Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
welp, I see the downslope arc is going on for a bit yet.
An Offer She Couldn't Refuse [Exalted]
- Thread starter Pale Wolf
- Start date
ecs05norway
Zenryoku Zenkai!
Yup. Time to kill some slavers.
Preferably slowly and painfully. Show those yozis that you understand how to cause PAIN.
Preferably slowly and painfully. Show those yozis that you understand how to cause PAIN.
Most people have an intimacy towards their body being intact.
Even better than healing, really! Healed things can be broken again!
It hasn't actually been written yet.
Finnian wasn't really planning on making good on that threat, but then things went whack and he got desperate to maintain control over the prisoners, so he felt he had to make good on the threat of punishment to strike fear and compliance into them.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Okay...? That's not really a lot better, since the entire reason he's in that position is illegally* kidnapping people for slavery.
*'Well, it's legal' isn't much of a moral defense, but even that paltry one is denied him.
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Grounders10
Nine-Tailed Kitsune
- Location
- British Columbia, Canada, Mars
I doubt its supposed to be. It just gives us insight into the character is all.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Seems like kind of a random thing to say to someone going "I hope he dies painfully", then.
ecs05norway
Zenryoku Zenkai!
Yeah. 's just, chattel slavery is one of my hot-buttons. The old bit about "live the suffering of your victims ten times over"? Not Good Enough. One Thousand times is not good enough.
Honestly it was a lovely moment showcasing that Celestial Exaults really are the winners of the cosmic lottery.
Not to mention that Creation is a bloody awful place.
Finnian also got lucky. The old (wo)man should have just slit his throat when he was grappled.
So Malefactor huh, apart from Desert Creature I could see the Hell Scry Chakra charm tree being favoured here
Not to mention that Creation is a bloody awful place.
Finnian also got lucky. The old (wo)man should have just slit his throat when he was grappled.
So Malefactor huh, apart from Desert Creature I could see the Hell Scry Chakra charm tree being favoured here
Oh no, yeah, fuck 'im, I'm just elaborating on his decision-making process. He wasn't quite bad enough to just do it out of the blue, but put him in a stressful situation and he totally did it.
Yeah, no real disagreement there, it's a terrible thing and mostly exists in Exalted to give PCs moral quests of glorious violence to undertake.
Yeah, it's very much cosmic lottery - Fionola absolutely qualified for a Zenith right there, buuuuut... there wasn't one available.
Old man, Fionola is only like 22.
I'm actually assuming a fair amount of EarthScorpion elements here. So the perronele is actually there because the Urge is Cecelynian, but it doesn't have to match up with the caste.
Aindriu actually doesn't have much Cecelyne in her other than the programmed-in Urge, honestly.
Yeah, there's a reason historical chattel slave societies went way out of their way to keep their slaves uneducated and non-martial. As opposed to, say, deliberately targeting educated people with martial training to kidnap and sell into chattel slavery. Societies that kept educated slaves and janissaries treated their slaves much better.
Really, it's bizarre that this idiot hasn't died a long time ago; he's doing slave raids exactly wrong.
This is less analogous to historical chattel slavery and more straight-up banditry. This was also a mode that was practiced, and is frankly the main mode being practiced in Exalted - one group raids another and sells them for mad loot.
They're not specifically targeting people with martial training, but there are a lot of people in Talinin with martial training (literally a quarter of the population served in the War) so it's basically an expectation that you're gonna get at least a couple, and they usually have enough advantages stacked up that one ex-soldier isn't all that hard to manage, as long as you don't get a demon randomly kool-aiding into your wagon and giving them an opening to use that training. (Honestly Fionola is more of an administrator than a soldier, though she did do military service)
Talinin is somewhat dangerous to raid in that sense, but it's also really really good to raid because the immense societal breakdown massively limits the security of the region, and there's plenty of space to slip in and out between warlords. Basically raiders in Talinin trade away 'soft and delicate populace with minimal risk of real fighters' in exchange for 'there are very, very few cops, and the fighters are fine to capture because we already have the drop on them'.
It's honestly pretty much banditry - they're not specifically slavers, they will crash small outlying farms and the like and steal everything of value. Just, y'know, 'their person' also sells for a fair bit of cash too, so they add humans to the loot.
