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

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Aleph said:
Kerisgame! In which Keris does further unwise things involving Primordials, manages not to have a fight with Sasi by means of a fucking amazing Temperance roll and some hastily improvised roleplaying, is loopy and has mood swings from soul-dizziness that she mostly keeps a lid on due to aforementioned Temperance roll, makes said soul-dizziness worse, and forces me to remove twenty fucking minutes of OOC debate on exactly which Attribute is used for painting (ES eventually decided it was Cognition, thus unfairly robbing me out of two dice that were rightfully mine, bah.)

Incidentally, and on a vaguely related topic; I'm not 100% sure how many people are still reading these logs or how many of them enjoy the Tiger Empire and pantheon that Keris is building up around her, so I just want to take a quick poll. If I were hypothetically considering a "Krisity Quest" set in her Tiger Empire, in which Keris would not appear at all, that would be focused on a First Circle protagonist and almost entirely dealing with homebrew First Circles in a homebrew environment using a largely-homebrew system, would there be any interest in playing it? Or to shorten it to an elevator pitch; "Exalted demon game, but with a setting and species that aren't just unfamiliar, but are in fact entirely novel".
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I read it and I might want to participate, time allowing, if not I'd likely like to read it for the worldbuilding if nothing else.
 
Aleph said:
Kerisgame! In which Keris does further unwise things involving Primordials, manages not to have a fight with Sasi by means of a fucking amazing Temperance roll and some hastily improvised roleplaying, is loopy and has mood swings from soul-dizziness that she mostly keeps a lid on due to aforementioned Temperance roll, makes said soul-dizziness worse, and forces me to remove twenty fucking minutes of OOC debate on exactly which Attribute is used for painting (ES eventually decided it was Cognition, thus unfairly robbing me out of two dice that were rightfully mine, bah.)

Incidentally, and on a vaguely related topic; I'm not 100% sure how many people are still reading these logs or how many of them enjoy the Tiger Empire and pantheon that Keris is building up around her, so I just want to take a quick poll. If I were hypothetically considering a "Krisity Quest" set in her Tiger Empire, in which Keris would not appear at all, that would be focused on a First Circle protagonist and almost entirely dealing with homebrew First Circles in a homebrew environment using a largely-homebrew system, would there be any interest in playing it? Or to shorten it to an elevator pitch; "Exalted demon game, but with a setting and species that aren't just unfamiliar, but are in fact entirely novel".
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Yeah, I'd at least lurk the quest, and these updates are one of my favorite things here. Of course, I'm the one who originally asked you to start posting them, so that should be obvious.
 
Aleph said:
Incidentally, and on a vaguely related topic; I'm not 100% sure how many people are still reading these logs or how many of them enjoy the Tiger Empire and pantheon that Keris is building up around her, so I just want to take a quick poll. If I were hypothetically considering a "Krisity Quest" set in her Tiger Empire, in which Keris would not appear at all, that would be focused on a First Circle protagonist and almost entirely dealing with homebrew First Circles in a homebrew environment using a largely-homebrew system, would there be any interest in playing it? Or to shorten it to an elevator pitch; "Exalted demon game, but with a setting and species that aren't just unfamiliar, but are in fact entirely novel".
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I certainly would! I mean just read my name. I live and breath for Infernal stuff!

Especially demons, they're probably my third part of the franchise after Infernals and Hellstriders.
 
@Aleph I'm still reading the Keris logs and would read and participate in a quest.

Wow, Keris is really into big declarations of love and trust. I really like how you use sorcery and titanic nature to do those neat one off magical effects.
 
Indivisible said:
@Aleph I'm still reading the Keris logs and would read and participate in a quest.

Wow, Keris is really into big declarations of love and trust. I really like how you use sorcery and titanic nature to do those neat one off magical effects.
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Well, the Surrender Oaths prove that Primordials can alter their nature under duress to enforce laws that bind their constituent souls, so it's only logical that they can also do it willingly. And yes, Keris has something of a running theme that - as she learned on the streets of Nexus listening to prostitutes proclaim eternal love for handfuls of yen when it was Rat who would share his food with her and huddle close under a blanket come winter - she doesn't really think too much of words when it comes to love, because anyone can say them and mean nothing. That's not to say that she doesn't proclaim love verbally, but she has a Principle that what really matters in love, what proves it; is what you do, not what you say.

Though this one in particular was more because she always gets a bit loopy after radically altering her soul-structure, and was still high and dizzy from expanding her Domain out into a Tiger Empire and then crowning Dulmea Queen of Everything within the city's walls, and thus was running on somewhat poor judgement at the time.
 
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Session 18
  • Threadmarks
    • Kerisgame! Wherein Sasi summons and swindles a Second Circle demon, she and Keris agree that the First Age was kind of shitty, we get some lovely anima-porn [1] and Keris manages to start a heretical cult inside a heretical cult, which may be a first even in An Teng.

    [1] In the sense of being lavishly described, not literal pornographic anima banners [2].
    [2] No you are not allowed to use that idea in the Changing Moon Lunar character you just thought up [3].
    [3] No, not even if it would be really funny.
     
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    • I'm amused that keris still has to get back to those demjens. "It'll only take a day or so" sure.

    I guess I'll make the fact that they are basically floating balls of wings more explicit.

    Edit: added the line
    At first sight these beings appear to be a floating ball of white-gray beating wings, sprouting from the central body and bending as if they were hands, feets and other appendages.
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    at the start.
     
    xenondestroyer said:
    now, I'm sure they won't accidentally make an hole in the seal. maybe. hopefully. :p
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    No, they couldn't do that even if they wanted to. And she specifically said not to mess with the actual plug.

