Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
huh so Lunars are like the the opposite of infernals when it comes to channeling unnatural powers which are hostile to reality as we know it?
Ascensions and Transgressions: the Tales of Keris Dulmeadokht (Exalted game)
- Thread starter Aleph
- Start date
Session 28
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
What time is it? That's right! It's your weekly Kerisgame time! In which Keris plays the blushing artist some more, accidentally another seduction (well, deliberately, but I didn't expect to seduction so well), and finds out some dirty little secrets about our friend Ledaal Norono. Also, in which we get our first look at the mysterious "Lady"; the Abyssal Exalt who's been causing us so much trouble!
Grr.
(And yes, I would totally have done it if Keris had failed that Temperance roll.
)
Grr.
(And yes, I would totally have done it if Keris had failed that Temperance roll.
)
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Dynamesmouse
Bzzzzzz
I think it's kinda dodgy how Sasi can rope people with VEE with simple request like "a drink", even though you got rid of the training effect.
I understand using VEE on that second circle to free them from the summoning circle, but offering a drink seems cheap.
Cecelyne's Excellency said:
I understand using VEE on that second circle to free them from the summoning circle, but offering a drink seems cheap.
Remember, she's spending 10m, 1wp a pop - and they can negate it for 1wp. Which is why she had to run off, find a safe place to anima flare, and recharge, and then hide until her anima went down.
It's just she's picking her targets carefully, going for influential mortals, and no one has a reason to suspect her.
But yes. VEE has always had the ability to give people things from idle requests. With the mutation upgrade, you can use someone's "Please turn the lights up" to grant someone nightvision. You can ask someone a riddle, and when they want to know the answer, you can train them in Int. Etc etc. VEE is incredibly exploitable - and it's actually far more exploitable in canon than with us, because due to our mote reactor system, you can't use Cece Mythos Exultant to recharge your expenditure with 2 2-dot stunts and a 1-dot stunt. So it's much less spammable unless you're anima flaring - and there you're telling everyone that you're using magic.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Actually, it's an interesting point about Sasi that while we've seen her collecting debts like candy - sometimes three or four from one person from one request ("do you want me to go to bed with you? Do you want Humble Root to? Do you want both of us to?") - I don't think we've actually seen her calling any in yet. She likes having them, but she seems to mostly like having them as insurance.
…heck, if she's being intimate with someone, she could pick up dozens or at least, have plenty of opportunities) over the course of the night if they experimented at all.
Or on the more mundane, all the little things people ask for over the course of the day…
Yikes. So, the important question: does Keris owe her any favours?
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Are you kidding? Keris owes her a tonne of favours. Sasi isn't stupid, and Keris wasn't kidding in the slightest when she described herself as "one of the most lethal things in Creation". Damn straight she got as many favours out of Keris as she could in the early stages of their acquaintance - most especially when she agreed to help in Matasque and even more when she agreed to go to Nexus and aid Keris in taking down Kasseni. Oh, she wasn't nearly as obvious about it with the "would you like", and she's more or less stopped now that she has a decent amount of insurance and is starting to believe that Keris a) really does love her and b) isn't going to flense that away and engage murder mode on a casual whim.
But trust me, Sasi is very much aware that dealing with something as Adorjani as Keris is like riding a tiger. Even if it loves you. Especially if it loves you. Does Keris show any signs of hurting the things she loves like Adorjan does? Well... uh, yes, actually, though not in the same way, and the circumstances aren't likely to apply to Sasi. But she has still made very, very sure that if Keris ever turns on her, she'll have insurance in the form of botches to call on. Because she knows damn well that a straight, "fair" fight between her and Keris would be over very quickly and would leave Sasi splattered all over the walls and then inhaled and forgotten.
TL,DR: Sasi has trust issues. In fact, Sasi has trust Issues. In the same way that Geasa has Issues with the Dead, and Keris has Issues with the Scavenger Lands slave trade.