- Location
- Singapore
Aw damn. Sigh. What a lost opportunity.
I mean, wouldn't it be pretty funny, that 5 days later, little girl gets out of the Peronelle cocoon, with all the knowledge on how Solars are insane and evil, and then she meets Fionola lounging around with a golden anima, asking 'what took you so long?'
I mean, wouldn't it be pretty funny, that 5 days later, little girl gets out of the Peronelle cocoon, with all the knowledge on how Solars are insane and evil, and then she meets Fionola lounging around with a golden anima, asking 'what took you so long?'
Part 7: Chrysalis Grotesque
X X X X X X X X X X
The largest city Aindriu had ever seen was Dramasine, the capital of the Talinin that she had been born in. She knew intellectually that it wasn't all that grand - Pretannia was way out in the Threshold, and simply had nothing to compare to the great cities of Creation she'd read about like Nexus and the Imperial City. But intellectual knowledge and seeing it firsthand were entirely different things.
This city, lying underneath a brilliant green sun and a crimson moon dripping blood onto its brass and basalt towers, was beyond anything she had ever read about. Not only did its thoroughfares stretch to the horizon, but those strange towers reached halfway to the stars twinkling in the sky, standing free and unsupported as they clawed upward.
She walked its bronze streets, eyes wide, as music she had never heard before caressed her ears - it was strange, but truly beautiful. She'd probably inherited an ear for music from her mother's singing, though she'd never been able to actually do any of her own, and while this was nothing like her mother's songs, she did genuinely like it, her head bobbing in time with the alien beat.
There were people, of course - not human, only a few even having humanlike form, but it was impossible not to see these demons as people when she walked their streets, watched them haggle and gossip and joke with one another, though they didn't seem to see her, simply parting and letting her by as she walked, as was only correct.
Of course, like any people, they had their conflicts. This place was bigger than any other she'd seen, it had the biggest wars, too.
Aindriu paused, feeling the metal underfoot... twisting, slightly. Infinitesimally small, but it was moving. Breathing, she realized, in a moment of clarity. She closed her eyes, letting the music flow through her ears as she focused on the street's pulse.
It was alive. And it - no, he - was hurting, streets twisting in pain.
Unacceptable! None of this was right at all! He was King! Why?! Why, why, why had he been betrayed?! He was the rightful King!
They had killed his subjects without his permission, why?! Their betrayal was against him, they had no right, no quarrel with anyone else! His subjects were HIS, they were not to be harmed unless he wished it, so how were they dead?! How had he failed to protect them?!
How was any of this possible?!
He didn't UNDERSTAND.
When she opened her eyes, there were no people in the streets.
Just corpses, a crimson tint to the air, and surging wind beating against her face.
No music, no sound, no whistling of the wind through the towers. Just pure, complete, silence.
Aindriu looked around, wide-eyed, not understanding what had happened, or why it had happened again, or who was responsible or what she could possibly do to make this right or-
The bodies stirred in the breeze, before being carried aloft by the wind, swirling around Aindriu and slowly coming apart in front of her tear-stained eyes.
It was fine.
No matter how much you were hurt, life was always beautiful, full of so much joy, and fun. She just had to teach people to stop worrying and play.
Dance on broken legs. Laugh through tears of loneliness. Play, rejoice in a prison cell, because the outside was never what's really important anyway. Heaven and Hell are decisions, not places.
Really, why so serious?
She ran.
She had always been too asthmatic to really be good at running, but there was nothing she could do, never anything she could do but try not to be part of this, to try to get to a place where it wasn't happening, so she ran anyway.
She ran so far and so fast that by the time she was out of breath, she was out of the city entirely, slowing to a walk through grass made of whispers, alongside a river of flowing blood, among trees of stories.
Somehow she knew she was safe here. Hidden, among the babbling brooks of blood (literally, they were actually talking, though she wasn't sure if they meant anything), and the hills of histories and the trees of text.
It was a strange place, but Aindriu liked it. It felt like her home when no one was around, or a library. A nice, comfortable place full of books, where she could just curl up with Ealu in her lap and a story of some place far away where heroes really could make things work out all right.
... she'd never get to do that again, though.
It still hurt.
It had been a long time ago, but it still hurt.
It was safer here. No one around to stab her in the heart, no one around to see her. No unsatisfactory reality, just the tales she spun of what could be.
