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

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I suspect that Malra's going to shortly be unable to hold out against enemy forces in the civil war.

Well, more accurately, they're probably going to go begging to them saying 'I'll submit as your vassal! JUST STOP THAT DEATH MONSTER FROM KILLING US ALL!'
 
I kinda suspected that one, or more, of Keris' parents/family members were dead since Kerisa showed up, it felt like ES was trying to show 'this is how not-fully-insane-ghosts act/work', or something along those lines. She appeared a few months earlier than the Stranglerfolk write-up admittedly, but maybe he hadn't fully decided by then/hadn't decided how Maryam died.
 
Quoted from the Stranglerfolk entry in the Pale Apple Necronomicon:

Occultists broadly categorise stranglerfolk into two broad motives; the ones who wish revenge on their killers and the ones who wish to share their pain with all and sundry. Unfortunately, the two of them are very hard to tell apart while they are still trapped.
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*looks at ES*
*soto voice* I don't trust yooooou~
 
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Session 102
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    • Blargh. I was super off my game for the whole of this last week, which meant this session of Kerisgame stalled out not once but twice, on both Friday and Saturday. I have no excuses to offer; only that I was being weird and am hopefully now over it. Part 102 is therefore up, in which Keris explores a Malran town and finds herself up against that rarest of animals; a peer opponent. Who is not trying to stab her!

    Shocking, I know.

    I'm not gonna lie; I went into this session feeling all bleary and blaargh, and stayed like that for most of the first two thirds, but the last bit? The last bit had me grinning. I can't wait to see what comes next. Mwaa haa. And Rathan and Calesco starting to get along is enormous fun. They're developing a brilliant "sibling" vibe of their own, akin to some of the other stronger half-sibling bonds (Calesco and Vali, Rathan and Haneyl, Haneyl and Zanara, etc). It's notable that while all of Keris's full siblings have pretty strong, well-defined dynamics, there are degrees of closeness between those with a degree more separation, and some pairs are actually still quite weak - Eko and Zanara, for instance, or Vali and Zanara, or even Eko and Vali. It's nice to see that Rathan and Calesco have hit the groove of a solid back-and-forth that is not only very sibling-like, but is also hilarious to watch, both in and out of character.

    Extras are here:
    <First break, post-canvasbird gawking>
    EarthScorpion: Hee.
    EarthScorpion: You are coming into stuff I've been planning for aaaaaaaages.
    EarthScorpion: I've wanted to show off the Malran plateau for a while~
    Aleph: : D
    Aleph: Oh, Keris
    Aleph: Too curious for her own good, sometimes.
    Aleph: The Eko in her sometimes overrides the fear.
    EarthScorpion: qt moment with Calesco, too. And Calesco and Rathan are being fun together.
    Aleph: Yes. I'm loving Calesco and Rathan.
    Aleph: That bit at the start was the most sibling moment, I laughed out loud.
    Aleph: "Mama did something stupid!"
    "And you didn't stop her?"
    "Believe me, I tried! I really tried!"​
    EarthScorpion: i'm not saying that my original plans for Malra wonderfully support "giving Keris a motive for Keriskanda" just like what she saw in Terema gave her a motive for "I want DBs and to be rich and stuff"
    EarthScorpion: but you know
    Aleph: lawl
    EarthScorpion: But yeah, in case you didn't get it from the description, Keris thinks that the town here has a lot of stuff either taken from Dragon King stuff, or based on the same principles.
    EarthScorpion: Crystal lighting, plants linked to the buildings and doing civic things.
    Aleph: yes
    Aleph: she is probably going to steal plant samples
    Aleph: and crystals
    Aleph: because she is keris

    ...

    EarthScorpion: Oh yeah, so something Keris is going to have to think about. Her airship can sneak at night. In the day, though, if the weather is clear at all she'll be seen.
    Aleph: Hmm. Yes.
    Aleph: I am thinking about it.

