Ascensions and Transgressions: the Tales of Keris Dulmeadokht (Exalted game)

[Aleph]

So, this is a thread for Ascensions and Transgressions; my 1-on-1 Exalted game with @EarthScorpion. I've copied all the posts and replies over to this thread so as to stop cluttering up the General Exalted one with discussion. Enjoy.

Kerisgame AO3 series
Kerisgame Rules
Keris Character Sheet (spoilers if you're not up to date)
Kerisgame Discord (expires on 27/01/23)

If you're reading for the first time, The Tales of Keris Dulmeadokht is an account of her Exaltation, her first mission in Matasque and the revenge she took in Nexus prior to her move to the Anarchy of the Southwest, as well as a quick summary of her character at this starting point. Demonic Downtime shows what she got up to in the short holiday she took with Nemone Sasimana, her new boss/girlfriend, while the transfer from one Directorate to another was going through.

Subsequent to this, you can read forward into the Lady Sareh's Mistress arc, which begins on the next page of this thread.

 

[Aleph]

Yo. Kerisgame, ya'll.

See the OP for an introduction summarising who Keris is and the Events Thus Far.

Next session is tomorrow. Enjoy.

 

[Aleph]

So yeah, first session as a ST and I've had to ban a player. Lucky me.

Click to shrink...

Sorry to hear that, and I'm glad you've got a replacement player. Have fun!

On a slightly lighter note; the second Kerisgame session is up, for those interested. And anyone who thinks little of Awareness Charms, I invite them to cast their eyes over the sheer bullshit number of successes that Keris can trivially achieve on sensory rolls, all the time, for a relatively tiny cost. She's a human radar station, and her senses are only going to get better.

I'm still not going to get a sight-enhancer, though. I like making ES suffer in having to describe everything in terms of sound or taste or smell. : 3

Also lol, ~6500 words in one night. They're less game sessions and more improvised writing jams, I swear.

 

[Aleph]

And on the note of redheaded Adorjani women; Kerisgame Part Three is up.

 

[Aleph]

New Kerisgame session up, in which Keris finds out that she can actually be rather good at this "social influence" thing if she does it the right way.

PS the right way includes bribery and shameless use of "I'm innocent and sympathetic" UMI auras.

 

[Aleph]

Edit: Speaking of Keris, another session will be going up after I've had some sleep. In which my hubris and curiosity came back to bite me.

Click to shrink...

Okay so what basically happened was that Revlid spoke about his very cool elemental rewrite and I was like "hey cool I wanna see some of this" and ES was like "mwaa ha ha haa" and I was like "what was that?" and he was like "oh nothing nvm" and basically what I'm trying to say here is why do I keep bringing things down on myself like this?

i've been such a fool

(And yes, Keris did indeed just create life, in a cave, with a box hairful of scraps skulls. During a storm. With lightning. We can only be thankful that she did not cackle and/or shout "it liiiiiives!")

 

[Aleph]

Kerisgame part six! In which Keris decides not to attack the street-length rock-centipede, creates life (again) and discovers once more that Echo is utterly adorable.

Edit: You know, despite following the "Exaltations are weapons; Exalts were made as murder-machines designed to kill Primordials" view pretty heavily, Kerisgame is usually (ironically) fairly low-key and "mundane", insofar as that word can be applied to a girl who can hear the sound of machinery through twenty yards of solid concrete at the bottom of an 800-metre deep lake that used to be a mineshaft, and who is so lethal in combat that ES doesn't even bother asking me to roll to slaughter a group of mortal soldiers unless I'm trying to do it in total silence or without any of them noticing or something.

But the subtle things are still there that speak of really cool shit happening in the backstory. Case in point...

The water is thick with layer upon layer of silt, and Keris can taste it. It's like a taste map of history. She can taste the changes in the humans that must have been living upstream as she gets deeper and deeper. There's a layer of bamboo down here, rotten and decayed - maybe from a great storm. Down and down she goes, surrounded by sediment. She's glowing, but she can barely see her own hands because of all the dirt she's kicking up.

