Stealth specialist is an interesting idea, but if we trust her, making her a special specialist seems most logical for her situation. She's a white court scionI'm increasingly certain that Silver is the Day Caste. We've seen one of her caste abilities in a subterfuge roll and her having pathetic intimidation, which more concretely narrows the options down. Given her performance she's either been rolling so well we can't even tell we're being manipulated or else she's not really that good at social stuff on this scale even though she did use one moonshadow charm.
Not popping out her empathy or etiquette excellency in this situation if she had them would be a very strange decision, so it's more likely that Subterfuge is her only social caste ability.
If she does end up on our side long term, what do you guys think would be the best equipment for an Abyssal assassin? You know, cause they aren't scary enough or anything on their own.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
The stealth stuff is sort of a core part of her kit; the question is more about application. Does she use it for basically being a spy, or in a more saboteur/assassin kind of role?
If she ends up in our circle, which we shouldn't take as a given, then the latter would make more sense because Molly is a pretty overwhelming information specialist. Though there would be some synergy with her ability to steal foci for us.
For basic weapons either way I'd start with a really high quality set of FCF firearms and grenades. Not a launcher, but anything that can leverage her athletics score. Day castes have a lot of synergy built on that skill, so it's helpful to leverage it.
Really, some explosive stuff in general might be fun for her depending on her temperament.
This charm is a core piece of Day combat:
Note that it says unexpected attack, not how precisely she needs to make that happen.
I'd argue that suddenly exploding with no prior warning is pretty unexpected, so if set up right she could run around planting hidden bombs in a truly unfortunate facility and double all of her damage successes on whatever they do to the people in range.
It's probably suboptimal compared to just shooting them, but I'm also tempted by some potential splendor shenanigans:
I'd assume Larceny is what you'd use to plant things on people without them noticing right?
So even setting side demolitions, imagine giving her some really fancy and low profile explosives that she uses a reach splendor to stick in people's pockets from 15-30 feet away before setting them off.
With being raised in the White Court, even if she didn't become one, would have thought Inari would have been a Social caste.
General social skills might help, but you need to show excellence in particular ways to qualify for particular castes.
She doesn't really fit Moonshadow:
The most achievable one is poet/artist, but she isn't one. Day caste only requires that she be outside the bounds of accepted society:
We know she has Subterfuge excellency and doesn't have one for Intimidation. So even setting aside the character requirement she can't be the Dusk or Daybreak castes that got loose. If she was somehow the Moonshadow then she'd have gone through that scene without using her primary social excellencies.
Edit:
[X] Yog
Last edited:
Update will be tomorrow unfortunately, I still have some work on those other sheets, but there is an interlude I can post now.
Arc 15 Interlude 12: Measuring the Last Step
New
Measuring the Last Step
10th of March 2007 A.D.
The night hummed with the voices of a dozen insects drawn by the water, restless energy, they said New York never sleeps, but the same thing could be said more rightly of New Orleans. Old gas lamps still flickered like watchful eyes over the narrow alleys of the French Quarter and when the tourists had their fill and moved with raucous merriment from one distraction to another, the memories remain. Where once the lost and banished scions of distant aristocracy and armies marched to the beat of a dozen drums, poets declaimed their verse to the soft and winding Mississippi, wide as it is deep and deep as it is secretive now a single figure walked with a limp, dressed in what one could call goth-ware, though more velvet than leather with a bit of rubber and PVC to fill in the corners. A hypothetical observer, maybe a proprietor of one of the nearby shops looking out might find his slinking suspicious, his lack of company foreboding, so at least the man hoped. Maybe my ghost will wander here too, following in my last living footsteps.
He'd heard from his father that's what ghosts did, though Lukas Thomson had never seen a ghost, nor a goblin nor faerie, nor any of the dozen, hundred other things he knew were there, beyond the heavy curtain of the heavy fleshy eyelids he wished he could peel back. The summoning had failed and he was fresh out, out of ideas, out of energy, out of the will to keep on trudging through a world that seemed to have no interest in him except as a hunk of meat going though the motions.
For a while as he meandered south by Crescent Bridge he wondered if he'd at least end up in the news 'promising young man with his whole life ahead of him dead at twenty three'... 'senseless suicide of unknown young man...' All he could really bring to mind was a collage of all his neighbors saying he'd been a quiet boy, but that was serial killers not, not suicides. Some serial killer I would make, can't even curse one annoying old woman.
