Ascensions and Transgressions: the Tales of Keris Dulmeadokht (Exalted game)
- Thread starter Aleph
- Start date
Yes.
Yes, she is. Hence why "Uh, well. What do you want to know?" is a thing which gets used pretty consistently because fuck this shit I can't provide 24 successes of information. Sight is a... uh, tertiary sense for Keris.
(Also why Sasi's capacity to assume a soundless shadow-form using Skulking Shadow Shintai which makes Awareness rolls invalid when she's not in direct illumination is one of the few things that can surprise Keris)
…why do I get the feeling that Sasi's used that capability for fun uses in the past. 
My other moment when reading that was a 'Aw, she does care' when Keris showed concern for the outcastes. and a chuckle at the callback to her Po's thieving tendencies.
My other moment when reading that was a 'Aw, she does care' when Keris showed concern for the outcastes. and a chuckle at the callback to her Po's thieving tendencies.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
: 3
Well, technically, she has a pool of 14 for sensory rolls when I stunt, and Hateful Wretched Noise/Palate Without Limit double her successes and give her 4 autosux for hearing and taste. So she almost never gets lower than 10, averages around 18 and can quite easily hit mid-20s.
In contrast, she "merely" gets 2 autosux to her sense of smell, and thus averages 9, and a meagre 7 for paltry seeing things. Honestly, what kind of weirdo needs to use their eyes for stuff?
Keen (Sense) Technique and Unsurpassed (Sense) Discipline, people! They are terrifying! Seriously; Keris is a terrifying asset from an information security perspective. Once she gets Adorjani telepathy, she can sit in a room playing her harp like a cute little hired musician providing entertainment for a party and give Sasi a running commentary on the private conversations of literally everyone in the room, as well as who's sleeping with who, who's ill, who's doing drugs, a fair idea of what people are feeling if it affects their scent... anything that high-end scent (and taste, if she can touch them) rolls could reveal. For someone like Sasi, that is one hell of a useful information source, and that's without the rest of her espionage skills.
Friggin' unfair ninja Shintai sneakin' up and surprising me. ¬_¬
totes op hax nerf plz
She certainly enjoyed startling the life out of Keris with it back in Nexus. As did ES, the arse. ¬_¬…why do I get the feeling that Sasi's used that capability for fun uses in the past.
My other moment when reading that was a 'Aw, she does care' when Keris showed concern for the outcastes. and a chuckle at the callback to her Po's thieving tendencies.
And yeah, Keris has Compassion 3 and her 5-dot "Be Loved" Principle means she quite literally views being alone and without any loved ones as being equivalent to death, from an emotional perspective.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Exceeding the Excellency-pumped Perception + Awareness pools of your circlemates with just those two Charms is pretty entertaining.
No. Hateful Wretched Noise tends to send them running. Until they seriously get annoyed at the general noise pollution around them and they take steps to... deal with it.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
No, because the Compulsion part is fucking stupid and renders the entire Charm pointless dross that nobody would ever buy, so we removed it. Keris takes a -1 penalty when the ambient noise is louder than a whisper and I remember to apply it, which I've stunted as her being more distracted than hurt by the noise - she's constantly soaking in a mesh of sound and trying to follow ten conversations or interesting noises at once. She takes a genuinely painful "argh that hurts mah ears" -2 penalty when it's louder than a shout, and can pay 1wp to ignore all penalties for a scene. There is no Compulsion to stop ambient noise, but the penalties don't apply to actions specifically working to stifle the source of the sound.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Uh... what? Devil Domain is fucking awesome. It has nothing to do with Artifact; it's unlimited Elsewhere storage with a Misc retrieve-or-store action. Like... can you even imagine that? Keris never has to carry luggage. She never has to worry about being searched for contraband. She never has to worry about her normal, mundane possessions getting damaged if she gets in a fight. She never has to worry about being encumbered by carrying a fuckoff huge lance or a bunch of maps or an automatic coffee machine around, while still having access to all of them. She has high Coadjutor - 4 dots - so her Domain is the size of a large neighbourhood; several city blocks, and she has effectively unlimited space for anything inanimate and smaller than her that she wants to store in there. And she can carry reference materials and utility stuff around wherever she goes, easily and with instant access to them whenever she wants them.
You cannot even begin to imagine how much my life improved when I got that Charm. Before that, I was fashioning impromptu sacks out of nearby material to carry around my ill-gotten gains and hiding stolen silver at the bottom of rivers. Bar Excellencies... hell, no, even with Excellencies and sensory Charms taken into account, it is probably my most-used Charm, and easily my best utility one. The only reason Sasi doesn't give Keris all of the contraband high-value Reclamation resources; all of them to carry around undetectably in her perfectly secure soul-sanctum until and unless they're needed is because Keris's soul-sanctum happens to have a bitchy possessive kleptomaniac snake-soul with an attitude problem in it.