- Location
- The end of all things
I find this hilarious, because the canon VEE does absolutely nothing to prevent your victim from suddenly stabbing you in the face.
Dynamesmouse
Bzzzzzz
You could command them to give you their sword, or immediately head to Malfeas, or kill their allies. Hell, the command "defend me" also works.
- Location
- The end of all things
These won't work. It takes a day of inaction towards the demanded task to trigger the automatic botches. So if they order you to defend them, you just have to murder them quickly. You won't even suffer botches for killing them, because doing so renders their demand impossible.
This could be an oversight, but I don't think so, for it fits Cecelyne's thematics far too well. VEE is a tool to enslave your lessors. Attempt to enslave those stronger than you at your peril.
Yeah, no, that's clearly going against the intent of the Charm. As the text says
Killing someone who's asked for a task of "don't kill me" is completely "failing to obey". The design intent seems pretty clear to me that phrasing you're referring to is intended to stop people from just not doing anything and waiting for the one-month timer to expire (rather than being smarter and 'going slow' if the Infernal wasn't precise enough in their orders'. Not "deliberately doing the opposite of what the task is asked for in the hope that if you can wreck it within one day, you render the task impossible to complete and thus negate it".
I feel that your reading is an exploitative reading, as bad as the infamous nicknumbers "If you give yourself the Hive mutation, that means you become a place of Habitation and thus can always use the Malfeas perfect".
Session 29-30
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Ladies, gentlemen and undefined others! On hiatus-ish for a week due to part twenty-nine being unusually short and ending on a cliffhanger, I give you a dramatic double instalment of... Kerisgame (plus)! Featuring Tengese folk tales! Hungry ghosts! New deva! Greater Dead! Mortal combat! Sapphire Sorcery! Long-lost relics! Priceless treasures! And also some slapstick and slice-of-life comedy and just a tiny little bit of LEEROY JENKINS!
... so yes, last night was fun. Even if it did mean that we only went to bed at something like 5am.
... so yes, last night was fun. Even if it did mean that we only went to bed at something like 5am.
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- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Incidentally, wrt Kerisgame; some post-game commentary that I didn't include in the doc itself, but which is interesting setting-wise:
Post Session 29 chat said:
Post Session 30 chat said:EarthScorpion: ((FOUND THE ROYAL YACHT OF AN TENG))
Aleph: Yesssss~ : D
EarthScorpion: It's not a warship, and had no more than light defensive armaments, but it's fast (when properly fuelled), submersible, and incredibly decadent,
Aleph: Hmm. What fuel does it use?
EarthScorpion: It requires different fuel for different functions.
EarthScorpion: Based on function, high grade Water fuel, Air fuel, and all the key functions require high grade Solar fuel.
Aleph: dammit
EarthScorpion: In addition, the vegetable garden requires high grade Wood fuel.
EarthScorpion: (it dynamically and on-the-fly grows whatever you want in seconds)
EarthScorpion: (including plants that never existed before)
Aleph: ...
Aleph: right. Remind me to find a high-Breeding Wood Aspect and offer them a hilarious amount of money.
Aleph: And I'm guessing Ligerian light doesn't count as Solar enough?
EarthScorpion: Ligierian fuel will, without modifications, cause systems degradation over the medium term
Aleph: ...
Aleph: Oh yes.
Aleph: Modifications.
Aleph: : D
EarthScorpion: One totally valid path
EarthScorpion: is taking it to Ligier and finding something he wants for a full refit to Infernal standards.
Aleph: And then asking him to reconfigure it to work with Ligierian light and Echoan, Rathanite and Haneylan essence.
Aleph: (this has the side effect that a lot of the fast-grown plants will either a) be flammable, b) try to eat you or c) both.)
EarthScorpion: Well, that would entail giving him "poke around" access to your essence structure and the like to actually study these peculiar hybrid quasi-Third Circles.
Aleph: Well, yes.
Aleph: ... haha.
