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

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Magnus said:
@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.
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Ah, I somehow got them mixed up my head. Yeah, I meant E10, but in my defense, both Essence and Enlightment begin with an "E" so that confuses things a little further (at least for me). On reading through the archives, if you meant the whole story, done that, if you meant the whole thread... Well, I've scrolled through most of it. I know that Keris is one of the most deadliest things in the whole Creation, but that is little hard to contextualize in my head, as these two last sessions have been about the most combat heavy that we've seen (I think?) and even here Keris (quite wisely) avoided unnecessary fighting and relied on suprise and speed to not allow the opposition to gain any kind of steam. Or even notice her, until it was too late.
 
One of the things I have noted with amusement in the past is that the greatest factor in Keris's deadliness isn't her base dicepools or her equipment or her Charmtech - though all are indeed formidable - it's her tactics. Naan may have a far higher headcount of peer opponents, but Keris will almost certainly outlive him just because she sets up her fights to give herself the greatest possible advantage in them and never fights fair. In a certain sense it's pointless to talk about how deadly she is in a white room fight with DBs, because her first response there will be to disengage - and she's good enough at that that you'd probably need a Shogunate Wyld Hunt at minimum to stop her. I put her solidly at the level of a combat-focused Unquestionable - and by that I mean that if Keris went 1-on-1 with Ligier and seriously wanted him dead, he'd have genuine cause to be worried. Especially if he couldn't draw on his infrastructure and artifacts.

Sanguine Rapture Shintai, though, does mean that mortals just cease to matter at all to her. It reduces a fight against an entire Realm legion to a one-on-one duel against the DB commanders, because if you don't have essence backing up your attacks she just laughs at you and you can't even touch her. It also makes her even better at disengaging, because she can go through any barrier that would let the wind through and you can't stop her without magic that could stop the air itself.

Ironically, the main threat that a Wyld Hunt poses to Keris is to her Compassion. It's basically a near-sure thing that she can get away from them now, because she's just too fucking fast and terrain-capable to pin down. But she can't do much to stop a heavily armed Wyld hunt from murdering all her Hui Cha and Gullites and owlriders and friends and so on - and that's a real problem for her, because she cares about those people and doesn't want to leave them all to die while she escapes.

(If you want to see the faction Keris genuinely is scared of at a personal level; look to the Unquestionable. She is dead certain, if you'll pardon the pun, that they could pin her down and kill her if she angered them as a group - by declaring herself as one of them or permakilling a demon prince or abandoning the Reclamation overtly, say. These might not actually get the entire 3CD population of Hell gunning for her, but she thinks they would, because her religious beliefs have sort of shifted to seeing them as her gods, and she's hyper-wary of offending or angering them. And she doesn't believe Noh or Adorjan would step in and help her if it came to a fight, because she knows she can't rely on either - not to mention that the ire of the demon princes might turn on Sasi if she did escape somehow.)
 
meianmaru said:
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".
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So, at a mechanical level, if you have three attacks hitting her per round, she's bleeding motes even if she goes to a Level 3 anima. Moreover, since there are no I(A)M-alikes in Kerisgame, excellency-boosting mean you're also bleeding motes. But multiple DBs have more mote regen than a lone Celestial.

I estimate a party of 3-4 high grade Immaculate monks would be enough that Keris would disengage from the fight rather than fight them properly because they'd have a considerable chance of taking her down. Unfortunately, few Dragonblooded have the Charmtech to stop Keris running away, because between her Adorjan Charms and Mother Sea Mastery, she's faster than anything they have that can chase her down and can run up vertical cliffs and across rivers, and as long as she disengages soon enough they can't take her down by shooting arrows at her without an outrageous number of archers.

It's her cowardice and the fact that she's at the low end of Valour 2 that makes her dangerous. She's very much a Night, not a Dawn. She'd rather kill a man in his sleep than in an honourable duel. And a Dragonblooded in a nightshirt is much less dangerous than a DB in full armour.

