Exalted: Out Of The Eater

[X] Plan "No Man, No Monster So Mighty"
-[X] Liege (Steel-and-Ember Elegia), 375 xp
-[X] Primary Skill: Midnight, 250 xp, (625)
-[X] Charms: Dread Anatomy, 250 xp (875)
-[X] Lament's Mirror, 75 xp (950 xp)
-[X] Iridescent Nightmare Mantle (25 xp)
-[X] Anima Banner (25 xp)

I could try and sell you on this vote by posting a point by point breakdown of why this is fucking fantastic, but instead I'll just show you.


In a dream that doesn't happen and that you don't remember, you consider the monstrous totality of your aspirations and find yourself wanting.

You are mighty, but not mighty enough. Man, mortal, monster - take what epithets you may, but by himself not even the most brutal warrior could skewer a nation, the greatest general raise an army, the most charismatic change the hearts of man, the most righteous ply justice from cold earth.

You are the herald of a mighty reckoning, and you must descend on Lookshy at head of an avalanche of wrath. With allies.

You are a Helot. You were born so much trash and your death was the emptying of a chamber pot. Discarded then forgotten, like They did - like They do - to keep the machine of Lookshy lubricated.

The unquiet dead and the trampled living shall jam that machine for you. But you aren't like Them. Where there are choices they will be made willingly or not at all. You understand that if you would force souls into this, you would be no better than that which you seek to destroy.

And o!, there is so much destruction.

You smell it first, dreamscape morphing from abstract to sensory. Rancid smoke of burning Helot flesh sears your nostrils. Your people burn before and around you, like they always have, fuel for the fire, as crows come to dine. It's the scene of a massacre since abandoned by soldiers, so quickly left that arrowheads and broken spears still litter the battlefield. For a moment you wonder if it was yours, then the thought fades slowly away. It doesn't matter which it is. It's happened so many times already.

You walk slowly through this, blood-heavy loam sucking your toes with every step, breathing deep the horrible sweet perfume of cooked humans, staring at a tattered war-banner that flaps in the limp wind. You have to. Have to face it. Have to remember it, because this is what you're fighting to end. What you're going to exterminate.

You kneel in gore before a relatively whole body and your pallid forearm unfurls like a billowing sail. Bone re-knits, skin stretches and tendons snap muscles into shapes unfamiliar yet entirely known to you. Your arm is a throbbing array of tools to shape flesh and bone. Clips of keratin-glazed enamel, incisor-sharp scalpels. Things yet stranger and more convoluted which you are nevertheless certain will prove effective.

Diligently and slowly the work progresses, sometimes slow, always messy. The shard of glass from earlier is a useful mirror to see better inside stuffed bodily cavities bursting with viscera. You need an extra, intact hand - getting up would be a pain. You wish you could see from above as a bird, to find that without moving.

As if in sympathy the shard pulses, and you find that, yes, it seems you can. You see the entirety of the whole horrible battlefield at once, and with a mental command the perspective lurches. You see all without having to so much as lift your head from your work. Quickly you hurry to retrieve the hand and finish your first attempt at fashioning from flesh something that might aid you. The details don't matter. It's a failure, but it's one you learn from, and the idea of it sinks into the gray nothing of unthought. The world around you closes in.

You would create and animate, but you need to learn. You need perspective and a voice to say no and insist yes. You need kinship to ground you now that everything you have ever loved is gone. You need education, yes, and wisdom... but most of all you need a true, loyal friend, so you're not so alone. But you're not alone, are you?

There is a smile, or the thought of a smile, and softly burning coals. Their fire is comfort to you as you wake.