Of Silver, Jade, and Steel (Exalted)

[X] Make a deal. If Svetlana wasn't exaggerating the efficacy of your new tattoos, you could easily walk through whatever it is they're talking about and claim what is within, and you only really want the arm. The scavenger can have the rest (although you might want to figure out how to recompense him for the lost laborers). Hopefully the Tepet doesn't attempt to kill you in the process. (Charisma + Presence)

You sigh and take a moment to compose yourself, clenching your fist tightly in your hand so that the nails dig sharply into your skin, making you forget about your nerves from the pain. Now calmer, you shift your form a bit to appear about a decade older than you actually are; you think they'd probably take your offer more seriously if you don't appear as a teenager. You take a deep breath and step around the corner and adopt the most non-threatening posture you can and say, "Well, hello. My apologies about eavesdropping, but I can't help but notice you've got a bit of a problem that I can handle quite easily."

The Tepet woman is about fifteen feet away, standing in front of an archway whose darkness swallows up the torchlight of her employer, but you feel as though her sword, a daiklave made entirely of cerulean blue jade that is about as long as you are tall, is somehow pressed to the tip of your chest regardless of the distance between you. There's an odd elegance to her; you feel as though you're beholding someone who would be more fitting if you spied her in a ballroom rather than a dimly lit tomb. Her gaze is cold and without any kind of discernible emotion; a fitting look for someone with eyes the color of snow. Her armor appears to be a suit of white chitin and leather, with her vitals covered with blue jade plates, and a cape that looks uncannily like the wings of a moth trails down to just above her ankles.

Her companion is far more grounded. He looks like the average Guildsman; like all of them, he spends an inordinate amount of time on fashion. His buff jacket seems more for showing off than for getting into a fight, with several odd flourishes you know would be useless at best in a fight and downright exploitable at worst (the long leather coattails are especially useful for the purposes of a trained pankratiast). His sword is made of steel and is far more reasonably sized than his employee's, but is filigreed with gold wiring. His skin is a healthy looking bronze with few blemishes or scars, his beard well kept and oiled, his black hair kept fashionably neat and close to his head, and his eyes are bright and looking at you like you're just another rare Shogunate era vase he's appraising instead of a human. He speaks up first. "Oh, how very convenient that you would say that. But, logic says you're no mere thief. One wouldn't come this far out from civilization, one wouldn't have come alone, and one certainly would not have come with only one arm. Keep your distance, and if I don't like what you have to say next, well..."

"Yeah, yeah, the Dragon-blood will try to cut my head off. You're right on the mark that I'm not normal. I overheard your issue with getting into the burial chamber over there. Luckily for you, I have no such problem with walking through such a thing. I can't be mutated whatsoever."

The Guildsmen turns to the Dragon-blood and asks her, "Well, is that possible?"

She nods, but doesn't take her eyes off you. "Not for a Dragon-blood. One could fortify themselves with Earth Essence and become inviolable to the forces of the Wyld, but it wouldn't work against this. Some spirits can survive that, but those that could wouldn't be in such a place. A Solar Anathema could do it, perhaps, but the far more likely possibility is this thing is a Lunar."

"Well, "thing" is such a dehumanizing word, don't you think?" You let your tattoos resurface on your skin, and the scavenger lord takes it surprisingly well, his eyes lighting up as he sees this. The Tepet woman merely continues to stare at you, but you feel the air begin to take on a biting chill. Wind begins to radiate from her, causing the torch to flicker and warp, the shadows of everyone in this area changing shapes in an erratic pattern that fills you with unease. The guildsman holds his hand up and says, "You've got my employee a bit riled up. No worries, she won't attack unless I order it, and for the moment, I'm disinclined to do so. I'm Lan Rihaya. I've got quite the standing in the Guild, and quite a few talents in my bank account. I'm certain you're not going to do this out of the kindness of your heart, so what do you want in exchange for getting me what's in there?"

You incline your head towards your missing arm and say, "There's a prosthetic in there, made of moonsilver. Won't tell you how I lost the original, but I'm only here for that. Whatever else is in there, I'll get it for you, but the arm is mine, and you stay quiet about this so that no Wyld Huntsman come sniffing around. You get to avoid spending more time and money waiting for your friend to work whatever magic she's capable of, and I get to be able to use a fork and a knife at the same time again. A fair trade, wouldn't you agree?"

Lan laughs, and says, "Well, you've confirmed there's at least one artifact in there. You're seriously undervaluing how much that's worth. I could pay the average satrapy's taxes for a year with just that; plenty of Dragon-blooded buyers who are craving a replacement for something that got hacked off by one of your kin. I've got all the time in the world now, madam."