Remember, Nerigus Sashi was not an elite fighter. She was a scholar and sorcerer-engineer who, when max excellency-boosting, had a dice pool equal to Keris'. Despite that, she held Keris for an entire action. In many ways, I built her to be a shock to @Aleph's system - that a non-combat DB with a surprise negator had a good chance of avoiding Keris for an entire action. If she'd survived that, she'd have then used that same Charm, Nighttime Sentinel's Yell, that Keris saw the time with the Dragonblooded on the boat, where they just shout and alert everyone in range even if they're asleep and tell them not only where they are, but make Obvious what they're facing. And that would've gone to roll-off against Keris' anima for the mortals, and would have alerted the DBs anyway because Dragonblooded synergies are unfair like that. And then not only would an entire citadel of Lookshyians be up and ready to go, but then she would have anima flared up to Level 3 and Keris would've had some hard choices to make about how to continue the fight.
 
Hmm. Speaking of tactics, its quite funny that while Keris is, like both of you have said, actually quite good at picking the most optimal choice how to approach the fight based on what she knows, she isn't actually that good at strategizing or tactics on paper. I've seen that Command 0 popping up in dice-rolls, and appearantly causing some amount cold sweat for Aleph every time it appears. Mind you, with Keris mostly operating solo that doesn't seem to hinder her that much most of the time, but I bet that is going to change little by little as she continues to build up her own infrastructure.
 
Aleph said:
Sanguine Rapture Shintai, though, does mean that mortals just cease to matter at all to her. It reduces a fight against an entire Realm legion to a one-on-one duel against the DB commanders, because if you don't have essence backing up your attacks she just laughs at you and you can't even touch her.
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Well, not a Realm legion. Because Dragonblooded are cheating bastards who have Charms like "Ah, my men, all your swords are now on fire. Have fun stabbing the barbarians, what what" and it's generally very mean. But the kind of forces a satrapy or even lesser Realm formations which don't have a skilled DB leader, yes.
 
rogthnor said:
I(A)M alikes?
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Infinite (Ability) Mastery.

For some Willpower and an upfront cost of motes, you can define a certain level of Excellency boosting that lasts for the entire scene.

Basically, instead of spending 10 motes every action to boost Dex + Melee to max, you spend 1wp and 20 motes or so and just have 10 dice added to every roll you make for free.

Its a big part of why Solars are very, very deadly.
 
There's also the Infernal version, Effortless (Yozi) Dominance, which requires repeated use to arrive at free excellency activation.

I guess that's not around?
 
Aleph said:
One of the things I have noted with amusement in the past is that the greatest factor in Keris's deadliness isn't her base dicepools or her equipment or her Charmtech - though all are indeed formidable - it's her tactics. Naan may have a far higher headcount of peer opponents, but Keris will almost certainly outlive him just because she sets up her fights to give herself the greatest possible advantage in them and never fights fair.
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I'm reminded of a post that someone made over on SB about surviving and fighting:
  • The best way to fight is from behind, in the dark, at a dead run, with a two-by-four. (Either metaphorical or literal).
 
I do wonder when Keris will start extending her strategy to "have a good enough spy network that you know how to dispose of any conceivable threat long before you might actually want to dispose of them". The best fight is one that you've won before the other person even knows it's happening, after all.

For the inconceivable threats, you just need to find/develop an organization-level surprise negator to go with the personal one. Then make sure you never stop using it.
 
The Sandman said:
I do wonder when Keris will start extending her strategy to "have a good enough spy network that you know how to dispose of any conceivable threat long before you might actually want to dispose of them". The best fight is one that you've won before the other person even knows it's happening, after all.

For the inconceivable threats, you just need to find/develop an organization-level surprise negator to go with the personal one. Then make sure you never stop using it.
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She probably won't ever extend her strategy that far, actually. Keris reminds me of my mother in that whenever she doesn't have a metaphorical fire to put out, she starts getting antsy. Staying safe at the center of a web is more Sasimana's thing; Keris is too high-key to ever do that for long, and (I presume) too high-key to even think of that solution.

Of course, Sasi probably will if Keris asks, but my earlier point remains, about Keris getting bored and impulsive.
 
The difference as I see it would be that Sasi would use the info so that the fight never happens, whereas Keris would use it so that when the fight starts she utterly wrecks her opponent.
 
