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

Slamu · Jul 29, 2021

beowolf said:
I doubt ES is even going to add an equivalent, but it's especially important to note that Sunlit Sands is chronologically a decade earlier than A&T at this point. Inks herself is definitely not going to be there, because if she still was she'd be known globally by this point.

You're just saying that because Inks is so subtle and low-key.

Aleph · Aug 1, 2021

Calesco is not yet forgiven and the boys are off doing their own thing in Early Water 774, and Keris takes the time to visit her family and get some teaching done.

Azunth · Aug 1, 2021

The Curse of the Baisha is not quite broken, I see.

Amazing Abzan · Aug 1, 2021

I hope this isn't the last we see of Zanyi, because there's so much that's appealing about this situation. Keris can always use more peer level opponents for one, particularly if they aren't just the result of the Reclamation's internal squabbling. It's also cool for her to finally have a loved one who can recognize her hellishness for what it is without being hellish themselves. She's never really been in the position of having someone she cares about disapprove of her infernal nature without her being able to just dismiss their concerns as ignorant, so it'll be interesting to see how she handles this. Finally, it always makes for delicious drama when you've got two family members who genuinely care about each other working on opposite sides.

Also, watching Vali try and be a pirate is adorable. I imagine he wouldn't be too thrilled to hear that, but it's the truth.

Chloe Sullivan · Aug 1, 2021

Do any of the Keris-clan have Travel?

Aleph · Aug 1, 2021

Don Alverzo said:
Keris can always use more peer level opponents for one

Keris would like to loudly object to this viewpoint and in fact advance the counterpoint that her current peer-level adversaries include a solid chunk of the Unquestionable peerage of Hell, multiple Green Sun Princes, the entire Immaculate Faith and the combined forces of Heaven. She has a positive surfeit of peer-level opponents and indeed is wondering if she can perhaps exchange any of them for gift certificates, because she's only dealing with her current excess of the fuckers by taking great pains to avoid most of them finding out anything about her.

Bel · Aug 1, 2021

Aleph said:
Keris would like to loudly object to this viewpoint and in fact advance the counterpoint that her current peer-level adversaries include a solid chunk of the Unquestionable peerage of Hell, multiple Green Sun Princes, the entire Immaculate Faith and the combined forces of Heaven. She has a positive surfeit of peer-level opponents and indeed is wondering if she can perhaps exchange any of them for gift certificates, because she's only dealing with her current excess of the fuckers by taking great pains to avoid most of them finding out anything about her.

...Now I'm trying to think of what kind of Gift Certificates Keris would have...and how annoyed she would be if she found out that her gift certificate is expired after she went to all the trouble of breaking into heaven to get to that heavenly mall.

Aleph · Aug 4, 2021

Alright, the character list for this series is getting ridiculous, and I'm increasingly seeing people go "... who?" when characters who haven't shown up in a while are referenced. So. For your ease of reading, here's the Kerisgame Dramatis Personae, a list of paragraph-length descriptions of the various members of the cast to jog your memory and summarise key points. More will be coming out covering characters from Hell, characters from Creation, etcetera. Until then, you'll at least be able to keep all these damn keruby and family members straight.

Chapters by title for ease of links:

Pyro Hawk · Aug 5, 2021

Huh. The golden fire Ahkmi is noted to have has me wondering... Did they actually pick up a touch of Solar Essence in their make up? Or is it merely aesthetic touches? Because one of Keris' things does seem to be creating mixes of many essences that eventually reach a mostly harmonious state. So I would be both not shocked, and also shocked because damn is that a neat ability to have, if some of Keris' 'Demons' had that as well. And if any did have it, the keruby would be the most likely due to the way they already naturally shift between essence natures if exposed enough.

beowolf · Aug 5, 2021

Aleph said:
Until then, you'll at least be able to keep all these damn keruby straight

...Huh. I was honestly unaware of the existence of the Solitary Riders as something separate from the three low-energy forms being boosted by their respective forms of nourishment.

Aleph · Aug 6, 2021

They're rare enough that Keris hasn't actually encountered any yet, though she's heard about them without really understanding what they are. All fems become solitary riders when they mature, and get a moment of awesomeness... and then as soon as they achieve their Motivation or suppress a Virtue or fail an important roll or don't have a 5-dot Principle towards some goal, they lose their momentum and devolve to one of the lesser breeds. In practice this means most fems devolve instantly, because their maturation condition is gloriously achieving a major goal they set for themselves... which means that unless they can instantly generate a new Motivation and have an associated 5-dot Principle to go with it, they get just enough time to enjoy their success before abruptly running out of steam, like Vali does.

Solitary riders are a bit like Abyssals, in that there's not really any "after the story's over" for them. They spend their lives pursuing a big, grand, heroic goal... and they don't exist outside of that story. They can't achieve it and then retire and keep their awesomeness. They're only powerful and glorious dragons for as long as they have something to set themselves against, resistance to dig in their heels and push at. Left without opposition and challenge, they find themselves powerless. If orven maturation says something about how (Keris believes) adults need love in their lives and mez maturation is a metaphor for how growing up means confronting the ugly truths of the world, fem maturation makes the case that part of leaving childhood is realising that after your childish daydreams of heroics and fame are over, you still need to eat and pay the bills.

beowolf · Aug 7, 2021

Aleph said:
which means that unless they can instantly generate a new Motivation and have an associated 5-dot Principle to go with it, they get just enough time to enjoy their success before abruptly running out of steam, like Vali does

Sorry for taking so long to reply, but:
Do fems work on canon Exalted Motivation rules in that they can have a literally world-changing overarching goal, but can count the next major step that they would have to grow to achieve as their Motivation?

Aleph · Aug 8, 2021

Of course, Keris did more than some Cinnamon training and Little River cover in Water. She has an assassination contract to carry out Late Water 774, and a date on the Blessed Isles.

Let's go see her in her element, shall we?

<Heisi and Sehece>
EarthScorpion: She's flirting with Keris, enhanced with Searing Passion Spark, which will mean if the social attack is successful it'll affect Keris with an Emotion of desire.
Aleph: Oh please. Like Keris needs to be hit with charms to flirt back with pretty women who look Dynastic.
EarthScorpion: /r 16d10s7c10 #PrettyDynastGirlFlirting
Bot: EarthScorpion rolled 6 <5; 4; 9; 9; 6; 7; 6; 8; 6; 2; 4; 7; 8; 6; 1; 1> #PrettyDynastGirlFlirting
EarthScorpion: Ok, yeah, so she beats Keris's MDV outright without even having to benefit from how "Girls over Boys" lowers it, so unless Keris resists she picks up a 1-dot of Attraction and furthermore is under an Emotion of Desire.
Aleph: Heh. Can I activate Go Get It on Keris's barely-subtle flirting here?
EarthScorpion: So, it's a 5-long-tick social attack, so not immediately, but if you want to commit to a growingly-more-flirty social attack, yes.
Aleph: Then yes, I will activate it now and get more flirty, mwaa haa. : 3
Aleph: Think they can instil principles in me, do they?
Aleph: Hmm. What's Keris worth as a "purely mortal" courtesan? Also grr that I can't apply my full bedroom talents to this without giving myself away.
EarthScorpion: Pfft. Okay, so, hmm. It's not illegal, and... yes, if she sticks to mortal skill, that's probably 4 as per the core.
Aleph: /r 16d10s7c10 +4 #FlirtingWithDBLadies
Bot: Keris rolled 14 <5; 4; 8; 10; 3; 10; 6; 5; 10; 1; 9; 2; 10; 4; 6; 2> #FlirtingWithDBLadies
EarthScorpion: She does not even try to resist.
EarthScorpion: OK, roll me Per + Politics to see what you pick up from these two over the afternoon, evening, and at breakfast the next morning.
Aleph: /r 14d10s7c10 +4 #PillowTalk
Bot: Keris rolled 8 <2; 6; 3; 7; 9; 4; 6; 2; 2; 8; 3; 6; 3; 8> #PillowTalk
EarthScorpion: o Keris
EarthScorpion: There's so much going on here that's technically illegal under Realm law but they get away with it because they're rich.
Aleph: Hee : 3
EarthScorpion: Oh, Keris. Honestly, as part of her acceptance of her past, she's a lot more willing to just walk into a bath and within five minutes be snogging two DBs and within a few more minutes just be outright fucking. It's accepting the part of her she put in Haneyl.

Sasi: "Keris, I can't believe you!"
Sasi: "..."
Sasi: "Doing all that without me being there? You owe me!"
Aleph:

Keris: "It was work, honey, not pleasure!"
EarthScorpion: Oh Keris. There's definitely a... hmm, Calesco and Zanara bit of her that's idly wondering how to keep these baby DBs, corrupt them, and give them to Sasi as a present. Possibly dressed in ribbons.

...

