Remove ads

The Last Daughter -- Dragon-Blooded Sorcery School Quest

Reader mode
Randino Treviani said:
She's like this deliberately with whoever she can because her sorcery rewards her for provoking them into trying and force demands of propriety on her. So long as she refuses to submit, it strengthens her sorcery.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
What do you mean? I'm not familiar with Exalted's magic system. I totally missed that. Isn't it a bit stupid to choose a method of empowerment that requires you to piss people off?
 
[x] Tell Maia a story about the first time you kissed a girl, and hopefully lead things around from there

C'mon, it'll be great. Trying to work Deiza in there is absolutely going to spoil the mood because it puts the focus on Deiza. And being too direct by saying "I want more of that smile" is just going to push her away.

The real way to start a relationship with this girl who clearly also has a crush on Ambraea is to tell her "you know, when we were apart for a bit, I found this really cute girl and I kissed her and it was great and you'd make a great long-term replacement for her".

...Honestly, all three are going to be a little awkward and are still almost certain to push the relationship forward, but this is by far the funniest option for getting there.
 
K von Carstein said:
What do you mean? I'm not familiar with Exalted's magic system. I totally missed that. Isn't it a bit stupid to choose a method of empowerment that requires you to piss people off?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yes, it is stupid to pick it, but the QM said in one of their posts that one of the Heptagram initiations has that as its method of getting the points you use to cast sorcery.

[X] Try to tell Maia how you felt when she smiled at you after the fight with the mercury ants
 
K von Carstein said:
What do you mean? I'm not familiar with Exalted's magic system. I totally missed that. Isn't it a bit stupid to choose a method of empowerment that requires you to piss people off?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Faith revealed it after previous chapter.
Gazetteer said:
This is an interesting point, and it's probably a neat opportunity to mention that like... Traditional Simendor sorcerous practices came from learning from and emulating the Court of Nameless Gods, "spirits of sand and shadow" who live in pleasure palaces hidden out in the middle of the desert and refused to submit to the authority of the Old Realm. So... One of their shaping rituals literally gives sorcerous power in exchange for refusing to submit or accept the influence of others, especially those who might claim authority over you.

Article: Unbroken Spirit: Like the rogue gods she emulates, the sorcerer draws power from opposing others' will. Once per scene, when she successfully asserts her Resolve against social influence or another effect, she gains (Integrity) sorcerous motes, which last until the scene ends. If the character she resisted had a higher Essence than her, she gains additional sorcerous motes equal to the difference in their Essence ratings. Source: Heirs to the Shogunate pg. 18

Which is not necessarily a hatred of authority, but it does encourage a level of irreverence toward it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's the magic her family uses. She's following in their footsteps. It's very counter productive and speaks to an isolated culture that interacts with the rest of the realm little enough that they can just continue to live as if nothing has changed in thousands of years, because their sufficiently out of the way that there irreverence is relatively irrelevant to the powers above them.
 
[x] Tell Maia a story about the first time you kissed a girl, and hopefully lead things around from there
 
[x] Explain to Maia what exactly Deiza said to make you try and hit her, and try to explain why it upset you
 
K von Carstein said:
What do you mean? I'm not familiar with Exalted's magic system. I totally missed that. Isn't it a bit stupid to choose a method of empowerment that requires you to piss people off?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Man, you should see some of the predilections that Infernals have, which include 'Villainous Monologues that tell your enemies about your plans' and 'deliberately allowing the enemy you've caught in your death trap to escape and thwart you another day'. They're mechanically worth it and hilarious from a meta-perspective, but are logically the utter dumbest things you can imagine desiring to do.
 
[x] Explain to Maia what exactly Deiza said to make you try and hit her, and try to explain why it upset you
[x] Try to tell Maia how you felt when she smiled at you after the fight with the mercury ants
 
[X] Try to tell Maia how you felt when she smiled at you after the fight with the mercury ants
 
[X] Explain to Maia what exactly Deiza said to make you try and hit her, and try to explain why it upset you
 
[X] Try to tell Maia how you felt when she smiled at you after the fight with the mercury ants
 
[X] Try to tell Maia how you felt when she smiled at you after the fight with the mercury ants
 
Gazetteer said:
They stir to lurching, hideous pseudo-life in time to hurl themselves bodily at their still-living fellows l, who are just now back around for another attack.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Extraneous "I" should be removed.
Gazetteer said:
"... Skin of Bronze would not be a good idea," she decides, a little self consciously.

"It would not," you agree. Metal skin is all well and good, until you need to be able to climb, or swim. The spell infers no ability to breathe underwater.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Gazetteer said:
"What is it saying?" Deiza asks.

"That L'nessa can see and hear me, but can't respond," you say.