And then a thin layer which just tastes of pure wood.

And then death. So much death. Rot and death is all around her, bitter and vile in the sediment she's kicked up.

Click to shrink...

A layer of death and rot from the Great Contagion still lingering in the geological record, just below a second layer from when the Pole of Wood reconnected with Creation after being knocked loose during the Balorian Crusade, sending out a wave of Wood Essence so potent that it lingers in the fossil record on the other side of Creation more than seven hundred years later. An Exalted parallel to the layer of iridium in Earth's geology from the KT impact.

So cool.

(That wave of Wood Essence was, incidentally, what prompted the hyper-rapid growth that let Creation recover so quickly from the mass-die-off of the Contagion, which is also why most Shogunate ruins are completely overgrown, especially as you get closer and closer to the East).

 

[Aleph]

New Kerisgame update!

For those who enjoy the character drama and soul shenanigans; Keris is worst mother, very neglect, much inattentive, many guilt, wow. But she has figured out the key to Sasi's heart - pretty things are all very well and good, but unique things are even better, especially if she's the first one to ever see them.

For those who like the mysterious plot threads and CONSPIRACY, it appears that we have found a thing that catalyses red sunrises. A catalyst is defined as a thing that allows a reaction to take place or increases the rate at which it does so, without itself undergoing any permanent change. In other words, a reusable trigger for a "red sunrise", whatever that is. Debate what it could be at your leisure, but tell no-one of our plans for it!

And for those who like humour, there's quite a bit of that, too. Among other things, Keris once again loses to her souls. Two of them, in fact, taking a literal black eye from the second. Isn't it sad, Keris? Your souls are beating you at stuff. And they're not even sapient.

(Also, we have decided that An Teng has mostly South-Asian fauna, so there are a variety of animals which might show up, from mangrove river dragons to giant porcupines to tigers to pangolins to forest elephants. We're less sure about where all the lemurs came from, but they probably escaped from a Shogunate zoo and carved out an ecological niche for themselves after the Twin Cataclysms.)

 

[Aleph]

Kerisgame! In which we spent a fair amount of the session having an in-character discussion about how different Infernals conceptualise and implement the development of Heretical charms, and I found it highly amusing that Sasi basically uses a Silurian/Devonian paradigm for her Sorcery despite her Past Life literally being Salina, whereas Keris uses a weird instinctive Salinian-Kimberian mashup that she's largely figured out on her own. Or if you like oMage terms better; Sasi is a very precise Hermetic who needs to account for every variable and plot out the structure of a spell in minute detail and Keris is a Verbana/CoXer who throws in "blood sacrifice" whenever a Sorcerous recipe seems like it could use some spicing up [1].

... and then Sasi probably violated some sort of human rights treaty by siccing a bored Keris (who is prone to finding or making her own entertainment) on a bunch of comparatively innocent mortal smugglers, who she found in the space of one morning and then committed arson and possibly murder against. Which apparently wasn't interesting enough to satisfy her, because then she went and did some public vandalism. Tch. Kids these days, honestly. Can you believe them? I blame the par-oh right, yes, never mind then.

[1] Keris: *smacks lips* "Hmm. Needs more souls of the guilty. Hang on, lemme go get a slaver."

 

[Aleph]

... well, I certainly appreciate Keris a lot more now, with her base Move of 5, base Dash of 19, no penalties for climbing because she can run up vertical walls and along the undersides of ceilings, doubling of her already bullshit speed in water, reflexive Dashing and lack of any DV penalties for doing so.

And speaking of Keris; new game session, whee! In which Keris has what is only her... sixth or so onscreen meeting with a First Circle demon she didn't create herself in upwards of sixty sessions (this Infernals game doesn't actually have that many demons in it, ironically), finally meets the mysterious Deveh, and also learns the cardinal rule of stalking Second Circle Demons: Don't Get Caught. By, uh. Getting caught.

friggin' traitorous dice fairies and feline snitches and cat whisperer demons and mutter mutter sulk sulk grumble~