Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

THE SCARLET PATH

The febrile and demon-infested spirit bridge linking Yomi and the Yang World is called the Scarlet Path. While easier to find than the Ebon Road, the Scarlet Path is considered by many to be notably more dangerous. In addition to sporting minor hells that mar its length like boils, the Scarlet Path is a breeding ground for spirits of plague and pestilence. An unwary traveler could brave the path, escape swarms of malevolent insects, defeat hideous demons and make it to the Yang World only to fall over dead of kuru or advanced syphilis. Such are the dangers of defiled Yang Chi.

The Scarlet Path is hard to miss from any point in Yomi. The amount of traffic passing along it between the Thousand Hells and the Western hell of Malfeas makes it one of the most noticeable landmarks in the corruption realm. It has "on ramps" in most of the Yang-aspected kingdoms of the Yomi World; these are marked by heavy traffic, wayposts and occasional defensive encampments. The Path itself stands out from its surroundings by its particular mixture of sickly, web-infested jungle trees and sticky red mud. The continuous procession of bakemono, Goblin Spiders, demons, akuma, emissaries, fugitives, slaves and others who traverse it make the difference more obvious yet. Scores of wagons, rikshaws and tanks travel at excruciatingly slow speeds in both directions through diseased and aggressive vegetation that constantly must be hacked or burned away.

Most of the length of the Path appears as thick jungle rising up out of rich red mud. The trees along the Path are gnarled and cankered, but when hacked down, they grow back at a rate fast enough to be witnessed by the naked eye. The vines strangling the trees are fibrous, sticky and thorned, and the flowers, while spectacularly beautiful, are poisonous to smell or touch. A reddish sun shines down on the path continuously, keeping the heat and humidity very high.

Luckily for the Kuei-jin, this sun is just a souvenir drawn from the fears of nuclear holocaust. It was much brighter in the '50s, almost insufferably so, but in the last decade it has begun to dim. It still casts more light than most of the denizens of the Path are comfortable with.

A traveler trying to get on the Path has to determine how best to navigate his way through the dangerous mass of thick trees and hostile insects without getting lost or eaten. While it may be tempting to try following one of the many "official" caravans of lost souls along the Path, such tactics are nearly impossible. The pitiless sun and extreme humidity generate mirages that can turn a traveler around entirely, even if it seems as though she's only feet behind her guide. Branches just hacked through drip caustic sap on anyone caught beneath them, and worst of all, the sap marks the poor individual it drips on as food or egg-host for the Path's enormous swarms of ants, hornets, mosquitoes, ticks and spiders.

Any traveler along the Scarlet Path who is not heavily imbalanced toward Yang seems dead in comparison to the rest of this realm, and the denizens of the Path respond accordingly. Enormous flies will seek lay eggs on a victim; once hatched, those eggs grow into boring maggots that tunnel throughout the traveler's flesh. Various lurid-colored fungi begin growing on the traveler's skin if not carefully watched for; left untended, such growths consume their victims within the space of a few days. If a traveler is imbalanced toward Yin, these horrors are intensified ten-fold. Few experiences could be more unpleasant or lethal for a follower of the Song of the Shadow Dharma than a trip along the Scarlet Path.

Any attempt to rest while on the Scarlet Path almost certainly ends unpleasantly. Hungry green shoots or tendrils, dripping with a sticky nectar that is both caustic and anesthetic, start groping toward bodies that remain at rest for more than a moment or two (Dexterity + Brawl, difficulty 5 to hit; Perception [difficulty 7] for a target to notice anything wrong while the sap erodes a health level per turn). The powerful anesthetic agent in the nectar prevents the victim from feeling anything as the vine slowly dissolves its target. Many fugitives, exhausted by their escape from Yomi, have rested a moment too long in the jungles of the Scarlet Path and never taken another step.

The creatures inhabiting the Path, both flora and fauna, tend to be spirits representing the worst nightmare images of the natural world. As a result, they are capable of completely unnatural behaviors; thus, a swarm of army ants, for example, deviate from their path in order to engage unwanted guests of the realm, roots pop up to trip careless travelers, and the gigantic phoenixes that swarm the skies above the Path take careful aim when they spit napalm on travelers below. In short, any way in which nature could have gone wrong has gone wrong — and all of the unpleasantness gets directed at any intruders.

