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A Vision in Bronze; A Sidereal quest

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Gazetteer said:
There, an earth elemental sweeps the walk outside a teahouse dripping in gold and jewels.
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Love a fully bedazzled earth elemental

Gazetteer said:
"I'll send you a copy of mine to look over, so that we can be sure we don't have accidental discrepancies," you say.
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Nice of her to let him vopy her homework

Gazetteer said:
Yours is fully capable of carrying on a conversation and carrying out a variety of household tasks. It's alternately very helpful and very annoying.
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Yessss

Gazetteer said:
This is part of why you usually avoid actual sleep, along with the lost productivity.
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Oogh yeah that's rough

Thank you for Lohna arguing with the house, it's everything I hoped for.

[x] Teresu Hari
 
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Gazetteer said:
You enter the main hall. The large portrait of Wayward Prayer and her circle stare down at you along with many other pieces of iconic art showing people and landscapes from centuries past. As always, you consider packing it all away and replacing it with something more to your tastes, but a strange mix of guilt and a distant nostalgia not entirely your own always stops you. Ayesha Ura, Chosen of Mercury, smiles from beside Wayward Prayer. It had been a nightmare to get her to stand still for long enough for the artist to capture her likeness, you remember, but Harbingers are like that.
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Man, having a past life is pretty awkward. But I'm sure that-
Gazetteer said:
It is twenty years before your own birth, and you are pacing furiously back and forth across the very parlour where you'd just fallen asleep. "Oh, of course, appeals to 'the lesser evil'," you say, making it sound like a curse. Genuine anger thunders through your veins. With every word, you gesticulate forcefully. "That's only ever an excuse to change nothing and reassure yourself that there was nothing else you could have done. There's always something else you could have done!"

The young Shieldbearer tracks your movements from his seat on the couch, a look of genuine fascination in his arresting eyes. Like this is more of a novelty than anything to him — it only makes you angrier that he isn't taking this as seriously as you are. "Yes, but sometimes we don't have the luxury of choosing the righteous option — sometimes, it really is down to one evil or another." He brings the glass in his hand up, inhaling deeply as he savours the nose on your third best liquor.

"Always very convenient, after the fact," you say, giving him a very hard look. You turn to face him more fully, a hand on your hip. You catch sight of your reflection in the glass of the window behind him: A dramatically tall Zhao woman, the angles of your face knife-sharp with piercing blue eyes to match, your straight dark hair cut efficiently short. A scar angles across one cheek, a souvenir from a duel you'd fought in your youth. You're still dressed for outside, wearing a long jacket of supple leather. A spray of blue flowers splash along the hems and run up the sleeves. Over the jacket, hanging from a swordbelt, is a sleek, slender daiklave in a pure white sheath. Comet's Tail, the Wandering Blade. It is the same one that, in several decades time, will be found shattered and driven through the heart of your own cold body.

"You're too young to remember the Shogunate," you say, a swerve that takes your guest a little aback.

"Well, no," he admits, smiling at you infuriatingly over the rim of his glass. "But we can't all be a thousand years old, or whatever enchanting age it is you're up to."

"Nine-hundred seventy-one," you say, a little stiffly. "I remember what it was like. Hundreds of years of pointless war, the Dragon-Blooded murdering each other over who got to sit on a fancy chair that they kept moving around every few years, and trampling the world underfoot as they did so. I remember what my seniors told me here when I was your age — 'it's the lesser evil'. And all the while, the corpses piled so high you could barely see the sun, while the ground grew soft underfoot from spilled blood. Was it true then? Why should it be any truer now that one of them has finally clawed her way to lasting power? The Realm's rule was ushered in by the complete destruction of my homeland, my people forced to flee for their lives." You finally unbuckle the sword belt, lifting it free of your waist and carefully laying the daiklave down on a nearby table.

The young man's smile fades a touch. "Now you're just putting words in my mouth. I'm talking about practicalities. The Realm exists, it isn't going away overnight or because we might wish for it. While it's here, it has its uses."

"And that makes up for the sheer weight of human misery that it inflicts upon the world? The lives lost or destroyed just to enrich the Dynasty?" You pull your gloves free, first one, then the other, tossing them onto the table next to your sword.

"No. that causes far more problems than it could ever be worth. Desperate mortals are stupid mortals — stupider mortals. Leave them alone, and they're mostly content to sit on their squalid little farms and play in the dirt. What the Realm does pushes them to all sorts of idiocy that makes my job harder."

"Your compassion for those beneath you is truly boundless and admirable," you say, real acid behind the sarcasm.

The smile comes back, charming as ever. "You know, I have often been told I'm generous to those beneath me, if you can believe it." His eyes have never left you, but you feel the weight of them more than ever, trailing a hot path down your body.