Deiza seems vaguely offended by this. "I know what an Infallible Messenger is!"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Gazetteer said:
"You're the one who wanted to go first," you're not quite able to keep yourself from saying.

Deiza glares at you, outlined in anima the colour of yellowed ivory, phantasmal spirals of bismuth crystal blooming and dying in the air around her, glittering in the same metallic colours as her hair. "Yes! Thank you for the reminder!" she snaps.

In Deiza's defence, this time the irritability is substantially pain.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Gazetteer said:
"At a guess, Peleps might have done something to the chimeras," Deiza says. "Sometimes it's easier to take off the hinges than it is to pick a lock."

"I'm sure I wouldn't know," you say, trying to reclaim at least a bit of your dignity.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Man, the (seemingly mostly unconscious) passive aggressiveness from Ambraea is very real. This would absolutely get under my skin, I can tell you that.
Gazetteer said:
That takes you by surprise enough that you can only stare. "You—"

"It didn't mean anything! It was just words." Deiza whirls away from you, picking up her pace as she clambers up to a higher ledge — it's fortunately not that difficult a climb.

You're trying to decide exactly what to say to that, when you arrive near to your destination.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'm surprised this was surprising to people. Piss somebody off enough, and they'll tend to lash out. Deiza did it with words instead of with physically trying to knock somebody's teeth out (as Ambraea did in response to Deiza herself lashing out). I have a hard time accepting the assessment that being deliberately offensive is qualitatively worse than violence.
Gazetteer said:
She takes in both your and Deiza's appearance, noting the minor injuries. "Are you alright?"

"Fucking marry me," Deiza says, grinning at the necromantic carnage that Amiti has set loose in front of you.

Amiti, if anything, looks even more alarmed by this than she had by the monsters. "No!" she says, after a fractional delay.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Objectively hilarious. I didn't know I needed Deiza interacting with Amiti, but I'm glad I got it.

Also Amiti MVP fr fr.
Gazetteer said:
"We're even!" She shouts down at you. Which you don't dispute under the circumstances, even though you're not really even — you saved her twice down there, after all.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I suspect Deiza is counting the two of them landing down there in the first place against Ambraea's account, which would make Ambraea saving her from plunging into the ocean just the balancing of that account.
Gazetteer said:
You begin to stand, but freeze as a shadow falls over you. Looking up, you see the glittering coils of a very large elemental hanging in the air. "I see you didn't need my help after all," they tell you, voice very dry.

"Yes, well-spotted," you agree.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I wonder if it'll help our relationship with Deiza to demonstrate that Ambraea's dryness isn't (always) actually about being passive aggressive towards her. It's also kinda just how she is.
K von Carstein said:
What do you mean? I'm not familiar with Exalted's magic system. I totally missed that. Isn't it a bit stupid to choose a method of empowerment that requires you to piss people off?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It would be, if that's actually how it worked. People somehow seem to have landed on a meme-level understanding of it despite the QM literally posting the exact text of how it actually works:
Gazetteer said:
Unbroken Spirit: Like the rogue gods she emulates, the sorcerer draws power from opposing others' will. Once per scene, when she successfully asserts her Resolve against social influence or another effect, she gains (Integrity) sorcerous motes, which last until the scene ends. If the character she resisted had a higher Essence than her, she gains additional sorcerous motes equal to the difference in their Essence ratings.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's not actually about pissing anyone off. It's a reward for resisting social influence or similar effects that can be resisted with Resolve. People who wanted their influence to be accepted might get pissed off by that if they don't know how to handle failure in that, and people who are very tight-laced and proper (e.g., Ambraea) might be offput by irreverence in general, but that's neither the point nor the inherently necessary result. A lot of the friction with Deiza seems to be that she's been reading Ambraea's attitude towards her as being the first thing rather than the second. Witness her actively rejecting Ambraea's claim that her issue with Deiza was Deiza's improper behavior as infuriating bullshit in the recent blow-up we had with her.

It's also not a Heptagram shaping ritual, it's Simendor-specific.
VagueZ said:
The real way to start a relationship with this girl who clearly also has a crush on Ambraea is to tell her "you know, when we were apart for a bit, I found this really cute girl and I kissed her and it was great and you'd make a great long-term replacement for her".
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I really, really doubt that our one-night stand on vacation was literally the first time Ambraea ever kissed a girl.

[X] Explain to Maia what exactly Deiza said to make you try and hit her, and try to explain why it upset you
[X] Try to tell Maia how you felt when she smiled at you after the fight with the mercury ants

I like both of these, so I'll approval vote here.
 
Last edited:
[X] Explain to Maia what exactly Deiza said to make you try and hit her, and try to explain why it upset you
 
[X] Explain to Maia what exactly Deiza said to make you try and hit her, and try to explain why it upset you
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top