Aleph: So this is going to be "having cooled down...", reactions from various souls, the summoning of Rathan, the fretting of Haneyl and The Second Day. Yes?
EarthScorpion: Probably
Aleph: cool
EarthScorpion: Also, heh, remember - Keris invited Asarin to the great parties here~
Aleph: : D
Aleph: oh yeah, the last thing - or rather the first thing - is of course going immediately to Lilunu and telling her what happened (though without the "kill the Unquestionable" bit).
Aleph: Because Keris is a Good Girl who informs her bosses of developments like this once she is no longer crazy and raving.
...
EarthScorpion: Oh, Zanara. Zana is at the moment ULTIMATE BRATTY LITTLE SISTER.
Aleph: : D
EarthScorpion: (she has learned well from Haneyl)
Aleph: I note that Rathan was told that the "she-he" was still in the... statue...
Aleph: ... Nara was female when Zana put them in there.
Aleph: DAMMIT ZANARA.
Aleph: Did you do that for the
sole purpose of smuggling yourself up to Rathan's moon?
EarthScorpion: Maybe. Maybe not.
Aleph: of course
EarthScorpion: ... sigh. Haneyl totally tolerates a lot more wall-drawing and generally indulges the Zana side a lot more, because she has the same creative drive and sometimes Zana makes beautiful things and she can just whitewash the walls she doesn't like.
Aleph: hee
Aleph: Don't think I didn't notice that you had Zana looking like that link you posted earlier, btw.
EarthScorpion: Well, Zana looks how Zana wants to. But yes, she tends to have a duality of colours. Like having different coloured eyes, and hair that's two colours. While Nara is a lot more wide-ranging.
Aleph: Or, hah. That condition, what's it called. Skin heterochromia, you know? A type of chimerism, I think.
EarthScorpion: Piebald? Mosaicism?
Aleph: Possibly, yeah. You know the kind I mean, anyway. Can't find any pictures though.
EarthScorpion: Or do you mean Blaschko's lines?
Aleph: No, it's visible all the time. I've seen pictures - it's a bit like eye-heterochromia, but with the skin instead. I think it's a type of chimerism where two different skin colours went into the mix. She likes doing that, especially mixing Keris's complexion with something closer to Lilunu's.
Aleph: Oh, Keris. She may use "facepainting" as a form of Zanara-time more often now.
Aleph: (She may also find out that when Zanara paints teardrops-turning-into-eyes down your cheeks, sometimes the eyes work.)
...
EarthScorpion: o yeah, so the timeline... hmm, we're on Calibration 2 ATM?
Aleph: Yeah, or... leading into it. Keris will be able to summon Rathan when she wakes midmorning.
EarthScorpion: kerisssssss
Aleph: : 3
Keris: "I believe the appropriate terminology here is..."
Keris: *grins viciously*
Keris: "MINE."
EarthScorpion: Keris: "Omg, look at
that guy's sexy spearwork."
...
EarthScorpion: Hmm, how old is Zanara going to be?
Aleph: Vali and Zanara are still children - they'll have gained a few years, but they're probably in the 6-8 range now. Sigh. Honestly, there's a pretty good chance that Vali right now is just charged up and manic and won't be able to sustain his dragon-form. He's an eight-year old running around on a sugar high kicking sand all over the place and swordfighting invisible ninjas, and soon he's going to crash and conk out for hours.
EarthScorpion: Well done for realising that he's on an upswing right now and he's burning through his energy reserves. I wondered how long it was going to take.
Aleph: Oh, I figured that out last night. Keris, however, didn't. Because while I think she
has spent offscreen time with him - I really need to put her offscreen daily meditation into concrete defined terms somehow - she hasn't seen his mood swings much.
Aleph: ... huh. She has seven souls. There are seven days a week. Heh. I may just assign them all a day, then, and she spends that night of meditation with them.
Aleph: ... aaaand now Krisity's days are named after her souls.
...
<post-Noh>
Aleph: Hmm. Okay. So what Keris wants for today is to, mmm, occupy Echo for an hour or two at a time so that she can make a cursory showing at a few events to make it clear that she is in fact in Hell, find and talk to Asarin and Naan, and pop back every hour or so to stop Echo going too far out of control. She has an attention span of "about a scene", so I'd say Keris probably
can get her set up for an hour or two with - say - a masterfully crafted hellish toy that is definitely not a lament configuration which spits poison darts or gouts of fire at you if you access a trap combination, and which may or may not have a priceless treasure in the middle if you solve it (it is made to trick baby Cog-focused Exalts into worshipping Ligier).