You give a derisive scoff. It's precisely this kind of arrogance that made you demand to continue this argument in private to begin with — some things you just can't work out in the staid confines of a destiny planning meeting. "So what, exactly, are these 'uses' that you feel are so important?"

"It's good enough as a tool for cleaning up its own messes even if it causes its share of them. When you can get the Dragon-Blooded pointed in the right direction." He brings the glass to his lips and takes a slow, savouring sip of the drink.

You shrug out of your jacket, tossing it over the back of the nearest chair. "Which is good, considering the amount of time, energy, and blood we spend murdering anyone else we could turn to for these things."

"Oh, please, spare me the plight of the poor maligned Lunar Host," he says, actually rolling his eyes. "I simply don't have the energy for a line of argument this tedious."

You take two long steps forward to stand over him, snatching the glass out of his hand and downing the entire thing in one smooth motion. The liquor burns in your mouth and throat, giving you no time to appreciate its delicate complexities. This is fine — you're too busy savouring the outrage on his face to notice. You cast him a contemptuous look down your nose.

"Well! If you lack the energy, should I leave you to your rest?" you ask. You lean past him to set the glass down on the windowsill behind his couch, a little firmer than necessary. With your other hand, you're already working at the knotted fastenings of your shirt, starting at the top and working your way down.

He stands up all at once, glaring down from a vantage of inches. You're fully in each other's space now — you can practically feel the frustration coming off of him. "Maybe I was saving it," he growls.

He grabs you roughly, shoving you down onto the couch, forestalling your reply with a hard kiss. You return it hungrily, channeling all of your anger with him into it, your nails digging into the back of his neck.

Some things really can't be worked out in a meeting.

You wake on the couch, yourself again and back in the present. Your first, absurd thought as you study the ceiling is to reassure yourself that the furniture in this room has to have been cleaned at least once in the past fifty years. Still, you get up in a bit of a hurry. This is part of why you usually avoid actual sleep, along with the lost productivity.

The worst part is that, as is all too often the case, you recognise the other Sidereal from the memory as a man who is very much still alive and still working for the Crimson Panoply. It's going to be impossible not to think about this encounter the next time you have to interact with him. Just the thought of it makes you hunch in on yourself with mortification. Many people have good things to say about your predecessor, but you can't exactly speak to that. Given that you were born the same day that she'd died, you never had a chance to meet the woman. You just wish that she'd been capable of practicing even a modicum of restraint or discretion when it came to initiating... entanglements with gods and Sidereals who you now need to work with.
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...
...
...
It never occurred to me that the Exalted could have memories of their past life's sex life.

Gazetteer said:
True to the house's word, your mail waits for you on the desk in several neat piles, organised by date and importance. One pile is for urgent work correspondence and memorandums, the next for purely social matters, and the third for missives that probably aren't worth your time — largely mail delivered directly to the house itself, hawking various services or opportunities.
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Heaven has junk mail, this is truly an Age of Sorrows.

Gazetteer said:
Dear Grace,

It has come to my attention that the Cerulean Lute's most precious jewel has returned to grace (ha!) Heaven once again.

This is particularly fortuitous, as I have recently acquired a trifle that I feel would suit you far better than I, and I would like the opportunity to pass it on to you before one or both of us are dragged away to Creation once again.

I would consider it a profound kindness if you would help relieve the endless tedium of my days, before I'm forced to entertain myself by tearing out the tongue of the next fool who asks something of me. I have been positively drowning in paperwork, between that affair in Kamthahar last month and the Department of Celestial Concerns quibbling over my choice in servants, and any excuse to to come up for air would be most welcome.

With all my affection,
Sapphiria the Night-Lily, Chosen of Jupiter, Sorcerer-Prince of Ysyr​
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I like her already

My mind has been forcefully expanded on what past life memories could include.

[X] Sapphiria the Night-Lily

Later has come, I chose the eccentric Sorcerer-Prince.
 
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[X] Teresu Hari

I value helping a friend in need over a not necessarily time sensitive chance to meet with another friend. I recognize that this may not be best for Grace long term, but it does feel more in character to me.
 
Randino Treviani said:
Grace has just spent days or weeks in the midst of a solar circle prone to casual violence and hell bent on the annihilation of an entire realm city, put up with a near death experience, reopened her wound to distract to headstrong boys about to come to blow, and then suffered through an lengthy boat ride, and put up with a dream of her promiscuous past personage private pairing with an individual she knows, only to wake up and deal with the heartache of arcane fate.
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[Sarcastic?]Ah yes, a light week. The last day was admittedly stressful, compressing three days work into one, but having the rest of the week to casually enjoy an easy cover means she'll be fine once she takes a day to prepare instead of starting her next mission immediately.[/sarcastic]

But seriously, Sidereals do a lot. This is something she's going to have to get used to.
 