You smirk as you point your finger towards Lan and say, "Well, too bad for you that I scared all your laborers away with your transportation before I came here. Most of the food is gone, but hey, at least they left a few tents. Tell me, can you hunt and find clean water? Can your companion heal you if you injure yourself and the wound festers? Could you even navigate your way to the nearest settlement? Seems to me I've drastically hastened your deadline for this venture."

The smile on Lan's face disappears, and a small twitch of Tepet No-Name's right eye tells you that she too lacks the skills to live here for that long. You lean against the wall to the right of you and say, "Now, I'm not here on my lonesome, exactly. I can arrange transport for the both of you back to civilization with whatever spoils you desire that aren't the arm. Like I said, that's my only goal, and I'm afraid I'm a little desperate to get it, so forgive me if I sound like I'm making things personal here. Do we have a deal?"

Lan slumps down onto the ground and groans before smiling in a way that actually does manage to creep its way up to his eyes, "Ah, fuck, you're good. Can't fault a man for being greedy, it's what keeps us all going, eh, madam? Go on ahead, then. Personally, I still think you're going to turn into coral, but good luck."

The Tepet woman watches as you advance, never sheathing her daiklave, but you finally get that sense of impending death off of your chest when she lowers it as you get beside the two of them. Lan offers you his torch and you take it just before you walk through the archway. For a moment, everything goes dark and you get the sensation that your tattoos are being slightly lifted outwards, as if being tugged at by some magnetic force, and then you are hit by rays of light reflecting off of the immense amounts of gold in this room and the sensation goes away as quickly as it appeared. It covers the walls and the thousand columns of Old Realm hieroglyphs that fill up all the space on them. Urns of the same substance dot the room, filled with gemstones and silver coins that each bear a human face that may have meant something to someone long ago. In the center are the bones of who you guess is Meril Thorn-Bearer, held upright by some kind of enchantment, as no frame or pole is affixed to her. Her right hand, peeking out of the fine robes she was buried in, is almost completely skeletal save for a few flaps of parchment-colored skin, but the left is just as Svetlana said; silver. Clasped between them is a spear made of a far more radiant gold than you've ever seen before, its slender head barbed with numerous spines. It seems to emit its own light even in the utter darkness within, and it's about two feet taller than you.

You dig through your memory and determine that the weapon is made of the infamous metal known as demon-gold, or more properly orichalcum, that trademark of the Solar Anathema. You move to wrench it out of the corpse's hands, happy to have something to offer the Guildsmen so he doesn't try to stab you in the back, but you quickly realize how big of a mistake you've made when it's made apparent that it is about as heavy as a wheelbarrow filled with bricks. It topples onto your chest, the arms of the dead sorcerer popping out of their sockets as you and the lance are sent to the ground. Wheezing, you heave the spear off of you and take a moment to get your breath back into your lung. In your haste, you forgot one of Svetlana's lectures regarding artifacts and how moronic one would have to be to attempt to wield one without funneling Essence into it first. You pry the fingers of the skeletal arm off before you grasp the handle of the spear again, and this time focus your inner might into it before lifting it. This time, you find the orichalcum to be as light as a feather. You lift it up, amazed at how it almost seems to feel like another body part, and prop it against a wall, and then you grasp for the moonsilver arm still clasped onto its haft.

This time, you feel an odd sensation of something watching you when you attune to the arm. You look around you, but spot nothing else in the room. You will the arm to loosen its grip, and it does so. You toss off the cloth and admire how life-like it looks; it's stunningly formed to look like a normal human arm, veins and pores etched into its rippling silver surface. Gingerly, you lower your robes off your left shoulder and push it against the stump, hoping for the best. The metal slides over your skin like water, fusing itself to your body and reshaping itself almost instantly to match the shape of the right. You extend it outwards, clench your new silver fist, and try not to bawl your eyes out over how happy you are to have this.

You calm yourself and untie the knot on your left sleeve so you have room for your new limb, and exit the burial chamber with the golden lance held firmly in both your hands. Lan looks up at you from his seated position and whistles. "Well, damn, I guess you weren't lying about how eager you were to have that. Lovely spear you've found too. Anything else in there?"