    Well, they'll probably have finished scouting the area, at least. This is what happens when you try to juggle three IC schemes, people! Especially if your character isn't very good at planning and multitasking such things.
     
    Aleph said:
    Especially if your character isn't very good at planning and multitasking such things.
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    If it helps, I'm pretty sure Keris could murder a small city without anyone figuring out what happened.

    I've just had a look at her charms and good lord is absurdly lethal, reminds just how scary Scourges are. Especially with that AoE charm that Echo was spawned from.
     
    greensun said:
    If it helps, I'm pretty sure Keris could murder a small city without anyone figuring out what happened.

    I've just had a look at her charms and good lord is absurdly lethal, reminds just how scary Scourges are. Especially with that AoE charm that Echo was spawned from.
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    Keris was intentionally built to be a whirlwind of murder in melee. She's not perfectly optimised for it - I could build a chargen Scourge even better than she is, if I cut out literally everything else - but with four or five more Charms she'll be pretty close. And no, she probably couldn't murder an entire city with no signs. A small town, if she struck at night, quite possibly, but a city would probably be too big to get everyone.

    And yes, Silence In Her Wake is even more hilarious than Opened Eye of the Hurricane for unfair melee combat. Sadly, murderin' does not help with most of her current problems.

    Edit: Come to think of it, I don't think I've used Silence In Her Wake (on actual targets worth consideration) since I started publishing the sessions, have I? Heh. I'll have to see if I can remedy that and show you how hilarious it is when used.
     
    Aleph said:
    And yes, Silence In Her Wake is even more hilarious than Opened Eye of the Hurricane for unfair melee combat. Sadly, murderin' does not help with most of her current problems.
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    The Kerisgame set-up makes the Infernals very much nega-Sidereals. Rather than government employees, they're high-flying contractors who work for megacorp execs and have to stay on the good side of their asshole bosses and try to explain to them that what they want cannot per se be done right now unless they're willing to spend rather more than they intend to.

    And because they're working for the Third Circles rather than the Yozis, they can just play their bosses off against each other, bribe their souls (Sasi is bribing/blackmailing the Red Moon's Indulgent soul, to make her well inclined towards her and so she will consider the offer of a demesne to be far, far more than what she'd wanted Sasi to do beforehand), and try to make sure none of their patrons ever take them for granted because they can go find someone else to work for. And being paid incredibly well as long as they perform to standards, but risking nasty consequences if they fuck up.

    So, basically, if a Sidereal is a government bureaucrat sitting at their desk and engaging in office politics, under this model an Infernal is a corporate freelancer sitting in a club doing cocaine as they network with clients over their next contract.
     
    Aleph said:
    And yes, Silence In Her Wake is even more hilarious than Opened Eye of the Hurricane for unfair melee combat. Sadly, murderin' does not help with most of her current problems.
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    I love that charm., it is just so unfair!

    Oh, so the normal tactic of ganging up on an exalted is your strategy? Well guess what, it makes me harder to hit now! Good luck trying to hit me while I carve out your throats with teeth, asshole!

    EarthScorpion said:
    So, basically, if a Sidereal is a government bureaucrat sitting at their desk and engaging in office politics, under this model an Infernal is a corporate freelancer sitting in a club doing cocaine as they network with clients over their next contract.
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    You have such a way with words ES :p

    But yes, I do prefare this way of modeling Green Sun Princes better than the canon model, which was too Yozi heavy. It also takes on a more literal meaning when you play a game set in the Modern Shard.

    Your boss is not a only a corrupt corporate executive, but also a demon!

    (And it isn't him being a demon that makes him an ass, its the fact that he doesn't refile the coffee jar when he's had the last cup. Fucking ass, Cecelyne should have a law for that.)
     
    Aaron Peori said:
    So Infernals are Shadowrunners and Sidereals are Mr Johnson.

    Kay.
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    Pretty much!

    Especially since, when you get down to it, all the Sidereals are basically on the same side and their disagreements are on means. Infernals? No such luck. The All-Thing exists at least in part to try to resolve what happens when two different Unquestionable hire Infernals for opposing missions so they talk things out there, rather than backstab and sabotage each other. Deveh in theory is under Sasi's auspices as she has been granted mission control over the An Teng area, but in practice he ignores her because he's taking orders directly from an Unquestionable of SWLIHN and argues that this trumps her (and it does), which means that if she wants to force things, she has to travel back to Malfeas and call an emergency conclave of the All-Thing to try to resolve the fact that Deveh's patron is breaking the rules (because Deveh is a SWLIHN-fanatic who basically ignores all other Unquestionable).

    Things are going to get even more... uh, dynamic when some of the Unquestionable go "So, why can't we hire other Exalts under the same rules and use the All-Thing to settle their disputes?"

    (the moral of this story is that by having the Unquestionable running the Infernals rather than the Yozis, it turns into "Shadowrun where you're answering to squabbling demon-gods who spend at least half their time trying to thwart each other's power plays, which gives you plenty of room to do your own thing and alter the balance of power in Malfeas")
     
    It is certainly probable that none of the other Unquestionable interested in An Teng have yet noticed that Keris has been recruited by the Shashalme - Sasi's warned them that Iastestus is doing worrying things with Deveh, but I'm not sure she mentioned Keris's "generous" new patron - and that when they do cotton on they will be magnificently pissed off.
     
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