[x] Sapphiria the Night-Lily

Hari's sounds like the more important, but also the more open-ended, time-consuming, and mentally/emotionally demanding. It's been waiting a week already and isn't time-sensitive (according to Hari). Sapphiria's is apparently less significant, but lends itself to being slotted in to a timeslot before another appointment and ticked off the list quickly. This may be my own (definitely worse than Grace's) time management instincts showing through, but I'd definitely be inclined to handle Sapphiria's first.

Gazetteer said:
Sapphiria the Night-Lily, Chosen of Jupiter, Sorcerer-Prince of Ysyr
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What a tool. I think I like her.

Gazetteer said:
"I'll send you a copy of mine to look over, so that we can be sure we don't have accidental discrepancies," you say.
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Rank corruption! IA hates her!

Gazetteer said:
It isn't nearly subtle enough at this kind of falsely servile nudge toward a superior — it faintly bothers you, in a professional sense.
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Grace doesn't mind being sassed, but she expects to be sassed competently.

Gazetteer said:
You rarely sleep anymore. You'd learned the technique — well known among the Fellowship — of replacing rest with reading, writing, or bureaucratic tasks. Eight hours of writing your after action report should leave you every bit as refreshed as eight hours in bed, and with fewer strange dreams.
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Oh god. That's both the dream and the nightmare.

Gazetteer said:
Your first, absurd thought as you study the ceiling is to reassure yourself that the furniture in this room has to have been cleaned at least once in the past fifty years.
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Grace, you live in Heaven and work under Venus. You're surrounded by ancient buildings and furnishings. Almost certainly you should assume that basically everything you encounter has been fucked in, on, or around.

Gazetteer said:
Her politics were also hopelessly naive for someone as old and experienced as she was, but you can live with that more easily.
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I can excuse horniness, but I draw the line at anti-imperialism!

Gazetteer said:
The last surviving daughter of the late Matriarch Tepet Usala Sola
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I think this should just be Tepet Usala?

Orbmorb said:
Love a fully bedazzler earth elemental
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I think it's the teahouse that's dripping in gold and jewels?

Gazetteer said:
The daughter of a god of forbidden love.
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kamikasei said:
Oh god. That's both the dream and the nightmare.
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Article:
Never Cease Moving
Cost: 1m; Mins: Any Secrets Ability 3, Essence 1
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: None
Duration: Indefinite
Prerequisite Charms: Any three Secrets Charms

The Sidereal's ever-mounting workload precludes such luxuries as sleep.

The Sidereal treats time spent reading, writing, researching, or performing bureaucratic tasks as restful sleep for all purposes, including natural healing and recovering Willpower once per day.
Source: Sidereals: Charting Fate's Course pg.257


It's such a funny way to give them a "you can go without sleep" charm. Other Exalts usually just get a more expensive charm that gives them the capacity to tough it out (Sidereals also get that, but weirder and much more specific).

kamikasei said:
I think this should just be Tepet Usala?
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Oh, yes, thanks.
 
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[X] Sapphiria the Night-Lily

Ok listen it's not that I like intentionally annoying sorcerous character from decadent and heterodox traditions okay? It's not... all that. I am also interested on the Empty Thrones proposal, particularly how it mirrors similar currents in the Silver Pact.

But yeah I am also fascinated by Grace's penchant to surrounding herself with people who personally, socially, or politically challenge her. Lo que se hereda no se roba, I guess
 
beowolf said:
[Sarcastic?]Ah yes, a light week. The last day was admittedly stressful, compressing three days work into one, but having the rest of the week to casually enjoy an easy cover means she'll be fine once she takes a day to prepare instead of starting her next mission immediately.[/sarcastic]

But seriously, Sidereals do a lot. This is something she's going to have to get used to.
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She is used to it, as the update shows, I'm just arguing that even if she's perfectly willing and prepared to leap into aiding a needy circle mate she doesn't even typically get along with in some family issue, maybe it's better for her personally to do something a bit frivolous for a change.

HBInquirer said:
But yeah I am also fascinated by Grace's penchant to surrounding herself with people who personally, socially, or politically challenge her. Lo que se hereda no se roba, I guess
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Wayward Prayer : Political hothead Gold Faction Sidereal who settled her disagreements with copious amounts of emotionally charged intimacy

Singular Grace : Calm, even tempered, a sexual bronze faction Sidereal that prefers to go to great lengths to keep her political hothead circle mates from being at each other's throats, to the point of deliberately reopening her wounds to forestall an argument.
 
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