The Sandman said:
The difference as I see it would be that Sasi would use the info so that the fight never happens, whereas Keris would use it so that when the fight starts she utterly wrecks her opponent.
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Agreed. Let's face it, though; Keris doesn't research her opponents thoroughly beforehand. Now, this is partially because she doesn't typically have reasonable access to information on her opponents, but Aleph has characterized Keris as being prideful to the point of hubris - this, more than anything, is why Keris won't use her web to its fullest extent, even assuming she makes one in the first place.
 
I have, actually, had a Minor seasonal action of "get Contacts all the way up and down the southwestern coast" planned for a while now. I haven't had a chance to do so yet, but it's on my list.

And remember, Keris is as much coward as adrenaline junkie. The main reason she gets antsy sitting in one place ruling somewhere is because it puts a target on her back (and because her Politics and Bureaucracy are shiiiiiiit).
 
The thing about fighting Dragon-Blooded for someone like Keris is that she abuses the exact same tactics that the Wyld Hunt usually does; strike them when they're weak, hit and run to bleed them and whittle them down, asset-denial and scorched earth. She sets up the battlefield to suit her tactics, a battle between Keris and a serious Wyld Hunt of high-grade Immaculates backed by possibly an Imperial Legion and a few House Legions would almost certainly look less decisive than what we have seen yet, much more uncertain although I'd give Keris high odds.
 
Look mate, if there's a serious Wyld Hunt of high-grade Immaculates backed by possibly an Imperial Legion and a few House Legions in the area, there's not going to be a battle because Keris will have noped the fuck out of that entire Direction.
 
ManusDomine said:
The thing about fighting Dragon-Blooded for someone like Keris is that she abuses the exact same tactics that the Wyld Hunt usually does; strike them when they're weak, hit and run to bleed them and whittle them down, asset-denial and scorched earth. She sets up the battlefield to suit her tactics, a battle between Keris and a serious Wyld Hunt of high-grade Immaculates backed by possibly an Imperial Legion and a few House Legions would almost certainly look less decisive than what we have seen yet, much more uncertain although I'd give Keris high odds.
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One thing that Kerris hasn't yet replicated much is having a team of peers, near-peers, 1CD-level beings and/or mortals assisting her when going to a mission, outside her raiding the ships of unlucky mortals with her demonic pirate crew. Just having Eko out (even if she is "just" a 2CD for now) when going to a fight would mean quite lot, and I remember some talk about Aleph grooming a "wolf-pack" of 2CDs from Keris' souls. A team of tightly cooperating Demon Lords lead by an Infernal Exalt, maybe with some of that 1CD and mortal support that I mentioned earlier thrown in, would probably be a quite terrifying force to face.

And like Aleph's latest post just now reminds us, if Keris gets to decide she likely won't hang out anywhere near any place where her, her souls/children and her followers might face anything that might actually threaten them. So I'm guessing if she manages to gather such a team (or even more) in one place, its probably so that she can strike at something reasonably soft and unexpecting for great amounts of loot and/or other rewards, while everybody else is looking at somewhere else. After which she probably disappears again before anyone can react to her presence to stab/steal something else in somewhere far, far away.
 
ManusDomine said:
The thing about fighting Dragon-Blooded for someone like Keris is that she abuses the exact same tactics that the Wyld Hunt usually does; strike them when they're weak, hit and run to bleed them and whittle them down, asset-denial and scorched earth.
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Huh, weird; it's almost like they're entirely sensible generic tactics.
:V

ManusDomine said:
She sets up the battlefield to suit her tactics, a battle between Keris and a serious Wyld Hunt of high-grade Immaculates backed by possibly an Imperial Legion and a few House Legions would almost certainly look less decisive than what we have seen yet, much more uncertain although I'd give Keris high odds.
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I don't remember "Who Wore It Better" being such a bloody game.
 
EarthScorpion said:
It's her cowardice and the fact that she's at the low end of Valour 2 that makes her dangerous. She's very much a Night, not a Dawn. She'd rather kill a man in his sleep than in an honourable duel. And a Dragonblooded in a nightshirt is much less dangerous than a DB in full armour.
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Ah, the tao of the Tenno.

"Yes, I could kill them in an open fight, murdering all their guards too with my weapon that commits multiple warcrimes per attack. But I'm just going to cheese this thing while running really fast because that's more efficient."
 
