Purple means Endings.
Ascensions and Transgressions: the Tales of Keris Dulmeadokht (Exalted game)
- Thread starter Aleph
- Start date
Purple means Endings.
So it does.
For some reason I was thinking red meant endings, instead of war.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
No other Infernal has had such close contact with a Yozi. But what makes you think things have been public? Keris has met Adorjan five times thus far:
- Running by herself through a region that had just had a war take place. Vitaris happened to be passing through, noticed the shiny thing and took it back to mama for show and tell. Keris took 3 Agg damage all over when she tried to essence-measure a Primordial, saw the Csend for the first time, learned Silence in her Wake and budded Eko (and shortly afterwards her Devil Domain). She then spent a solid week tied to a bed, delirious and raving, as she vividly hallucinated nightmare-visions from Yozi Sickness. The only people who really found out about that were Sasi and Mehuni, who were there when she stumbled back home - and she didn't mention to them that Adorjan had manifested to her. Or that it had been Adorjan at all, actually, though the wounds spoke for themselves.
- Running through a layer overtaken by the Silent Wind on her way back to Creation. Ligier may have found out from the road-guards that she went down, but nobody would have known that she wound up in the eye of the hurricane when she caught her Mentor's attention. Picked up her very distinctive scars on the jawline, nose and lips, met the Csend for the first time and drove her off when she said Keris should kill Eko, spent several days unable to speak from the effort of doing so. Learned Splintered Gale Shintai from the experience.
- Visited in her dreams by Adorjan, who coupled with her and taught her Love-Born Sweet Fancies; resulting in Calesco being born. Spent the better part of a month in a painful state of arousal and hypersensitivity. Even Dulmea didn't know about this one until a hyperventilating Keris word-vomited it all over her.
- Attacked by Adorjan manifested through Lilunu at Ligier's grand ball, who wanted to a) give her child support in the form of two Artifact 5 presents and b) cut her tongue out and teach her Eloquence in Unspoken Words. Nobody else saw the fight at all, she explained to Ligier and nobody else what had happened. This was the first he knew of Adorjan taking a particular interest in Keris, and his response was to ban her from his layer of Malfeas until such a time as the Silent Wind lost interest. Lilunu was laid up for weeks with ALL THE AGG, and Keris was completely unable to make any sound or regenerate her tongue for similar timescales.
- Visited by Adorjan in her dreams a second time, this session. Adorjan reduced her to a puddle of bliss and peeled her skin off; teaching her Scarlet Rapture Shintai in the process, dropped some secrets meant only for the Yozis on Keris's head during their pillow talk, and then ordered Keris to go all Heath Ledger!Joker on the Reclamation's plans. Keris will be subject to rapid, exaggerated mood swings and a lack of control over her own flesh for the next fortnight or so.
If that wasn't the case, there would be a lot more panicking going on right now among the upper brass of Hell.
(Incidentally, we can see from this that a visit from Adorjan - which Keris treats like a religious experience - generally involves three things; Keris getting injured, Keris learning a highly thematic Adorjan Charm {generally either a Pantheon or Shintai Charm}, and Keris suffering Yozi Sickness for a few weeks afterwards because she never uses her mental defences.)
@Aleph has addressed what I was going to say, so instead I'll just bolt what I said that she didn't cover on like this and delete the rest.
More generally, in Kerisgame, the Yozis have real problems focussing and thinking at the layer of a single person. Most of their personal-scale interactions with Infernals - like that time Metagaos showed up to Keris and basically just went "LEARN MY CHARMS THEY'RE GREAT THEY MAKE YOU MORE LIKE ME" - are done through Lilunu, and that's not exactly the Yozi talking to the Infernal. It's the Yozi sticking their hand into Lilunu's chakras, forcefully harmonising her mind with them, and then she basically serves as an interpreting tool that takes the Yozi's desires and intentions and conveys them at a human scale.