Aleph: Haneyl would become very shy and hide behind Keris's leg because this man is like her green fire but way more.
Aleph: also he is very pretty
Aleph: and has so many things.
EarthScorpion: (first crush)
Aleph: ... sigh. Yes. Totally first crush.
Aleph: ¬_¬
EarthScorpion: Ligier: "You're right. I am the best crush. Have a toy box, little girl."
Aleph: Well, it's better than Echo crushing on her non-sapient akuma-wind half-sister.
EarthScorpion: Another totally valid way is for Keris and Sasi to start sneakily taking time off from their missions to locate manses and begin to stockpile the appropriate fuel.
EarthScorpion: And of course, there's the "how much can we strip out of it to bring down its fuel consumption rate to make its current stocks last as long as possible."
Romantic_Kaiju
Romantic Kaiju
- Location
- National Battlefield
Aleph Question on the Essence Fuels.
How exactly do they work, are they Essence Tokens, or Hearthstones? Or are they elementally aspected essence stored in a essence battery and funneled into the ship?
How exactly do they work, are they Essence Tokens, or Hearthstones? Or are they elementally aspected essence stored in a essence battery and funneled into the ship?
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Hearthstones are one way - our hearthstones are nothing like canon; they have no powers, aren't permanent and are basically oil metaphors - a hearthstone is a chunk of crystallised essence (and they're not always pure - this yacht needs very, very high-grade, very pure fuel) that will slowly degrade as you use it, and manses produce the things in the same way that an oil well does (which is why you want them). That means you can't have a manse deep in the Southeastern jungle and hundreds of feet underground that's safe from attack and supplies you with Essence via a hearthstone - if you have a manse, you need an infrastructure chain to get the hearthstones from it to you. Or you need to visit it every so often. Either way, your enemies can find it if they work at it (and vice versa for your enemies and their manses).
Essence taps and batteries are another way - you can get Solar Essence from sunlight or Water essence from the sea, though not very much unless you're willing to set up an infrastructural solar furnace or power tower (which gets you lots of yummy Solar Essence to run your First Age tech, and which is also unfortunately very easy for your enemies to smash) or some sort of big branching thaumaturgic Essence tap structure out in the ocean (likewise). Things like the Infernal Essence taps in Manual: Infernals pg 187, basically. The general thing about them is that for any real quantity of power; they are big, they are inherently stationary, and they are also rather easier to smash than a manse (which is harder to build but tougher and produces its own Essence storage medium in the form of hearthstones instead of requiring you to make batteries as well).
And the last way is just to be able to produce the stuff naturally via a stage 2 anima banner, attune to whatever you're powering and flare. Sadly, this requires you to be an appropriately flavoured Exalt, which Keris... uh... isn't.
I know there isn't one in canon, but could there be an Infernal charm that temporarily changes your anima back to the equivalent Solar caste one? Possibly an Ebon Dragon one branching out from one of his "be the opposite of something (in this case yourself)"? Or a heretical charm requiring charms from there and some of the GSNF tree?
Edit: forgot to tag you guys. @Aleph @EarthScorpion
Edit: forgot to tag you guys. @Aleph @EarthScorpion
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well, Eldritch Secrets Mastery lets you look and register to Essence sight like a Solar, or whatever else you want to metaphysically look like. But if you mean "I can produce high-quality Solar Essence wheee~"... I would say no for Kerisgame. Among other things, Solar Essence in our hack is naturally uncomfortable to Creatures of Darkness as though it were mildly Holy [1], and... basically, it brings up a lot of problems around the Holy keyword and also defeats the point of forcing you to either go to great lengths to get the Solar Essence you need to run most First Age relics or to taint and rebuild them to be warped and hideous demonic desecrations of the once-gorgeous works of art and craftsmanship they once were.
You know, like Keris has had done to her superheavy moonsilver plate armour.