    ...

    EarthScorpion: You're liking things? I know there's less Maryam focus than you seemed to ask for, but I'm balancing "what you wanted to see" with my existing plot stuff.
    Aleph: Yeah, I guessed as much.
    EarthScorpion: Also, uh. I kind of wasn't sure how to run things when Keris wasn't actually a PC and it'd just be me talking to myself for basically the whole scene.
    Aleph: Yeah. : P
    Aleph: How did I do playing Maryam?
    EarthScorpion: Yeah, it works. Like, mmm, a product of my ghost rules is that ghosts are not complicated characters, especially not young ghosts who are dominated by a few Passions. They've lost most of the human nuance they had, replaced with obsession over a few things.
    Aleph: There's irony in calling Maryam a young ghost and Kerisa an old one.
    EarthScorpion: Kerisa is... younger as a ghost than her actual age, because she's effectively stunted from social isolation.
    Aleph: True enough.
    EarthScorpion: Like, if she'd been in the society of the Dead, she'd probably have a lot more Passions built around things from her afterlife. But she's essentially "young" because she's still dominated by Passions from life.
    EarthScorpion: You know, it's funny. Keris' souls seem to have taken an instant dislike to her mother. Does that say something about Keris, or about her souls who think they're her children?

    ...

    <Second break, post pyramid-exploration>
    EarthScorpion: So, again, how did you feel that part of the session went?
    Aleph: I'm definitely liking Malra.
    Aleph: A lot.
    Aleph: So much to steal for Keriskanda. Which, sigh, is being shaped quite a lot by the people Keris is envying.
    Aleph: ¬_¬
    Aleph: dammit keris
    EarthScorpion: Keris: "... this is what you get when the people in charge actually seem to give a damn. I have literally never seen this before."
    Keris: "..."
    Keris: "Apart from Ligier, obviously."​
    Aleph: Keris: "And Lilunu."
    EarthScorpion: oh god
    EarthScorpion: that means keris is, in fact
    EarthScorpion: fuelled by spite
    Aleph: Yes.
    Aleph: Yes she is.
    Aleph: In her mimicking of other cultures, no less.
    EarthScorpion: that makes her very productive
    EarthScorpion: Sigh, that's definitely Haneylian envy.
    Aleph: Yyyyup.
    EarthScorpion: Rathanite Envy would be collapsing that fortress as she leaves by wrecking its foundations with WWI.
    Aleph: Heh.
    Keris: "You realise, the two best rulers I have seen; the ones who give an actual damn about what they're ruling as more than something just to exploit, are both high princes of the Demon Realm."
    Keris: "Ligier and Lilunu are literally better to their domains than basically any mortal ruler I have yet seen, and both of them are demons and one of them has been as powerful as an Incarna for thousands of years and couldn't understand the plight of the weak even if he tried to, and he's still a better ruler over his personal layer than any mortal king I've ever seen."
    Keris: "I feel like that says a lot about Creation, that does."​
    EarthScorpion: Heh. Oula would love to walk around one of these towns. She could architecture nerd with Keris.
    Aleph: hee, yes

    ...

    EarthScorpion: Heh. One really funny thing I realised
    EarthScorpion: was that as soon as Keris ran off on her own again
    EarthScorpion: the voices in her head started talking to her
    Aleph: ...
    Aleph: lawl
    EarthScorpion: Poor Eko. She's trapped in mama's head when everyone else is having fun.
    EarthScorpion: And mama isn't even trying to break in through a fun door that kills you.

    ...

