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The Last Daughter -- Dragon-Blooded Sorcery School Quest

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Fayhem said:
I have absolutely no confidence that rejecting Maia's oath here wouldn't actually have real long-term consequences for our relationship with her. It would be pretty weird if a momentous choice like this only had one option that would actually make a difference IMO.
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Agreed, though I do hope she gets a proper lecture on everything wrong with springing this on Ambraea now. Accept shouldn't spare her from being called out the lack of proper consideration she's demonstrating by pushing for this so impulsively.
 
Makes me really glad there aren't any magically binding oaths for eternal companionship in our world. We people manage to screw up with just nonmagical binding ones.

Eh, screw it
[X] Accept Maia's oath

No one holds any illusions that this isn't unhealthily codependent given context, so I might as well vote. What is life without a small chance to break your and someone else's heart to pieces now and then?
 
Randino Treviani said:
Lol. Thats amusing, and it makes the addition of another dragon blood to the Hearth Oath even more complex. Does Ambraea collect the other problem child in her friend group so she can keep an eye on both of them? Or should she seek out Sola as a more stabilizing element. I'm looking forward to year 5 storyline, and leaning toward the known Sola option.
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Why not add both of them? I don't think there's a rule that says you can't have two air aspects in the same hearth.
 
PeepTheSheep said:
I don't think there's a rule that says you can't have two air aspects in the same hearth.
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There isn't any limitation on Aspects -- you can have a Hearth that's all Fire Aspects, hypothetically.

The main limit is that usually you can only have five in a hearth, and more than that is unusual-but-not-unheard-of (this is explicitly there for groups of Dragon-Blooded PCs that have six or more people in them).
 
Gazetteer said:
It doesn't matter that she didn't come out and say that your mother had arranged to spare some portion of Maia's family. She'd made certain that you understood it, and that was very nearly as bad.
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Is this really that much more shocking than what we already knew? The Empress basically already came out and told us "I could ruin Maia's family, but I won't because I'm using it to threaten them and a pet clan of assassins sounds pretty handy." Is it really any worse to know that the Empress personally set up the situation she's using to blackmail them?

Anyway, I don't hold it against Maia. The Empress has hooks on everyone, it's just what she does. It's not her fault, and spying on us for our mother is fairly benign as far as spy things go. The only reason to reject her would be purely political (if we want to avoid being in the splash radius when the Empress finally uses that blackmail), and I'm too much of a romantic to care about that.

[X] Accept Maia's oath
 
Gazetteer said:
There's another few seconds of silence. Across your shoulder, Verdigris shrinks back in distress, slithering under your clothes. When you finally speak, voice urgent with concern, what you say is: "You should not have told me that!" It doesn't matter that she didn't come out and say that your mother had arranged to spare some portion of Maia's family. She'd made certain that you understood it, and that was very nearly as bad. The word 'treason' keeps buzzing at the back of your mind. "Why are you telling me this?"
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This part specifically, I think. Maia committed borderline treason by explaining that her family is a black ops of the books murder cult dedicated personally to killing the Big E's enemies. Not in so many words, no, but knowing this is still very, very dangerous.
What I took out from this is something else tho

Gazetteer said:
Maia is silent overhead. A cool breeze sweeps up the hill, and the tree groans gently as it sways behind you. "It was... arranged," Maia says, hunching in on herself. "By someone with the power to spare... Her. My grandmother."

She looks up then, meeting your eyes for the first time since the reading room that morning, not wanting to come out and say it, clearly wishing for you to put things together yourself. In the end, there are only so many possibilities that can require this level of secrecy. You open your mouth slowly, and it's a few seconds before you can form the words: "... the one who told me?"
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tfw when your girlfriend also happens to be your grandniece.
Just your typical Dynast stuff.
 
One question I'm not quite clear on: if we reject the oath here, does that have any force beyond the fact that we don't accept it, and the mundane interpersonal consequences? As in, obviously we'll both feel very bad about the situation and Maia will feel, you know, rejected, but does it have any magical effect, like making it impossible for us to become sworn kin in the future, or making it impossible for Maia to initiate an oath on her own, or anything like that? Essentially, is she burning any kind of resource here, or does the decision purely come down to whether or not we think this is a good idea?

Raiseth said:
tfw when your girlfriend also happens to be your grandniece.
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That line confused me as well, but I think it's saying "by someone who had the power to spare [my grandmother]". I.e., the Empress was the one with that power, and used it on Maia's grandmother's behalf; the Empress isn't actually her grandmother (though she is presumably a somewhat more distant ancestor, I forget what Iselsi's origins are).
 
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Randino Treviani said:
Lol. Thats amusing, and it makes the addition of another dragon blood to the Hearth Oath even more complex. Does Ambraea collect the other problem child in her friend group so she can keep an eye on both of them? Or should she seek out Sola as a more stabilizing element. I'm looking forward to year 5 storyline, and leaning toward the known Sola option.
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I thought we were already the stabilizing element? In a possibly literal as well as metaphorical sense, being an earth aspect.
 
beleester said:
Is it really any worse to know that the Empress personally set up the situation she's using to blackmail them?
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It is very precarious for Maia to have told Ambraea this, and to hint at the situation being larger than one patrician house hiding their inconvenient heritage.

Raiseth said:
tfw when your girlfriend also happens to be your grandniece.
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I'm sorry, I realise that line is accidentally confusing -- Maia is referring to her grandmother being spared by the Empress.

