This is our life," and you know the words and the gentle tone but you can't hear her voice, it's just a ripple of sound, an impression of syllables, the rush and babble of a brook just beyond a copse of trees, "This is the life you will have Alexius, my Alexius. We work, for the Empire, for the City. You'll be strong, won't you? You'll survive won't you? For me."

Your father standing behind her, stooping down and gently resting his palm on your head. Pushing just a little, tilting your chin up, turning your face up to stare at the black socket where his features should be. "You'll build calluses soon son, it'll get better."

Was that the moment you realized?

Was that the moment you understood? Who you were, what you were?

Helot. Slave. Filth. Scum. Work. Labor. More. Give more. Give everything. Give everything you are. Hollowed out. Gutted out. So hungry you chew a piece of leather just to pretend. Are you starving? Are you dying? Godsdamn insect. Shackles cut into your wrists. Are you looking at me? Are you looking at me you worthless piece of shit? You don't deserve this. Pain blooms across your cheek from the force of the strike. Hot blood dripping like tears. For this the Dragons made your kind. You don't deserve this. There's been some mistake. There's been no mistake. You don't deserve this!

It's not your fault.

The noonday sun beats down on you; its heat an almost physical thing, a tangible weight. Settling on your shoulders, drawing sweat from faintly tanned flesh, the drops evaporating almost instantly. Above you a bird beats flaming wings, every feather a brilliant, burning blotch of crimson and copper; its three claws the color of new coals and fresh soot. It rides its own thermals, circling and wheeling above the ruler straight fields. A sea of barley rustling in the warm, dry breeze that stirs in time with the crow's own pinions. The ground is dust, your tongue is covered in dust; it collects in the creases of your thin tunic, the folds of your cotton leggings, the pockets of the padded jacket with its sleeves tied around your waist. Stirred up by the passage of countless steel-shot boots and horse hooves.

Clotting black and sticky at your feet as blood drips, syrupy thick, onto the thirsty earth. Sluggish rivers giving way to curdling puddles, scabs in the bone dry soil. There's a faint pleading behind you, an old man's voice; quavering and desperate. A sound like a spade sinking into river clay, a splatter and a choked scream and the begging stops. A pair of soldiers come into view a second later, grey breastplates shining like mirrors. A skirt of dark leather strips hanging over longer folds of wine dark cloth. Ring mail drawn up over their noses like a rich woman's veil, hair bound beneath rounded helms. They grunt with effort as they drop the elder on the slow-growing pile, turning on their heels and striding away. The strains of their fast and easy conversation drifting back over the crowd.

His mouth is still open, one blue eye glassy and staring at you. As you watch a fat, glossy green fly lands on his lip. Scuttling in stop-start motions over his cheek. Drinking from his watery, still teary eye before taking wing.

A man beside you is softly sobbing, sick, half-strangled sobs that twitch his shoulders and struggle, stillborn in his chest. A woman beside you, her skin like cracked hide, her expression bleak. All around you the assembled ranks of the village: men and women, young and old, nearly five hundred strong. You don't look at the dead man in front of you. You don't look at the Captain as she rides by, resplendent in her lamellar, helmet adorned with eagle wings over the ear. You don't look at the soldiers as they begin dousing the mound in oil, another carrying a torch, and something in you, some not-so-buried part already braces for the stench of roasting flesh, the smell of rendered fat. You just straight ahead at the fields in silence, at the horizon; eyes flicking above you, now and then, to the suncrow as it's joined by another. By a third. By more mortal ravens, until it's a gyre of ink dark plumage twisting and turning and threading through itself as the birds wait for the soldiers to leave. For the feast to start.

A torch lands on a tangle of limbs and greasy flames shoot skyward. Tar-black banners blooming, deepening as it spreads. The crows croak their approval, cawing racuously.

Your calloused hands hang at your side. Beyond the far fields the seventh wall of Lookshy rises up, high enough to score the sky. A purple tinged span, stretching across the world. Wrapping around you. Closing you in.