The most common hazard encountered in the Goblin Jungle is the nation of goblins themselves. Goblins are nothing so much as a grab bag of human and animal features grafted onto a roughly humanoid frame; hideous mismatches are common occurrences. Worse yet, goblins possess a malevolent cunning that makes them terrible and persistent enemies. Goblins hunt for pleasure as much as for sustenance; they take great joy in terrifying, trapping and otherwise tormenting their prey before devouring it (preferably alive). It's all part of the sport for these twisted nature spirits.

The most malevolent and hated inhabitants of the Path, however, are the Kumo. The Goblin Jungle is used by the Hattar Goblin Spiders as breeding grounds. If the Kumo were to call any place a homeland, this would be it. Some Goblin Spiders have suggested, under extreme duress, that the Kumo make their lairs in the Goblin Jungle because it is there that they guard their queen until she can be freed from the stone in which she was imprisoned. That story, however, is only a rumor, and not a common one.

Kumo webs are so thick in some areas that passage through the miasma is extremely laborious and time-consuming, when it is possible at all. The Kumo seduce (or kidnap) appropriate breeding stock and bring their mates to the web-homes in the tallest trees along the Scarlet Path, commonly making deals as necessary with Yama Kings to allow free passage through Yomi or the Yang World. Most Yama Kings allow this passage, as the Kumo are some of their best soldiers; in exchange, the Kumo are responsible for hunting down unauthorized travelers along the Scarlet Path. This agreement works well for the spider demons, providing them with all the blood and Chi they might ever need.

While the nature of the Path assures that everything on it is defiled or at least imbalanced, it remains very much a living world, and living things, given time, can adapt to any environment. There are tiny enclaves along the Scarlet Path comprised of fugitives who have adapted to this malevolent environment. Called Crazy Monkeys, these lurkers in the shadows survive primarily by virtue of their hard-won knowledge of this liminal realm. They may occasionally attack small caravans (or other fugitives) to acquire needed goods like metal tools or cloth. Most official caravans, though, carry nothing more than the seem-
ingly endless reciprocal gifts of souls and innocent flesh exchanged between the Yama Kings and Maeljin Incarna.

Many of the Crazy Monkeys are originally from Southeast Asia, near the Golden Courts of the Penangallan, and more than a few have had experience with guerrilla warfare at some point in their existences. The Crazy Monkeys like to think that they are fighting a guerrilla war against the Yama Kings (or the demons of the West, or whoever they saw most recently before escaping to the Goblin Jungle) that may eventually weaken the demon lords enough to tip the balance against them. Mortals and shen of all types, especially hengeyokai and chi'n ta, as well as the occasional overzealous Shih, have been found in the ranks of the Crazy Monkeys, and they do their best to utilize their various arts and skills against demons without bringing down the full wrath of the Yama Kings.

Needless to say, most of the Crazy Monkeys are in fact crazy. Their hatred of the Yama Kings goes so far that they may remain in the Goblin Jungle even after they find a way back to the mortal world. While the Crazy Monkeys' idealism may be beyond question, their rationality is not. Any traveler seeking out the Crazy Monkeys had best be prepared to embark upon a nearly impossible quest in a thoroughly malevolent environment followed by an excruciating initiation— and that's if everything goes well. If things don't go well, the traveler had best be prepared to reach the end of his current incarnation in a spirit realm composed of the hatred,rage and pain of the ages. Paranoia, particularly as pertaining to spies of the Yama Kings, is one of the most common afflictions among the Crazy Monkeys.

The Scarlet Path has nearly unlimited surprises for the unwary traveler. From time to time, the thick red mud of the Path yields an intensely bright red or green gem. Yangstones, as these crystals are called, are common and have no value in Yomi or Malfeas, though they are highly coveted elsewhere. Lightning People, in particular, find them desirable for the mystic energies they contain. Carrying a yangstone gives its possessor a surge of self-confidence and a feeling of exhilaration. A single stone makes a traveler impatient and impetuous. More than one and she is rendered utterly manic. Those who bear multiple stones feel powerful, unstoppable and in extreme cases almost godlike, and don't hesitate to rush into ill-advised situations while under the stones' influence. Carrying three or more yangstones assures the traveler a fascinating series of visions, and the hallucinations caused by yangstones are always of a variety to push the carrier into unwise action at the worst possible moment.