Remember, Adorjan has genuine problems telling Keris apart from other Infernals and mostly recognises her by the Power of Love and by sensing the parts of her Keris has learned (and Keris has learned a lot of Adorjan Charms and favours Adorjan), so it's about enough that she can recognise and remember her when she encounters her. And Malfeas, say, doesn't have the help of the power of love.
Basically, what I did to Infernals is very much set up so you get your orders from the Unquestionable and you interact with them and you politic with them and you look to them for patronage and play them off against each other, etc. The Third Circles are in a convenient position that at the start of the game, they're more powerful than you - but not so powerful that they can just crush you. And as the game goes on, you start rivalling them at a personal level, but they have way more infrastructure than you. They're excellently tiered for a Solaroid game, and unlike Deathlords there's the assumption that the Infernals are working for multiple Unquestionable so can play them off against each other and choose which patron they want.
Yozis, by contrast, up-heave everything when they interact on a human scale, Infernals and Third Circles alike. Hence, they have to be rare when they interact with your PCs or they lose their impact. In ~150 sessions, Keris (who has a protagonist field that means rare things happen more often) has interacted with Yozis, like, six times.
Especially given what just happened.
On that note, can we just remember how involving Adorjan was always going to be a bad idea that would practically garuantee the Reclaimation, canon or this version, was going to Fail? Along with everything else involved?
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Evenly split between how; amusingly. Two in-person actual physical encounters with the Yozi itself, two Lilunu-possessions where they were speaking through a translator-mouthpiece, and two dreams where Adorjan stuck a bit of her love into Keris to talk to her from a distance.
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
You forget that one of the major Yozi's who spearheaded the idea was the Ebon Dragon. You know, the guy/thing that basically lives to betray others.
The question wasn't how the Yozi involved would fuck things up, it was who and by how much.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
And the point I made was that the Ebon Dragon - as could be guessed by the fact that his heart is Noh - fights against expectations. And that everyone was so busy expecting him to stab the Reclamation in the back, nobody noticed the keywords like "catastrophe, calamity, inevitability that bad things happen, unconsidered variable, shreds the best-laid plans of Yozi and Exalt alike, purposeful chaos, exposes the flaws in systems, lays low the proud, no-one expects her and refuses to be understood" in Adorjan's Excellency or realised that she was gearing up to stab it in the face.
Well, the thing I like to point out is that you're giving the Exalted involved access to Yozi Charms, which encourage certain modes of behaviour.
Three out of the five canon charmsets do not even remotely encourage being a good servant to the Yozi, rather the opposite in fact. Fucking Adorjan, fucking Ebon Dragon, fucking Malfeas.
This gets even better with the additional fan Yozi. Read the Isidoros Charmset, which has an Excellency which is outright inapplicable to being a good little Infernal iirc.
The Yozi- or the Unquestionable, it makes no difference- knew not what they wrought when they made the Infernal Exalted. Neither did the Deathlords with the Abyssal Exalted, and I think that's a rather important part of both 'Corrupted Solar' Exaltation types.
Three out of the five canon charmsets do not even remotely encourage being a good servant to the Yozi, rather the opposite in fact. Fucking Adorjan, fucking Ebon Dragon, fucking Malfeas.
This gets even better with the additional fan Yozi. Read the Isidoros Charmset, which has an Excellency which is outright inapplicable to being a good little Infernal iirc.
The Yozi- or the Unquestionable, it makes no difference- knew not what they wrought when they made the Infernal Exalted. Neither did the Deathlords with the Abyssal Exalted, and I think that's a rather important part of both 'Corrupted Solar' Exaltation types.
Remember, though, the Infernals project here was initiated by, run by, and organised by the Third Circles. It wasn't a plan of the Yozis at all. They all had their own goals for signing on, and their goals aren't necessarily even in harmony.
