Well, dragonblooded in such numbers make potent ghosts so...
Exalted: Out Of The Eater
- Thread starter TenfoldShields
- Start date
Well, dragonblooded in such numbers make potent ghosts so...
Origami Clock
Right twice a day
- Location
- Brighton, UK
Found the write-up of our new Deathlord, by the way. He's...a good fit for Alexius, if it helps.
It doesn't. Nothing can help us now.
It doesn't. Nothing can help us now.
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Deadly Snark
Tryhard As Fuck
[X] Because it's the only way for this to end. Because the only freedom you or any helot could ever have would be on the backs of a million Lookshyan dead. Fine then. If you had a choice you'd buy it with their blood.
[X] Because they told you you were sick, that you were wrong, but you know the truth. It's the world who's sick, not you. It's the world that's twisted and wrong, not you. So break it. Reset it. That's how you heal it.
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
A few things.
1. Thank you all for your kind words, it really means a lot and I appreciate your participation.
2. Please remember that the Prologue isn't quite over. There's at least one more update and an Interlude to go and, all told, this is still essentially the start of the story.
3. While the quest does engage with some pretty heavy topics and the central antagonist is, by design, deeply reprehensible in a systemic, pretty all consuming way, remember that this is still a fictional thing for fun and this is still SV. The Rules in general and Rule Two in particular still apply. Some degree of grandstanding is fine and to be expected honestly, but I'm deeply uncomfortable with the discussion and general tone degenerating into an extended two-minutes-hate-"let's-revisit-the-genocide-idea" thing.
This isn't directed at any one person in particular, just a general QM reminder for courtesy and consideration.
Thanks.
1. Thank you all for your kind words, it really means a lot and I appreciate your participation.
2. Please remember that the Prologue isn't quite over. There's at least one more update and an Interlude to go and, all told, this is still essentially the start of the story.
3. While the quest does engage with some pretty heavy topics and the central antagonist is, by design, deeply reprehensible in a systemic, pretty all consuming way, remember that this is still a fictional thing for fun and this is still SV. The Rules in general and Rule Two in particular still apply. Some degree of grandstanding is fine and to be expected honestly, but I'm deeply uncomfortable with the discussion and general tone degenerating into an extended two-minutes-hate-"let's-revisit-the-genocide-idea" thing.
This isn't directed at any one person in particular, just a general QM reminder for courtesy and consideration.
Thanks.
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Homebrew: Frozen Beauties
Oh no is that a spoopy ghost for @TenfoldShields?
Frozen Beauties
Lesser Dead
Dead by Cold
On an isolated path under a moonlit snowscape, a hunter meets a beautiful young man. They speak; they fall in love. For five years they meet throughout the winter months. Then the hunter finds someone else. He does not come to the mountain, so the beautiful young man who never ages a day hunts him down. This time he has no warmth of passion to save him from the hungry dead, and the kiss freezes him solid. The beautiful young man returns to his mountain and the snow-hidden mound of bodies of those who could not sate his need for warmth.
Death is cold. Colder still are those restless dead who died all alone. As they die they think of the warmth they lack, and their spirits linger. These ghosts have the cold beauty of a winter landscape. Faintly luminescent flesh is bloodlessly pale; lips are icy blue; eyes and hair as black as the night sky or white as snow. Even those who were ugly in life sculpt the snow into masks that can fool the eye. Such a chilly beauty is their curse, for they long to be warm. Their touch drains heat from mortals and their breath is the howling winds from the North. Love can warm them too and a frozen beauty might live as a spouse with an unknowing mortal for many a year, but should love fade – as it often does when the truth emerges – then their spouse loses such protection.
Frozen beauties are material as long as snow rests on the ground. As a result, they tend to only haunt the North or the high places of Creation. Where they cannot find cold places they swiftly retreat to the Lands of the Dead. Their more abstract hunger for the warmth of passion leads them to seek to rise in power in the societies of the Dead, and many are tempted by the lure of sin-eating.
Necromancers summon frozen beauties when they must venture into cold places, for these ghosts are at home in freezing temperatures. Those who do not fear the cold also task them with serving as concubines, and given true love – or a ready supply of mortals to feed on – a frozen beauty will revel in such a task. Within the colder parts of Creation, such ghosts are not uncommonly encountered within an exorcist's duties, and in the north many shamanistic traditions are well practiced at leading such Dead to the warm waters of Lethe.