Possession of a yangstone has led more than one Kuei-jin to commit Acts of Blindness. The Scarlet Path is home to many, many manic chih-mei wearing entire necklaces of yangstones, generally interspersed with finger bones, bits of scalp and teeth — all added for their aesthetic value.

Near its terminus in the Yang World, the Scarlet Path branches and twists like the roots of an enormous tree as it blends with the ten thousand realms of the Yang World. The primary trunk of the Path feeds directly into the gigantic Western hell called Malfeas. Myriad smaller branches feed into the Realm of Fighting Spirits, the Realm of Atrocities and the Realm of the Great Abyss. Many tiny alternative paths feed into other realms and zones of the Yang World. A very small minority of them are even said to wind up in such unpolluted realms as Shangri La and the Hollow Earth, but it is widely known that such hopeful tales are merely legend.

If the Scarlet Path were to connect to an unpolluted realm, however, that realm would surely have an immensely powerful guardian to keep demons from sweeping in like a storm surge and laying waste to all that stood in their way.

Sidebar: The Yang(Crystal) Method said:

THE YANG (CRYSTAL) METHOD

Yangstones are one of the most dangerous pitfalls in the Goblin Jungle because they're as enticing as they are deadly. The euphoric rush associated with holding a yangstone is one of the most pleasurable sensations most creatures, especially Kuei-jin, can ever feel. The Yang charge contained in each of these gems floods the holder with the most ecstatic sensations of life, and the Hungry Dead yearn for that with a longing unimaginable to the living.

While holding a yangstone, a vampire behaves as if she has three more points of Yang Chi than she actually does. While this "illusory Yang" counts with regard to Yang Chi totals and Chi imbalance (and its concomitant side effects), it can't be used for anything constructive. A Kuei-jin with one point of Yang Chi in her body and three yangstones would feel like she had 10 points of Yang Chi and would behave as if heavily imbalanced toward Yang. Even if she spent her last actual point of Yang Chi, she would still believe she had nine points of Chi — until she was disabused of that notion by trying to call upon nonexistent Chi or the yangstones were taken from her. No one ever gives up yangstones of their own free will.

Example: Li-Tsang, the most revered Devil-Tiger ancestor of Shanghai, has a permanent Yang Chi of 6. If she picks up one yangstone, she feels as if she has nine points of Yang Chi in her body. If she unwisely picks up a second yangstone, she feels as if she has a full 10 points of Yang Chi, but two points of her own natural Chi are displaced, flowing out of her body and presumably to the nearest dragon line. If she is so rash as to pick up a third yangstone, not only does she grow jittery and start hallucinating, but she also displaces three more points of her own Yang Chi. Only when the yangstones are taken from her will she realize that she has only one actual point of Yang Chi left.

Yangstones do have one constructive application to Kuei-jin: They can help those vampires who have become ch'ing-shih due to long-term Yin imbalance lose their corpselike appearance. For each month that a ch'ing shih wears a yangstone (and suffers the consequences of doing so), the stone returns one dot in the Appearance Attribute lost to the ch'ing shih condition.

More than one stone can be used this way, provided the Kuei-jin is willing to suffer the consequences of a Chi imbalance in order to do so. A yangstone corrodes to dust immediately after returning one point of Appearance to a ch'ing shih.

Only the chi'nta have the skills to coax the energy from a yangstone, which is to them simply another form of Tass.

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THE EBON ROAD

The Ebon Road connects Yomi to the Yin World like a smooth black shard of bone; it links the Yomi World to the Dark Kingdoms of the Dead and is the sole means of direct passage between the two. Were it within his power to do so, the Jade Emperor would have destroyed the Ebon Road moments after it was created, but he can no more annihilate the Road than he can calm the winds of the Tempest. He has, however, done what damage to it he could, and his efforts have caused it to flicker. Now the Road flickers in and out like a flame in a breeze, and by its uncertain nature it keeps traffic to a minimum. Few souls can find the Road, fewer still know the secrets of traveling it.