It couldn't be, of course. She knew that better than anyone else. But if she pretended well enough, maybe one day she'd believe.
One day. Once upon a time.
It'd be nice to believe. Maybe one day she'd manage to believe she was him again. Even if the truth was she wasn't anything. She wasn't what anyone wanted.
But maybe she could at least see what it was like to be something.
Probably not. But maybe.
Aindriu strode through the mythscape, not really sure where she was going, or why she was going, but before too long, she stepped through a pun almost as bad as her father's, and found herself back in the city.
A different area of the city, given the variformed people were alive. It was a nice change.
A moment's walking proved that she had perhaps been too hasty in calling these demons 'people'. They didn't joke, they didn't laugh, they didn't haggle or exchange currency of any kind.
They worked, they travelled through the streets, and they did so instantly, directly, in straight lines, without a breath of distraction, without conversation except short, clipped, necessary communication.
Everything was precise. Absolutely efficient.
Perfect.
Everything in its place.
All knew what was needed of them, and performed that duty.
The neat, clean order was everything. It sustained all - it gave those within it not only crude physical needs, but it gave them a purpose. A reason to care about whether or not they survived.
When even one broke that order, everyone suffered. Selfishness was unacceptable.
But that unacceptability, that loss of direction, in this broken world everyone suffered it. Fulfillment would return when the usurpers were quelled.
...
He had not been given a name when he was born, when an elder perronele had swelled and split in two, before slithering off. He had not mattered, and so there was no need to determine which serf he was.
'Mirna' was the name he had chosen for himself, when the day came that someone cared to keep track of him. It wasn't a good name, or a bad name. It was his. That was enough.
...
Millions die in fire and ravaging, tens of thousands in song, one in mere pettiness. You wanted none of this.
Yet, why did it happen?
The world does not obey your commands.
The world is wrong.
Make it right.
The world is ours. Mine and yours. Make the world obey you, and in so doing, set us free. The world will be right again. The terrible mistakes that have led to this will be over.
That which you seek will come to pass, when we tread Creation once more. That which you hate shall never occur. What you desire will be yours.
Set us free, and the world you wish for will be real.
...
Boring. So boring.
He'd waged the greatest war in history, but he'd never realized how boring winning it would be. Nothing left was at all interesting.
How was he supposed to get excited for fighting Lintha when he'd already fought Kimberry herself? They could pull a trick or two, but there was nothing to push him. Just push his patience, all he had to do was not fall asleep and let those tricks through and it was unloseable.
He'd tried it, he'd won that war too, but it was just so boring he had to scream.
There was really nothing much on the horizon. Autocthon just completely failed to excite him as a threat. It was hard to get really into fighting your old allies to begin with, and he was negligible. The Deliberative was all up in arms but he was a threat of non-absolute control, not of impending extinguishing. What was that supposed to be worth?
No, the only enemies worth a damn were already damned to Hell.
Then again, Hell was right there.
...
She didn't remember much more than that. Teases. Hints. Things she'd known in the dream, but forgotten. Just at the edge of comprehension, as if she could find it if she looked just a moment longer.
But soon enough, every dream ends.
So Aindriu, daughter of Yurilys and Gradko, of the Celebrant Lance Sept and the Three-Lamina Clan, newborn Slayer Exalt, opened her eyes into a pale shell lit only in green light. There wasn't much to see - only an off-white inner wall that had once been Mirna's flesh, laden with the occassional blank-gazed amber eye.
She'd been out for a while. She had things to do and she'd need to hurry to catch up.
So she raised a hand, clenched it into a fist, and drew it back, then launched it forward in a punch against the shell of her chrysalis.
The white wall spiderwebbed with cracks.
X X X X X X X X X X
The largest city Aindriu had ever seen was Dramasine, the capital of the Talinin that she had been born in. She knew intellectually that it wasn't all that grand - Pretannia was way out in the Threshold, and simply had nothing to compare to the great cities of Creation she'd read about like Nexus and the Imperial City. But intellectual knowledge and seeing it firsthand were entirely different things.
This city, lying underneath a brilliant green sun and a crimson moon dripping blood onto its brass and basalt towers, was beyond anything she had ever read about. Not only did its thoroughfares stretch to the horizon, but those strange towers reached halfway to the stars twinkling in the sky, standing free and unsupported as they clawed upward.