Ligier, for example, as project lead has plenty of complex reasons. Some of it was to have his own green sun princes, of course - but there's also the fact that he was the one who designed and planned out Lilunu, which suggests that he's studying how Yozi soul hierarchies work and managed to build a prosthetic soul that he could attach onto a Yozi. Considering the nature of Malfeas' maiming, it's strongly indicative that Ligier is trying to find a way to make a prosthetic second fetich for Malfeas so that his greater self can overcome his crippling. By contrast, Ipythmia is just in it for the power given by having Infernal servants and as a distraction - Ligier brought her into his plan by offering the chance to have Solars corrupted to the ways of Hell, acting for them in Creation. She might even oppose the fact that he's got his plans to reshape Malfeas if she knew the full extent of them.
Noh, by contrast, prioritises escape from Hell above all things. Every moment of captivity is agony to her. She's going to be pushing hard for Infernals to power-level to get Adamant Circle Sorcery so they can start releasing Third Circles on demand, and doing other things to weaken the chains that hold them. Erembour isn't like her older sister - she has her own vision for Creation, and so she'll be pushing for different goals than her.
The Csend is not on board with the project. She doesn't want Adorjan to have any other souls than her, and a prosthetic soul is an abomination. But others of Adorjan's souls cooperated with Ligier, and the Csend is chained to the silence in Adorjan's wake. She couldn't stop them.
And so on, and so forth. The Kerisgame Infernals Project can't be understood just by reference to the Yozis, and just looking at Yozi Excellency text would give you a very different project than the one that exists.
Ligier, for example, as project lead has plenty of complex reasons. Some of it was to have his own green sun princes, of course - but there's also the fact that he was the one who designed and planned out Lilunu, which suggests that he's studying how Yozi soul hierarchies work and managed to build a prosthetic soul that he could attach onto a Yozi. Considering the nature of Malfeas' maiming, it's strongly indicative that Ligier is trying to find a way to make a prosthetic second fetich for Malfeas so that his greater self can overcome his crippling. By contrast, Ipythmia is just in it for the power given by having Infernal servants and as a distraction - Ligier brought her into his plan by offering the chance to have Solars corrupted to the ways of Hell, acting for them in Creation. She might even oppose the fact that he's got his plans to reshape Malfeas if she knew the full extent of them.
Noh, by contrast, prioritises escape from Hell above all things. Every moment of captivity is agony to her. She's going to be pushing hard for Infernals to power-level to get Adamant Circle Sorcery so they can start releasing Third Circles on demand, and doing other things to weaken the chains that hold them. Erembour isn't like her older sister - she has her own vision for Creation, and so she'll be pushing for different goals than her.
The Csend is not on board with the project. She doesn't want Adorjan to have any other souls than her, and a prosthetic soul is an abomination. But others of Adorjan's souls cooperated with Ligier, and the Csend is chained to the silence in Adorjan's wake. She couldn't stop them.
And so on, and so forth. The Kerisgame Infernals Project can't be understood just by reference to the Yozis, and just looking at Yozi Excellency text would give you a very different project than the one that exists.
Sure, but I don't think my point's significantly damaged by that- I'm talking about the effect that these Charms will have on the behaviours of the Infernals, and I think that damages this version of the Infernals project as much as it would canon- at least, regarding the goals of the 3CDs running the show.
Yes, but you only posted a minute before me and so I wasn't addressing any of your points.
And you think that's bad? As Adorjan indicated, they just let Oramus and Szoreny in. Aka Oramus "Oh yeah, I just declare anything to be an unacceptable order that I believe to be true like 'I will never help you!' and now I never will until I break this effect" and Szoreny "I'm such a toxic person that my toxicity poisons myself and my charms literally encourage me to envy people more powerful than me until I get strong enough to take their place".
...I see no way the Reclamation won't be a smashing success as the Infernals move more and more into their yozi-flavored themes. "What do you mean somebody who is literally Malfeas's ego compressed into human form isn't happy to serve me?" "...your telling me that the person who has internalised 'the strong do what they want' isn't happy to follow my commands now that they are stronger than me?"
Sure the Reclmation in this setting is made up of Third Circle Authors but that just means that hte people who decided to do this are on a much more level playing field to the Infernals, which means its possible to bargain/threaten/bribe/serve as you like.
What the Yozi's think of the entire thing is another matter entirely of course.