    <post-session>
    Aleph: hee~
    Aleph: I like him.
    Aleph: ^_^
    EarthScorpion: So, happy with how that went?
    Aleph: yes
    Aleph: : D
    EarthScorpion: ... honestly, it's like Keris just stumbled and landed in Inksgame thematically.
    Aleph: She does get lost a lot. It's entirely possible.
    EarthScorpion: Clearly that's why Malra survived the civil war so well. It's out of the ES "everything is awful" field. It's a pocket dimension.
    Aleph: I just spent the entire thing reading it from Ney's side as a manga or anime or something, and deliberately playing to type.
    Aleph: like, from the other side, that whole encounter was hilarious.
    Aleph: She's such a tsun love interest. It's great.
    Aleph: She's the Mysterious Tsundere Spy who he caught lurking around the fortress and Defeated In Skill before Charmingly Inviting Her To A Meal
    Aleph: Which they spent verbally flirt-sparring (during which he deduced several things about who she is and why she's there, including the revelation that she has (gasp!) demon blood, and her reaction clearly showed that she's faced people trying to hurt her for it in the past.)
    Aleph: And then he got her to promise to meet him again before she retreated mysteriously because she's still prickly and defensive. Later it may be revealed that she was actually HOLDING BACK in their race and is in fact SUPER DEADLY and has DARK AND SHADOWY REASONS OF HER OWN FOR BEING HERE beyond what he deduced.
    Aleph: keris y u so anime

    ...

    EarthScorpion: I was... surprised that you genuinely seemed shocked there was a Solar in Malra.
    Aleph: I know! I should have thought of that!
    Aleph: I don't even have the excuse of you sneaking this up on me!
    Aleph: You weren't trying to hide it, and I would have guessed it if I'd spent any time at all considering what I was walking into!
    Aleph: I just... didn't think ahead, for some reason.
    EarthScorpion: I thought you'd guessed sessions ago and was just pretending to avoid metagaming!
    Aleph: yah
    Aleph: I am very foolish
    Aleph: though I am good about not metagaming
    Aleph: ^_^

    ...

    Aleph: Oh, Keris. Hee. I do kind of hope he noticed that pronoun slip.
    Aleph: It's a very interesting pronoun slip. : 3
    EarthScorpion: Oh, Keris. She's just wound up like a ball from all the stuff going on with her mother and being a new mother and dealing with two teenagers and everything.
    Aleph: indeed
    Aleph: A relatively safe target to Night against was a great relief.
    Aleph: Also he managed to transform most of her fear response into tsunning at him.
    EarthScorpion: Calesco: "... a man. Yuck."
    Rathan: "Was he hot?"
    Oula: "Rathan!"
    Rathan: "What, I just want to know for mama's sake."​
    Aleph: Honestly, that's probably the most effective way for a stranger/possible-threat to get Keris to settle down from stab-ready.
    Aleph: Beat her at something, but don't act aggressive.
    Aleph: It subtly codes you as "safe" at the same time as giving her an avenue to be grumpy and irritated rather than scared.
    EarthScorpion: Keris: "So, uh, no one's going to tattle to Sasi about this, I hope?"
    Rathan: "Mama, she has literally no right to complain about that. Plus, clearly you were just doing it to influence him."​

    ...