Maia is technically Ambraea's some number of great niece by adoption, since Iselsi was the Empress's adoptive niece, but it's not necessarily closer than that.

kamikasei said:
One question I'm not quite clear on: if we reject the oath here, does that have any force beyond the fact that we don't accept it, and the mundane interpersonal consequences?
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No, there are no metaphysical consequences to refusing the oath.
 
Well, great-great-five-times-more-great-grandniece, really, and there's no direct blood relation

Gazetteer said:
But you feel her eyes on you, so you make your hands work even against the pit of dread in your stomach, moving like an automaton to pull free the richly illuminated paper. You're looking at another family tree, this time styled magnificently as a waterfall cascading down through the generations. Your mother is at the top, the characters of her title painted in ink infused with red jade that seems to burn under the light. Beneath her is a single adoptive daughter, with the rest of the family flowing out from there, the vast network of adoptions and marriages that form a Great House.

Your mother reaches out to tap a nail on a name near the bottom. It's a particular Exalted scion, her name in shimmering black jade ink, as with most of the Dragon-Blooded on the family tree you're looking at.

"Iselsi Velera," the Empress says. "An officer in the Imperial Legions, lost during a campaign on the Threshold. You will note the timing, I'm sure." The disappearance was only a few short years before Maia's grandmother had married into House Erona.
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Really, Ambraea is very well preserved for someone who has so many nieces and and nephews, lol

Gazetteer said:
I'm sorry, I realise that line is accidentally confusing -- Maia is referring to her grandmother being spared by the Empress.

Maia is technically Ambraea's some number of great niece by adoption, since Iselsi was the Empress's adoptive niece, but it's not necessarily closer than that.
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Yeah, I got that

I'm sorry too, for making this even more awkward than it already is.
 
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PeepTheSheep said:
Why not add both of them? I don't think there's a rule that says you can't have two air aspects in the same hearth.
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Mostly time? The key thing I'm reading in Maia and Ambraea's Hearth Oath, is that it's actually something neither of them is actually fully ready for yet, but Maia is pushing ahead with it because she's in a bad place right now and is grasping at the only thing she can think of to try and solidify her relationship with Ambraea against the many uncertainties and secrets between them.

So, as close as Maia and Ambraea are, this still being rushed by that and given the difficulties in getting both of them to the level of mutual trust and emotional investment with a third person that is needed to welcome one of the other girls in their oath, let alone successfully bring 4 girls to the point that they can all promise that same oath to each of the other 3 girls, in three years, is a longshot. I'm certainly willing to try, but we'd definitely have to prioritise Sola and Amiti Storylines in the coming years and possibly in break visits.
thelordofmango said:
I thought we were already the stabilizing element? In a possibly literal as well as metaphorical sense, being an earth aspect.
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Well yes but I'm talking about bringing another person in, which with the two girls I consider to be possibly candidates means either bringing in a fairly normal daughter of Tepez with typical dynast issues to help Ambraea fend off Maia's uber problems, or becoming the hearthmate of a budding necromancer with issues only a small degree less troublesome than Maia's for ambraea to add to her growing list of "things outside dynastic norms that may become problems".
 
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Randino Treviani said:
So, as close as Maia and Ambraea are, this still being rushed by that and given the difficulties in getting both of them to the level of mutual trust and emotional investment with a third person that is needed to welcome one of the other girls in their oath, let alone successfully bring 4 girls to the point that they can all promise that same oath to each of the other 3 girls, in three years, is a longshot. I'm certainly willing to try, but we'd definitely have to prioritise Sola and Amiti Storylines in the coming years and possibly in break visits.
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It is more common, I believe, for everyone to swear their oaths together -- this is often done when a group of Dragon-Blooded are preparing to undertake a difficult or dangerous task, or to go on a long journey.

Way weirder to like, swear a secret hearth oath to your girlfriend halfway through Secondary School, honestly.
 
Eh I'm sure there's a few novels out there with this exact premise, probably heavily frowned on in polite society and Immaculate teachings.

Y'know, tearful confessions, romantic relationships outside your own caste, secret longing for that pretty boy from the rivaling House, handholding.
In other words, pure unadulterated smut.
 
Raiseth said:
Cope, seethe, mald, Amiti. Cope, seethe, mald.
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Are you kidding?
Gazetteer said:
Amiti looks up, and smiles. "Well! You two were a while. Did you end up dallying in a hallway?"

You're so taken aback by the question that you answer more or less honestly: "Something a little like that." before taking a seat across from Amiti.

Maia, face extraordinarily red, sits down next to you, Verdigris still cradled coiled in her arms. She doesn't contradict you, however.

"Wait, am I being rude?" Amiti asks. "I'm not trying to be rude."

"We know, Amiti," you say.

"You two are just so adorable, though!"

"... Thank you?" Maia ventures, utterly unsure how else to take that.
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Amiti is there biggest, most upfront, unapologetic shipper...
Gazetteer said:
It is unspeakably romantic.
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And they'll be pledging their undying love and devotion to eachother based on how the votes going. Amiti will be thrilled. It'll take all they have to keep her from writing a trashy romance about them.
 
Ambraea and Maia are out there, living out Amiti's trashy romance novel fantasies, and they don't even have the decency to invite her for a firsthand viewing, smh.

More seriously, I kinda imagine Amiti is very particular about specifics of the romance. Details some would consider unimportant or wouldn't even notice.
 
Thinking about Maia, i get the impression that she thinks her superiors may very well think Ambraea may be out of spite, or if judge her as a threat to their secrecy. The other big concern is that going through this Oath might cause another kind of hell to break loose with the Iselsi. This is what I'm worried the most with going through.
 
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