Frozen Beauties
Lesser Dead
Dead by Cold
On an isolated path under a moonlit snowscape, a hunter meets a beautiful young man. They speak; they fall in love. For five years they meet throughout the winter months. Then the hunter finds someone else. He does not come to the mountain, so the beautiful young man who never ages a day hunts him down. This time he has no warmth of passion to save him from the hungry dead, and the kiss freezes him solid. The beautiful young man returns to his mountain and the snow-hidden mound of bodies of those who could not sate his need for warmth.
Death is cold. Colder still are those restless dead who died all alone. As they die they think of the warmth they lack, and their spirits linger. These ghosts have the cold beauty of a winter landscape. Faintly luminescent flesh is bloodlessly pale; lips are icy blue; eyes and hair as black as the night sky or white as snow. Even those who were ugly in life sculpt the snow into masks that can fool the eye. Such a chilly beauty is their curse, for they long to be warm. Their touch drains heat from mortals and their breath is the howling winds from the North. Love can warm them too and a frozen beauty might live as a spouse with an unknowing mortal for many a year, but should love fade – as it often does when the truth emerges – then their spouse loses such protection.
Frozen beauties are material as long as snow rests on the ground. As a result, they tend to only haunt the North or the high places of Creation. Where they cannot find cold places they swiftly retreat to the Lands of the Dead. Their more abstract hunger for the warmth of passion leads them to seek to rise in power in the societies of the Dead, and many are tempted by the lure of sin-eating.
Necromancers summon frozen beauties when they must venture into cold places, for these ghosts are at home in freezing temperatures. Those who do not fear the cold also task them with serving as concubines, and given true love – or a ready supply of mortals to feed on – a frozen beauty will revel in such a task. Within the colder parts of Creation, such ghosts are not uncommonly encountered within an exorcist's duties, and in the north many shamanistic traditions are well practiced at leading such Dead to the warm waters of Lethe.
Origami Clock
Right twice a day
- Location
- Brighton, UK
The husbando wars, begun, they have.
RedV
Refuelling
- Location
- Right here
[X] Because it's the only way for this to end. Because the only freedom you or any helot could ever have would be on the backs of a million Lookshyan dead. Fine then. If you had a choice you'd buy it with their blood.
This seems to be a bit more concerned about the lot of his fellow slaves and rescuing them, so I like it better.
This seems to be a bit more concerned about the lot of his fellow slaves and rescuing them, so I like it better.
Homebrew: Existential Ectoplasmic Entities
NonSequtur
a body
Interrupted
Lesser Dead of the Helotry, by Caprice
It would be... not nice, or fair, but something closer to nice and fair, if doing one's duty was enough to spare a helot the whip or the sword. It might grant their suffering some structure, something resembling a reason, however cruel.
Lookshy is not in the habit of encouraging its helotry to have reason, and so, on occasion, it reminds them of exactly what their position is through violence. Not against the weakest, like a punishment for failure. Not against the strong, so as to snuff out rebellion. But at random, simply to show, yes, it can. Yes, it will.
An Encrypted arrow striking down a man working the fields. An overseers sword, casually swung at a trench digger. The only sense behind these deaths is their senselessness, and it is this senselessness that can induce a ghost to stay, unwilling or unable to believe it would be killed for nothing at all.
So they continue to toil, mindlessly. In shock. They rise at night to continue their task, as though through effort their deaths might be recognized as mistaken and somehow corrected. However, they aren't particularly... precise, as to where and what they work on. Unbound Interrupted might dig trenches through lonely woods, or harvest a noble's rose garden. Or sometimes (by chance?) they will continue their work upon a living body, and the morning will come to find a corpse with its ribs split apart by a spade, skull shattered by a pick, or its head 'harvested' by a sickle.
The Iron Nails
Ancestor of the Helotry
To stand out, for a helot, is to die, and so, if a helot wishes to live, they fervently pray to avoid notice, or prove exceptional in any way. Unfortunately, someone listens. The Iron Nails died in his sleep, old in a way helots almost never live to be, and frightened down to his bones. It was this fear that kept him from Lethe, and this fear that drives him on his task.