Whether approaching from Yomi or from the Underworld that it connects to, the Ebon Road is impossible to find, or nearly so, without a clear understanding of the auspicious times and places for its manifestation. The Road is always extant somewhere, but rarely is it predictable in its appearance, and it is permeated with "not-there-ness." No standard map is capable of leading to it, and even great feats of magic can miss it unless the seeker is very knowledgeable about the exact nature of the Road. It is notable for its blackness in dark places and for its silence in quiet places, and composed of the cold, metallic substance of corrupt Yin.

Even those souls fortunate enough to find the Ebon Path out of Yomi are forced to traverse the Pit of Salt and Iron, ruled by the Yama King Wu Hua, or the Hell of Ti-tsang Wang. Should any intrepid souls manage to pass through those dark places, it is only to find themselves in the deepest reaches of the Grand Caverns of the Yin World, with Spectres and shifting Labyrinth walls. Travelers know this intuitively; they realize that there is no point to their journey, and that they may as well give up. Continuing is only a greater trauma, and going back the way they came simply returns them to the agonies of Yomi.

In truth, the Road's intended effect is to instill such a weariness in travelers that they give up and let the path drink the Chi from their souls. Thus does the Ebon Path insinuate itself into the minds of all but the strongest-willed who travel upon it. For this reason, the Ebon Path is sometimes called, "The Little Hell of Despair."

Being so difficult to find, the Path is not often used as a means of travel between Yomi and the Yin World. Only the Yama Kings and their greatest generals, who know the secrets of the dark road intimately, can travel with any regularity, and they're happy with the situation. While using the Scarlet Path as a trade route with the demons of the West is all well and good, making the carefully constructed Yomi World accessible to creatures obsessed with destruction and Oblivion is thought by even the most strongly Yin-aspected Yama Kings to be unwise.

No light shines along the Ebon Road. No sun, moon, stars or glowing fungi cast any sort of light, so any kind of illumination acts as a beacon to whatever travels along the Road — or scours it for prey.

The Ebon Road is made more difficult to traverse due to the fact that the road itself is as hard and slippery as black ice. Due to its extreme smoothness, only the most dexterous traveler can tread the Ebon Path without slipping. Wise travelers stay far from the edge; slipping off the edge of the Road and into the Tempest tends to be a final and fatal error. Should a traveler lose her balance and fall (a near certainty unless special measures are taken), the Road saps Chi from her; mere contact with the stuff of the road is enough to initiate the drain. The Road steals Yang Chi first, but inevitably draws forth all of its victims' vital energies. The amount of Chi a traveler loses in one fall depends on how hard she lands. Once a traveler has lost all her Chi, she can no longer move, and she stands, helpless yet horribly aware, as the centuries tick past. Freshly drained victims resemble statues skillfully carved from obsidian. The Road is littered with the eroding statues of those travelers who have suffered this fate. Eventually (as time is reckoned along the Road), Tempest winds and Spectral feet grind these remnants to dust which blows away into the Tempest. It is said that one or two of the Yama Kings enjoy decorating their hells with Ebon Road statuary, but no method has yet been devised whereby a traveler drained in this fashion can be restored to life.

The only creatures to travel the Ebon Road with any frequency are Spectres or the occasional Plasmic that somehow manages to wander onto the Road (or falls from the Tempest onto it). Spectres from the lower castes may find the Ebon Road an intriguing diversion from the Labyrinth's familiar terrors, and may not be in any rush to get back home.

There are a few creatures that exist on the Ebon Road and almost nowhere else. Perhaps the most frightening beings are the disturbing entities called the Unfaced Ones, though certain Yama Kings, notably Emma-o, have imported them to their own hells to use as watchdogs and packhounds. The Unfaced Ones are the rag-draped twisted wreckage of Spectres that have lingered too long on the Road.