[1] To be more precise, "Holy", in Kerisgame, is the mechanisation of the way that certain types of being are metaphysically allergic to Solar Essence and take Agg damage from it in sufficient quantities, etc. Raksha are vulnerable to it because the Unconquered Sun was designed so they'd be allergic to his Essence because that was the point (yes, shaped raksha too; fuck them they don't matter), Dead things are vulnerable to it because the Underworld is still traumatised by the echoes of the Essences that killed the Neverborn (Dead things are also vulnerable in various ways to pure elemental, Lunar and Sidereal Essence), and demons are vulnerable to it because the allergy to Solar Essence was forced on them by the metaphysical mutilation of one of the clauses in the surrender oaths.
You forgot the method that Keris' Cherub shrine uses. It draws on ambient mostly-air essence, slowly filling up internal batteries with low grade air essence. It just ticks up slowly (a few motes an hour, depending on local circumstances - it'd charge faster on a mountain than it would in a valley), filling itself.
This was why it damaged itself when she used it in the Underworld - it drew on entropic necrotic essence, and that degraded the systems. Same reason Keris shouldn't use the shrine when she, herself, is anima-flaring. It's not designed to handle any flavour of Yozi essence, so it'll corrode the mechanisms.
These kinds of "self-charging" mechanisms tend to only be made for fairly simple Artefacts, and then with naturally occurring essence. A Second Age crafter could build a giant bronze mirror which gathers sunlight before unleashing it on enemy ships in a burning beam, but First Age weaponry can't tolerate that kind of low-grade ambient essence (probably tainted with air essence and water essence). The High First Age usually only made things with that kind of power system if it was meant to operate away from the Creation-wide broadcast power networks and also away from the supply lines that provisioned any military force, because you take a major loss in precision and efficiency by making something work off ambient essence like this.
The Cherub Shrine is one of the archetypical examples of artefacts which work in this way, because it's basically a long range military radio made to be used by scouts operating away from the main body of your troops, and that means that they need something hardy, tough, and which can be used when you're cut off. It's a radio which can send a message every few hours. It sucks compared to integrated High First Age tactical command nets. But this design survived to be produced by the Shogunate and still gets made in post-post-apoc Creation, because it's so hardy and tactically useful.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Nah, mang - Shaped Raksha are clever little fairies who get around "the sun burns me and the moon herds me out of Creation" by sheathing themselves in terracotta shells of real-stuff, like fire, water, flesh and hope, and so can act freely under the light of Creation's day and night. Unfortunately, being a Real Boy involves sealing away large chunks of their power into Graces, which restrict their behaviour into a "personality".
Sure, they can get chunks of that power back by forging those Graces
@Aleph
Just finished reading Kerisgame and I think that Keris' souls participating in the fight is the coolest thing ever. How do you represent that mechanically? Is it part of a flurry, or do they make their own attacks? Do you balance it against other splats somehow?
Also curious about why Sasi is a shadow for so long. Has she learned Guile-Spun Shadow Flesh, or is it something else?
Also, surprised that Sasi called in a favor to have Keris keep the yacht secret. Did she also activate Our Little Secret, or was that just phrasing? In any event, it seem that Sasi's fear of Ululaya is going to drive her to flee the Yozis' service.
Just finished reading Kerisgame and I think that Keris' souls participating in the fight is the coolest thing ever. How do you represent that mechanically? Is it part of a flurry, or do they make their own attacks? Do you balance it against other splats somehow?
Also curious about why Sasi is a shadow for so long. Has she learned Guile-Spun Shadow Flesh, or is it something else?
Also, surprised that Sasi called in a favor to have Keris keep the yacht secret. Did she also activate Our Little Secret, or was that just phrasing? In any event, it seem that Sasi's fear of Ululaya is going to drive her to flee the Yozis' service.
@Aleph
Great chapter! I really enjoyed the interplay between Keris, Sasi, and her souls. Also, the Shadowrun-like relationship between Infernals and 3rd Circles is once again a great driver for character and story conflict.