EarthScorpion: Heh. Honestly, Keris there is probably going to wind up thinking about capture-tanks of rainwater she can use for baths, although she'll need to be careful about the Sinasana anti-malarial laws about standing water. or, you know, just accept paying off the inspectors as an operational expense.
Aleph: Hmm. Maybe some kind of pump system to cycle it so it's not (technically) standing? Eh, but that probably just comes back to "bribing them to accept the technicality".
EarthScorpion: Alternatively, of course, she could find a volcanic island with actual hot springs (of which there are many in the area) and set up a subsidiary resort.
EarthScorpion: Sigh. Honestly, as soon as she tells Haneyl about this place, and about the fashion there and the styles and the like, she'll start planning to leverage her influence on the Raraan Ge to get land to build a hot springs resort.
EarthScorpion: It can't be on Saata because it's not volcanic, but there are islands within a day's sail of Saata that are. And the overall chain that leads up to Shuu Mua is volcanic, because Shuu Mua is. Saata is just a low rise of that overall island separated from the mainland by a channel.
Aleph: Hmm. It'll have to be after I step Cinnamon back and have largely finished training the first generation of Gulls and started them expanding. Might be a post-timeskip thing
EarthScorpion: Well, yes. Haneyl doesn't even have the influence yet. Or frankly the spoons given her current state.
EarthScorpion: But yeah, mmm, if she doesn't want to build it from scratch, she can always buy out an existing one and fold it into the overall Joyful Priestess organisation - especially once she picks up a proper patron god.
Aleph: True, yes. Hmm.
EarthScorpion: Well, honestly, Keris and her souls being who they are, odds are it'll be less a corporate takeover and more corruption and/or the mob, but that's how it is
Aleph:

...

EarthScorpion: OK, so, hmm. I'll probably think about it more tomorrow, but I think we probably agree OOC what Keris's plan is for both targets - or if she's going into one of them without a solid plan - and then play out those scenarios.
Aleph: Yes. OOC I think I am going to paralyse the Slug in a bath somehow, either with acupuncture or paralytics, and then slowly boil him to death.
Aleph: Like a big fat lobster.
EarthScorpion: Lol.
Aleph: Hmm. Ideally I'd get him to flare in the scene prior as a way of showing off or a party trick, to exhaust him enough that he couldn't in the bath.
Aleph: He's in such bad physical shape that I doubt he can sustain an anima flare beyond the caste mark level for very long.
EarthScorpion: OK, so let's zoom out a bit, and I'm saying you get three "sub-minor actions" to find attack vectors / develop attack plans. So, for example, a "find attack vectors" kind of thing would be "I want to get my hands on the reservations and the like to see where people will be staying" while a develop action would be working on getting things in place for your Salt the Slug plan.
Aleph: Okay, hmm. So if I want my "Salt the Slug" plan to go down successfully, that's basically dependent on checking out the personal massage/bath rooms where I can shiatsu paralyse via Lilunu-acupuncture and then leave him in a tub and switch the inflow to boiling spring water. Which is mineral-rich in salts, so it's still Salting the Slug.
EarthScorpion: Hmm. He's still a DB, so once he's aware he's paralysed, you're likely on quite a sharp timer. Having those pipes rupture onto him when he's already relaxed and having a massage and acupuncture and not expecting to move is different from paralysing him if he's going to notice it..
Aleph: Hmm. True. Well, it'll still be some variant of "get him in for a massage and then boil him to death", so I'll use an action to check out the massage rooms and find good places to engineer a rupture.
EarthScorpion: OK, so, hmm. Cover identity investigation or "pretending to be staff" or both?
Aleph: Likely both. First as cover identity, then going back as staff - probably a cleaner.
EarthScorpion: OK, hmm. So a Reaction + Subterfuge for "getting away with poking around", and a Cog + Occult for studying the water flows
Aleph: 5+5+3 stunt+3 Silver Willow+4 EH autosux - this is a stealth roll, but it's an investigate action, so I think that counts?
EarthScorpion: No, just the Cog + Occult benefits from EH
Aleph: Fair enough. Then I'll make that +4 Kimmy ExSux, and for the Cog+Occult it's 4+5+3 stunt+4 Kimmy ExSux+4 EH autosux.
Aleph: /r 15d10s7c10 +4 #SneakySneakySpying
Bot: Keris rolled 17 <7; 5; 6; 8; 10; 10; 1; 8; 10; 2; 9; 7; 9; 1; 7> #SneakySneakySpying
Aleph: /r 12d10s7c10 +8 #HowDoIScaldSlug
Bot: Keris rolled 15 <6; 5; 1; 7; 9; 6; 1; 8; 9; 9; 7; 7> #HowDoIScaldSlug
EarthScorpion: So, to summarise. Keris finds that there's underfloor pipes carrying near boiling water that are what keep the floors lovely and warm even when it's misty outside and she's barefoot. But since they're using mineral rich water, there need to be a lot of access points to clean out the pipes of mineral build up. Keris finds that there's a weakness in the design of the valves such that if one was damaged and there was a surge of pressure, that one would burst and - assuming no one in the flow rooms caught it and cut the pressure - flood the room with scalding hot water and steam.
Aleph: excellent~
Aleph: Hmm. Check the flow rooms in advance, then, and drug anyone there unconscious. And stage it like they got drunk or fell asleep or something.
EarthScorpion: Okay, any other ideas for actions? You don't have anything for the minister yet. Looking into the rooms and reservations would be one option to maybe generate a lead, for example.
Aleph: Yeah, I'll go with that for my second action.
EarthScorpion: Okay, well, that's a good ol' reaction + subterfuge to steal things. Diff 2 to get your hands on the room allocations, diff 6 to get your hands on the much more sensitive associations of names to rooms (incidentally there's real names there so Sasi would want a copy of that).
Aleph: Mwaa haa.
Aleph: Hmm. This is EH-okay?
EarthScorpion: Hmm. It's not really aimed at him, so I'll say only 1 autosuccess at quarter effect.
Aleph: 5+5+3 stunt+3 Silver Willow+1 EH sux=16[+1]. Enhancing with Theft As Release to hit actions opposing the theft with a -4 external penalty and prevent anyone from noticing the room allocations sheet is gone (or dismissing it as "probably thrown away by someone, copy it out again" if they do). Which... I assume drops the Diff to 2? or does Difficulty not count as an action?
EarthScorpion: It's going to penalise the contested roll
Aleph: Cool cool. Okay, if I'm still working at Diff 6 I'll add +5 Metagaos ExSux for MINEMINEMINE.
Aleph: /r 16d10s7c10 +6 #StealingRoomAllocations
Bot: Keris rolled 13 <4; 6; 3; 10; 7; 1; 8; 5; 5; 3; 5; 8; 2; 5; 10; 5> #StealingRoomAllocations
EarthScorpion: /r 7d10s7c10 #Security
Bot: EarthScorpion rolled 3 <4; 6; 8; 6; 10; 5; 5> #Security
EarthScorpion: Okay, you get in, dodging the attention of one of the accountant gods lurking around the place, and pour over the ledgers.
EarthScorpion: The Slug has a place he always stays here - a well protected empress-grade suite that's surrounded by other rooms for his entourage. Not a good place to go for a kill - there's too many DBs there in close proximity.
EarthScorpion: But aha, the minister has been reserved a fine suite at the top of the eagle tower. It's the most elevated structure here and highest up the hillside, as well as closest to the immaculate shrine. There's notes here saying that she wants a place she can mediate where the wind blows around her, and where she won't be bothered by other people's noise. As a result, while the floor below has plenty of guards, the minister herself only has rooms booked for her two personal guards on the top floor, which adjoin hers.
Aleph: Oh ho ho. Okay, I am going to... think about that overnight, though some there are definitely fun ideas coming up (like "sneak up on her while she's meditating, slide a garrotte noose over her head and shove her off the tower so the fall-stop cuts her head off").
Aleph: I shall consider my third mini-action, then.

...

Aleph: Lol. These poor Dragonblooded. They have no idea what they're messing around with.
EarthScorpion: One of the nice things for Keris about having a mortal cover identity is that she can just leave a Gale in her place
Aleph: Yes, heh. And have two DBs attesting that they were in bed with her when the gruesome murders occurred.
EarthScorpion: Oh yeah, so a note about Such Sweet Corruption. It's not sorcerous, so the 9m cost is committed for its duration, so you can't programme too many people with it. On the other hand, characters can be pretty heavily programmed with it, as long as nothing happens that makes them spend 1wp to resist.
Aleph: Hmm. Yes. And I also have Offcast Mad Whimsy if I need it.

...

EarthScorpion: Any thoughts on the third mini action?
Aleph: Hmm. So, I don't... think I need any more prep for the Slug. I know what I'm doing, I know how I'm doing it, it shouldn't be difficult to do it - the main thing will be getting whoever's in the flow room out of the way by some means, which I can likely do as a driveby, and then getting him into the massage room at the right time.
EarthScorpion: Well, the set-up for that could be something - finding out who's going to be there, ensuring you can replace them, making sure there'll be some privacy so you don't have anyone else in the room when you cause the surge. Or alternatively, ensuring you have your sleeper agent in the flow room to cause it.
Aleph: Yeah, but, mm. He's not the primary target. So my third mini-action will probably be put into the minister, because I have less invested there. I know where she's going to be, and I'm thinking some kind of Hitman-y cinematic thing where I drop a razor-wire noose around her neck and kick her out of an open window.
Aleph: I have my location. I know I can get up there, and that she'll be fairly lightly guarded. So I probably want a prep action for her.
EarthScorpion: Oh, I mean, it's totally valid to just scale the building and kill her in her sleep. You have Hermetic Substitution Technique so you can even make sure if she wakes up and grabs her weapon, it's a useless double.
EarthScorpion: (Or kill her when she's meditating in silence, using anima silencing.)
Aleph: Yeah. Hmm. Well, I guess I can kill her and then kick the body out of the window with a noose around her neck.
EarthScorpion: Or just break her neck and tuck her up in bed to be found in the morning.
Aleph: Bah, let me have my drama. But, mmm. Urgh, okay then, yes, I'll make hers a fairly boring "regular" assassination with no frills and save my drama llama for the Slug.
Aleph: So yes, the flow room. I shall subvert it, mwaa haa~
EarthScorpion: OK, well, that's easy enough. Keris already has the information to identify who'll be overseeing it that day - it's a woman called Three Oaks - so you just need to use Such Sweet Corruption to set up a trigger circumstance to cause a pressure flow to a room when a message is sent. So that charm is just the pool you need.
Aleph: ... huh. Can I enhance the Such Sweet Corruption roll with Hidden Depths Temptress? It is "encouraging a specific action".
EarthScorpion: I'll say yes for now, but I might change my mind later depending on how the balance works out for that.
Aleph: yeah, I'm fine if it doesn't, it just occurred to me based on the phrasing. Hmm. Well, we'll use this as a case study I guess.
Aleph: Per+Pres, 5+5+3 Perfumed Smoke+2 stunt x2 HDT=15[x2].
Aleph: /r 15d10s7c10 #SuchSweetCorruption
Bot: Keris rolled 5 <8; 1; 3; 2; 10; 4; 6; 8; 5; 6; 5; 7; 4; 6; 2> #SuchSweetCorruption
Aleph: So 10 sux.
EarthScorpion: I mean she's a mortal thaumaturgist, that basically dumpsters her MDV
Aleph: Tee hee~
EarthScorpion: Set this up for you to be lil miss corruptive influence.
Aleph: Sigh. So yes, slave-Keris will happen to run into Three Oaks just before the kill, all in a tizzy, and blurt out that she's been booked to give the Slug a massage, oh noes, what should she do, etc.