He appears, much as he did in life, to those helots who are blessed in some way. Notable. Maybe they are beautiful, or strong, or eloquent. Maybe they have long hair, or a deep voice. Anything that a helot might take pride in, and that an overseer might take notice of - this is what draws the Iron Nails, to save these helots from their own gifts. He scars the beautiful, cripples the strong... anything, so that they might avoid being picked out by the overseers to be made an example of.
In this, he does the overseers' job for them. He is given power beyond the average Dead by the whispered prayers of helot parents upon seeing their child, the muttered mantra of many a helot - please, no, look away, not here, not today.
Pyreclasm
Lesser Dead of the Helotry, by Defiance
While Lookshy has refined techniques of terror and despair to better break the spirits of helots, no system is flawless. This is the truth of the Underworld - all things fail, given time. So it is, sometimes, that when a helot is chosen to be made an example of, they deny their masters sport in the only way they can. They lean into the knife, bite their tongue, and leave a mute husk instead of a screaming victim.
Of course, that hardly stops their body from being eviscerated and mounted, but the small defiance remains deep in the soul that sparked it, only worsened by the ritual disrespect given to their corpse. The rage, the hate, the pain - that can anchor a rather unique ghost. A Pyreclasm is a creature of self-destructive passions.
Here is a situation presented to Lookshyan masters: a helot drops their shovel and walks away from the work-line. The overseer cracks their whip once, and the helot stumbles, but continues to walk. Such defiance is not to be borne, of course, and the overseer rides near to strike the helot down. However, as steel bites into skin, the overseer sees the face of their target - and they are grinning, eyes lit by blue-white fire.
The helot bursts into a flame that dives on to the overseer like a living thing. It is a painful way to die.
The Sufferer
Sin-Eater, Ancestor of the Helotry
The helotry produces fewer ghosts than one might expect, given their circumstances and the cruelty of their deaths. Lookshy might, on occasion, use this as a defense of their system, when in fact it is the harshest condemnation. Helots do not leave ghosts because their lives have so very little to cling to, and Lookshy does all it can to ensure they have nothing at all to hold them back from Lethe. The lesser dead of the helotry slipped through this process - Pyreclasms found death before their defiance could be crushed in life, Fox-Breaths reach maturation when too many helots are gathered to account for, Interrupted held on to the lie of duty Lookshy would perpetuate.
The details of the Sufferer's life are both utterly mysterious and completely transparent. All that is known is that they were, once, a helot. And, in a way, that's all that needs to be known. Like the Iron Nails, the Sufferer clung to life, but where the Iron Nails reached old age, the Sufferer never made it close.
The Sufferer clings to those who resemble the way it was in life - numb, dead men and women walking, and takes their pains for its own. The possessed helot becomes disassociated from their own body. Free, in a way. Sometimes they rebel, no longer cowed by whips. Other times, they simply enjoy a time without pain.
This freedom from pain is what dooms them. Wounds accumulate on the possessed, starvation and dehydration cause their organs to fail, and the helot dies. Maybe on an overseer's sword, maybe in a ditch - it doesn't really matter. The Sufferer can be compelled to leave by rubbing salt in the wounds of the possessed, but few helots have salt enough to try, and even fewer would attempt it even if they did. Far more pray, knowingly or not, for the Sufferer to take them next.
The Sufferer will consume any ghostly helot it comes across, to spare them the afterlife. If any Lookshyan exorcist knows of it, they fear what it would be if it dove into the Labyrinth, as it is already one of the more powerful Greater Dead.
Lesser Dead of the Helotry, by Caprice
It would be... not nice, or fair, but something closer to nice and fair, if doing one's duty was enough to spare a helot the whip or the sword. It might grant their suffering some structure, something resembling a reason, however cruel.
Lookshy is not in the habit of encouraging its helotry to have reason, and so, on occasion, it reminds them of exactly what their position is through violence. Not against the weakest, like a punishment for failure. Not against the strong, so as to snuff out rebellion. But at random, simply to show, yes, it can. Yes, it will.
An Encrypted arrow striking down a man working the fields. An overseers sword, casually swung at a trench digger. The only sense behind these deaths is their senselessness, and it is this senselessness that can induce a ghost to stay, unwilling or unable to believe it would be killed for nothing at all.
