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Exalted: Out Of The Eater

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[X] Tools. Materials. Foundries. All that freedom to create you never had.

Folks, let's make some shit

Besides which, the idea of building something new out of the ashes for the pure sake of spite appeals to me
 
[X] Tools. Materials. Foundries. All that freedom to create you never had.

Let us show the true measure of our hatred for the Legion and all it stands for.

We shall take its corpse - and pave over it, with its bones supporting an even grander city. We will pierce the heart of Lookshy, by raising its helots into humanity. We will make what traitors to the city wonder why they ever felt remorse for letting go of empty "freedom" and hollow wealth. We will burn the forest, and from the ash grow a jungle. We will cut open the barrier between worlds, and in the celebration of the dead and the quick reunited, the old religion will be cast down.

Lookshy will be condemned to be forgotten.
 
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[X] Tools. Materials. Foundries. All that freedom to create you never had.

This world is ugly. We can try to make something better.
 
[X] Company. Friends. Belonging. All those connections you never had.

Going with this because the impression I got from the prior chapters is that Harrower is fundamentally a very lonely and emotionally isolated person and that Alexius's reveal of who he really was hurt him greatly, so giving him companionship and the best possibility for WAFF seems like the thing that would do him the most good.
 
[X] Wealth. Comfort. Luxuries. All those beautiful things you never had.

Let Harry wrap himself in the comfiest of blankets and forget all about the nasty outside. Wolf-king can join if he wants.
 
Wade Garrett said:
[X] Wealth. Comfort. Luxuries. All those beautiful things you never had.
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As to the why:

I want to see our Quest creator write basically that bit in 300 where Xerxes showers Ephialtes in treasures and sensual delights (but, errrrrr, without the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc so maybe not like that scene at all moving on) also I like the idea doing the whole "Preacher from Ecclesiastes" bit.

"I acquired gold and silver, the treasures of provinces, I had male and female singers, I gathered a harem, all the things to make ones heart merry...vanity, vanity, all is vanity."

Harrower going through this hedonistic debauchery because he's never had anything, and he's been offered everything, it feels very relatable to grab that with both hands and party like a rockstar, only realizing in the morning after that it isn't what you wanted at all.

Or maybe it is, I dunno, Wolf King seems like he can probably throw one Hell of a debauch, and we can't know it won't make Harrower feel better if we don't try it :V
 
[X] Tools. Materials. Foundries. All that freedom to create you never had.

Once we tear Lookshy down we should build something beautiful from its corpse.
 
TenfoldShields said:
He towers over you. Even you were standing he would still tower over you. He's nearly three meters tall and you? You would barely come up to his collarbone. Thick cables of brawn frame broad shoulders and a wide back, his deeply muscled chest and bared stomach all black marble slabs. He's like a statue: smooth, glossy stone carved into an athlete's physique; a predator's anatomy wrapped up in pelt that's more a living oil-slick than anything mundane, anything normal, anything human.

Backbent legs, powerful arms, the long limbs strung with cabled strength. Fingers and toes tipped in gutting claws, a killer's smile. He wears little but a waistwrap, sapphire cloth trimmed in silver thread. Rich, cerulean blue cascading down to just above his knee, the knot hung with inscribed argent slats. Metal plates, crowned in an etched relief of a raven's skull.

A circlet sits between two knife-like ears, less laurel leaves and more thorns and hand-length blades woven into something almost delicate.

Yellow irises and black sclera meet your gaze, catch your eye, and that grin crawls a little farther up the sides of his face.
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...

This is your Bayonetta, isn't it @TenfoldShields? It's one thing to make your artistic creation your personal idea of distilled sex appeal on legs, it's another thing to make them love the camera that you're training on them.

Also, relevent:


TenfoldShields said:
"You understand that don't you? You live with a boot on your back all your life, ripping off the leg and beating the man to death with it is its own kind of reward. And Lookshy? Lookshy had its chance. Lookshy had its time. Lookshy had its Golden Age and it's been gone for centuries now. All that's left is a wicked old woman with a broken back, who still thinks the gates can hold against the things outside, the beast at the door. But we know better, don't we Harrower? In the end all walls fall. In the end all gates are laid open and all wounds laid bare. In the end we're going to eat her alive, tear her apart from the inside out, and build something new from her bones."

Your mouth is dry, you lick your lips. "(We?)"

Nerius taps his thumb to your brow, to the space just between and above your eyes, the spot where the brand burned that night.

"We. Us Anathema owe it to each other don't we? And I'm not so heartless or so stupid that I'd toss you back out into the cold," that smile's still there, still in place, a silvery-white crescent moon, "I saw your shackle-scars, I saw cuts across your back. You were a helot weren't you?"

You nod numbly, a hesitant jerk of the chin.

"I'd strike the chains off of every chattel-slave in the City, I'd cast down every archon and sack every cathedral. Wisdom's March to Victory would burn in Luna's light" he says, his voice a resonant rumble, so deep it buzzes in your bones, echoes in your chest, tinged raw and ragged and rasping by lupine features, a wolf's palate, "I saw you at Ivory Bones. I found you almost untouched, the ground around you thick with Lookshyan dead. The first thing you did when the spark came for you was lash out, fight back. Harrower: I admire that."

"I-"

"What is it you want? Fight with me, help me and I'll gladly make it yours. Anything you want."
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Hmm. It might just be me, but I suspect a decent chunk of this is less a meeting of like minds and more of a somewhat frantic recruitment pitch. Granted, that's entirely understandable when faced with the potential to recruit an Abyssal, but it pays to remember that this relationship may well be more mercenary than amicable. We shall see.
TenfoldShields said:
He'd give you all of them. Will give you all of them. But what's most important to you?
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Important to keep in mind. This isn't a vote to choose a reward, this is a character vote to decide what Harrower wants. "Let's make some shit" as a reason for your vote speaks of a misunderstanding of what this choice is. That in mind...

I get where people are coming from, voting for Wealth. But as a character angle, it doesn't sit right with me. Yes, Harrower has been denied every comfort in life, so it makes perfect sense for him to glut himself on hedonistic pleasures at the first opportunity - but think. What is wealth, to somebody like Harrower? As he's scraped and crawled to survive a helot's life, what has been his model of 'a wealthy person'? Because the most natural answer that I can see is a Lookshyan noble, and that suggests to me that voting for wealth carries a certain uncomfortable overtone of a beaten slave rising up out of hunger to live in the master's house and enjoy the master's comforts. I don't... I don't really like that dynamic. Similarly, Command strikes too much of a dominatory note in me. I don't want Harrower to yearn simply to hold the whip instead of suffer the lash, I want to burn the whip and salt the earth.

So for me it comes down to a choice between Tools and Company. Tools is honestly somewhat tempting for me - as @mothematics points out, art is the breath of the soul, and there's something pure in Harrower yearning to create, to let his mind unfold in his newfound freedom... But, in the end, I have to vote for

[X] Company. Friends. Belonging. All those connections you never had.

I like where this kind of desire comes from - it suggests Harrower as a people person, calling back to the other helots he remembers, suggesting he survived that life through bonds with his fellows, and it means going forward that Harrower's desires are about people. It suggests, I think, the kinder side of his vengeful motivations - that he wants to raze Lookshy to the ground and piss on the ashes, yes, but that he wants to do it for people he cares about.
 
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