He wondered for a moment if he would even leave a ghost or if his soul was so utterly mundane as to be washed away. He looked down at the water, then from his pocket he took out a handwritten business card, paper not plastic, like something from a hundred years ago, subtle and understated 'The Hellfire Club.' Maybe I should just go, see what they have to say, the voice of fear in the back of his brain sounded suspiciously like Garry. But Garry didn't want anything to do with him since three days ago, wouldn't take his calls, wouldn't open the door... wouldn't listen.
That's when he hatched a daring plan, to be perhaps remembered by more than the local papers.
OOC: I've been trying to do the second half of this for hours and it's just not coming together. You guys will just have to wait to see the rest tomorrow. I will note here this is happening three days in the past, the rest of it will be in the present.
It occurs to me that this is actually an opportunity in and of itself: this line of communication to the Neverborn, who are well disposed to us, isn't just a one-way street. And it's not like we haven't made a habit out of trying to reach out a hand of friendship and redemption to some of the worst things in the world.
- Location
- Maryland
Well, you're gonna get your wish, buddy.
It just might not be how you expected it.
Oh he is absolutely going to do something stupid and it will get him killed... but it's T-3 days to a quartet of Abyssal Exaltations flying free.
As it turns out, when necromantic abominations walk the world, you don't even get the grace of not having to worry about consequences of your stupid death.
Oh, it is an unprecedented opportunity, yes. By worming itself directly into Inari's mind via direct communication, rather than acting as normal Whispers, the lone Neverborn to do so put themselves directly into range of Inari's social charms. And since it also things about Molly as an adorable little sister who's just a tiny bit confused about what's right and proper (that is, destroying Creation), it also lets us chip in. A year, maybe two at most, and, given the rate we are going at, it'll accept reincarnation as a form of ego death, transitioning the abyssal not into a solar, but into a primordial type of exalted.
I am exaggerating, but the potential is clearly there.
I mean, we don't even know what their motivation is anymore. They're obviously still heavily aligned with death and entropy, but as far as I can tell they haven't really been doing anything for literal ages* and all the bad stuff has been a side-effect of their mere presence.
And more importantly, Creation WAS destroyed already. Possibly multiple times. Didn't really help them.
*A long, long, LONG time for their mindsets to potentially shift. Such as, for instance, even having the capability to be happy or be well disposed to us
Last edited:
… Wait is this the Abyssal version of horse mask!Solar from the book?
Buddy you're supposed to exalt first. Points for style though.
Arc 15 Interlude 13: When the Dragon Sheds Its Skin
New
When the Dragon Sheds Its Skin
13th of March 2007 A.D.
Knowledge is power, that was the truth of magic that superseded all other truths. Cut the right deal, speak the right ritual and you too could have powers unimaginable... Lukas slowly painted the symbols onto his flesh, oak and ash, salt and brimstone that ticketed the back of his throat. Like Sisyphus on his mountain unable to reach the top, like Tantalus standing in water under the tree so bright.
The answering machine went off, shrill and loud in the silence of the cramped apartment looking down over the crowded streets of the Lower Garden District "Lukas this is your final warning, if the money isn't paid by Sunday I will have you evicted!"
If only she knew, oh if only she knew, the man thought gingerly putting on a trenchcoat, unwilling to risk disturbing the symbols of binding. He left the copy of the Lesser Key of Solomon on the table, after tonight he wouldn't need it. On his way out the door he smashed the answering machine off the table, never hearing the next message. In another life maybe he would have, maybe he'd have listened to reason, maybe he'd have just stayed Lukas Thomson, a man with dreams hundredfold greater than his power.
This was not that life.
***
Cigar smoke wafted out of the club like the breath of some subterranean dragon and the light inside pulsed reds and purples and blues, like the colors behind his eyes when he passed out in a haze. The doorman, almost as broad as he was tall looked down with hooded eyes and opened his mouth in time with the bass behind him to reveal a creased stump where his tongue used to be before closing it in an uneven smile, the first time Lukas had seen a smile on the man's face.
Almost he stopped again, maybe he would have after all if at that precise moment an elderly woman, greying hair up up a French braid and rhymestone purse in hand, hadn't given him a dirty look, not even as one might a dangerous character, more like dog piss on the side of a building. Without once looking back he hastened inside.
Scenes of horror and desire assailed his senses, stuff you'd find in the grimiest, grainiest porn in the darkest corners of the Internet mixed with other stuff that was just plain weird that all the rest almost seemed to be framed around. Distantly he wondered if there was something magical about it or if they were just... like that. Once or twice he was almost pulled in to the embrace of carnal dissolution less from desire and more from the sense of being too... clean... too ill fitting to this place, like he had stepped into a fun-house mirror where filth was normal and purity itself was foul. But no... he had to... talk to... Him.
