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

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I can't tell if that Liho, Gull, and Rat in the dream vision chunk were supposed to be Raksha trying to use her instability to eat her or not.

Almost disappointed she didn't outright forget she was Keris, mostly cause seeing Echo try to deal with that would have been funny. Or horrifying. Definitely traumatizing.
 
So, I've been trying to get my head around where things in the Anarchy are with regards to one another - particularly Saata and Shuu Mua in relation to one another and to the Sisters that Keris has already found. Any chance of clarification on that front?
 
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So, this is the current map of the Southwest I use to keep track of where things are when Keris goes swimming around. There are some things that are pretty dated - that island she and Sasi went holidaying on back before Lady Sareh's Mistress, for instance, which was literally years ago and which they haven't had time for since, but is where Keris first learned Emerald Sorcery. Or Kalbada, the Lintha port and Ululaya demesne she found Lintha Gajui Narooj in. But this is a pretty good look at where her bits fit in the rest of Creation around them.


As you can see (with a handy Great Britain for scale), 06 and 07 there are the First and Second Sisters, meaning that if they're in a rough pentagon there's probably one (the fifth, if they go round in a circle) on or around the bulb of the island in [15-Earth, E-Water], and another two even further out in roughly [15-Water, D-Water] and [16-Earth, D-Water]. And the Mother mostly likely in the vague region of [16-Air, E-Fire], just off the southern tip of that slanted-"T" shaped island chain (which means Keris is probably going to want to entirely take over that southernmost island, and quite possibly the whole island chain just to be sure). However, this is guesswork at best, and operating under the entirely unfounded assumption that the water demesnes fuelling the Mother are in a more-or-less regular pentagon. No such guarantee can be made, which is why Keris hasn't yet sunk the resources into going and looking.

As for Saata, you can see its location on the map, and here's a closeup!


@EarthScorpion will get around to doing a more detailed one with things like Silver Lotus and Shining Foam and Little River's townhouse in Memory of a Golden Land and Piu and Zanara's dance academy marked on it whenever I get around to bugging him enough on the matter. So "not for a while", probably.

I hope that helped!
 
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I can confirm that all of the characters shown in this were real people, and that none of the scenes you've seen are outright lies. All of them happened, in some sense. Perhaps not exactly the way as portrayed here - as you saw with the "waking up with Gull" repeated scene, the first version was whitewashed to be nicer and more pleasant and to have the apartment be less shitty than it actually was, etc. But if you read carefully and piece things together, you can get an idea of which details are real and which are the lies (Interlude 3 will help a lot with this).

Admittedly, at some points in these flashbacks the non-Kit characters are being worn like suits by (if you haven't guessed this by now I'm disappointed) the raksha who are maintaining the Illusion. But even then, they're stepping into roles, and so they have to act more or less as the characters would - even if they can warp details about the scenes in question (most obviously seen by them going "no, look, Liho and Rat were totally still around and friendly and alive when you learned about spirit-hosting, your life was all perfect and happy, see?", to which Keris went "bullshit they were, you fucking liars" and they hastily went "OH HEY LOOK LET'S REMEMBER HAPPY TIMES WITH GULL INSTEAD" to distract her.) Also they kind of give themselves away when they're doing that, to those who are looking for it and know the signs.
 
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Aleph said:
Admittedly, at some points in these flashbacks the non-Kit characters are being worn like suits by (if you haven't guessed this by now I'm disappointed) the raksha who are maintaining the Illusion.
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When authors do flashback scenes, my first assumption is it's a flashback scene, possibly caused by the usual suspects (magical spirit quests, drugs, repressed trauma resurfacing, ect...) The idea that these scenes are 'real' and that the world itself has been warped into a stage where Keris plays out her past, aided by a random collection of bizarre alien beings who are playing along by wearing people like suits in hopes of eating her soul, is not something I ever would have guessed and would have been a massive and shocking twist.
 
... I mean, I kind of figured the part where Eko showed up inside the "flashbacks" and started murdering major characters and telling Kit she was only pretending to be twelve years old while Iris pulled Loom-Snarling Deception off her arm was a hint. She literally gutted the narrator, even.
 
Aleph said:
... I mean, I kind of figured the part where Eko showed up inside the "flashbacks" and started murdering major characters and telling Kit she was only pretending to be twelve years old while Iris pulled Loom-Snarling Deception off her arm was a hint. She literally gutted the narrator, even.
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Eko nods. Adorjan plus Elloge means that with her, "death of the author" is a lot less figurative. She can stab Raksha right in the narrative.
 
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Secrets Revealed - Interlude 3
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    • And we close out our flashback miniarc with Interlude 3 of Secrets Revealed. And oh my, there are a lot of secrets being revealed here. This contains corrections for most of the alterations the raksha made to prior flashback scenes, as well as a full accounting of what they skirted around and how Kit Firewander's life in Nexus was spent.

    They also contain a lot of very nasty things happening, some (but not all) of which happen to Kit. I'm going to repeat the disclaimer in the chapter here, because it bears repeating: this interlude contains references to or depictions of child slavery, major character death, underage sexual activity, teen pregnancy, miscarriage, prostitution, graphic violence, torture, drug use and addiction, mental illness, abuse, rape, body horror and attempted suicide. I think - I hope - I have handled things respectfully, or at least not callously. But this is not a happy backstory. Nexus is not a nice place to live. In particular, immediately after the "Trapped Again" scene, there's a description of body horror that leans a little on the stomach-turning side. If you have a queasy stomach, you probably want to skip the paragraphs after the one beginning "The demon envelops her..." and resume reading at "In the back of Keris's mind..."