...

EarthScorpion: o dulmea
EarthScorpion: Her and her Opinions about what makes a good assassination.
EarthScorpion: Dulmea would play Hitman and consider it a failure if she didn't get the Silent Assassin rating.

...

<The targets arrive>
EarthScorpion: Reaction + Politics to conceal your intent as you study him.
Aleph: 5+2+3 Wolf-as-Lamb+1 bonus+2 Coadj+2 stunt+7 Kimmy ExD {secrets, hides ugliness beyond imagining, keep secrets by any means necessary}=20. Enhancing with FtFF, which increases the Diff to read my motives by (Enlightenment -5).
Aleph: /r 20d10s7c10 #SpySecretlyontheSlug
Bot: Keris rolled 9 <7; 1; 6; 1; 4; 2; 8; 3; 7; 10; 8; 2; 1; 7; 10; 6; 2; 3; 4; 3> #SpySecretlyontheSlug
EarthScorpion: /r 15d10s7c10 #FlowerFacesSunAwareness
Bot: EarthScorpion rolled 4 <4; 6; 8; 7; 6; 1; 4; 2; 6; 6; 7; 3; 1; 4; 7> #FlowerFacesSunAwareness
Aleph: Keris is looking to:

a) watch how he deals with people and, like, get a vague gist of how many people are caught up in his web and how he's playing with them. She doesn't care so much about what he's doing, more a sense of the how and the who
Aleph: and more importantly

b) assess how good he'd be in an actual fight if something with her planned kill goes wrong and she has to actually murder him with punching and stabbing
EarthScorpion: OK, well, Reaction + Politics, Diff 7 for the first. Reaction + Melee, Diff 2, for the second.
Aleph: Okay, these are rolls to directly study the target of my envy, mwaa haa, which means I definitely get EH bonuses from them. So
Aleph: Politics: 5+2+3 stunt+3 Social Saboteur+2 Coadj+4 EH autosux=15[+4].
Aleph: Melee: 5+5+3 stunt+3 [various combat styles]+2 Coadj+4 EH sux=18[+4].
Aleph: /r 15d10s7c10 +4 #What'sHeDoingPrecious
Bot: Keris rolled 10 <3; 5; 2; 3; 10; 7; 6; 4; 7; 9; 2; 6; 4; 9; 4> #What'sHeDoingPrecious
Aleph: /r 18d10s7c10 +4 #CanWeStabsHim?
Bot: Keris rolled 12 <2; 6; 3; 5; 5; 7; 1; 10; 5; 4; 1; 4; 10; 1; 6; 6; 8; 10> #CanWeStabsHim?
EarthScorpion: OK, so socially he doesn't seem to really actively be doing much. Oh, he's being a crime boss and people are coming in and meeting with him, and so on. He's making gifts to people here to get them in his debt, and on and so forth. But he's also spending most of his time indulging. This really does seem to be a holiday for him.
EarthScorpion: Physically, he's a little more in shape than he looks. But that's not saying much. He's tough - Endurance 4 - but Physique 1, and has Melee 1 and 2-dots in a self-defence martial arts style. Enough that a mortal assassin might get a nasty surprise; not much to Keris.
Aleph: Goooood good. About what I was hoping. In fact, exactly what I was hoping, bar maybe the Endurance, which could pose an issue in the "scald him to death with a geyser of boiling water" plan.
Aleph: Eh. I can break his neck if I have to.
EarthScorpion: I mean, scalding water is something you have to kind of just vacate your presence from.
Aleph: True. It'll kill him eventually if he's paralysed, even if he toughs it out for a few actions.

...

EarthScorpion: Ama seems ill at ease, and she seems very sensitive to noise in a way that might remind Keris of Atiya. She can't focus on her meditation while music is drifting up from down below, where there's a band playing to entertain guests in one of the outdoor baths.
Aleph: ... interesting. Aww. This might make me feel bad later. :c
EarthScorpion: I mean, I was hinting at that before with the fact she got the job by being detail-focussed, obsessive about future worries, and got it directly from the Empress rather than her own political skills.
EarthScorpion: And if you want her to be isolated and meditating in quiet with no one around, you'll need to find a way to get the band to stop.
Aleph: Yeah, so Keris will probably just, hmm, go screw with a valve or two so the bath gets cold and the guests have to move (which feeds into the "oh no, there were problems with the plumbing that night and a floor pipe tragically burst and scalded the Slug to death, what a terrible tragedy" narrative).
EarthScorpion: OK, roll me Reaction + Subterfuge, diff 3 to get that meddling done.
Aleph: 5+5+3 Silver Willow+2 stunt=15.
Aleph: /r 15d10s7c10 #HopeYouLikeColdWater
Bot: Keris rolled 9 <7; 1; 2; 1; 6; 6; 10; 10; 8; 10; 4; 3; 7; 5; 5> #HopeYouLikeColdWater
EarthScorpion: OK, so let's talk through the path of the assassination and the charms Keris uses.
Aleph: Keris will be going in through the window, and obviously using Wind-Born Stride to dart across the nightingale floor, coming up behind the woman. Her anima will mute everything around her, stifling sound nearby. Keris will be making a surprise attack to break her neck as quickly and quietly as possible, and then dropping Passing Off Blame to make it look like a fall. In an ideal case - if this were a mortal - that would be all Keris would need.
EarthScorpion: OK. So in the beats, what Keris has to get here is