So they continue to toil, mindlessly. In shock. They rise at night to continue their task, as though through effort their deaths might be recognized as mistaken and somehow corrected. However, they aren't particularly... precise, as to where and what they work on. Unbound Interrupted might dig trenches through lonely woods, or harvest a noble's rose garden. Or sometimes (by chance?) they will continue their work upon a living body, and the morning will come to find a corpse with its ribs split apart by a spade, skull shattered by a pick, or its head 'harvested' by a sickle.
The Iron Nails
Ancestor of the Helotry
To stand out, for a helot, is to die, and so, if a helot wishes to live, they fervently pray to avoid notice, or prove exceptional in any way. Unfortunately, someone listens. The Iron Nails died in his sleep, old in a way helots almost never live to be, and frightened down to his bones. It was this fear that kept him from Lethe, and this fear that drives him on his task.
He appears, much as he did in life, to those helots who are blessed in some way. Notable. Maybe they are beautiful, or strong, or eloquent. Maybe they have long hair, or a deep voice. Anything that a helot might take pride in, and that an overseer might take notice of - this is what draws the Iron Nails, to save these helots from their own gifts. He scars the beautiful, cripples the strong... anything, so that they might avoid being picked out by the overseers to be made an example of.
In this, he does the overseers' job for them. He is given power beyond the average Dead by the whispered prayers of helot parents upon seeing their child, the muttered mantra of many a helot - please, no, look away, not here, not today.
Pyreclasm
Lesser Dead of the Helotry, by Defiance
While Lookshy has refined techniques of terror and despair to better break the spirits of helots, no system is flawless. This is the truth of the Underworld - all things fail, given time. So it is, sometimes, that when a helot is chosen to be made an example of, they deny their masters sport in the only way they can. They lean into the knife, bite their tongue, and leave a mute husk instead of a screaming victim.
Of course, that hardly stops their body from being eviscerated and mounted, but the small defiance remains deep in the soul that sparked it, only worsened by the ritual disrespect given to their corpse. The rage, the hate, the pain - that can anchor a rather unique ghost. A Pyreclasm is a creature of self-destructive passions.
Here is a situation presented to Lookshyan masters: a helot drops their shovel and walks away from the work-line. The overseer cracks their whip once, and the helot stumbles, but continues to walk. Such defiance is not to be borne, of course, and the overseer rides near to strike the helot down. However, as steel bites into skin, the overseer sees the face of their target - and they are grinning, eyes lit by blue-white fire.
The helot bursts into a flame that dives on to the overseer like a living thing. It is a painful way to die.
The Sufferer
Sin-Eater, Ancestor of the Helotry
The helotry produces fewer ghosts than one might expect, given their circumstances and the cruelty of their deaths. Lookshy might, on occasion, use this as a defense of their system, when in fact it is the harshest condemnation. Helots do not leave ghosts because their lives have so very little to cling to, and Lookshy does all it can to ensure they have nothing at all to hold them back from Lethe. The lesser dead of the helotry slipped through this process - Pyreclasms found death before their defiance could be crushed in life, Fox-Breaths reach maturation when too many helots are gathered to account for, Interrupted held on to the lie of duty Lookshy would perpetuate.
The details of the Sufferer's life are both utterly mysterious and completely transparent. All that is known is that they were, once, a helot. And, in a way, that's all that needs to be known. Like the Iron Nails, the Sufferer clung to life, but where the Iron Nails reached old age, the Sufferer never made it close.
The Sufferer clings to those who resemble the way it was in life - numb, dead men and women walking, and takes their pains for its own. The possessed helot becomes disassociated from their own body. Free, in a way. Sometimes they rebel, no longer cowed by whips. Other times, they simply enjoy a time without pain.
This freedom from pain is what dooms them. Wounds accumulate on the possessed, starvation and dehydration cause their organs to fail, and the helot dies. Maybe on an overseer's sword, maybe in a ditch - it doesn't really matter. The Sufferer can be compelled to leave by rubbing salt in the wounds of the possessed, but few helots have salt enough to try, and even fewer would attempt it even if they did. Far more pray, knowingly or not, for the Sufferer to take them next.
The Sufferer will consume any ghostly helot it comes across, to spare them the afterlife. If any Lookshyan exorcist knows of it, they fear what it would be if it dove into the Labyrinth, as it is already one of the more powerful Greater Dead.
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no.