    EarthScorpion: Anyway, let's do that thing where we talk about the session, what you liked and what you think could have been done better.
    EarthScorpion: First, on my part, spreading it over three nights like that wasn't great.
    EarthScorpion: There was going to be a ninja fight to try to tutorialise that all fights are not necessarily fights to the death, but then you ran away and he managed to keep up and then the flirting happened - which wasn't meant to quite happen the first time they met.
    Aleph: I did really like him, hee. And, hmm.
    Aleph: Honestly, it happening this way is probably better, because at an IC level it teaches Keris that peer Exalts might not be hostile and sort of pre-tutorialises her for a not-to-the-death fight.
    EarthScorpion: Any other comments, things you liked, etc?
    Aleph: yeah, I agree with you on the three-days thing; I was a bit off-game for the whole week and it was hard to focus.
    Aleph: Good news; the introduction of Ney pulled me back into the thick of things and now I'm eager to continue.
    Aleph: I loved Ney. He's great. That whole sequence was great. I literally can't wait for more of him.
    EarthScorpion: You were just missing a fun new NPC. Maryam is many things, but she's not fun. : p
    Aleph: The Malran art and prettycity and canvasbirds and carrierhawk and so on were all really cool (and also incidentally reignited/fanned my desire to have Inks do craft stuff as well as giving me lots of ideas about how she can do craft stuff, so well done there).
    Aleph: I very much enjoyed and appreciated the look at what an Exalt-aided society can look like.
    EarthScorpion: i'm not going to lie
    EarthScorpion: i basically put as the concept for what'd happened "Inks given a few years"
    Aleph: heh
    Aleph: I'm definitely interested in what Ney does and doesn't know, because, mm
    Aleph: the "doesn't" is interesting
    Aleph: He almost certainly doesn't know what Keris can do at full stealth and full speed; so those will be a surprise if she pulls them out (also TEETH).
    Aleph: He seemed confident of having the edge in a fight and wasn't treating her as a demon-prince threat, calling her "demon-blooded" instead, which... makes me suspect that if he has AESS, he didn't use it and may not be aware that Keris is actually stronger than him in raw Enlightenment.
    EarthScorpion: AESS is notably harder for Solars to get than Infernals.
    Aleph: Hee. Also, heh.
    Aleph: Her instinctive hair-bash when he snuck up behind her (which I suspect he dodged rather than getting pushed off the tower) was Wild Alleycat, and when she stopped and tsunned at him she was feeling defensive and embarrassed and prickly and we know she slides into a more Wild Alleycat stance when she's feeling like that.
    Aleph: So unless he was focusing very hard on the really subtle bits of her stance there, I would guess he'll expect her to be a brawler if a fight does break out, and the sudden shift to spearwork might surprise him.
    Aleph: There's a decent chance their date will start entering the territory of lines like "I do like you, but you have a slave trail going past your town and you're in my way, so I may have to stab you a little" and other politely menacing verbal fencing.
    EarthScorpion: Of note, in canon, Harbourhead slavery is - as I recall - a much more transitory thing. It's not generational, and it tends to be a more short term thing as a form of "imprisonment" after losing a battle or something
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    Also, as a special treat, a snippet from MALRA GAME, cunningly stolen from a parallel mirror universe by hacking their accounts (it's not hard; their passwords are the same as ours but backwards). Translated from mirrorspeak for your convenience and ease of reading:
    ST: "... roll me Reaction+Awareness for spotting hidden things. Opposed roll; -1 penalty on your side from the bad angle the hawk's windows give."
    Ney: "11 successes."
    ST: "Mmm. As the hawk comes down to land, you happen to spot a figure crouching on one of the pyramid towers. It's well concealed, but someone's up there watching the hawk land."
    Ney: "Okay, I'll sneak up behind them and appear leaning against the tower wall - out of reach in case they startle - and drawl "as much as I like standing on rooftops, I'm going to have to ask what you're doing up here."
    ST: "Physique+Subterfuge. Roll it."
    Ney: "... 11 successes again! Man, I'm good at this."
    ST: *rolls*
    ST: "Huh."
    ST: "Just as you touch down on the roof and lean against the wall casually, the figure stiffens, somehow sensing your approach. Her hair - she's a woman, short and slender with really long red hair that falls down to her ankles even in a thick braid - surges backwards like it's trying to knock you off the tower. A second later, she bolts like a startled rabbit; fleeing down the tower and away across the rooftops with no regard to gravity."
    Ney: "Yikes. Well, I quickly drop and roll out of the way of the murderhair..." *rolls* "Extra success on my DV there."
    ST: "You avoid being knocked off the tower."
    Ney: "Sweet. And then I give chase with full speed; unveiling my soul to the caste mark level to keep up."
    ST: "Okay, so roll Physique+Athletics, opposed by Mystery Lady..."
     
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    • ...

    Damnit guys! I'm always eagerly and impatiently waiting for the next chapter, but now you've figured out how to make it worse!