1) Approach without being noticed
2) Secure the grapple
3) Control the grapple
4) Secure the kill.
EarthScorpion: 1 is... uh, terrifyingly trivial for Keris, given she is an invalid target for hearing based rolls and the other woman is relaxed and meditating. So it's Physique + Subterfuge, Diff 2, vs her Reaction + Awareness at Difficulty 5 and with a -3 internal penalty which leaves her with... 3 dice.
EarthScorpion: /r 3d10s7c10 #Minister'sDetectingRoll
Bot: EarthScorpion rolled 1 <5; 8; 5> #Minister'sDetectingRoll
Aleph:
EarthScorpion: Literally all you need is to meet the difficulty.
Aleph: 5+5+3 Lurking Predator+2 stunt=15... honestly I can almost just pay to autopass this. But eh, I'll roll it to conserve motes.
Aleph: /r 15d10s7c10 #StalkingMahPrey
Bot: Keris rolled 8 <3; 2; 3; 10; 8; 5; 6; 4; 7; 1; 6; 6; 8; 8; 10> #StalkingMahPrey
EarthScorpion: OK, right now you need to secure the grapple. So it's your Phys + Melee + Styles vs her Reaction + Melee + Styles to instinctively twist out, and she's at -2 because she's distracted.
EarthScorpion: Reaction 3, Melee 3, Water Dragon Style 1, 4XD = 11 dice, -2 penalty = 9 dice
EarthScorpion: /r 9d10s7c10 #WaterDragonEscapingCoils
Bot: EarthScorpion rolled 5 <10; 4; 8; 10; 4; 2; 3; 1; 5> #WaterDragonEscapingCoils
Aleph: Okay, for this Keris is going all out. So Physique 5+Melee 5+Wild Alleycat 3+2 stunt+5 Adorjani autosux=15[+5].
Aleph: /r 15d10s7c10 +5 #DemonGrapplingDragon
Bot: Keris rolled 10 <7; 2; 10; 3; 6; 1; 4; 9; 1; 4; 8; 2; 4; 3; 2> #DemonGrapplingDragon
EarthScorpion: OK, so for "control the grapple", Keris needs to pin her and stop her snatching up that sword of hers and using it in any way. This is raw contested Phys + Melee. She's surging to Anima 1 and using Dragon-Slips-Free Atemi for two auto-successes to escape a grapple, but she is at Difficulty 3 because of Keris's previous successes and also being severely limb-outnumbered.
EarthScorpion: Phys 3, Melee 3, Water Dragon Style 1, 4 EX, 2 Suc = 11[2] vs D3
EarthScorpion: /r 11d10s7c10 +2 #SoDesperatelySheFights
Bot: EarthScorpion rolled 9 <10; 8; 1; 1; 8; 8; 2; 7; 7; 4; 5> #SoDesperatelySheFights
Aleph: ... anima 1, or anima 2?
EarthScorpion: She can only jump up one level an action
Aleph: Ah, cool. Literally, heh.
EarthScorpion: Keris is at -1 internal penalty from the anima pain, though. Like static shocks or too-harsh winds.
Aleph: Dangit
EarthScorpion: She has 6 net successes.
Aleph: Okay, Keris will be repeating her earlier roll, sans 1 for the penalty, at 14+5 sux.
Aleph: /r 14d10s7c10 +5 #YetTheDemonIsRelentless
Bot: Keris rolled 11 <4; 2; 1; 4; 10; 6; 3; 10; 9; 2; 3; 5; 8; 4> #YetTheDemonIsRelentless
EarthScorpion: OK, Keris now controls the grapple. It is therefore contested Phys + Athletics (for Keris) vs Phys + Melee for the raw strength to break her neck.
EarthScorpion: Ama is flaring up to anima 2. So Keris has a -2 internal penalty.
EarthScorpion: Phys 3, Melee 3, Water Dragon Style 1, 4 EX, channel Survive (5), 2 Suc = 16[2] vs D3.
EarthScorpion: /r 16d10s7c10 +2 #AtTheBorderOfLifeAndDeath
Bot: EarthScorpion rolled 17 <8; 10; 10; 8; 1; 10; 3; 3; 5; 8; 10; 9; 8; 9; 7; 5> #AtTheBorderOfLifeAndDeath
EarthScorpion: 14 net successes, god. She really really wants to survive, so Keris probably wants to find a principle to channel and also if she has any extra charms to use she might want to think of them.
Aleph: Shit. Hmm. Okay. GSNF can potentially up my damage, and I think it won't leave too much of an obviously-Hellish trace on the corpse, just burn marks. And, hmm. Actually, I've got FWT, so I can savage her neck a bit and then patch it up as part of my Passing Off Blame roll. So Keris can also use Teeth Without Number and Branch-and-Root Protrusion for MOAR LIMBS THAT BITE YOU. I'll also switch to the Malfean Excellency and flare my own anima to the caste mark level to bring the penalty down to -1 (and recover some motes).
Aleph: What bonus do the extra-damage charms give me?
EarthScorpion: You're directly trying to kill her, so take the GSNF damage bonuses as auto-successes
Aleph: Cool, so that's a +2 sux. I'll also channel, uh... hmm. Okay, honestly? I'll TLA her for her will to survive and then channel Compassion, which boosts my stunt to 3-die and lets me add successes instead of dice on the Compassion channel.
Aleph: So that makes, uh... 5+5+3 stunt+3 Wild Alleycat+5 Malfeas ExSux+2 GSNF sux+4 Compassion sux=16[+11].
Aleph: /r 16d10s7c10 +11 #LoveBloomsInFatalSplendour
Bot: Keris rolled 17 <1; 5; 6; 3; 8; 10; 1; 6; 9; 7; 2; 4; 3; 1; 8; 2> #LoveBloomsInFatalSplendour
EarthScorpion: god
EarthScorpion: That was far too close for your comfort.
Aleph: :S
Aleph: Keris's policy of "treat DBs as though they're 2-3 Enlightenment dots higher than they actually are" continues unabated!
Aleph: And to cover up the cause of death, Cog+Subterfuge = 4+5+2 stunt+4 Szoreny ExSux {cheat, pin the blame, prefers his vengeance cold}=11[+4].
Aleph: /r 11d10s7c10 +4 #JustAnAccidentalBrokenNeck
Bot: Keris rolled 9 <6; 6; 8; 2; 4; 4; 10; 8; 1; 8; 2> #JustAnAccidentalBrokenNeck
EarthScorpion: OK, it's Diff 4 due to the... uh, notable damage. So that's a -5 external penalty for people to investigate what happened here.
EarthScorpion: It'll also cost you 1wp and 1 Limit to suppress Possessiveness in favour of Love of Art to avoid taking the artefact blade so you can leave your artistic fake death scene
Aleph: Damn it. Yes, okay, I will suppress.
EarthScorpion: And with that, that's the first kill done. We can look to get the next one done maybe as one scene, and then a final scene as wrap-up and so on.

...

Aleph: Okay, so Keris will... huh.
Aleph: ... is it actually an act of depravity to order a terrified servant to give you a massage and then take advantage of her in a private room?
Aleph: Or is that just something that's totally cool with the Realm as long as a DB is doing it?
Aleph: Wait, no, I can just use Go Get It to timidly tell him he's been offered a free massage
EarthScorpion: Or not so timidly, because he's a very intemperate man and knows what he's here for.
Aleph: Well yes
EarthScorpion: Legitimately Go Get it might well not be necessary because he probably has a 4-dot for his appetites anyway so all you need to do is get those appetites pointed at you.
Aleph: ... true, lol. Alright, Keris will drop by the flow room, babble to her new best friend there that she's been assigned to give the Slug a massage, oh noes, what should she do, run off before Three Oaks can properly reply, and then bat her eyelashes at the very rich lord and offer him a private massage~
EarthScorpion: Hee. Of course, if Keris is up for shenanigans and is looking to use her cover story time as needed, Such Sweet Corruption could be used to get her DB waifus reading forbidden texts she provides to get them into Things Not Acceptable To The Immaculates
Aleph: ... : 3
Aleph: Yesss, mwaa haa~
EarthScorpion: Keris: "You know, if the Blessed Isle is getting too hot with these... accidents including the deaths of political figures, I heard from some traders down in Arjuf that there's fortunes to be made in the deep south. And then there's the delights of cities like Saata, the legendary city of sin and vice down in the Anarchy where fortunes in spices and hardwoods pass. I'd like to have contacts there for that, so I could Go Get It."
EarthScorpion:
Aleph:

Sasi: "So, you did the job?"
Keris: "Killed the minister. Boiled the Slug alive. Got his documents. Flipped a couple of baby dragons into reading forbidden texts and convinced them to go down to Saata to explore the wealth of the Anarchy. I'll finish corrupting them once they're there, and then maybe send them back for you to play with."
Sasi: "Always the overachiever."
EarthScorpion: Keris: decides to keep them
EarthScorpion: OK, Per + Pres compel on him
Aleph: 5+5+3 stunt+3 Cerulean Paramour=16.
Aleph: -1 Diff from Cerulean Paramour's mastery bonus {inappropriate liaisons}, and My Dark Lady has this count as UMI and increases the WP cost to resist by 1.
Aleph: /r 16d10s7c10 #MayIOfferYouAMassage
Bot: Keris rolled 7 <4; 4; 10; 7; 9; 2; 8; 2; 7; 6; 9; 6; 2; 6; 3; 2> #MayIOfferYouAMassage
EarthScorpion: His MDV is 5 base, +2 from always keeping Jade Defence active, but his Principle of Vice (4 dot) sinks that to 3. Which Keris handily beats, and he's like "yeah I have absolutely no reason not to."
Aleph: : 3
EarthScorpion: What's Keris looking like for this?
Aleph: Uh, same disguise as on Three Oaks, so "On the day the Slug arrives, Keris disguises herself as a pretty and off-duty maid and goes to search out a certain woman who's usually on duty in the evening."
Aleph: Presumably Nexan, but paler than she usually is, with brown hair. More Scavenger Lands than Tairan-Harbourite.
Aleph: Hmm. Re: "devotee of Venus Blue-Veil" and "arts of the Fivefold Weaving Petal", are those names Keris recognises from her Joyful Priestess training? That is to say; is he literally referencing her order there?
Aleph: Because if so he just managed to genuinely surprise her, which is a hilariously rare occurrence.
EarthScorpion: Not exactly - but "fivefold weaving rope" is the name of one of her hand massage techniques she learned, so it might be a related technique or practice.
Aleph: Yeah, I figured.
EarthScorpion: Heh. The smoke and mirrors in this mini arc is fun. Objectively neither DB is much of a threat to Keris in the actual kill. But both have managed to unpleasantly surprised her.
Aleph:
Aleph: Okay, Keris is, uh... partly just leaning hard into that Envious Heart Principle, but also carefully distracting him by getting him to puzzle out her story and thereby miss the pressure points she's hitting.
Aleph: Hmm. Gimme a mo to work out the rest of it, I'm leading somewhere here. Or, heh, have him make a comment, if she's got him interested enough by now.
Aleph: Sigh. With that last bit... he may think this is a job application. If the girl is her and she already went to one bad man for work and protection~
EarthScorpion: Well, let's see how his sense motive roll does. Unfortunately Keris has given him time to observe her, given him reason to do so, and so... what's her (Reaction + Politics + Style) / 2?
Aleph: 5+2+2 Coadj+3 Wolf-as-Lamb Style+1 bonus {deflect attention away from holes in your story}=13/2 = 7, and Flowering the Fairer Face additionally increases the Difficulty to read my motives by 4 for a total of 11.
Aleph: Hmm. Can I apply 7 Metagaos ExD {lurks in plain sight, cunning, enticing, false familiarity} to enhance that Reaction+Pol/2 and raise it up to 20/2 = 10+4 FtFF?
EarthScorpion: Yes
Aleph: I will definitely do that
Aleph: and then cross my fingers
EarthScorpion: /r 21d10s7c10 +1 #NastySuspiciousManUsingDragon'sCunningEye
Bot: EarthScorpion rolled 12 <4; 1; 8; 3; 6; 1; 9; 7; 6; 1; 10; 10; 5; 9; 2; 2; 2; 8; 10; 3; 2> #NastySuspiciousManUsingDragon'sCunningEye
Aleph: breathes out shakily
Aleph: Wouldn't have made that if not for Zanaran petals.
Aleph: Okay, can we assume she's bought enough time and paralysed him enough that the water-surge is coming?
EarthScorpion: Hmm. Let's see...
EarthScorpion: /r 6d10s7c10 #AvoidTheSurge
Bot: EarthScorpion rolled 4 <6; 10; 3; 6; 8; 9> #AvoidTheSurge
EarthScorpion: He's paralysed enough that he doesn't quite manage to avoid it. And yes, fortunately your patsy got the 3 successes first try.
Aleph: : 3
EarthScorpion: /r 1d10s7c10 #Survive
Bot: EarthScorpion rolled 2 <10> #Survive
EarthScorpion: He manages to roll off the table and cover his face.
Aleph: Man, of all the times for him to get a 10 on 1.
EarthScorpion: /r 1d10s7c10 #Survive
Bot: EarthScorpion rolled 0 <5> #Survive
EarthScorpion: But the water is still cooking him alive.
EarthScorpion: /r 1d10s7c10 #Survive
Bot: EarthScorpion rolled 1 <9> #Survive
EarthScorpion: He gains some purchase, pulling himself agonisingly across the floor.
EarthScorpion: /r 1d10s7c10 #Survive
Bot: EarthScorpion rolled 0 <1> #Survive
EarthScorpion: But it's not enough, because the broken pipe gives way from the roof, and dooms him.
Aleph: Okay, close there? Hmm. Do we need to game out Keris sneaking into his rooms in the chaos and stealing his paperwork?
EarthScorpion: Uh, I'll think about it tomorrow and whether I want there to be a challenge there.