"Oh... no Mr. N. is busy, come on now you know the rules..." There was a sting in the back of his neck, he didn't know from what and before he knew it he'd been pushed down onto his kees. Through foggy eyes he saw a pair of club employees forcing him to his knees in the middle of a pentagram as the music turned to chanting. Echoes stretched out in the hollow room and through the haze he could see another man and next to him a woman, rows of people going through the same rite.
None of them had his protection, he would, he would...The man who had pushed Lukas to his knees laughed, a hollow speechless thing, in mockery.
A rusted blade was pressed to the palm of his right hand and though it the poison flowed, wholly untroubled by the marks copied and copied again, spells long since reft of power. Lukas dreams of binding the demon inside of himself, of using its power against the Hellfire Club were ash, no less than ash for that might once had had substance, they were burning smoke in the hand. Just another pawn... nameless... nothing.
Taking...You...With... ME
Lunging for the knife in his left hand he grabbed it poorly cutting his finger on the jagged edge and slashed is across his throat.
There was no pain, long deadened by the smoke, there was only a vague feeling of warmth that faded to cold darkness. The demon inside of him recoiled like a worm under a dragon's gaze, trying desperately to rip itself free, spilling out like tar though his ruined throat, but that cold voiceless thing paid it no mind and made instead to him, to him, a terrible offer.
Reach out, embrace the grave and live. Through cold and timeless passage it had forgotten most of what made humans humans, all but one that still it clung on like oil on a winding sheet: spite.
Lukas Thomson hurled that name into the Mouth of the Void without a second thought and Azhi Dahaka, rose from death, winding the petty demon that had had tried to wear his flesh around one hand.
OOC: Daybreak... has come. Incidentally this is a a canon character if a very minor one, a internet cookie to anyone who figures out which one.
Last edited:
Ivar
Dark Reaper
- Location
- Russia Moscow
Oh great, Nicodemus is right there. Although I sense that even Nick isn't ready to suddenly feel the Neverborn's breath next to him. He could theoretically capture the abyssal if he's there in person. It's not just his base that got burned.
And yes, Dragon Paradox you specifically wrote everything so that nothing is clear and it is extremely vaguely described, what is happening? Because there are huge chunks of text missing and it is very difficult to understand anything. There are no special descriptions of the environment or anything else.
And yes, Dragon Paradox you specifically wrote everything so that nothing is clear and it is extremely vaguely described, what is happening? Because there are huge chunks of text missing and it is very difficult to understand anything. There are no special descriptions of the environment or anything else.
The PoV character was drugged out of his mind for most of the chapter, but that is not to say there can't be errors (
). Could you give an example of missing text?
Ivar
Dark Reaper
- Location
- Russia Moscow
Oh no, then it's clear why he writes like that. I also thought he was on drugs. But what I mean is that he doesn't really describe the club or where the pentagram is or how they're going to kill him in the middle of the club and that creates a little misunderstanding of how and what's going on here.The PoV character was drugged out of his mind for most of the chapter, but that is not to say there can't be errors (
The club is a front. Right now the whole thing is filled with cultists and future victims, that is why Not-Lukas over there got an invitation to show up today and not some other day.
- Location
- Germany
That seems like the kind of guy we should only give a single chance to be better.
Otherwise finish him and roll the dice again with the next Exalt.
That is unless he actually gets integrated in the Denarians, then directly attacking him would be so risky that no chance of redemption can be afforded.
Otherwise finish him and roll the dice again with the next Exalt.
That is unless he actually gets integrated in the Denarians, then directly attacking him would be so risky that no chance of redemption can be afforded.
Ivar
Dark Reaper
- Location
- Russia Moscow
Yes he's a recluse and an idiot, but why did he have to be killed? I'm not sure what you mean? Do you think he was going to join them? Or what? Because I feel like we came out of the interlude with a completely different understanding of the character.
- Location
- Germany
He was not going to join them, but now that he's an Abyssal, I'm sure the hosts here will bend their full attention on getting him on their side.
And he doesn't exactly look like the type of character with a solid foundation to resist an evil cult offering anything that can turn his so-far shitty life around.
Best case he gets out of there and we can try to help him, but I don't think that likely.
Ivar
Dark Reaper
- Location
- Russia Moscow
Well maybe yes, but I think the Denarians would rather kill him than be in an alliance. BUT this is my reading of the situation. So we will see if the cultists captured him, there is Nicodemus and so on soon I think