    As stated in the chapter note; the conditions of Nexus as described here take considerable inspiration from the conditions experienced by the poor in Victorian London. The primary source of reference for life for women in the violent and precarious situations outside "respectable" society was 'The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper', by Hallie Rubenhold.
     
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    • I'm not stating one way or another on which came first (and honestly, the answer is kind of "both" to some extent), but... Keris has had Cerulean Paramour Style, Spirit-Charming Supplicant Style and "Addiction is for the Weak" on her character sheer since literally the beginning of the game logs.

    I find it vaguely amusing that nobody has ever thought to ask why a self-proclaimed thief and pickpocket would have developed those particular skills and opinions.
     
    whOOF

    All the parallels between Kit's old life and Keris's new one are quite telling but that old life was not happy. On the other hand, it's nice to see so much Word of God finally make it into the story explicitly.

    Also interesting that this state seems to bring back memories I had thought would be lost forever to Freedom Lets Go. Particularly the memories behind her negative intimacy towards Rat. Makes me wonder if something deeper is going on, but definitely fits with the arc being "Secrets Revealed."

    As far as the longstanding consequences of Torment among Fae, I wonder whether Keris will choose to permanently heal in some manner or invest in prosthesics. And if the latter, how many kinds of prosthesis. Swapping hands and legs for different guises seems... fitting, for She of a Thousand Faces.

    I've said it before on Discord, but now I can't help but imagine a Lamia body as a kind of demon-prosthetic. As in, an actual demon species that compensates for missing limbs and paraplegia. Something about it feels Infernal-OK and Kerisian in aesthetic while the medical-aid aspect being something less likely to be common in Malfeas. (One would imagine the nature of demons and mindset of the Descending Hierarchy would lead most demon lords to see their subjects as more... disposable, than that.)
     
    The Phoenixian said:
    Also interesting that this state seems to bring back memories I had thought would be lost forever to Freedom Lets Go. Particularly the memories behind her negative intimacy towards Rat. Makes me wonder if something deeper is going on, but definitely fits with the arc being "Secrets Revealed."
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    Does it? Was it Kit, remembering those things?

    Or was she being reminded?

    Go back and reread the bits where she's mad at Rat or thinking about how she was angry with him. Look at what prompts here to think of it.
     
    Aleph said:
    I find it vaguely amusing that nobody has ever thought to ask why a self-proclaimed thief and pickpocket would have developed those particular skills and opinions.
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    Well, part of it is that we didn't ever see this from the start. When we started reading about Keris's adventures, Keris was already an established Green Sun Princess who was meeting with the Shashalme and going to An Teng with Sasi.

    Everything before that was summarized and referenced, but we didn't know the details of how or when Keris picked up those Styles and whether they were background or something she got in play. As for the Addiction is For the Weak, I always figured it was because of that character that gets mentioned in said summary that Keris got into a relationship with and had to cut off because she was a mortal getting heavily addicted to Keris's presence or poisons or however it went.
     
    Fuck me, it's been a while since I've read something that made me feel as strongly as that did. You really are a fantastic pair of writers.
     
    This was very well done.

    I'd assumed that Keris picked up Spirit Charming Supplicant from dealing with the Unquestionable, Cerulean Paramour Style for Sasi, and Addiction is for the Weak from watching other people on the streets succumb.

    I wonder what happened to Asarin. I could see all of Keris' souls being drawn into to her when she had her freak out, but Asarin would still be there, surrounded by fae.
     
    Aleph said:
    Does it? Was it Kit, remembering those things?

    Or was she being reminded?

    Go back and reread the bits where she's mad at Rat or thinking about how she was angry with him. Look at what prompts here to think of it.
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    Ah, I see. So Dulmea's prodding is helping Keris reconstruct what happened.

    Pulling a question from the Discord, the fun thought here is: Who's going to learn and when?

    Because Keris's wounds are going to be A Thing until she finds some way to hide or heal them and I'm honestly not sure what options she has here and which ones, such as perhaps her gales, been crippled with her. And that could well continue the chain of revelations the arc title promises.

    Beyond her kids, souls, and probably immediate family, I imagine Asarin will probably see the result in all its horror and if so her reaction to seeing Keris laid low like this will be very telling for how far their friendship will go, one way or another.

    And then there's the painting. (Word of God exists, but my neurotic side finds it a bit uncomfortable to pull from Discord whole cloth when the text can be interrogated first.) The Painting's location isn't explicitly mentioned in story, or at least isn't visible via ctrl+f, but it's explicitly not with Sasi as the Immaculates would burn it. It was on the ship once upon a time, but there's been no mention of the Memory of Baisha since the talk of recrewing it early in the arc.

    Seeing as Keris would probably leave it with someone she trusted wholeheartedly, that's... basically Lilunu and maybe Testolagh. And if she left it with Testolagh she wouldn't have needed to fly out to meet him.

    And if it's Lilunu she's going to know immediately. Which is ripe for a source of significant chaos depending on exactly how it goes.
     
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