...

EarthScorpion: /r 18d10s7c10 #QuestionsWereAsked
Bot: EarthScorpion rolled 8 <6; 10; 8; 4; 4; 2; 10; 9; 3; 4; 4; 9; 2; 6; 6; 4; 6; 8> #QuestionsWereAsked
EarthScorpion: So roll me for your Passing Off Blame cover-up. You need 6 successes, because it was already Diff 3 for them.
Aleph: what's the roll?
EarthScorpion: Cog + Subterfuge
Aleph: ... wait, just to check, am I rolling a cover-up that's enhanced by a separate POB roll, or just folding it into one?
EarthScorpion: Passing Off Blame is a Simple charm; it's a cover-up action
Aleph: Cool. 4+5+3 Silver Willow+3 EH stunt+9 Kimmy ExD {shameful truths, hides ugliness beyond imagining, elegant practicality}=24.
Aleph: And because Keris is kind, her narrative is of a pressure surge that nobody caught, rather than one deliberately caused.
Aleph: /r 24d10s7c10 #SuchATragicAccident
Bot: Keris rolled 9 <2; 5; 8; 3; 6; 8; 8; 4; 7; 9; 4; 3; 3; 1; 6; 3; 3; 3; 5; 10; 5; 2; 9; 7> #SuchATragicAccident

...

<Back with Sasi>
EarthScorpion: OK, so here's where you can cover what you did to those poor innocent hedonistic adulterous lesbian DBs, and declare here what Charms you were using and to what effect.
Aleph: Quick roll - Keris will have described the Slug's death for Sasi, in vivid detail if she wanted, and presented the fact that she didn't give him a relatively quick, clean death like Ama like a cat proudly dropping a dead bird at its owner's feet. How did Sasi take that? Or, heh. More accurately, how did Sasi outwardly react to that.
EarthScorpion: She lets Keris see her appreciative satisfaction.

...

<Complimenting Sasi>
Aleph: Hee. Oh Keris. Honestly that says a lot about her.
Aleph: Enlightenment, Compassion and intellect, as the three things she chose to give attention to. Sasi is powerful, kind and smart.
Aleph: Beauty and family too, yes. But, heh. It's "brilliant" and "smart" and "learned" she mentions three times. Sasi's cleverness is a big part of why Keris loves her. Her mind is as beautiful as her body.
Aleph: (I do like "my stolen princess", hee)

...

EarthScorpion: Cool. That's that miniarc done.
EarthScorpion: ... so how long is it?
Aleph: Oh god, I don't even know. I'll rip it later.
Aleph: Hee hee. It was fun tho : 3
Aleph: And is a nice little reminder of just how scary Keris is.
EarthScorpion: Hee. And it's the most DB screen time in ages.
Aleph: Heh. I don't think I told you, but I've been helping Omi put Number None up in the collated AO3 series recently, which means I've been rereading a lot of them and putting check-marks in the various votes to show which option got picked
Aleph: When Keris was massaging him, the literal thought going through my head was

Even with his guard down, Sesusu Nagezzer has a formidable mind, and may notice something amiss. Distract him."

[ ] With pleasure.
[ ] With questions.
[ ] With a puzzle.

Aleph: : 3
EarthScorpion: Hee. If he'd beaten your Guile, he would have caught on and immediately called for his guards and it would have been that time in a Hitman mission where you fuck up and everything turns into panic
Aleph: Yeah, I thought I'd fucked myself over there.
Aleph: But it was a really good narrative beat : 3
EarthScorpion: It was the Nara in Keris's head. Specifically Nara. Zana was cool with the art being this perfect killing.
Aleph: Yeah. And I did love that last line.

"Once," and her voice is barely a breath now, "there was a girl alone in a cell of stone, with nowhere left to run to. My puzzle is this, my lord. What became of her?"
Aleph: The answer, of course
Aleph: is "and then, the demon came"
EarthScorpion: If he'd beaten your Guile, he would have jumped to LUNAR ASSASSIN as his first assumption and the irony of Keris once again being mistaken for a Lunar would have been hilarious.
Aleph:
Aleph: I was thinking "this sounds more or less like an 'hour of greatest need' or 'change by deciding to stop running away' moment that could qualify for Solar or Lunar Exaltation"
Aleph: but, of course
Aleph: wrong Exaltation type~
EarthScorpion: oh keris

The Phoenixian · Aug 8, 2021

Porting an obsrvation from the discord that with the ending of this chapter, after meeting a total of three Signature Exalts in the form of Arianna, Harmonious Jade, and now the Slug, Keris has killed or directly led to the death of, uh, all three of them.

As Aleph put:

meeting Keris is a hazardous prospect if you are a sig character

Indivisible · Aug 8, 2021

It's always fun to see Keris pull off an infiltration and be absolutely terrifying.

The Sandman · Aug 8, 2021

Kind of surprised Keris didn't try to swap out the artifact sword for one of the mundane swords she presumably has in her inner world and add another layer to the assassination by having the logical "secret behind the secret" be "theft gone wrong" while getting herself a shiny.

EarthScorpion · Aug 9, 2021

Indivisible said:
It's always fun to see Keris pull off an infiltration and be absolutely terrifying.

I was playing Hitman when I was planning this session, and it kind of (really really) shows.

Aleph · Aug 11, 2021

Schools of Sorcery
Not all sorcerers belong to a school. It's not required. It's entirely possible to make your way through the Stations and initiate entirely through self-study, piecing together scraps into spells that function through intuition and whatever makes personal sense to you. Indeed, it may be that the majority of sorcerers in the Age of Sorrows are this type of under-resourced lone occultist, scrabbling in ruins to find individual spells and assembling a hodge-podge of techniques they've experimentally found to work, without much or any thought put into how or why they do.

But many sorcerers nonetheless join forces and organise themselves into schools, and there are many benefits in doing so. The simplest is, of course, support. A proper school of sorcery has many initiated casters who are able to cooperate on larger rituals and Workings than any could do alone, trained thaumaturgist-scribes and savant-engineers who maintain their anchors and aid the school's masters, libraries of research and resources available to members of the school. Such a wealth of infrastructural backing is literally priceless in the eyes of a sorcerer who must bargain for every hard-won scrap of knowledge and pay for every ill-trained assistant, and it is no small surprise that they look hungrily on the offer of joining a group of peers and allies. Alas, few such schools survive in the Age of Sorrows, with the Heptagram being the most well-known.

There are more abstract benefits to membership in a true school of sorcery, however. A school is an institution, a hierarchy of students and teachers and research and learning. The wealth of accumulated contracts, oaths and mystical potency built up by shared practice and study is strengthened by new practitioner added to the web, and a sorcerer can call on this Lineage just as they can call on the Backing of a kingdom to Anchor their spells - an Anchor that is impossible to take from them as long as their school survives and accepts them among its ranks. The benefits of this are obvious - and compounded in the opposite direction, for the paradigm of the school helps the school itself.

Paradigms
Many sorcerers take students. It is a risk, yes, to trust another with power they might use to overthrow you, but allies are valuable and enlightened subordinates are a flexible and potent form of power. Sorcerers who give no thought to the theory behind their casting struggle to teach, though. Their initiations are unique to each individual, their spells tend to be specialised forms they have personally found to work, and their views on how and why their sorcery functions - if they have put thought into such questions at all - are generally a hodge-podge of intuition and tricks with no unified groundwork or theoretical basis behind them, trading true understanding for superficial knowledge. While effective for their own casting and permissive of any spell they come across, it is more difficult to pass this kind of individualised paradigm on to a student due to the lack of any concrete basis, hard to make predictions with by extending existing knowledge to phenomena the sorcerer hasn't encountered before, and almost impossible to develop new effects by building on basic axioms towards an intended result.

By contrast, a strong paradigm regarding the nature of theory offers a universal theory of essence that explains its behaviour and can be used to predict its interactions even in previously unknown or entirely novel situations. This limits a sorcerer's flexibility in learning spells somewhat, but allows them to far more easily theorise how a desired effect could be achieved and then develop a means to realise it. The systematised methodology underlying a proper paradigm is easily taught to students, producing both sorcerers of the same paradigm and thaumaturges who share its base axioms and can assist in rituals and Workings. The power of a paradigm is in its ability to be taught - and so reproduce itself and spread further, gaining more power with each generation to follow and further its ideals.

Each school can be understood to represent a different theory of language, and in much the same way as academics debate fiercely over their theories, the schools of sorcery have ever been rivals. Indeed, the first great split in human sorcery was born of the fact that while one can anchor spells in a demesne, one cannot in a manse, for the mystic power in a manse is already sealed down and calcified into the production of hearthstones. Devonian sorcerers have long considered this to be the best use for the dragonlines, for the hearthstones may be used by a sorcerer to cast spells that require essence of aspects other than their natural one, as well as to defray the costs of casting.

By contrast, Salinian sorcerers typically view manses to be blights on the natural essence of Creation that cause it to stagnate and putrefy, instead favouring the use of untapped demesnes as places of power. Silur took a neutral position in the entire argument, though practically speaking she tended to favour manses due to the increased flexibility that easy access to hearthstones gave sorcerers. Silurian sorcerers did hybridise the two designs to create manse designs that instead radiated their power in synthetic dragonlines to specially made artefacts - a compromise which pleased neither party, and only furthered the arguments and academic wars between all three schools.

Major Paradigms
There are many schools of sorcery in the modern day. Compared to the zenith of the sorcerous art, however, even the Heptagram would have been considered to be a fifth rate and woefully lacking academy. In the modern annals of Heaven, the techniques and names of the schools are recorded by Hosesja, Shogun-Scholar of the Disciplines of the Arcane, who operates as part of the Department of Secrets. Under two-faced Hosesja's reckoning, there are only three comprehensive models of sorcery extant in Creation with all others as lesser mimicries and she insists on categorising all other schools as variants or emulations of these. In this, her rival Shu Yal, Sage-Adjunct of Sorcerous Lineages in the Bureau of Heaven disagrees radically. However, the minutiae of his intricate categorisation system is beyond the understanding of nearly all modern sorcerers, and so Hosesja's three broad categories descending from her beloved Solars have come to dominate - even though even she must accept that there were other rival schools in the First Age, lost now to time.

Devon - the School of Law

Devon stated that the world is a great machine and Essence is the rules it functions by, standing for the metaphor of functionalist language; sorcery as a tool for interacting with the world. To the Devonian school, sorcery is learning the underlying laws and rules that describe how the world works and then using the right buttons and levers to produce a desired effect.

Devon believed that a universal system of consistent rules existed that formed the foundational principles of all Essence manipulation, and that by analysis and experimentation, these rules could be understood. It was his belief that Essence was the basis of natural law; that things fell downward without something holding them up, that heat would pass from concentrations of heat to concentrations of cold, etcetera. A sorcerer could study how materials reacted to essence or how patterns of essence acted on their surroundings, recording and analysing his findings with numbers, geometry and esoteric new forms of mathematics. By replicating the correct conditions and exploiting the relevant laws and rules, they could produce any feat they had observed and understood, from creating a fire to controlling a mind.

Modern sorcery owes its reliability to the school of Devon. Most sorcerers accept that the rules behind sorcery, whatever they may be, are consistent - that a spell properly cast will always work, not fail by chance or unpredictable outside influence. Sorcerous engineering, motonic physics, magitech and other arcane sciences are largely Devonian creations; the school excelled at crafting wonders. Devon was convinced that with enough examination he could discover every law and refine them all to one world-defining principle—the master law by which the Primordials ordained Creation itself. To this end, the fanatics who echo his conviction regard even the greatest of spirits as subject to Creation's deepest laws rather than defining them - which makes them no more than further subjects for experimentation.

The Devonian school is without a rival in the construction of artefacts and material effects, being very well suited to the manipulation and measurement of energy and matter. However, it struggles to quantise and define abstract concepts such as "emotion" or "meaning", and must find complex workarounds to assign concrete values to such things - a love potion must harmonise the essence of the targets with the nature of Venus and tie their fates together, rather than simply imbuing a liquid with a conceptual imperative. Consequently, the school tends to attract sorcerers with fundamentally materialistic worldviews.

How do you cast a spell? Manipulate essence in the correct patterns and forms.

Salina - the School of Thought

Salina postulated that Creation is a living entity, and Essence is how it thinks, claiming the metaphor of structuralist language; sorcery as something which must be understood by way of its relationship to a broader system. To the Salinan school, sorcery is a way of discovering more about how the mind of Creation thinks and then convincing the living world to act on your behalf.

Salina's worldview agreed with Devon that sorcery revealed fundamental truths about Creation, but rejected his vision of a clockwork universe founded on consistent rules. Instead, Salina conceptualised the world as a vast living mind; its logical thoughts formed the physical matter of Creation, while its ideals and emotions became the insubstantial currents of Essence that flowed through it. Its inspiration; ideals applied to logic, were the marriage of the two sides in the form of living things. Just as one captivating thought can change every other within the mind of the thinker, so can one action ripple out to touch every other in Creation. A sorceress who truly understands that everything in the world is connected has a limited influence over the whole with her every spell, and can study the thoughts of the world around her to better understand and interact with it, finding logic in the woven branches of a bird's nest or ideals in the flickering dance of a fire spirit.

The most well-known product of the Salinan school is, of course, the Salinan Working, which forever imprinted the knowledge of Sorcery into the weave of Creation such that knowledge of it could never be lost, and was free to any who studied the natural world. Most self-taught sorcerers therefore follow Salinan ways, as the Working leads them towards her philosophy. Some call the Working hubristic, but Salinan hardliners see no meaningful difference between weaving a small thought into Creation's mind and persuading it of a new overarching belief. Some of the more mystical and devoted of their number opine that if Creation had no sapient consciousness before the Working, it surely does now - and often these hardcore believers seek to commune with this vast awareness in the hopes of gaining its flavour.

The strong focus on the interconnectedness of Creation and the framing of spellcasting as the persuasion and influencing of the mind through communion with Creation's thoughts makes the Salinan school particularly adept at sorcery that affects the natural world or imposes on lesser minds - as there is no fundamental difference between planting a memory of a lavish feast in a mortal and commanding a field to give a harvest. However, it has faced criticism for its "messiness" - without Devon's calculated nature or Silur's precise grammar, it is prone to side effects and organic imprecision, and struggles to coax out or create unnatural phenomena that do not fit Creation's customary patterns without oaths or contracts to call on - a rain of fire is far easier than one of alien vitriol, for instance.

How do you cast a spell? Ask the living world to enact what you'd like to happen.

Silur - the School of Speech

Silur theorised that all things can be represented through a system of arcane symbols, championing the metaphor of formalist language; sorcery as a mathematical-semiotic system. To the Silurian school, sorcery is a means of extracting these archetypal symbols and qualities from the world around them and then assembling them into new combinations and sentences that describe the desired result.

Unlike both Devon and Salina, Silur thought Sorcery defied Creation rather than revealing deeper truths about it, and saw herself as upholding the ancient traditions of Brigid even as she practiced strict empiricism. She developed a way of representing spells as collections of arcane symbols that each held innate power and represented some quality of the spell's manifested result: a form, an element, the direction of energy flow, the resonance of a ritual tool, etc. A sorceress would extract these archetypal qualities from Creation (or consult a Silurian dictionary), then build new combinations such as [obsidian] [butterflies] or [skin] of [bronze] that describe a desired result. Each spell is a sentence assembled according to this particular grammar, but which defines a result that would never occur naturally.

Most sorcerers accept Silurian concepts to some degree, simply for their incredible utility for describing, adapting and researching spells, but the Silurian school proper has come to hold that the magic is in the language - speak, and it shall be so. Some disciples compare the way sorcery can mix and match the forms and qualities of Creation to the similar transpositions found in the Wyld or among the glamours of the Fair Folk. They believe the Primordials imposed an arbitrary order on Creation by pure will and the sorcerer reaches beyond Creation to impose a new order in accordance to her own will, albeit on a smaller scale. Silur herself, ironically, was never one of these hardcore devotees. She saw no deeper meaning in this grammar than a convenient way of describing spells.

The Silurian school is theoretically unlimited in scope, being capable of creating any effect it can describe. In practice, most of the great Silurian libraries and dictionaries of the High First Age are lost, and a student's knowledge of the arcane script limits them heavily. The school excels at adapting and adjusting spells to create new variations by tweaking the grammar and phrasing of sentences, but places a high burden on students before they can begin to get creative or unorthodox with it - in the modern age, rote memorisation is often necessary. As such, it is a common school among casual sorcerers who do little research and focus on a set of rigorously memorised spells, but sees little use at the cutting edge of experimentation and development.

How do you cast a spell? Describe what you want to occur in the arcane script.

Ediacar - the First School, the Forbidden School, the Lost School, the School of Will

Before even Devon, there was Ediacar. It is possible they were the Second Sorcerer, Brigid's first student, but little is known about them or their precise teachings. Later sorcerers sought to destroy the records of them and deny the first organised school of sorcery. Only fragments remain, and most of what is recorded of them is in the form of condemnations by their enemies.

According to Devon, Ediacar's hubris led them to believe that sorcery was the manifested will of the titans, serving as the metaphor of cultural–historical language; sorcery arising from the thought of potent beings. The sorcerer learns various techniques to make their own will evident - a spell that flays the flesh from a foe's bones is the intent to harm, while a spell that breaches all the doors in a building is the desire to enter. Ediacar was said to view sorcery as a means to reify one's intentions through emulation of the titans, studying their ways to learn to think as they do. Later on they expanded their techniques to emulate other beings; gods, elementals, even the mad princes of the wyld.

It is certain that Ediacar was one of the first - perhaps the first - of the great demonologists of the Exalted host, and they eagerly reached out to the new denizens of Hell to plunder their secrets. Early Ediacarans learned to call the Eyeless Face from its Elsewhere-gaol, took war knowledge from the rebellion of the Incarna and turned it to the end of documenting how demons might be brought to serve, and studied the thoughts of the ancient elementals to dream up new islands dragged up from the seabed of the West. It is said that Ediacar was the first to bind a demon prince, though others doubted who was the master and who was the servant in that relationship.

Ediacar is forgotten, and rightfully so; their name erased by the late Deliberative. Yet their legacy lives on. Their hand wrote the very first great tomes of demonology, and codified the binding templates. Some copies of copies of their books still exist within Heaven. And more than that, Ediacaran styles of sorcery spontaneously arise when sorcerers learn the ways of demons, for their early techniques had much in common with the way the masters of Hell practice their wicked sorceries. The pliable among them are brought into the worship of demons; the hubristic adopt Ediacar's peculiar obsession and come to believe that it is possible to ascend to become one whose every thought and every will is an act of sorcery.

As an early school of sorcery, Ediacar's techniques were crude compared to later methods - yet in that way, fragments can be of great help to the sorcerers of this fallen age. Moreover, their talent for recording and cataloguing powerful beings and how to make use of them is second to none. Ediacar's spells combine techniques learned from such beings to manipulate and structure essence - gods, demons, elementals, fae and more - in ways that seem counterintuitive and inefficient compared to more modern schools. In surviving fragments of rituals, often one must symbolically take on a role or call upon an ally to express one's intent in that way; ritually become a demon to express power as they would, or don the Sun's mask to call on his cleansing light.

How do you cast a spell? Express your intent in the way a being who could do such naturally would.

The Kerisian paradigm

The School of Influence
Keris says that Creation is a living entity, and Essence can override its natural thoughts, representing the metaphor of post-structuralist language; sorcery as a tool with which to influence others. To the Kerisian school, sorcery is a means of developing conceptual forms called Ideals; thoughts too vast for a mortal mind to comprehend, and then enforcing them on the mind of Creation to enact and realise them.

Metaphorically speaking, the Kerisian school takes language to fundamentally be a means by which you can change the thoughts of others. Sorcery is a means to an end rather than a system in its own right or a way of uncovering deeper truths about the universe, and Kerisian sorceresses care less about what sorcery fundamentally is than what they can do with it. It is a tool to change the face of Creation - the nature of existence is a question for philosophy, not sorcerous analysis or research.

The Kerisian school is a hybridised mongrel school by nature; largely based on the Salinan school before it, it incorporates notable reinvented elements of Ediacar's lost work through a Silurian lens and faint traces of the Devonian school's more analytical approach to essence-shaping largely born of her original tutor, Sasimana. This combination of influences to create a child of four parents that fully resembles none is perhaps to be expected from the Kerisian school's founder and head.

One notable difference from the Salinan school that birthed it is that the Kerisian school makes frequent use of the notion of abstracted power or energy being used to feed or fuel spells - where a Salinan sorceress is conducting a dialogue to convince Creation to light a blaze for them which ceases when the world tires of their persuasion, a Kerisian sorceress is far more likely to imagine a finite pool of power being consumed to produce the inferno or force its Ideal on the world-mind. This also influences the school's proclivity for cannibalisation and scavenging by way of their belief in divitiae.

The Kerisian concept of the Ideal is a perfect match to the Ediacaran concept of spells as Primordial thoughts, with the mind of Creation substituted for that of the sorceress in a display of - somewhat - less hubris. Though Kerisian sorceresses still think of Creation as a living thing as the Salinan school does, they care far less for working in concert with it, seeing it as something their own will can overcome on the small scale rather than a greater power that must be entreated and persuaded.

Kerisian spells often have personalised forms chosen when they are learned; each student's intentions give unique form to their manifestation of the same spell's shared Ideal. The use of Pact, Ally and Mentor anchors is a major theme of the school inherited from its Salinan mother, with a secondary focus on Artefacts as sorcerous casting tools.

Axioms
The Kerisian school blends all four of its predecessors into the perception of Creation as a living thing with natural patterns of thought, which correspond to the laws of nature. Sorcery can break these rules and make the mind and body of Creation think and act differently, substituting an Ideal into Creation's mind to be realised. In general, the Kerisian school recognises three levels of thought in the world-mind of Creation:

Autonomous reflexes are the everyday laws of physics that anyone can use. When one thing strikes another, it applies force both to the striker and the struck. When a fluid is heated, it expands and gets less dense; when it is chilled, the reverse occurs. Things fall downward unless held up and water runs downhill, and if a disparity exists between phase states - heat and cold, dense and rarefied, etcetera - energy or matter will tend to flow from areas of higher potential to those of lower potential. These laws are on the level of a knee jerking when tapped with a hammer; purely physiological responses that comprise the natural way the physical form of Creation functions. Mortals make use of the autonomous reflexes of Creation whenever they chop down a tree by hitting it with a sharpened axe or jump over a puddle by pushing off the ground with their feet, and they take no special enlightenment to use, only knowledge and skill.
Natural thoughts are the ideas and concepts the mind of Creation is naturally disposed to have under certain circumstances, and correspond to thaumaturgy. If you mix together a specific blend of substances in the right way, it reminds Creation of the incredible healing powers of its champions, and an alchemical tincture that lets mortals heal as Exalts is the result. If you form the Mudra of Ignition in front of something small and flammable, it draws Creation's thoughts towards the spark of flame that exists in almost all things, and sets your kindling on fire. If you draw a line of salt or fresh herbs or running water on the ground, it symbolises the pure elements that helped slay the fallen Primordials, and so Creation prevents the Dead from crossing it. Advanced knowledge is needed to make use of natural thoughts, as they are rarely intuitive or easily discovered, and most mortals who make use of them benefit from Enlightened minds that can more easily prompt the world-mind of Creation.
Unnatural thoughts are dreams that Creation would not naturally have, but which someone with an Ideal memorised can enforce on it, either by triggering a corresponding natural thought and then substituting the Ideal in its place or by simply hosting the Ideal in a mind of sufficient power and overwriting Creation's thoughts directly - for while Creation's mind is extraordinarily powerful, it's also very diffuse, and can be overridden on the local scale. Only the Initiated mind of a sorceress can host an Ideal, and even they require Anchors to leverage it into Creation's world-mind to be realised, for naught but the vast consciousness of a Primordial or a world can comprehend an Ideal in full.

Paradigm Concepts

Ideals

A true sorcerous spell is a thought without a mind; the dream of an effect, an abstract arcane concept called an Ideal. This concept shows the Ediacaran influence on the young school, as an Ideal can be compared to the crystallised thought of a Primordial, self-contained and separate from a mind to think it. An Ideal is incomprehensible to any lesser consciousness than that of a Primordial, and needs a mind of sufficient strength and Enlightenment to host it at all, with Ideals of higher Circles needing even stronger minds to support - putting the higher Circles of sorcery out of reach of those without sufficient strength.

An Ideal is useless on its own, for a mortal mind - or even that of an Exalt - cannot hope to unfold and comprehend it in its entirety. Instead, it is imposed on the vast world-mind of Creation, a consciousness as great as its mother-creator Gaia. Two methods for this are commonly practiced by the school, corresponding to their two casting styles. In the first, the sorceress borrows the mind of a powerful ally and uses it in concert with her own to directly force the Ideal into Creation's thoughts. This style favours the school's use of alliance Anchors like Ally, Mentor and Pact, and generally requires a sympathetic link to the ally whose puissant will the sorceress is calling on.

The second casting style is more manipulative. Inducing a natural thought in Creation's world-mind that resembles her desired effect, the sorceress substitutes her Ideal for the thaumaturgic response that would normally occur. Making the Sign of Ignition draws Creation's thoughts towards producing a wisp of flame, and this gives the sorceress an opening in which she can more easily imprint the Ideal of the Brilliant Raptor over that minor magic without the world-mind resisting. This style is suited to the use of Artefact Anchors that are used in the initial thaumaturgic priming and which then channel the essence necessary to leverage the Ideal into place over the world-mind's response.

Disparity

Though not a core component of the school's paradigm, the concept of disparity is present in many of its spells and workings. The Kerisian school believes that there is power in disparity, and often seeks to create deliberate imbalances in order to manipulate the flow of essence. The nature of imbalance requires a sacrifice of control, and in this the sorceress may be analogised to the martial artist who breaks their base in a leaping kick, accepting the loss of stability in order to add more power to their downward kick.

Every action has a reaction, so when a Kerisian sorceress makes use of this principle, she disrupts the resting state of Creation and engineers a sharp inequality to take advantage of the resultant flux as the world rebalances itself. To reactivate a manse, she blocks and dams the dragon lines and then releases a surge when enough pressure has built up; to drain contaminating Wood essence from a site she erects a barrier around a nearby area and eradicates all the Wood essence within it, allowing the ambient Wood essence from the focus site to diffuse over to the barren area once the barrier is dropped.

Care must be taken when casting spells and Workings in this way, because the interconnectedness of Creation can lead to unpredictable ripple effects that may take a sorceress by surprise, especially if the lingering effects of previous disparities remain in effect. However, like a living thing, the world will adapt to perturbations given time, and after the initial rebalancing she seeks with a ritual it will eventually restore itself to a settled and predictable equilibrium.

Divitiae

Divitiae (singular divitas) is a theoretical concept of the Kerisian school used to visualise work and value in a Devonian-inspired way. Time, energy, essence, mystical power and other scarce and valuable resources that can be spent on undertakings are modelled as quantities of an abstract quality that refers to the net utility invested in an entity or system, and which is correlated (assuming no wastage of loss) to the effective usefulness and prowess of the vessel. The food, time, effort and money a parent spends in raising and teaching a child can be modelled as an investiture of years of divitiae that transforms a helpless screaming baby into a capable and skilled adult, while the exposure to the inexhaustible Primordial power of an Infernal Exaltation and the dozens of gifts of Yozi metabiology Keris has internalised with its help has imbued Keris's inhuman body with more divitiae than the population of most cities.

This model is not an exercise of pure theory. The Kerisian belief in divitiae was originally conceived of by Rathan and Haneyl as a way to formalise their mother's intuitive view of the movement of value between systems and to better model the time-effort efficiency of different projects, but this use was rapidly eclipsed by spells and methods to extract divitas from various sources for use - the hearthstone generation of manses being an obvious example. Objects and beings of power hold substantial divitiae in their forms - or their remains - which can be torn from them by spells such as the Sacrifice of the Crystallised Heart or released into the world by spells such as the Rainbow Wave.

Sometimes the divitas gained from a drained entity will be material - the high-grade materials of a crashed Shogunate train, for instance - while at other times it will be more conceptual, such as a Working to infuse a captured demon's spite and combat prowess and expertise in certain occult arts into an artefact by boiling them down to azoth and reforging the artefact with it. This is not always safe, however - divitiae can equally be thought of as importance in the thoughts of the world-mind, and under this view it may be tainted by logical or emotional associations. The materials of the train might carry traces of the Great Contagion on them, the demon's spite may cause the artefact to turn on its owner, and the blasphemous results of the Black Nadir Concordat's desire for the divitas of the fallen titans are plain for all to see.

School Structure
The social structure of the Kerisian school is in some ways extremely typical for a small school of sorcery, and in other ways radically unusual. As is quite typical for such things, it is centred around its charismatic founder, and has grown as she taught her children and relatives. Her ideas and beliefs about the art have been passed down to them, and between the sorcerers of the school they have fleshed out ideas, practices, and invented new spells that use these theories.

Where it differs is the fact that said founder is a green sun princess who has greatly externalised her own nature into a soul hierarchy. Her children are her own souls, each as potent as a demon lord, she has taught the first circle demons they have created, and at present - excluding the demon lord Hermione who has been adopted into her family - every practitioner of the school is part of Keris's own soul hierarchy.

Because of this, the sorcerous school is essentially simply her family group at present, and it is likely that any new sorcerer they would teach would be adopted into the family as part of their instruction. However, the relationship is not purely one of a family. Before her Exaltation, Keris was a trainee in the Blue Way of Venus Joybringer, an impoverished mendicant cult operating in the Scavenger Lands, and she combined the practices of that group with her observations of the priesthoods of the corrupt pirate-city of Saata to create a rough-and-ready internal scheme for advancement.

Lowest ranked within the school are the students; those who have only just begun their training. Showing the imaginative naming expected of Keris, those who take that next step are referred to as initiates; those initiated into the secrets of the school and who have proven they have mastered its precepts and fully understood its principles enough to take a hand in teaching new students in turn - a process akin to taking the blue as a Joyful Priestess, and which shares with it an expertise in one or more arts of thaumaturgy. Those initiates who have cultivated their Enlightenment to the degree required to gain sorcery are referred to as aspirants, and face increasing pressure and expectation to pass the Trials, while disciples lack the inner strength to pass the Trials but have mastered a field of thaumaturgy to a degree that affords them respect, and are trusted to lead projects within that field.

Upon doing so and gaining the power to Shape the world, aspirants rise to the rank of adept and are given a new deed-name, chosen in some way to represent some part of their nature or personality - Rathan Waisikir, for example got his deed-name for his inquisitive nature. The masters have the highest respect in the school, though the line is much less firmly drawn. To be a master, the other masters must agree that the prospective is their equal. After that, they must demonstrate to the rest of the school some new spell or working they have devised which benefits the group as a whole, and then take on a chosen grand task. The first master other than Keris herself, Oula Montressa, created the Rainbow Wave as the Kerisian variant of the Sorcerous Blade, and took on the task of codifying and formalising the young school's methods of recording spells and establishing their library within Zen Daiwye.

Because of the family ties and the relatively flat hierarchy, the Kerisian school is fairly open about sharing spells and knowledge with each other, as the bonds of kinship allow a certain certainty of reciprocal aid and not-running-off-with-the-knowledge that others might not have. Still, Keris herself is not a natural teacher, with a pronounced tendency to leave other members of the school to find their own way as she had to. In many ways, Oula is the better codifier and teacher, which makes Keris very proud of her first student and protege.

Membership
As of Calibration of RY 774, the Kerisian school had the following membership:

Master Keris Maryam Dulmeadoht, founder and mother of the school (literally for most of the members in the latter case).
Master Oula Montressa, Keris's first student, and fiancee of her son Rathan. Oula was the one engaging in the codification and recording of the spells of the school. Despite merely being a first circle demon, Oula was brilliant, extremely driven, and threw herself wholeheartedly into sorcery to overcome her weakness relative to the other members of the school.
Adept Rathan Waisikir, Keris's eldest son and sixth soul. He was at this point the most accomplished of the initiates, though some might say that his wider knowledge of sorcery came more from the personal tuition of Oula and his workshy nature giving him plenty of time to sit around and study the occult arts.
Adept Hermione Matahan, Keris's adoptive daughter and the Envious soul of the Conventicle Malfeasant. A bodiless image of a dragon who lived within mirrors, Hermione nonetheless managed to initiate into sorcery - a fact that she was very smug about. Her aims with sorcery were to overcome the limitations of her nature, gain power to safeguard herself from the forces of Hell which she had escaped from, and incidentally prove herself better than all her fellow souls.
Adept Haneyl Azhgardana, Keris's second daughter and seventh soul. Compared to the others, Haneyl was much more of a utility-focussed sorcerer, carrying out little original research and learning spells primarily on how they aided her in her other goals.
Students Yuu, Ellysivera, Calesco, and others. At this point, the list of students was fairly scattershot, with Keris still learning the best way to lead others to sorcerous initiation and basically willing to teach anyone in her family who showed any interest in an attempt to try to train more sorcerers.

Shane_357 · Aug 12, 2021

Bloody hell.

deadcrystal · Aug 12, 2021

Aleph said:
Each school can be understood to represent a different theory of language, and in much the same way as academics debate fiercely over their theories, the schools of sorcery have ever been rivals.

I presume Exalted Wittgenstein's school of Sorcery is highly unpopular, as whilst it excels in long diatribes about beetles and boxes, it's unclear that it actually involves any spells.

Aleph · Aug 14, 2021

A social season for Keris-as-Cinnamon and a look at some more of the Anarchy in Earth 774, while Haneyl and Calesco are left in Saata to guard against the magistrate and Rathan and Zanara are off working devilry of their own to the east and west.

Amazing Abzan · Aug 14, 2021

Haneyl said:
"Awww, come on." Haneyl nudges her in the shoulder. "You're going to be getting plenty of exercise tonight, so you need to keep your strength up. And I was thinking... hmm. Thick rice noodles with prawns, fishcake, puffed tofu, and cockles, in a coconut broth garnished with lemon and mango. Oh, and there should be pork belly in the pot downstairs for the guest meals, so I can use that too. Something that'll give you the fuel to keep your girlfriend up all night." She tilts her head. "And maybe... oh, maybe some candied mango baked in lemongrass for dessert... hmm. Or something with honey and coconut milk..."

Dammit, now I'm hungry.

Anyway, good to get a reminder of how terrifyingly effective Keris is at corruption and subversion right after we saw her Hitman it up last chapter. Sasi's so lucky, this girl is the whole package

WolfKit · Aug 14, 2021

I knew that Zanara could be terrifying because they're part of Keris, of course they're terrfying.
But seeing them in action? Yeah, that's terrifying. And there's no escape either, because successfully avoiding their art would simply be a challenge for them to get creative.

Indivisible · Aug 16, 2021

I always enjoy when Keris corrupts someone, because her views on different kinds of loyalty means that the people she recruits are usually pretty loyal even before Exalted level magic comes into play.

Aleph · Aug 21, 2021

So back in Water we saw Keris on a high-stakes solo mission. Now who wants to see her lead, hmm? Well, for those of you that do, Early Wood 774 is going to make you very happy, because this time Keris is commanding her troops as she sets out to assault the Firepeak Pave, with a touching send-off from Lilunu and some extremely interesting discoveries as she makes her way south from the coast!

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

Princess of Stabbity

Subdefective

Princess of Stabbity

Princess of Stabbity

Princess of Stabbity

Princess of Stabbity

The Glacier Witch

So Zetta Slowpoke

╯‵Д′)╯彡┻━┻

Princess of Stabbity

Banned Forever

Slaaneshi Cultist

Princess of Stabbity

Pay no attention to the fox behind the keyboard.

Princess of Stabbity