Aleph: Or it might just serve as a door that leads you into Hell, come to think of it.
EarthScorpion: Well, getting her drunk
would work for some of that...
Aleph: ...
...
EarthScorpion: Yeesh, how long was this session?
Aleph: Very. Weirdly appropriate to ring in the New Year with, I suppose.
EarthScorpion: Yeah, heh, new year synch.
Aleph: Hang on, lemme check total. First half was 9:30-3:15; better part of 6 hours. Uh. That's a normal length session all on its own.
This one was... 7-1:30; six and a half hours.
Aleph: so, uh
Aleph: just over twelve hours
Aleph: fucking hell
EarthScorpion: 10XP, and heh, 1 demon XP per soul for upgrades of keruby.
Aleph: YESSSSS
Aleph: So that's, hmm...
EarthScorpion: You don't have to spend it for each soul technically.
Aleph: Yeah, true, it's "banked". I'll have the first three breeds turn up, though.
Aleph: ... es
Aleph: that session
EarthScorpion: 10k words?
Aleph: 20.
Aleph: We literally just output the length of a PG chapter in two days.
EarthScorpion: hee
Aleph: I mean, a fair fraction of that is datestamps... hang on.
Aleph: ... 19k, without the datestamps and user tags. 17 once you strip the post-session comments out.
Aleph: ... still the length of a PG chapter. Wtf.
...
EarthScorpion: Oh, Keris. She managed to avoid Rathan and Echo rolling into Malfeas and displaying for the first time that her souls wolf-pack opposition.
Aleph: ... oh
god. They will, won't they? Jesus fuck, the six of them will go all Artemedian on opponents. Goddamn, Rathan being all innocent and alluring and LOOK AT ME while Echo moves in with the knives...
Aleph: And
fuck, they're all assassin-trained from Dulmea. So people who dismiss Rathan as "probably not a combat threat" may be unpleasantly surprised.
EarthScorpion: Poor blood ape gang lord who has those two roll in and demand all their shiny things.
Aleph: : D
Aleph: Hee. I hadn't thought about it, but, hahaha. Of course they will. Keris has spent
so much effort getting them all to think of each other as siblings and not fight at a level above sibling squabbling and has stressed the importance of family and how she loves them all
again and again and again. I should have realised ages ago that they would wolf-pack. And they all have some form of positive principle towards her, too.
Aleph: also hee
Aleph: "She's so amused by this that she actually pays him. Admittedly in a spear lesson rather than money - and a spear lesson that takes the form of disarming him in a fluid motion too fast to follow and then slowly repeating it a few times and explaining how it was done - but Keris contents herself with the thought that she has still given him something of value."
Aleph: getting that theme of teachin' in : 3
...
EarthScorpion: Oh, Echo. She was scared by the Contrary One
Aleph: I am thoroughly unsurprised, though-
Aleph: oh
Aleph: oh, of course
Aleph: It's in Noh's nature to refuse to be found or understood. She was smarter than Echo because Echo was devoting all her intelligence -
and sitting very still to have lots and lots of time - to trying to pin her down. And Noh's nature is that the harder you try to pin her down, the more difficult it is to do so.
EarthScorpion: Yeeeeeeeep. : D
Aleph: Oh, Echo. I wonder if Noh can feel when someone is devoting lots of intelligence to pinning her down and making her better at masking her thoughts?
Aleph: ... oh right. She was amused by Echo and how Echo knows things she shouldn't. So yes. Yes, she probably can.
EarthScorpion: Of course she has it for schadenfreude purposes
Aleph: I wonder how long it's been since someone inadvertently boosted her that far? Hmm. Either within the last five years and it was a GSP Excellency-boosting, or... potentially quite a while, since Echo is kind of Cognition-optimised.
EarthScorpion: Oh, Echo. Poor Echo. No wonder she had a headache.
Aleph: : P
Aleph: I did like Noh. She came to voice her disapproval of the Golden Lord, but was she drawn there
at that time by her nature and the fact that what Keris is doing is the first step on a path that's going to throw Hell into chaos and spite the Blue Glass Maiden? That is to say, is her nature why she happened to choose that particular moment to visit, perhaps without realising beforehand why that was the right time?
EarthScorpion: Well, her logic is hard to discern.
Aleph: Naturally.
EarthScorpion: Noh is very petty as a fetich, in many ways. She doesn't have grand plans, not compared to Ligier. : p
Aleph: I'm guessing she came because of some combination of:
a) Wanting Keris to do stuff for her,
b) Keris spiting the Blue Glass Maiden with her souls, and
c) Keris's... "destiny", I guess? Or at least "likelihood", of rebelling against the powerful (Unquestionable) in time, which resonates strongly with Noh's nature and may cause her to be drawn to Keris to watch it happen.
Aleph: Heh. If this was another setting, I'd totally say Keris was fated to do so - not a deterministic fate, but a strong one based on how she's at the forefront of pantheon heresy and her attitude towards it. But of course Keris is Beyond such meagre things as Fate. : 3
Aleph: but yeah, I'd guess it was mostly "a", and now she's also interested because of "b".
EarthScorpion: Echo did amuse her more than Rathan charmed her, because Rathan wanted very simple things of her, but the Contrary One adores those who try to understand her and fail.
Aleph: *snicker*
Aleph: And she's also aware that Echo knows
things.
Aleph: ... I'd be interested in knowing how she's aware of that, actually.
EarthScorpion: Because she's much, much older than Echo and Echo is a bit smug and not as socially adept as she thinks she is. And Noh can do things like be who others don't want her to be - and Echo very much didn't want certain things.
Aleph: Ahahaha. Welp.
Aleph: o keris
Aleph: u r fetich-bait, apparently
Aleph: y r u fetich-bait
EarthScorpion: she's a fetich fetish
Aleph: : P
...
EarthScorpion: Meanwhile, Rathan is fitting in perfectly to Hell
Aleph: Pretty much, yes.
EarthScorpion: Heh. Puberty is actually stabilising him somewhat.
Aleph: Stabilising in what sense?
EarthScorpion: He's more grown-up and less spoilt.
Aleph: Ah, yes. Heh
EarthScorpion: And yes, Echo is a pain in the butt when you're trying to read
Aleph: oh very much so yes
EarthScorpion: (most other times too)
EarthScorpion: ... hee. I wonder when they're going to start getting homesick.
Aleph: awww crap
EarthScorpion: Well, after all, everything's
wrong in Malfeas. The buildings are all wrong and it's a green sun, not a red moon that's the constant feature of the sky.
EarthScorpion: And yes, Keris is really seeing that people
want things from her.
...
EarthScorpion: Also, roll me Cog + Lore
Aleph: Does Malfean Scholar apply?
EarthScorpion: Yes
Aleph: 3+2+3=8; 2 sux.
EarthScorpion: Keris does not recall any connection between Lelabet and the Contrary One.
Aleph: Heh.
...
Aleph: omg
Aleph: es
Aleph: crucial question
Aleph: srs bsns rly rly super important issue here
Aleph: what are the ship names for Kerisgame?
Aleph: Sasiris?
Aleph: Testomana?
EarthScorpion: Memory of Baisha, duh
Aleph: *eyeroll*
Aleph: you know what I mean
...
EarthScorpion: So, hmm, I want to get us out of Calibration pretty soon. I think we've pretty much exhausted it.
Aleph: Yeah, I figure that next session is the important bit; Cal 3 when the boasting happens and Keris reveals her brood to the Althing.
EarthScorpion: Keris can just not let the more problematic elements of her soul out. Like letting Vali loose.
Aleph: She might summon Zanara to meet Lilunu, who will
adore them.
Aleph: ... heh. It's a pity, because Noh would probably find Vali rather sweet. And very amusing.
EarthScorpion: Yes, but Keris can't exactly look for her to show him off
Aleph: well no
Aleph: that is a thing that is true
EarthScorpion: ... she'd also have very mixed feelings about Kalaska.
Aleph: Not quite as fond, since Kalaska is a soul of CONTROL THINGS and tries to enforce her laws, while Vali is just like "I'mma smash things that limit freedom" and "the ceiling of my workshop is full of greasy black TED-flavoured stormclouds that flicker with lightning, I am using it to make tiny brass models of feral dogs".
Keris: "... that's my smithy. Not yours."
...
Aleph: Oh Keris. You're Temperance 2, but your Payback principle means that in certain subsets of the virtue, you sometimes act like you're Temperance 4.