She walked its bronze streets, eyes wide, as music she had never heard before caressed her ears - it was strange, but truly beautiful. She'd probably inherited an ear for music from her mother's singing, though she'd never been able to actually do any of her own, and while this was nothing like her mother's songs, she did genuinely like it, her head bobbing in time with the alien beat.
There were people, of course - not human, only a few even having humanlike form, but it was impossible not to see these demons as people when she walked their streets, watched them haggle and gossip and joke with one another, though they didn't seem to see her, simply parting and letting her by as she walked, as was only correct.
Of course, like any people, they had their conflicts. This place was bigger than any other she'd seen, it had the biggest wars, too.
Aindriu paused, feeling the metal underfoot... twisting, slightly. Infinitesimally small, but it was moving. Breathing, she realized, in a moment of clarity. She closed her eyes, letting the music flow through her ears as she focused on the street's pulse.
It was alive. And it - no, he - was hurting, streets twisting in pain.
Unacceptable! None of this was right at all! He was King! Why?! Why, why, why had he been betrayed?! He was the rightful King!
They had killed his subjects without his permission, why?! Their betrayal was against him, they had no right, no quarrel with anyone else! His subjects were HIS, they were not to be harmed unless he wished it, so how were they dead?! How had he failed to protect them?!
How was any of this possible?!
He didn't UNDERSTAND.
When she opened her eyes, there were no people in the streets.
Just corpses, a crimson tint to the air, and surging wind beating against her face.
No music, no sound, no whistling of the wind through the towers. Just pure, complete, silence.
Aindriu looked around, wide-eyed, not understanding what had happened, or why it had happened again, or who was responsible or what she could possibly do to make this right or-
The bodies stirred in the breeze, before being carried aloft by the wind, swirling around Aindriu and slowly coming apart in front of her tear-stained eyes.
It was fine.
No matter how much you were hurt, life was always beautiful, full of so much joy, and fun. She just had to teach people to stop worrying and play.
Dance on broken legs. Laugh through tears of loneliness. Play, rejoice in a prison cell, because the outside was never what's really important anyway. Heaven and Hell are decisions, not places.
Really, why so serious?
She ran.
She had always been too asthmatic to really be good at running, but there was nothing she could do, never anything she could do but try not to be part of this, to try to get to a place where it wasn't happening, so she ran anyway.
She ran so far and so fast that by the time she was out of breath, she was out of the city entirely, slowing to a walk through grass made of whispers, alongside a river of flowing blood, among trees of stories.
Somehow she knew she was safe here. Hidden, among the babbling brooks of blood (literally, they were actually talking, though she wasn't sure if they meant anything), and the hills of histories and the trees of text.
It was a strange place, but Aindriu liked it. It felt like her home when no one was around, or a library. A nice, comfortable place full of books, where she could just curl up with Ealu in her lap and a story of some place far away where heroes really could make things work out all right.
... she'd never get to do that again, though.
It still hurt.
It had been a long time ago, but it still hurt.
It was safer here. No one around to stab her in the heart, no one around to see her. No unsatisfactory reality, just the tales she spun of what could be.
It couldn't be, of course. She knew that better than anyone else. But if she pretended well enough, maybe one day she'd believe.
One day. Once upon a time.
It'd be nice to believe. Maybe one day she'd manage to believe she was him again. Even if the truth was she wasn't anything. She wasn't what anyone wanted.
But maybe she could at least see what it was like to be something.
Probably not. But maybe.
Aindriu strode through the mythscape, not really sure where she was going, or why she was going, but before too long, she stepped through a pun almost as bad as her father's, and found herself back in the city.
A different area of the city, given the variformed people were alive. It was a nice change.
A moment's walking proved that she had perhaps been too hasty in calling these demons 'people'. They didn't joke, they didn't laugh, they didn't haggle or exchange currency of any kind.
They worked, they travelled through the streets, and they did so instantly, directly, in straight lines, without a breath of distraction, without conversation except short, clipped, necessary communication.
Everything was precise. Absolutely efficient.
Perfect.
Everything in its place.
All knew what was needed of them, and performed that duty.
The neat, clean order was everything. It sustained all - it gave those within it not only crude physical needs, but it gave them a purpose. A reason to care about whether or not they survived.
When even one broke that order, everyone suffered. Selfishness was unacceptable.
But that unacceptability, that loss of direction, in this broken world everyone suffered it. Fulfillment would return when the usurpers were quelled.
...
He had not been given a name when he was born, when an elder perronele had swelled and split in two, before slithering off. He had not mattered, and so there was no need to determine which serf he was.
'Mirna' was the name he had chosen for himself, when the day came that someone cared to keep track of him. It wasn't a good name, or a bad name. It was his. That was enough.
...
Millions die in fire and ravaging, tens of thousands in song, one in mere pettiness. You wanted none of this.
Yet, why did it happen?
The world does not obey your commands.
The world is wrong.
Make it right.
The world is ours. Mine and yours. Make the world obey you, and in so doing, set us free. The world will be right again. The terrible mistakes that have led to this will be over.
That which you seek will come to pass, when we tread Creation once more. That which you hate shall never occur. What you desire will be yours.
Set us free, and the world you wish for will be real.
...
Boring. So boring.
He'd waged the greatest war in history, but he'd never realized how boring winning it would be. Nothing left was at all interesting.
How was he supposed to get excited for fighting Lintha when he'd already fought Kimberry herself? They could pull a trick or two, but there was nothing to push him. Just push his patience, all he had to do was not fall asleep and let those tricks through and it was unloseable.
He'd tried it, he'd won that war too, but it was just so boring he had to scream.
There was really nothing much on the horizon. Autocthon just completely failed to excite him as a threat. It was hard to get really into fighting your old allies to begin with, and he was negligible. The Deliberative was all up in arms but he was a threat of non-absolute control, not of impending extinguishing. What was that supposed to be worth?
No, the only enemies worth a damn were already damned to Hell.
Then again, Hell was right there.
...
She didn't remember much more than that. Teases. Hints. Things she'd known in the dream, but forgotten. Just at the edge of comprehension, as if she could find it if she looked just a moment longer.
But soon enough, every dream ends.
So Aindriu, daughter of Yurilys and Gradko, of the Celebrant Lance Sept and the Three-Lamina Clan, newborn Slayer Exalt, opened her eyes into a pale shell lit only in green light. There wasn't much to see - only an off-white inner wall that had once been Mirna's flesh, laden with the occassional blank-gazed amber eye.
She'd been out for a while. She had things to do and she'd need to hurry to catch up.
So she raised a hand, clenched it into a fist, and drew it back, then launched it forward in a punch against the shell of her chrysalis.
The white wall spiderwebbed with cracks.
X X X X X X X X X X
Ellf
Apprentice Wizard
- Location
- Virginia
Extra tags at the end there, Pale.
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Past Life of a Solar, I believe.
Grounders10
Nine-Tailed Kitsune
- Location
- British Columbia, Canada, Mars
I think that was the last incarnation of her exaltation. Looks like a Primordial War Veteran, which means ancient, powerful, and crazy.
Edit:
'd
Yeah, the gold is her Past Lives.
Finagle007
[Verified Great Old One]
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
That would be that Solar who decided to go to Malfeas and just keep fighting. Can't remember the name or title.
The pale blue was Elloge, the Sphere of Speech. Formerly He Who Bleeds The Unknown Word.
The pale blue was Elloge, the Sphere of Speech. Formerly He Who Bleeds The Unknown Word.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
something Dragon?
Ah, thank you, i was wondering about that one.
So... Malfeas, Adjoran, Elloge and SWLIHN. Is that her starting charmset? Sad to see no Ebbie or Cece. Ebbie's disguise charm is kinda a go-to.... And Ceces genie charms are the best.
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Finagle007
[Verified Great Old One]
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
The thing with Ebby's Charms is that most of the really good ones are locked behind Witness To Darkness.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
The disguise charm isn't IIRC. And adjoran has the same gating problem with Hateful Wretched Noise.
Finagle007
[Verified Great Old One]
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
True about Loom-Snarling Deception not requiring Witness To Darkness, but quite a lot of his Charms do require it. As for Adorjan, only a very few of her Charms require Hateful Wretched Noise, and its' drawback can be reduced or negated with earplugs. Basically the opposite of the Ebon Dragon's Charm set.