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A Silent Blade - Chapter 9
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    • Yeaaaaah, not much got done this session. It was basically filler. We did another one the day after, so that'll go up mid-week, but for now have some Calesco sweetness and some wind-Keris in the final, wrap-up chapter of A Silent Blade.

    Also, Keris, seriously. You're getting disturbingly good at lying-by-omission to people with explicit truth-detection magic. Stop that.

    Aleph: Hmm. Anything you especially want to get done this session, or can we wrap this soulchat segment up and finish on the aerial shot of Baisha?
    EarthScorpion: Urgh, I'm actually super annoyed at how this session went and we literally didn't get beyond the first sentence of my plan
    Aleph: Oh? : (
    EarthScorpion: I should have pushed you on and stopped offering you things.
    Aleph: We can pause and resume tomorrow
    Aleph: And be more focused in moving the plot forward
    EarthScorpion: Yes, I planned all of this session barring a single basically cursory round-up of what you said to Orange Blossom to be moving on with things.
    EarthScorpion: Honestly, can we just call it here and run the actual session I meant to run tomorrow? This was basically filler.
    Aleph: Yeah, sure.
    Aleph: I think, mm. The problem is that at this point in the arc I'm not certain on what the arc plot is, so it's tricky for me to realise "okay we're not making progress, I will have Keris do a Kerisian thing that happens to move the plot in the direction we've agreed on it going".
    EarthScorpion: I thought what you wanted to do with the session was get to Baisha, so that's what I planned for.
    Aleph: Yeah, I was... well. Tomorrow.

    ...

    EarthScorpion: Yeah, so, hmm.
    EarthScorpion: How did you feel that session went beyond my "Grr, nothing is going as it should?"
    Aleph: Well, if nothing else it got in a great Calesco character moment and both of Keris's slips into wind were at narratively satisfying moments - initially the first time she felt a spike of emotion, in front of her trusted friend Kuha, and then nothing until the big blow-up at Calesco.
    Aleph: So as characterisation filler it worked pretty well.
    Aleph: also eeeee calesco teaching her keruby
    Aleph: SO CUTE
    Aleph: i cannot handle all the cute
    EarthScorpion: Yes, that was why I put the Calesco thing in even though I wanted to push on.
    Aleph: clearly calesco's angry sullen babybat resting state
    Aleph: is in fact compassionate protection
    Aleph: for everyone who would die of cute if she were gentle and squishy all the time
    EarthScorpion: calesco is showing that when she is older her default appearance will be "hot teacher"
    Aleph: lawl
    EarthScorpion: also calesco
    EarthScorpion: dammit
    EarthScorpion: why are your keruby not literate by default?
    Aleph: Because the sziromkeruby are stealing all the wordage, obviously.
    EarthScorpion: Or it's because they get too much tar on the pages.
    EarthScorpion: Hmm. Which keruby babies are born with the capacity to read?
    Aleph: Haneyl's, Zanara's, Rathan's.
    Aleph: though in practice there's enough keruby-mingling in the empire that most of them pick up some level by the time they're a respectable age
    EarthScorpion: Heh
    EarthScorpion: So it's the wet-keruby
    Aleph: indeed
    EarthScorpion: Vali: "How'd your keruby learn to read underwater, Rat?"
    Rathan: "It's clearly beyond your understanding."​
    EarthScorpion: poor calesco
    EarthScorpion: She got some good barbs in, though.
    EarthScorpion: Also, before I go to bed
    EarthScorpion: Were you okay with the Eko age-up to "very nearly adult", or would you rather save that for Elloge?
    Aleph: "Very nearly adult" is fine, yeah.
    Aleph: She's basically at the top end of teenagerdom now, and will hit full mature adulthood with Elloge.
    Aleph: Well, Elloge and 3CDness.
    EarthScorpion: One thing I considered was whether she and Keris can touch in ribbon form.
    EarthScorpion: Without Eko hurting her, that is.
    Aleph: ... that would be very cute.
    Aleph: And weirdly appropriate.
    EarthScorpion: Yeah. I was just wondering what that would do to Eko's isolation stuff.
    Aleph: Hmm. True. Pity.
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