Sure the Reclmation in this setting is made up of Third Circle Authors but that just means that hte people who decided to do this are on a much more level playing field to the Infernals, which means its possible to bargain/threaten/bribe/serve as you like.
What the Yozi's think of the entire thing is another matter entirely of course.
Yes, but you only posted a minute before me and so I wasn't addressing any of your points.
And you think that's bad? As Adorjan indicated, they just let Oramus and Szoreny in. Aka Oramus "Oh yeah, I just declare anything to be an unacceptable order that I believe to be true like 'I will never help you!' and now I never will until I break this effect" and Szoreny "I'm such a toxic person that my toxicity poisons myself and my charms literally encourage me to envy people more powerful than me until I get strong enough to take their place".
And fucking Isidoros
Like I said: The Unquestionable know not what they've done in making the Infernal Exalted. They have shot themselves in the foot with a fucking Soulbreaker Orb.
It's Exalted. Par for the course.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Come now.
Let's not pretend this tradition of "you have no idea what you just set loose on the world" doesn't go all the way back to Autochthon, Gaia and the Incarnae.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Heh. Actually, one thing that especially amused me this session:
ES making catty metacommentary on "I'm not going to steal your dragon statue at this point because I don't want you trying to violently retrieve it from the entire population of Eshtock and Saha combined". : P
Well yes. Involving Adorjan was always a matter of "I want the crazy wind bitch where I can see her" and then being so distracted by something else that they don't keep an eye on her.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Probably falls under the Joker Rule of supervillain team ups: as much as you know that the Joker/Adorjan is going to fuck everything up by being themselves on your team, this pales in comparison to what will happen when you don't invite them and they decide to make wrecking your plans an active and immediate goal out of spite.
meianmaru
The Devourer of Fiction
On more possible metacommentary by ES, I would note that the potential Chosen of Endings appeared just before the end of a story-arc. Speaking of what is to come after the shift to the new arc, while I'm not quite sure what to expect will happen next when Keris goes after the trail of her parents if she finds it (though it will probably involve copious amounts of bloodshed from what Aleph has hinted), I'm waiting quite eagerly to see the fallout from the "suggestion" Adorjan gave Keris, though that is probably still pretty far in the future.
Also, these last two updates raised again one question inside of me: just how killy is Keris at this point, and how much killier she will be now that she has SRS and might be hitting E5 at some point in the near future? How many Dragonblooded would you have to throw at her at the same time so that they would have even a chance to pin her down and kill her? I mean, we got to see her absolutely murderize the Lookshyans, but her playing sneaky and dirty all the time makes it hard to judge how she would fare in a more straightforward fight. Of course, those underhanded assassin -tactics are part of what makes her so deadly, but I'm just curious.
I was also wondering how sneaky and back-stabby she is when going against meaningful opposition who are alert against things like anathema, but that got answered pretty exhaustively and descriptively. And the answer is "terrifyingly so".
Also, these last two updates raised again one question inside of me: just how killy is Keris at this point, and how much killier she will be now that she has SRS and might be hitting E5 at some point in the near future? How many Dragonblooded would you have to throw at her at the same time so that they would have even a chance to pin her down and kill her? I mean, we got to see her absolutely murderize the Lookshyans, but her playing sneaky and dirty all the time makes it hard to judge how she would fare in a more straightforward fight. Of course, those underhanded assassin -tactics are part of what makes her so deadly, but I'm just curious.
I was also wondering how sneaky and back-stabby she is when going against meaningful opposition who are alert against things like anathema, but that got answered pretty exhaustively and descriptively. And the answer is "terrifyingly so".
greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
To be fair, having the Bodhisattva of Murder where you can keep tabs on them is a solid idea.
- Location
- Tennessee
@meianmaru
She is probably going to be hitting Enlightenment 10 soon. Which is equivalent to solariod Essence 5.
You might want to read through the archive before you ask questions.
She is probably going to be hitting Enlightenment 10 soon. Which is equivalent to solariod Essence 5.
You might want to read through the archive before you ask questions.
Last edited: