[Exalted] The Last Daughter -- Dragon-Blooded Sorcery School Quest

One of your most vivid childhood memories comes from when you were five or six. Still quite a few years away from beginning primary school, your education was nonetheless a great consideration in your childhood, featuring a rotating cast of tutors ready to prepare you for life as a respectable Imperial daughter.

As with most Dynastic children, you didn't see much of your parents day to day, and the mundane tasks of child-rearing were left to a team of nannies and other servants. When you did see one of them, it was usually your father. Being considerably less busy and less important, he simply had more time for you, telling you stories of his homeland and his travels. Not so much as to coddle you, of course. You spoke to him in any depths perhaps once a month, rather than anything truly excessive. What contact you had with your mother was, of course, quite different.

You remember kneeling in front of a low writing desk, clumsy child hand carefully guiding your brush to create High Realm characters as you'd been taught, trying not to be unnerved by the trailing red skirts you could see swishing past as your work was examined from multiple angles. Your calligraphy tutor knelt dutifully at the back of the room, an utter ball of nerves. And who could blame him? His work as a teacher was being evaluated by his employer, the most powerful woman in the world, based on the performance of a young child.

"Slow down." The voice was firm, melodic, always conveying utter confidence that it would be obeyed precisely. "You'll make mistakes." You understood the unspoken addition: Do not waste my time.

"Yes, mother," you said, trying to make yourself slow down. It was difficult to fight against your own anxiety. The weight of her assessing gaze was almost unbearably heavy, even then.

"You're nervous," she said. You nodded, not looking up at her. There was a rustle of rich fabric as she bent over you, fingers ending in red-lacquered nails tilting your face up until your eyes met hers. That was always difficult — like standing a little too close to a roaring bonfire, but not from any literal heat. The power of her presence was impossible for you to fully articulate at such a young age, but you'd held the almost overwhelming certainty whenever you were in the Imperial presence that you never, ever wanted to disappoint her. "Ambraea," she said, "listen carefully: Never show fear to anyone who can use it against you. Weakness is a luxury you won't have."

Which was a lot to take in, for a five-year-old, but it's remained perfectly etched into your memory, in part because of what happened next: A tentative knock came on the door to the chamber. Your mother released you and straightened, her eyes narrowing at the interruption. This being a private family audience, she wasn't quite wearing the full finery of her office — red silk, rather than cloth-of-jade. As always, though, she'd worn the mantle, and the heavy crown with its burning hearthstone centrepiece. "Enter," she said.

A messenger entered, bowing low.

"Speak," the Empress said.

The messenger had cast a nervous glance around the room, at you, and your tutor, and the other servants standing by. "For your ears only, my empress." So, she'd beckoned him closer with one hand, and he'd scurried over, whispering urgently in her ear. You saw something flicker through her — surprise, anger, you weren't sure. But she wasted no time after that.

"We will reschedule this for another time," she'd told your tutor, who hastily bowed. You saw her hands flash in a dozen unfamiliar gestures, a strange, hot charge coming into the air as red Essence gradually flared around her. It grew brighter and thicker until it finally consumed her form entirely. Then it was gone, and so was she, whisked off to whatever place needed such urgent attention.

That exit was, of course, the reason why this meeting had stuck with you in such stunning clarity. Of all the many direct or indirect exercises of power you'd seen from her, this one was the most impressive to you then, a child of walls and rules and schedules decided by others: The ability to simply come and go at will by your own strength, with nothing and no one to stop you.

That was the point in your life when you'd first felt that burning desire to possess that kind of power, even if you hadn't really let yourself acknowledge it fully before you knew whether you would Exalt. Once you finally did years later, your resolve had crystallised into something diamond hard and immovable as a mountain: Nothing would stop you from becoming a great sorcerer.

---

source: Heirs to the Shogunate pg. 27


Year 1: Sacrifice
Goal: Initiate into sorcery by year's end

You wake up in a narrow bed in a tower room the size of one of the closets back in your chambers in the Imperial Palace. Weak sunlight filters in through a narrow window, as if sullen at having to work its way through the heavy layer of clouds that always seems to hang over the Isle of Voices.

Out of three girls sharing this space, you're the first to wake up and get a real chance to look around. In addition to three beds, the space has three small desks and three sturdy looking wardrobes, all of the same plain-carved wood. You cross to the one opposite your own bed, conveniently located between the others. You'd been instructed that you wouldn't need to bring much in the way of your own clothing, and sure enough, a set of identical uniforms tailored to your exact size hang inside the wardrobe.

You waste little time changing into one of these, examining yourself in the wardrobe's mirror afterward. A long, high-collared tunic in pale blue, worn over red pants, with a pair of sturdy boots that you appreciate, given the relatively cold climate. Much simpler fare than what was appropriate for the Imperial court, but this entire setup is doing a good job of quietly impressing upon you that these next seven years will be a place for work, more than for finery.

You find the comb you packed, and get to work on your long, glossy black hair. It's precisely the same shade as the chips of black quartz set into your skin. Interspaced by the occasional rose pink or smoky coloured piece, they march up your limbs in intricate patterns that continue onto your back and around your neck. A single row goes across the bridge of your nose like freckles. The end result combines strikingly with your father's medium brown complexion, even with most of it covered up by this uniform.

You're just finishing with your hair when you hear a small, groggy noise from one of the other beds. It's the patrician girl you noticed on the ship, looking more than just half asleep. "... what time is it?" she murmurs.

"Well, the sun's up," you supply.

She blinks at you, as if trying to place who you are, or why you're here. Then she seems to remember, and her eyes widen in startled recognition. She gives a sound very close to a squeak, shrinking back beneath the blankets, as if embarrassed for you to see her unkempt and in her bedclothes. Which is just not sustainable, considering the current arrangement.

"What's your name?" you ask her.

She stares for a second or two, before abruptly realising that she has to answer the question. "I'm... I'm Erona Maia, my lady."

"And I'm Ambraea," you tell her. "We can't exactly spend the next seven years with you flinching at me whenever you see me. We're all just first years here."

"... sorry," Maia murmurs, which wasn't quite your objective, but at least she's let the blankets fall a bit. She's very small, with subtle Aspect markings that don't affect her hair, eyes, or skin — short and brunette, very dark brown, and light olive, respectively. Straying near to her, though, you can still tell she's a Water Aspect. The air around her is cool and heavy: Maia's mere presence feels like the anticipation of torrential rain.

"Don't worry, we don't bite!" says V'neef L'nessa, who has apparently woken up at some point in this conversation. "Or, I don't, at least. I'm L'nessa." She glances at you, smiling tiredly. "Ambraea and I have already been introduced."

Maia nods. Hopefully she's just not a morning person, although you admit that being the only patrician in the year, and then promptly being put into a room with a daughter of the Empress and a daughter of a Great House Matriarch has to be a little nerve-wracking.

"I'm so jealous, by the way," L'nessa tells you. "Your hair stays so straight!" She's got a brush and is struggling with her mass of thick, orange hair. And losing, in the short-term. You note with quiet amusement as what looks like an autumnal leaf floats free of her hair without any clear point of origin.

"Mm," you say, not offering anything else for the compliment as you finish tying your hair back out of your eyes.

"Oh, dearest Aunt, I treasure our talks already," L'nessa says with mock-formality. You struggle against the tiny smile twitching at the corner of your mouth.

"Oh! She's your—" Maia blushes as you both look around at her. "I mean, I knew who you were, I just didn't..." she looks between you and L'nessa a little helplessly. Despite how paler than you L'nessa is, the family resemblance is still there, particularly in your height and bone structure. It would have been more obvious while you were mortal, back when your hair was still red.

L'nessa gives a small laugh, although it isn't cruel. "You'll get used to that kind of thing, spending time with Dynasts. It's just what happens with enough Exalted in the same family." Your mother is a bit of a special case even by those standards, but it's not uncommon for even Dragon-Blooded who live a merely average lifespan to continue having children into their second century.

"Right, sorry," Maia says, finally rising from bed with an air of unnecessary caution. You can't help but feel like you'll be hearing her apologise for nothing quite a lot, going forward.

---

"I'm sorry, am I boring you, Simendor?"

Every student in the lecture hall turns to look at the girl in question, who is resting her head on her hand, eyes closed, looking almost as if she's about to nod off. She cracks open one dark eye, looking down at the instructor from her vantage point. You've all been assigned a specific seat along the tiered benches encircling the space — there's only a single lecture hall in the Heptagram, located at the base of the central tower, and large enough for the entire school to be seated in. Currently, it's fairly empty — this is less an ordinary lecture that older students would get benefit from than it is an exercise in explaining just what you're all in for as first years.

"Sorry, sorry," says the girl in question. It's the same one who'd been looking at the spirits through the mirror. Her hair is pulled up into a loose bun now, showing off the multi-coloured iridescence of the metallic crystals embedded within each hair. "It's just early, and I know this part already."

"Do you?" The instructor covering this is a Fire Aspect approaching middle-age, standing confidently down at the bottom of the circular lecture hall. Her breezy introduction had identified her as Cynis Bashura. The name hadn't meant anything to you, but you'd seen a ripple go through some of the other students as it had been given. "Enlighten us, then." A small wisp of dark smoke escapes her mouth with every word.

If the Simendor girl is taken aback by being put on the spot, she doesn't show it. Still looking halfway bored in a way that's earning her unfriendly looks, she says: "Training one's body and spirit to channel the pure Essence of the world is long and difficult, and can take months or years of dedicated work ahead of a formal initiation — it's... mind-expanding in a way that is impossible to describe ahead of time, so a lot of people need to ease into it just to manage." She seems almost to be speaking from experience there, which would be a little bit absurd. "You plan to make us ready for this through focus training and intensive study, yes?"

Her answer is apparently correct enough to make up for her arrogance, in Bashura's opinion. "More or less," she says, turning to the rest of you. "There will be guided channelling sessions twice in the coming weeks. They are recommended. There will also be several sealing rituals which must be conducted weekly or monthly, which will be introduced in the coming week. In between this, there will be lectures from instructor Zadaki and instructor Nellens Ovo, on elemental geomancy and demonology respectively. Skipping lectures when they're available is a good way to fall behind."

As she continues, explaining exactly what your average week of studies is going to look like, you glance down at the syllabus you've been given, literally entitled Your First Year: The Ten-Thousand Labours, and your heart sinks a little as you take in just how much you're expected to retain in order to make the cut here. It's not quite a surprise, but there's a difference between having been told about this by Heptagram graduates and actually seeing its imposing bulk standing between you and all your goals.

There are reasons that at least half of students who wash out of the Heptagram do so in their first year.

Bashura seems to be taking an obscure sort of pleasure out of your collective dismay. "In the future, you will need to check when lectures, practical exercises, and testing occur — these are scheduled at the instructors' convenience, and will not be reliably at the same time. These will be posted outside the lecture hall a week in advance. You are expected to manage your own time, and if you do so poorly and fall behind... you fall behind. Refer to your syllabus in order to make sure this doesn't happen to you." In what is perhaps intended to be more heartening than it is, she adds: "I have a good feeling about this batch, though. I have good money down that we won't lose more than a third of you, this time so, try not to prove me wrong!"

Article:

As a 'sacrifice' — a first year student — you have a full year of guided study ahead of you, with goals you must hit and things you must learn. The manner in which you do so is left partially up to your discretion, however. Every sorcerer has their own idiosyncrasies, after all, and the Heptagram chooses to foster these tendencies rather than stifle them.

Your precise approach is up to you, however. What is it? Although you will be doing some of everything to complete your Ten Thousand Labours, this will define important nuances about Ambraea's personality and priorities.

[ ] Theory first

Intensive study and book learning. You prefer to truly understand something intellectually before you try to grasp it spirituality.

[ ] Hands on

Experimentation, ritual, and practice. You prefer to learn by doing, with everything else following naturally.

[ ] Mysticism

Meditation, intuition, communion with spirits. As a Dragon-Blooded and aspiring sorcerer, you are attuned to the supernatural world in a way few others can imagine. You can use this to internalise the insights you'll need to become a sorcerer.