Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

13th of March 2007 A.D.

Where are you? you ask and are sent plunging down and down through bedrock and black oily waters at the root of the world though the veil into the spirit world and back again a honeycomb of tortured dimensions unseen by eyes of mortal man except maybe those who brought screaming to the cannibal feasts of the dead. You had wondered before why no wizard had ever found this place, had never known of the horrors that lurked beneath the sands? The answer is that it is no place, as easy to emerge into a graveyard in Romania desecrated by the bulldozers send to level the ground for urban development as it is an ancient temple complex set up by the pre-pharaohnic dead. Wherever the the ground of the dead was defiled they are.

Pouring your canteen down the back of your shirt and with the knowledge of the master vampire's location securely in your mind you raise your arm and with a slow dismissive wave of your hand as shadows coalesce nearly a liquid around your fingers you unravel the foul necromancy that binds the spirit to the defiled corpse."Excuse me Father, there's something on you."

Not without pain do the hooks break, how could they, but the spectral shriek is brief and the look of wonder that comes upon his face is not.

"Who... what art thou?"

"Well a witch wouldn't be an inaccurate thing to call me, even if you did mean it less politely a moment ago," you shrug. "Can you tell us what else is in here?"

He looks around as though expecting some predator to latch onto him with a from the shadows. When nothing comes he motions you thee to follow, though halls of stone distinctly not Egyptian.

Smooth curved surfaces dominate like Art Nouveau rendered in melted wax, bubbles of empty space emerging when one would expect solid footing and walls where all logic would indicate a passage. The tunnels had been carved though bedrock with no concern to steepness as they twisted 'round and 'round each other, yet there is surprisingly good airflow. The marks that are there on close inspection are faint and pressed into the stone with near-mechanical precision.

"Hands... all the work of dead hands..." Lydia whispers, catching on to the same signs, adding: "That's why death is so thick here."

The priest who introduces himself as Reverent Morris, explains that this is only the upper necropolis, the place where the unliving 'graciously' allowed t heir thralls to shelter in times of famine or war, sealed behind stone doors more massive than any you have ever seen and ye, as Tiffany tested, able to be moved even by a child.

I don't want to think about children here.

Deeper down in what must have been the living chambers are... fossils in the walls here shells and fish and stranger things preserved with a purpose, one imagines as a kind of strange art and in between them the beginnings of a script that had never seen the light of day. What has outlived these nameless people? Beds of stone and of stone the tables, you even spy what might be a latrine pit which would be a treasure trove for archeologists or for the explorers you brought with you.

Your ghostly guide explains words broken in his haste that the necropolis was built like an inverted pyramid though he and his companions had not managed to do more than breach the second level before He had found them. As with many of the dead the old priest loses something of his coherence when the matter of his death grows close. "At times, I still hear their mocking laugh..."

Before he can finish you hear it too, laughter like a shiver though the marrow of your bones coming from deeper in the caverns.

"This tomb is build like an inverted ziggurat," Tiffany cuts in. "The farther down one goes, the closer to 'the masters'. First the kine, then the guard dogs, then the things even those slavering halls fear to tread in. After that... well the people up here wouldn't have a reason to write inscriptions about them would they?"

"It was said in old legends, the oldest maybe, that all the world was born of water," Lydia speaks softly half to herself. "But not all the water has seen the sky when it was parted from it. Some lies so deep perhaps that it keeps reflections of alien skies all to itself."

A few of the explorers draw close to listen and then, even then, your friend pauses to look around. "People lived here even if they did not have the good fortune to die here where the rot is still manageable. I think we should leave this part of the ruins be. Let's see how much it fancies laughing now!"

The laughter stops... and the walls begin to move and that is when you realize, the builders or what's left of them are still here and they are clawing their way back out.

Lydia Essence 6/7
Molly Essence 18/18
Molly Willpower 8/9

What do you do?

[] Use no Essence, allow the Explorers to take some of the brunt of the attack, there's worse to come down below

[] The dead are linked somehow, Lydia tries to take command of them (-1 Essence for Command the Dead)

[] Write in

OOC: Enjoy

13th of March 2007 A.D.

Setting her feet more firmly into the earth in a manner that brings one more of a mind to a sumo wrestler than a sixteen year old girl Lydia calls sylables like stones sinking into dark water, falling between the thumps of the breaking walls.

"Watch out!" Tiffany's voice breaks the rhythm as the feeling above her breaks and something-once-human starts to crawl with the alien grace of a spider towards her... but the corpse stops moving, all along the corridor leading back to the surface the blacked mummified zombies still, here an arm dangling loose out of the broken limestone, there an eye peering though burning red.

"It's alright, I have them, though they don't feel right." She shakes her head, then finally looks up at the one that had been about to attack her, eyes wide in surprise.

Having your corpse expert be surprised by a corpse isn't a very good as the explorers all around show. Thankfully Lydia doesn't take long explaining: "These aren't just zombies, not just shells. They feel more like sketches in charcoal."

"Sketches of what?" you ask

Her answer is a single word, instinctively hugging herself as she looks at the improbably suspended corpse: "Vampires."

"What?" It is probably not a very imperial look, but for all Harry called the Black Court 'Super-Zombies', but that was just Harry pissing off monsters not an example of undead taxonomy, or whatever one wanted to call the ordering of unnatural beings.

"They have some of the powers look they can crawl on walls..." she motioned to some of the nearest mummies which proceeded to demonstrate a profound unconcern with gravity that would be wholly at home in Stoker's seminal book.

"And they're all linked together, I'm controlling sixty six of them even though I only reached for one."

"Do they feel, hungry?" Tiffany asks even as she gingerly steps away from the reverent closest to her. Obviously not interested enough to take a closer look herself, not that you can blame her for it.

"No..." She frowns. "They feel heavy, but like those doors, perfectly balanced so that they can be moved with the merest touch. Where did Reverent Morris go?"

"One suspects he decided to absent himself of our company when you commanded the very hosts of the underworld," Tiffany sniffs a little too dramatically.

One of the explorers, a Sutra in a decapod chassis painted with black and green patterns sparks off a synthetic laugh, only a little nervous. Earthly death and those who profane it are new to the people of Sanctuary, but to take on the mantle of explorer is to accept, almost invite the presence of fresh horrors.

"Keep one back and send the rest ahead to deal with any traps," you suggest. On the one hand the people who once inhabited those shells deserve a a resting place that isn't this. On the other if they are animate and in Lydia's control better that they run into danger than your subjects.

The temple so far had been reasonably free of sand or other contaminants, sure there were flakes of paint and bits of residue that might once have been grain or oil dried fruits and beer in tall jars, but nothing remarkable. The lower level puts it to shame. The polished limestone floor looks sterile, clean enough to eat off assuming one were insane enough to try.

"Priests lived here and embalmers though the language doesn't make a distinction between the words," Tiffany runs her hand just above the carved symbols curved like sickle blade. "If I were to hazard a guess, this was a society which believed that the truth of life was to die. That only in death could they be realized."

"Free from hunger and want," you say half to yourself, remembering the story Lydia had told before, but she can only shrug. What she told you is what she knows, the people of the Old Kingdom did not remember the builders of this complex as anything that a fading remnant withering among the sands.

As you step into the next room to take a closer look a wave of vertigo strikes you, strong enough that you tear Usum out to fight... but it's not an attack, not directed at all. Against your cheek the air flows ever so slightly for the first time since the entrance way, cold and dry and dead. No, not the air, you realize. The very essence of the tomb has changed to death, more than a tomb, manse that focuses necrotic energy. No wonder Lydia's corpse puppets don't feel hungry.

The satisfaction of a mystery solved is tempered by the knowledge that the master of this place would have surely found other uses for all thay aspected power.

When you explain this to Lydia she stops to think a moment, then suggests slowing down to study the glyphs, learn more about what might be down here instead of just 'charging in.' After all, she argues, it's not like the whole expedition can faster than your quarry.

Lydia Essence 5/7
Molly Essence 16/18

What does Molly think?

[] Press on, once you reach the heart of the manse its master will have to defend it

[] Establish a perimeter, and learn what you can, with Tiffany's help it shouldn't take long and the information could be invaluable

[] Write in

OOC: Enjoy.