Nothing shows beneath their tattered swaths, and they unfailingly wear masks that they've stolen, forged or snatched using dark powers of the Yin World. Despite their decrepit forms, the Unfaced Ones are incredibly fast and can pursue their prey for long distances at high speeds. It is not for their speed, however, and certainly not for their fighting prowess that such monsters are legendary. When the Unfaced Ones remove their masks, they expose the utter blackness of the Void that pulls their victim in like a strong riptide. When several Unfaced Ones unmask simultaneously, victims are ripped apart and sucked straight to Oblivion. Yin-aspected Yama Kings make frequent use of Unfaced Ones because their speed makes them good hunters, and the occasional direct sacrifice to Oblivion certainly doesn't hurt a Yama King's position in the Yin World. It is clear that the Unfaced Ones are Spectres of some ilk, but what brought them to the Ebon Road and what caused their unholy transformation is unknown. Certain scholars suspect that the answer can be found in their name, and that the Unfaced Ones are Spectres who have lost face through improper actions on behalf of the Yama Kings.

As a traveler gets closer to the world of ghosts, a great storm closes in around the Road. This is the Tempest of the Yellow Springs, and the intensity of the storm is one of the few ways in which a traveler can gauge his progress toward the Yin World.

Near its end, the Ebon Road divides into smaller twin paths. Should a traveler take the descending fork, she eventually finds herself in the Pit of Salt and Iron, which lies at the foot of the Road in the Yin World proper. The wails of the spirits and Kuei-jin impaled on the spires of Wu Hua's towers mix with the shifting Tempest winds to create a threnody that can be heard long before its source is visible.

Most wise travelers turn back at that point and attempt to take the other fork, only to discover that they seem to have lost their way. While it is possible to find the Ebon Road again by using whatever knowledge or technique got the traveler on the Path in the first place, doing so takes an intense search and a great deal of time — plenty of time for Wu Hua's servants to find stragglers. Once a traveler has been captured and aggressively interrogated by several echelons of Wu Hua's army, it is likely that her voice will be added to that of the other screaming souls impaled upon on the spires, and her travels will be at an end.

The other path slopes upward and deposits travelers on the slopes of the jagged mountain upon which Ti Yu, the Earth Prison of Ti-tsang Wang, is built. The path is heavily guarded by Yu Huang's servants and "demon jailers," and before long anyone taking this route stumbles into an impenetrable palisade of heavily armed guards. The travelers, having forfeited a "fair" trial, are sent on the long journey to Hell detailed on page 90 in Dark Kingdom of Jade.

Leaping from the edge of the Ebon Road before the Road splits sends a character spinning off into the Tempest, in all likelihood never to be heard from again (unless the character knows the Argos Arcanos, or there is some form of intervention). Leaping from the edge of the Ebon Road after the bifurcation sends the character into the Tempest as well, but the winds are notably weaker by that point, and instead of drifting the traveler falls a great distance while being buffeted by winds and hit by stray objects. After an indeterminate time in free fall (more than a second but less than a lifetime; time moves oddly on the borders of Yomi), the traveler comes to rest somewhere in the bowels of the Labyrinth, and must deal with its perils and pitfalls, (see Doomslayers: Into the Labyrinth for more information.)

While the Ebon Road is by no means an easy means of travel between Yomi and the Yin World, there are rumors of a handful of skilled operatives in the Yellow Springs who have tried to create a sort of "underground railroad" to free the imprisoned souls of loved ones from the Yama Kings. It seems unlikely that the Jade Emperor would allow such a thing, but he is not necessarily aware of everything that goes on in his Empire.

Sidebar: The Slippery Slope said:

THE SLIPPERY SLOPE

The Ebon Road is so slippery that characters are not able to traverse it on foot, but there is literally no way for them to know this ahead of time. Players should roll Dexterity at the beginning of each turn their characters are on the Road. The difficulty to walk normally is 8; difficulty 6 is necessary just to stand still. If the roll produces a failure, the character falls and loses one point of Chi. If he gets any 1s, he also loses one health level, as a: result of his harsh contact with the Road. Storytellers should give characters the opportunity to return to their starting point once they realize their situation. The Ebon Road is a death trap only for the unclever. Skating, flying or otherwise passing over the Road without touching it drastically improves travelers' survival rates; it is only the foolish or stubborn who insist on trying to defeat it on its own terms.

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