You hand the spear to the Dragon-blood, who is still doing her best impersonation of a mute, and say, "Lots of gold leaf on the walls, but I'm not gonna chisel that all off for you. Quite a few urns filled with jewels and First Age coinage, however. I'll see if I can get them out for you." He nods as you dip back into the burial chamber. You're exhausted by the time you've finished hauling out everything else of value. As a slight courtesy, before you take out the last urn, you use a bit of scrap cloth to tie Meril's other arm back onto her shoulder. It dangles rather limply, but you suppose that'll have to do; you're not a mortician, after all. You wipe off sweat from your forehead with your moonsilver arm, reveling in actually being to feel every bit of saltwater pouring forth from your pores.

The mercenary takes over after you're done, loading every urn out of the tomb and into a clearing while Lan takes out a pipe and begins smoking tobacco while lounging on the steps of the ziggurat. It's evening now, the sun low on the sky and the air filling with lightning bugs. You watch the little living motes of light for a time as you rest on the opposite end of the tomb, occasionally letting a few crawl on your silver hand and enjoying the feeling of their many legs upon the metal skin. Eventually, once you feel ready, you call out, "Well, Svetlana, you're gonna hate this, but we've got to take these two idiots back to Aluciere."

One of the tiny specks of light that's been floating near you suddenly bursts into the form of Svetlana, who looks rather bemused with you. You gasp, and say, "Ah gods, that was scary, I thought you were going to be a bird! Anyway, yeah, sorry, had to cut a deal. Uh, you got any way of making sure they don't immediately run off and snitch to Lookshy?"

Svetlana shrugs and says, "I can curse them from ever talking about us, but what use is that when one of them is a curse-breaker?"

"Oh, you overheard that?"

"I was a spider in the corner of the ceiling. You should try it some time. I've heard of that Tepet before. The White Moth, she's called. Her name on the imperial genealogies is Tepet Samara, but she doesn't respond to that. A few years back, she cut down each member of her own Hearth and fled East off the Blessed Isle. No one's pried the knowledge of why exactly she would betray her dearest friends and throw away a cushy legion position out of her, and those that press the issue tend to lose limbs. The Realm's got a pretty bounty on her head that gets higher each year."

You lay back and say, "Well, that's pretty out there. Wouldn't that make it impossible for her to call a Hunt on us, though? If she went berserk and slew her comrades, Lookshy would think her ability to judge things is suspect. Why trust a mad dog?"

Svetlana grunts and says, "Perhaps. Or perhaps they just take her word for it and investigate anyway. Lookshy's a cautious little city, same as any other nest of dragons, but sometimes they take a risk and it pays off big. Wouldn't they be so happy to cut down two Lunars so close to their "protectorate"? I'm curious at to why you revealed your nature."

You say, unsure of yourself, "Well, I didn't want to get into a fight. Showing the tattoos proved that I wasn't lying about being able to walk in there. If I didn't, I'd have had to bloody them."

She places her hands in her face, sighing deeply, before she removes them to show a look of deep pity. "Honestly, Blue, I'm sorry to rain on your day, you seem so happy to have that prosthetic, but I'm likely to just cut the two of them down and be done with this mess."

You lean up, and say, "Gods, really?"

"I let no threat to my existence linger on this world if I can. I can kill the little Guild prince as easy as I can blink, and the Dragon-blood won't prove much contest."

"Well, er, ok. I guess? But what about that oath thing you mentioned before?"

She looks towards where the other two are, and says, "What of it?"

"You told me you could steal the form of those who broke faith with you. Why not make them swear it? Tell them if they break it, you'll know and you'll have their faces to wreak all the havoc with."

"It doesn't prevent them from saying anything. If they tattle, we could probably escape the Wyld Hunt, but I'll have wasted a hundred years worth of work here if that happens. You're going to have to learn, Blue, that one can't have clean hands forever." She sighs as she looks at you, and you know that she can read your inner thoughts quite well.

[ ] Let Svetlana do it. After all, deep down, you know it to be true that you have to do ignoble things to get ahead in life, sometimes. What do the lives of a kinslayer and a greedy fool matter compared to your own safety and the hard work of someone you appreciate? Not even like it's the first time you've seen people die, either. You could do good things with all the riches they leave behind.
[ ] Convince her to make them swear an oath to her. You agree that they can't leave here as is, but death is a little extreme. Curses and geasa are fine enough to insure they'll not be able to speak of this to any interested shikari without great repercussions. (Charisma+Presence)
[ ] Convince her to spare them and convince them to never say a word of this. Get around the root of the problem and make it so they don't bother ratting you out of their own volition. You think the Guildsman would be easy enough, but the White Moth will be a tougher nut to crack; she's an enigma to you so far. (Charisma and Manipulation + Presence, Perception + Socialize).