... also that Sasi doesn't trust Keris not to poke a barrel of algarel once too often and accidentally blow herself up from the inside, or something. Which reminds me, crap, I was meaning to get some algarel, vitriol and Yozi Venom during downtime. I'll have to see if I can stunt that in using Infamy or something. Hmm.
Yes. First when her hearing evolved, and then again when her taste evolved likewise.
It didn't help that her very first taste roll after getting PWL was after she fell over from the sudden tidal wave of sensory information, her lips hit the floor, and she rolled 26 successes on a taste roll.
The next several minutes were just sort of mindless twitching.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
Oh god.
I swear to god! No! You've just made Fiach have PTSD moment!
But seriously, just use this mutation list and see what you think looks cool.
Hey Aleph, from a storytelling perspective, would it be kosher to say that the penalty could come from being 'drunk' on the sound, like an Infernal who favored Malfeas noticing for the first time all of the little subtleties in music, and getting lost in the sound?
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The -2 is definitely pain. Shouting around hearing that sensitive is definitely painful. But for the -1 ("louder than a whisper, quieter than a shout")... well, "distraction" is what I have it as for Keris, so yeah, that's basically the same thing.
Cool, that's rather helpful. Also, it provides drama, lots and lots of drama.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah, honestly she would probably find it hilarious. Adorjan is, after all, the one who reacted with delighted laughter when Gorol's attempt to crack the Yozi's prison open in the First Age did all of jack and shit, and Malfeas stood in stunned silence for a few seconds before raging harder than ever before or since in his imprisonment.
Of course, Adorjan finding you hilarious and adorable is still not a good place to be. Her first date with my Scourge left Keris with 3 Agg damage to the everywhere and a baby Pantheon soul following her around like a duckling made of murderwind.
(Adorjan declined to pay child support.)
Of course, Adorjan finding you hilarious and adorable is still not a good place to be. Her first date with my Scourge left Keris with 3 Agg damage to the everywhere and a baby Pantheon soul following her around like a duckling made of murderwind.
(Adorjan declined to pay child support.)
Session 3
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
And on the note of redheaded Adorjani women; Kerisgame Part Three is up.
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Excuse me! Adorjan had quite mutely indicated Keris she just wanted to teach her! It's Keris who refused to accept that she got studentzoned.
Also, I'd like to point out that Keris hasn't even told Adorjan that Echo exists. How is she meant to pay child support if she hasn't even been told? I'm sure she'd help out with all the important thing any growing child needs - you know, like knives, lessons in the pain of personal attachment, and daycare with the Four Winds.
Session 4
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
New Kerisgame session up, in which Keris finds out that she can actually be rather good at this "social influence" thing if she does it the right way.
PS the right way includes bribery and shameless use of "I'm innocent and sympathetic" UMI auras.
PS the right way includes bribery and shameless use of "I'm innocent and sympathetic" UMI auras.
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- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
No idea, I'm afraid. We switched over some way into the game, and I transferred my dots over largely by eye and judgement. We do use flat costs for Abilities and Attributes, if that helps - 3xp for Abilities and 9xp for Attributes, as well as 2xp per Style dot. I'd advise - after a quick skim over Keris's starting character sheet and a fair amount of gut feeling - starting with something like 15 Attribute dots and 30 Ability dots? And then, oh, maybe 12-15 Style dots, since Styles are kickass and useful.
Note that it's way easier to raise Abilities and Attributes due to the flat costs, especially if you split xp into Enlightened (which can be spent on Charms and magic and so on), and Mortal (which can be spent on Abilities and Attributes and Styles and whatever), and award 1xp of the latter every session.
Thank you.
I'd also like to thank you for posting kerisgame transcripts each weekend. It's a really enjoyable story and a great font of inspiration for Infernals.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'm glad you're enjoying it! It's always nice to get feedback and to hear that people enjoy my characters, and Kerisgame is basically weekly writing jams between me and ES that produce ~6-8k words in one night, so it probably counts as a fic. Any favourite bits you enjoy more than the rest?
After rereading the An-Teng parts, I'd say the parts where Keris is put in situations that are out of her area of expertise, but where she rises to the occasion. The talk with the Shalshalme, constructing the cypher-cult and disguising herself as a monk were my favourite parts. I also enjoyed the details on how she interacts with the world when sight is her weakest sense and hearing and taste offer so much more information.
I'm also fond of her interactions with her souls, and even after only knowing her the the transcript summaries, I smiled when Keris complained about them being such brats.
It'll probably be very interesting to see her cut loose in a combat situation. With her Grief-Chocking Lance and Silence in Her Wake I'm surprised she hasn't taken up White Reaper Style. I suppose that would be a Style and not a Martial Art in your game.
Session 5
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Okay so what basically happened was that Revlid spoke about his very cool elemental rewrite and I was like "hey cool I wanna see some of this" and ES was like "mwaa ha ha haa" and I was like "what was that?" and he was like "oh nothing nvm" and basically what I'm trying to say here is why do I keep bringing things down on myself like this?
i've been such a fool
(And yes, Keris did indeed just create life, in a cave, with a
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