Pink Flamingo Cabal Grand Vizier
- Location
- Pennsylvania
[X] Because it's not fair, because they killed you before you ever got a chance to live. Because they stole the future from you and took away your past and so if you could you would take everything from them.
This seems more interesting. Less, I dunno, moral motivation, I suppose? More fun tho.
And boy is it fun to have an Exalted quest with something that's not an Alchemical, (ES' headcanon version of)an Infernal, or a damn Worm crossover. I swear to god that stinky-ass locker gets more Exaltations than most of Creation's large city-states.
This seems more interesting. Less, I dunno, moral motivation, I suppose? More fun tho.
And boy is it fun to have an Exalted quest with something that's not an Alchemical, (ES' headcanon version of)an Infernal, or a damn Worm crossover. I swear to god that stinky-ass locker gets more Exaltations than most of Creation's large city-states.
[X] Because it's the only way for this to end. Because the only freedom you or any helot could ever have would be on the backs of a million Lookshyan dead. Fine then. If you had a choice you'd buy it with their blood.
On a lighter note, I wonder what Alexius edgy Abyssal name will be?
On a lighter note, I wonder what Alexius edgy Abyssal name will be?
- Location
- United States
[X] Because they told you you were sick, that you were wrong, but you know the truth. It's the world who's sick, not you. It's the world that's twisted and wrong, not you. So break it. Reset it. That's how you heal it.
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
also god you monsters
but how's their singing voice?
Take 50xp you obscene thing, brings you up to a total of 200xp iirc. Character sheet'll go up with the next update so you might actually get to spend it Soon.
Yooo, I dig 'em. The Interrupted are great as just this ambient monster that isn't necessarily hostile although it's definitely dangerous, Iron Nails is a fantastic boogeyman type figure, Pyreclasm is absolutely a thing I could see Lookshyan exorcists and potential necromancers grappling with, and the Sufferer is understated but still pretty evocative.
Take 200xp for the collection.
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
-
[X] Because they told you you were sick, that you were wrong, but you know the truth. It's the world who's sick, not you. It's the world that's twisted and wrong, not you. So break it. Reset it. That's how you heal it.
Because this seems like the option where we slaughter them all, and as they look up at us asking why we coldly say "to save you".
Because this seems like the option where we slaughter them all, and as they look up at us asking why we coldly say "to save you".
Undead-Spaceman
Skeleton Supreme
- Location
- Somewhere in Orbit
[X] Because they told you you were sick, that you were wrong, but you know the truth. It's the world who's sick, not you. It's the world that's twisted and wrong, not you. So break it. Reset it. That's how you heal it.
I kinda wonder if our reasoning effects what Caste we'll be?
I kinda wonder if our reasoning effects what Caste we'll be?
paradoxdragon
Immersed in Dreams
- Location
- Someplace or another
[X] Because they told you you were sick, that you were wrong, but you know the truth. It's the world who's sick, not you. It's the world that's twisted and wrong, not you. So break it. Reset it. That's how you heal it.
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Closing the vote in a few hours, by Noon Mountain Time at the latest. "Only Way" is currently in the lead.
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Okay perhaps a little later. 
Vote Closed.
"The only way" takes it. Update Soon™.
Vote Closed.
"The only way" takes it. Update Soon™.
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[X] Because it's not fair, because they killed you before you ever got a chance to live. Because they stole the future from you and took away your past and so if you could you would take everything from them.
E: Opps, too late. Oh well, the story is pretty great so far. Interested in seeing an abyssal for once though.
E: Opps, too late. Oh well, the story is pretty great so far. Interested in seeing an abyssal for once though.
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Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
So if the update is delayed, now you know who to blameDiscord said:Omicron Today at 4:16 AM
https://66.media.tumblr.com/8710da1...14de/tumblr_inline_p7r6rfTKiG1taoahu_1280.png
Somehow relevant to @Tenfoldshields's Out of the Eater
Tenfoldshields Today at 4:17 AM
looks at the half finished update
ZerbanDaGreat Today at 4:17 AM
wh-
Tenfoldshields Today at 4:17 AM
wordlessly deletes it
ZerbanDaGreat Today at 4:17 AM
yeah that's probably besty
Omicron Today at 4:18 AM
I'M SORRY
I THOUGHT IT WAS FUNNY
Tenfoldshields Today at 4:19 AM
out of the eater canceled o_o