A while back you mention a thaumaturgy hack that would be connected to Keris learning a smithing Style. Did I miss it or has it not become relevant yet? It sounds interesting.
Great chapter! I really enjoyed the interplay between Keris, Sasi, and her souls. Also, the Shadowrun-like relationship between Infernals and 3rd Circles is once again a great driver for character and story conflict.
A while back you mention a thaumaturgy hack that would be connected to Keris learning a smithing Style. Did I miss it or has it not become relevant yet? It sounds interesting.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
In the case of Echo, she is literally the soul created by Silence In Her Wake, so whenever Keris uses that Charm to make AoE attacks; it's Echo murdering things along with her. In Haneyl's case, it's because her souls have sort of parcelled up her Charms among themselves in "domains" (in the same way that Ligier has all of Malfeas's "green fire" stuff), and so when I OOC decided to enhance my SIHW AoE attack with Green Sun Nimbus Flare, I fluffed that as Echo getting Haneyl's help to add GREEN MURDER FIRE to her attacks; Haneyl being the soul who's claimed all of her Greater Self's "green fire" magic. She is like a chibi Shashalme-Ligier. With Sasi influence.
Or in other words; it's me using Keris's Charms mechanically and fluffing it according to the domains of Charmtech that each soul has claimed for themselves, since to some extent they are merely lesser parts of Keris (Echo is her joy and love of freedom, Haneyl is her imperialism and possessiveness and efforts to be posh like Sasi, etc). Yes, this does mean that the little "chicken!" argument about going into the shadowland was basically Keris's joy and love of freedom and her imperialistic "mine!" traits ganging up on her ego and getting her to go in and poke things with a stick instead of cautiously hanging back. Dulmea is her superego, and is feeling very lonely in said position, because she's pretty much the only even remotely superego-ish thing in Keris's entire soul structure.
(The snake, of course, is her Id.)
She's Enlightenment 9, and can thus keep Skulking Shadow Shintai up indefinitely. And because Sasi has Issues, she feels as comfortable if not more being the light-hating shadow as she does being the beautiful Dynastic woman.
Dunno, and don't be so sure on that last note - if it gets sorted out without Ululaya freaking out, things may yet go back to normal. But yeah, I think that's the first time we've seen her actually call in a debt.
... I'm not actually sure how many she has over Keris. Probably quite a few more.
Hasn't come up yet. Give it time. It may yet show up~
Now that's interesting, but would it mean that she'd be unable to use those charms if her souls were uncooperative? And if those souls were to die, would she lose access to those charms?
I'd probably work it the other way around, with the subsouls creating charms for Keris to use. I think you've got those with the soul-dependent charms, though that might be someone else.
Noctum
Dual Paradox
- Location
- Under the Skies Above
Wait, aren't you also using Revlid's Elemental revamp in Kerisgame? How do the elemental guardians that form at demenses opperate when you build a manse in this variant? Remain as protector, or go sessile and act as the fuel source for the hearthstones?
Also I noted that Sasi's caste mark was a green disk rather then the blue hourglass in baseline Exalted. Much like Keris' green circle, I presume that the Infernal caste marks in Kerisgame are green coloured versions of the solar caste marks?
We're not using that bit. Yes, elementals often form at demenses and many designers incorporate them into the manse, but others just go full "villain of a Miyazaki movie" and just kill the giant boar protecting the woods.
Yep. We just went "fuck this, most of these are lame" and just gave them green versions of the Solar caste marks.
It's not like Caste really matters for Infernals - and less so for these ones. Honestly, given we have 8 valid Yozi Charmsets in use in Kerisgame, I would just let the Infernal in question pick the 2 Charmsets they want to favour. And then justify it with "the Shards are evolving as more Yozis open their Charmsets to the Infernals". Your shard gives you two favoured Charmsets based on your personality - but it's totally valid for a Fiend to favour Cecelyne and Kimbery.