In the reckoning of the Realm it is the Year 768, 11 Descending Fire. The final weeks of the Summer harvest.

And today?

Today Agricultural Settlement Zero One Nine: Sublime Bounty of Sextes Jylis is being liquidated. Bound elementals are being brought from the City proper to complete the harvest on schedule. All able bodied helots are to be re-tasked to the front. Be glad! They still have use for you. Be glad! You live another day. Be glad! You aren't on the pile. Yet.

The bonfire grows, it spreads, caressing the old man's cheek like a lover. His wispy beard catching alight as his skin chars and carbonizes. Peeling away from the meat below, from the cracking bone. His eyes are the last to go. They stay on you the entire time.

Fields. Horizon. Crows. Wall.

Take nothing with you, Lookshy will give you everything you need. The City provides, ever and always. But you have one thing you take, nonetheless. One thing left from your mother, from your father. One small, worthless thing, that is still yours. Even after all that's happened.

[ ] A small blue stone, carefully etched with a crude image of Mela: Elemental Dragon of Air. She who uplifts, who inspires and enlightens. Who breathes spirit into cold flesh. Who held sway when you were born.
[ ] A small black stone, carefully etched with a crude image of Daana'd: Elemental Dragon of Water. She who changes, who is chaotic and secretive. Who is sublime. Who held sway when you were born.
[ ] A small white stone, carefully etched with a crude image of Pasiap: Elemental Dragon of Earth. He who endures, who anchors and sustains. Who forms the foundations. Who held sway when you were born.
[ ] A small green stone, carefully etched with a crude image of Sextes Jylis: Elemental Dragon of Wood. He who encroaches, who nurtures and heals. Who overcomes all. Who held sway when you were born.
[ ] A small red stone, carefully etched with a crude image of Hesiesh: Elemental Dragon of Fire. He who consumes, who destroys and renews. Who cannot be contained. Who held sway when you were born.

Introduction: To Keep Us Free

Prologue: Unworthy
Part One: Born To Die
Part Two: On The Nature Of Daylight
Part Three: Eat Me Alive
Part Four: Manifest Divinity
Part Five: Lament
Part Six: Red Skeins
Part Seven: Bad Moon Rising
Part Eight: The Fire Sermon
Part Nine: Daybreak
Part Ten: Jawbone

Interlude One: Intercalate

Chapter One: A Wilderness Of Wolves
Part One: The Man Who Sold The World
Part Two: From Nowhere
Part Three: Throne Of The Wolf-King
Part Four: All You Need Is What You Want
Part Five: In The Forests Of The Night
Part Six: Dissociation
Part Seven: From Below
Part Eight: Sunshine
Part Nine: Antagonist

Interlude Two: Abel In The Dark, Abel In The Night

Part Ten: Blood Of The Lamb
Part Eleven: Chrysaor
Part Twelve: Jam Session
Part Thirteen: Flickering Low
Part Fourteen: Hunger

Fanworks
Duty Demands by @Maugan Ra
Shades Of The Enslaved by @Omicron
Lookshyan Slasher-Spirits by @EarthScorpion
Frozen Beauties by @EarthScorpion
Existential Ectoplasmic Entities by @NonSequtur
O! the husk by @mothematics
No Man, No Monster So Mighty by @mothematics
Homebrew: Innocence Lost by @Gnarker
Artwork: Harrower's Familiar by @Camellia
Homebrew: The Accuser by @LupineVolt


Supplements
Lookshyan Empire Profile by @Chehrazad

While this Quest will run on a primarily narrative basis, an adapted set of the Exalted: Essence Tabletop Roleplaying Game mechanics will be used to track and compare abilities, allies, artifacts etc. As well as implement awards for fan material at the QM's discretion.

