The Last Daughter; Dragon-Blooded Sorcery School Quest
- Thread starter Gazetteer
- Start date
- Fantasy
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] The White Serpent
[X] The White Serpent
- Pronouns
- Reader
Having an incentive to leave the realm for prasad(and bargaining chip to be welcomed when we get there) could be very worthwhile.[X] Where Earth Meets Sky
I want more Prasad stuff in the plot and this seems like a great way to ensure it
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I feel like I keep very heavily implying that Ambraea is not going to abandon the Realm to go to Prasad or another part of the Threshold or to go be a hermit, but since it keeps being brought up, that is not within the scope of this story. The Realm is Ambraea's home, everyone she loves lives there, she is not going to look at it like it's suddenly a sinking ship she has to escape from. I did not write an entire quest about a character preparing for a life in the Dynasty with all these secondary characters and dangerous political situations only to present you with a convenient "but, anyway, she's just going to leave instead" alternative to engaging with them.
To be fair there are plenty of dynasts in canon who stab their fingers at a map of the Threshold and go: "Fuck the Scarlet Empress I'm going to build my own Realm with blackjack and courtesans over there", though that does not seem like Ambrea's style, she has too many friends here for whom she cares quite deeply.
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I feel like her throat would lock up if she tried to voice that first bit, which is sort of funny to picture.
In the main cast, the character most likely to just sort of leave is Amiti, who only very abstractly cares about the Realm, and is based on an older version of her I played in a game once. That version of her had just kind of gone off into the North to look at cool ghosts and fall in with a himbo Anathema ("Well, he hasn't stolen my face yet."). This version has more people able to sort of grab her and keep her at least partially moored to practical realities.
Last edited:
Amiti does give me 'would make friends with Abyssals' vibes, good to see I had her pegged right
This is a tough choice, each option has something strong to recommend it. On the one hand, Tidal Fang feels like a nice tie to Maia. I've consistently liked the idea of Ambraea's swordfighting being a complement to her sorcery that ties her to her dad and her Prasadi heritage, so that's appealing, and the built-in complication can be fun.
On the other hand, having a personally commissioned gift from the Empress that reinforces both snakes and sorcery (snorcery?) (see, mom pays attention to our hobbies!) and has a connotation of Immaculate orthodoxy and zeal to counteract the stigma of our aesthetic? I think that wins out.
[X] The White Serpent
Both of these points, yeah, pretty much.
On the other hand, having a personally commissioned gift from the Empress that reinforces both snakes and sorcery (snorcery?) (see, mom pays attention to our hobbies!) and has a connotation of Immaculate orthodoxy and zeal to counteract the stigma of our aesthetic? I think that wins out.
[X] The White Serpent
Oh no, that would be terrible. Why, we might have to do something awful like assist Sola with a... quest.
Likewise. The dramatic irony of knowing what's coming is fun, but if anything, I'm making decisions from the perspective that "this'll bite Ambraea in the ass comically when the other shoe drops" rather than "this should help us metagame for a situation she has no knowledge of".
I may not be the most Savvy about 3rd Edition exalted lore but doesn't the empress still go occasionally on those walks that last a couple years and as a dragon blooded of not insignificant political leanings shouldn't she be planning how to survive the next time her mom goes on an enthusiastic walk. Especially if she hasn't in a while.
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
She's never disappeared for that long. The Empress sometimes goes away for a month or two every so often, so there is a delay in how seriously her not being around is taken at first. The whole problem is that various pieces of the Realm's governmental apparatus just don't function without input from her long term, so you get things like the houses seizing control of the Imperial Legions before the generals could take advantage of the power vacuum.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[x] The White Serpent
- Location
- Canada
Going off the 3e Realm sourcebook
Yeah the Scarlet Empress has a habit of just heading out for a few months without telling anyone, with the subject of what she's doing in that time being the subject of much rumor
But it's specifically because she has this habit that it's not considered something you need a plan to "survive"
Keep in mind, anything you do in the Empress's absence is still something that you will need to account for when she comes back, and you are expecting her to come back because this is a semi regular occurrence
How the Houses act when the Empress is sitting on her throne and how they act when she's off who knows where for a few months isn't all that different, because the Empress herself generally doesn't spend her time personally breathing down their neck unless they've already screwed up somehow
It's the All Seeing Eye (which officially doesn't exist but it's an open secret by design so everyone knows they do) and Magistrates that spend their day to day keeping an eye on things, and it's her Ministries that spend their day to day making sure everything runs smoothly
They all depend on Her Redness to operate smoothly in the long run, but so long as everyone is expecting her to show up again relatively soon that's not a problem
Things start coming apart after she still hasn't shown up again for almost two years, which is a lot longer than she's ever been gone before
Though even then the prospect that she could show up again at any moment still occupies enough brainspace that part of the reason why they set Fokuf up as Regent is because he won't be missed if she walks in and incinerates him for the temerity of sitting in her chair
And why they're still tentative enough to set up a private deadline of 7 years before they're absolutely sure that she's gone, even if they've started plotting and scheming well before that
Last edited:
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
I am very much in favor of making a run at the imperial manse, but from the perspective of 'let's go find her' and not the idea of replacing and taking over the realm. I like our friends as an adventuring party more than a political tea circle, I think.
Both her and Sola are going to be in trouble, right?
- Location
- Virginia
[X] The White Serpent
The thing is Her Redness is a very very dangerous customer, if someone has her it's probably not in the Manse and equally probably not someone our baby exalt can deal with. It does not have to be the Ebon Dragon, but this is a Second Circle Demon/Elder Celestial Exalted and up kind of deal, things that swat young Terrestrial Exalted aside like flies
UrsaTempest
Don't Panic!
Why would you assume someone have her? Maybe she's willingly gone from the Throne because there's something more important going on.
By the time there is a danger of the Realm imploding you pretty much have to assume she is under duress. The Realm has been the sole focus of the Scarlet Empress' life for literal centuries. But assuming she is free well going after her would not do anything since it's not like Ambrea would meaningfully add skills or knowledge to anything that can stalemate her Redness for years. It is basically the same problem from another angle.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
[X] The White Serpent
🐍
🐍
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I suppose one could try convincing the Silent Legion of this.
The thing is if she were dead someone in the underworld or in Heaven would know, the Sidereals who set up the Immaculate Doctrine would have given a sign to someone. The fact that there is no sign, no mark of Heaven's favor smoothing the way for a preferred candidate means something far stranger is at hand.
Vote closed, Year 5 05
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
This is not really the case. The Sidereals do not know one way or another whether she's alive, just that presumably she was not destined to die. If they had the capacity to just know that, it would kill a lot of the drama and write out a lot of possible plots that are meant to be on the table. Lethe is a black box, and no one in the Underworld that we know of has perfect information to be able to say with 100% confidence whether or not a person has suddenly died and left a ghost. I'm not even sure that it was ever the case in previous editions that heaven could say for certain that she wasn't dead, and it's certainly not true now.
Here is what, canonically, is true:
- The Empress has disappeared
- By default, no one knows where she is aside from anyone who was directly involved
- The kind of magical scrying or location techniques that the major groups in the setting ordinarily have access to cannot answer this, because if they could, they would have
Anything else is speculation. This is something that is very much left wide open to answer as the needs of individual games require.