    Absolutely can not wait to see the rest of what happens in Malra. Though I have this suspicion that not all the Solars will survive it...
     
    Aleph said:
    Also, as a special treat, a snippet from MALRA GAME, cunningly stolen from a parallel mirror universe by hacking their accounts (it's not hard; their passwords are the same as ours but backwards). Translated from mirrorspeak for your convenience and ease of reading:
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    The question is, is Ney's player aware enough to meta recognize an Infernal when it's not IC? Or is he maybe distracted by feeling bleh and spreading the session out over three days, and so doesn't think it through enough to realize even if there are hints any experienced exalted player should pick up? Like the passive running speed.
     
    One of the things I've been pushing hard on this arc is scaling up the antagonists and opposition @Aleph is facing. To be blunt, Keris previously has been a pathological coward who runs from most meaningful threats or simply doesn't put herself in a position where she has to engage with them.

    But this arc, she started off dealing with Orange Blossom's machinations, then a full on Lookshyian operation (with interference from a Lunar and a Sidereal), then dealing with Orange Blossom's dragonblooded flunky, then an E6 yidak, and now she's run into a full on Solar-ruled polity that's had years to tech up. With Elite Tiger Warriors, because one of the balancing factors is that while Infernals can make 1CDs, Solars can train Tiger Warriors to the point where they're competitive with 1CDs with enlightened essence and thematic spirit charms.

    Of course, opposition doesn't necessarily mean it's a fight. As Keris demonstrated by deciding to be a mysterious red-haired lady and possible romance interest to the Night-caste ninja-commander.

    (He's built to be a ninja commander and spy. She's built to be an assassin and honeypot. She's just a morally ambiguous Bond girl, clearly)
     
    Gnarker said:
    Bonus points if the drugs are administered with a kiss.
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    Quite possible! Spiteful-Sea Tincture can totally be applied to one's lips as a delightfully colorful lipstick, that is also one of the strongest poisons in the game and one that can be altered to incapacitate harmlessly, mutate or addict.
     
    greensun said:
    Quite possible! Spiteful-Sea Tincture can totally be applied to one's lips as a delightfully colorful lipstick, that is also one of the strongest poisons in the game and one that can be altered to incapacitate harmlessly, mutate or addict.
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    Or, with enough repurchases of Great Mother's Tears and applications, all three at once! Though the middle one isn't quite thematic for a Bond girl.

    Unless it's some kind of weird Bond fetish doujinshi, I suppose.
     
    Aleph said:
    What did people think of the Rathan-Calesconess?
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    Reminds me of my own siblings to be honest; a lot of back and forth banter - mostly good natured - and I think it's a good think that they've actually found some common ground with one another.

    Even if said common ground was helping their Mother give birth while she was transformed into a war-from.

    But anyway, it is nice to see that their relationship has reached a degree of civility. Heaven (or maybe not) knows that their prior relationship was horrendously unhealthy.
     
    greensun said:
    But anyway, it is nice to see that their relationship has reached a degree of civility. Heaven (or maybe not) knows that their prior relationship was horrendously unhealthy.
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    Honestly, this is about as good as it gets for them. Keris' sense of justice and her compassion are essentially opposing forces, which mean the two of them have their Urges clashing a lot of the time. It's not like Haneyl and Zanara, say, where Haneyl is Zanara's preppy older sister and Zanara is Haneyl's indie-punk genderqueer sibling who loves their big sister but also wants to exceed them (because Keris' greed and her love of art are largely complementary). Or Rathan and Vali, where Rathan's the bookish pretty boy older brother and Vali is the brawling stubborn macho younger brother and they accept their differences (because her sense of justice and her determination to not be anyone's slave largely don't interfere so their normal personalities just dominate).

    There's always going to be tension between Justice and Compassion. Or indeed, any of Keris' souls representing Principles that might make Keris suppress one of them to further the other
     
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