Abyssal Exalt:
Essence: 2
Caste: Daybreak
Anima Banner: A carrion cosmos, a corpse-sky ruled over by a titanic seraphim. A great star-dragon, made from the merging of numberless dead.
Virtues + Intimacies:
Major Virtue: Wonder
Minor Virtue: Compassion
Major Intimacies: "No one should ever be held in thrall or bondage", The Lookshyan Empire (Bitter Hatred), Death (Ravenous Curiosity)
Minor Intimacies: "I pull validation from my art", The Wolf-Kingdom (A New Home?), Elegia (Awkward Fondness), 'Jason' (It's Very Complicated), General Navona Afia Sarantankous (Lethal Rivalry)
Exalt Advantages:
Death's Champions: Steeped in the power of the grave and in service to ancient ghosts, an Abyssal feels the wear of existence less keenly than the living. Metaphysically an Abyssal is undead, a creature of Darkness shunned by the Unconquered Sun, and cannot be incapacitated by fatigue, hunger, thirst, mundane poison and disease, or asphyxiation. If mortally injured an Abyssal instead falls into torpor and may recover at a later time. They are at their strongest in locations touched by death and feel the pull of such places as a tangible sensation, a tug on their senses.
Cruel Banquet: An Abyssal may eat and drink as it pleases them. Wine does not sour on the tongue and good food does not rot in the belly. A warm bed is a thing to be enjoyed, pleasant company an occasion to be relished and all the luxuries their Lords can provide are theirs to savor. But the truth cannot, will not be denied: a Deathknight is nourished most by flesh and blood, fear and dread. Nothing else can slake those most violent appetites.
Resonance: Abyssals are resonant with soulsteel and Necrotic aspected materials.
Anima Abilities:
Dark Inspiration (Passive): The great work of the Daybreak must continue. Let nothing inhibit their nightmare artistry. Let nothing bar the way of their dark genius. No matter the medium, no matter the methodology, let all their materials shudder with anticipation, leaping eagerly into the hands of a master craftsman.
Underworldly Lore (Active): Together they dance along the edge of Oblivion, the Daybreak and Death hand-in-hand. A slow waltz without a missed step or faltering motion such is their familiarity, such is their intimacy. What secrets must they share with each other? In those tender moments at the end of everything.
Gruesome Epiphany (Iconic): In the roiling light of their Anima Banner the futility of opposition is made clear. To a Daybreak's keen eyes there is no hiding the flaw that lays at the heart of their enemy: be it in the blade, the one who wields it, the walls beneath their feet or the crown they wear.

Attributes:
Force: 4
Finesse: 3
Fortitude: 3
Abilities:
Athletics: 4
Awareness: 4
Close Combat: 3
Craft: 3
Embassy: 0
Integrity: 3
Navigate: 0
Performance: 0
Physique: 4
Presence: 3
Ranged Combat: 0
Sagacity: 5
Stealth: 0
War: 1

Charms:
[2x] Ox Body Technique (None): The power that dwells within Harrower is an ancient thing; born of the darkness that drips, patient and ceaseless from between shattered stars and broken constellations. It cannot, will not, be undone by something as small as faltering flesh.
[Sagacity] Excellency (Sagacity 1): He was born with a consciousness chained, his world bound by horizon-spanning walls and days ruled by heavy-handed overseers. Now an ocean of occult lore lays at his fingertips and what chain, what wall, what whip-bearing hand could hold back such a flood?
Glorious Exalted Bolt (Sagacity 2): One of the oldest weapons of the Host, the Essence Bolt has been invented and reinvented, discovered and adapted a hundred times in a hundred eras by a hundred different Chosen.
Incarnadine Reaper (Sagacity 3): Where other Abyssals lace their murderous blows and lethal missiles with the power of the Banquet, Harrower instead reaps a wide and bloody harvest. Sacrificing precision and individual potency for that glut of ready Essence. It is the principles of Dragonline engineering applied on the personal scale. Those rivers of red flowing, feeding the vampire sun that lives in his soul.
Life-Mocking Assembly (Sagacity 3): He works in flesh, in bone, in dark alloys and cthonic fuels. He mines inspiration from the nightmares of carrion-titans and the echoes of eras long past. Some envision death as a terminus, a point past which the essential self ceases to be. But Harrower understands with every fiber of his still and silent heart: death is a transformation.
All Consuming Entropy Attack (Craft 3): Within that complex interweaving of power and purpose, celestial venom and ghost-lit necrosis lies the careful art of unmaking.
Lightning Speed (Athletics 4): The world blurs into smears of color as Harrower moves with sharp, staccato bursts of inhuman speed. Launching himself with great leaps and deceptively swift lunges. Jets of scarlet-tinged Essence erupting from the palms and heels.
Iron Kettle Body (Physique 2): A deep study of anatomy has prompted a fascination with his own new physicality. And what a sense of power it brings! The lash and weighted rod- if they were to strike him now he wouldn't feel a thing.
Ivory Blossom Carapace (Physique 4): Harrower wills skin to shadow and ivory scale, armor as peerless as it is inhuman. Purple and blue and bloody red fire weaves itself into cloth, an open skirt around his hips. Feathers trace the line of his spine, down the long and tapered tail and starry eyes twitch behind milk white lids. A dragon's death mask in iron and gold wire sits set in the blind helm he has for a face. Its horns arcing into a broken halo.
Fists of Iron Technique (Close Combat 3): Fist and forearm meet metal and it is not flesh that yields. Foot and shin strike stone and it is not the bone that breaks, shatters and splits.
Ghostly Sentinel Technique (Awareness 4, Essence 2): Shy Elegia, ever-watchful, ever-curious, taught Harrower this technique in his dreams. Showed him how to call forth creatures of black glass and black smoke and black metal; red-shot raptors and reptilian angels that could survey the world around him unseen. Another apologetic present from a bashful Lord.

Necrotechnology:
Arsinoe-class Amphibious Assault Frames (Prototype): River Dragon anatomy represents one of the most tried and true designs in Creation. Harrower created this analogue via multiple corpses fused into a single hulking, crocodilian armature, and the early results are promising. The prototype Arsinoe boasts strength and speed outstripping its already impressive frame. Dead, tireless muscle powering crushing jaws and rending claws; predatory instinct guiding physiology already well-suited to the dark waters of the Yanaze. A fearsome ambush hunter in the making...Yet the design already begs refinement and development. The animating force is all shades and echoes, the meridian-network simplistic, and inbuilt weaponry and defenses are, necessarily, limited.

Merits:
Apollyon, the Angel of the Abyss (Past Life 5): Apollyon was a veteran of the Primordial War and carried this Exaltation for untold centuries, before perishing in the Usurpation. Shaping it, molding it, like wind and rain sculpt stone. And now that corrupted sun shapes and molds Harrower in turn. What things must he have seen then, at the beginning of all this? What dark miracles must the founder of the Black Nadir Concordat have brought into this world?
Ram of Red Splendor (Abyssal, Hearthstone 5): The orichalcum of the armband is tainted, something like smoke, something like shadow staining the edges of the supernal gold. The abstract skull-head of the Ram itself is carved from a single scarlet gemstone -a thing of perfect proportions and fractal registers- and the two interlace magnificently. Until it's as if they were smelted together, the stone and its setting seemingly impossible to separate.
Elegiac Mirror (Necrotic, Artifact 3): A cloud of glass shards, razored sharp and cool to the touch. Fingers skate over the slick surfaces as if each were just pulled, dripping wet, from the water; while the edges swirl with shades of smoke and charcoal shadow. Blackened steel that rusts into fiery reds and smoldering oranges. An effort of will calls them forth from the shadows. A trickle of Essence and they will show Harrower any place he has ever been.
Nerius Canes Aventinus Rex, the Wolf-King of Xauma (Ally 3): He really does care for the odd Abyssal living in his palace; more than he thought he would, faster than he imagined. But trust comes slowly to a born liar and slower still to a student of Ma-Ha-Suchi. And while he has offered much and demanded little, there are still a great many cards he chooses to play close to his black-furred chest.
Chrysaor (Familiar 3): A minor elemental in the shape of a dragonbat, a thing of cinders and shadow and gelatinous orange pyreflame wound into muscle. The thick grey ruff of fur around its shoulders and down its chest is very soft. The bone mask over its face polished and bright. He lives in a simply carved Hesiesh-stone that Harrower wears around his neck and loves him very much.
Steel-and-Ember-Elegia (Liege 2): Far and forever beneath Creation is a dead continent- the land of Covenant. Archive-cities and fortress-colonies grow thickly on its ruined, rain-lashed coasts: Pelagia and Abyssia. Third Obelisk, Cinder Regalia, and Trisagion of the Deluge. It is a nation ruled over by the necropolis-leviathan, the serpent-tailed Last King of Deheleshen. The resources at his command are vast, his power considerable, and he has at his disposal many vassals and servants. But he has had neither kin nor friend in more than 750 years and frets constantly over giving offense, demanding too much of his Deathknight, or, worst of all, proving a weak-willed leech and poisoning their new bond. While he has not handled this poorly yet, it would be overly-generous to say that he has borne his new role and responsibilities with grace.

It was hot today.

Aeneas had never liked working in the heat. It sapped the strength and clouded the mind, made it hard to think straight, to work hard, to live with one's brothers and sisters in arms without coming to blows over the smallest of disputes. The end of summer was a time for remaining indoors, for practicing one's speechcraft in the marbled halls of the theme, for reviewing facts and figures and deciding on how the coming harvest should best be allocated among the deserving.

But Lookshy called, and he obeyed, for duty was honour and his duty demanded his presence here today.

The blade slid home, severing the spine with an artist's precision, and Aeneas grunted in satisfaction. When the soldier withdrew her blade and allowed the twitching form of the helot to fall to the floor, he made sure to give her an approving nod. It had taken time, and more than a little corrective action, to discipline that one out of her more flamboyant tendencies and instil a proper workmanlike attitude to the pursuit of one's duty. When he had first assumed command she had been prone to wasting time with gaudy displays, with mock battles and drawn-out torture, complicating the executions and drawing them out far beyond their scheduled timeframe. Good for morale, perhaps, for the rest of the troop always appreciated a good show, but counter-productive in terms of maintaining order among the helot's ranks.

Letting his gaze drift across the assembled crowd, Aeneas grunted once more, pleased to see the wisdom of his earlier decision. The helot they had just butchered had still been able-bodied, more or less, getting on in years but still able to hold a scythe. It was possible that an observer might have deemed him still able to serve, viewed his death as a violation of the terms on which their own survival depended… but no, there was not even the slightest glimpse of fire in any of the five hundred faces to be found. Swift, methodical, efficient work had the tendency to induce such apathy, while flamboyant sadism risked provoking a stronger response.

Considering that the helots had his troop outnumbered eight to one, such a spark might have proven dangerous indeed.

Dismissing such morbid thoughts from mind, Aeneas gestured to two of his stronger soldiers, sending them forwards to drag the corpse towards the pile while the executioner returned to her place in the line. There had been some debate, he recalled, as to the merits of displaying the corpses as a reminder. A ridiculous notion, and one he was glad that the Captain had crushed. Corpses in this heat, especially ones from such an unsanitary background, would invite plague within the week, and Lookshy could not lightly spare the manpower necessary to sterilize the region so close to the harvest.

His thoughts were disrupted by the flash of silver, and with a frown Aeneas turned his attention back to the motionless throng. Had there been… yes, there, amid the second rank. An older woman, weathered skin already sagging, her hair made dark in defiance of time by what he imagined was probably the application of some kind of dirt. A small trick, but a deception all the same, and if he allowed such an attempt to pass him by unchecked then who knew where it would lead.

Sighing, the scalelord nodded his head, and another young woman detached herself from the troop. A newcomer, he recalled, just starting her first five-year tour. One to watch, then, just to be certain that duty was done. Mistakes could not be tolerated, after all, not in a matter such as this.

Lookshy demanded the best.