I liked the interplay. I'm curious to see how they both react to a potential love interest for Keris that is also involved in the same slave trade that killed their grandmother. I mean, that conversation is going to be amazing.
Ascensions and Transgressions: the Tales of Keris Dulmeadokht (Exalted game)
- Thread starter Aleph
- Start date
To be fair the sum total of available evidence for involvement is 'doesn't actively stop slave traders passing through outside the city'. There may or may not have been a regime change since her father passed through more than a dozen years ago. And unless Ney is a) in possession of one of the few exaltations that never got locked up, and b) extraordinarily lazy about improving himself for a solar in a war-zone, he's too young to have been involved with that particular event with any meaningful agency.
Sessions 103 & 104
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yyyyup, you're getting a two-parter this time. Part 103 and Part 104, specifically - the former ran so long that it finished on Thursday, and then we quickly rolled the latter out on Friday evening, and they're pretty much linked anyway.
They're also spoilery as hell, so...
Part 103 extras:
Part 104 extras:
They're also spoilery as hell, so...
The Good Times
Alas, we have confirmed that Maryam no longer remembers the good times, really, and it's ripping Keris up inside that she... basically doesn't seem to love Keris anymore. For someone with Be Loved 4, that hurts. A lot. And it's one of the ways in which the old adage of "don't ever mistake ghosts for people" holds true - the depth of feeling and capacity for true emotion and the source of instinct are all with the po (which amusingly means that if the greater yidak realised Keris was its daughter it might potentially respond to her somehow, though I don't think it has the reason necessary to recognise her as such). This is part of a whole theme of souls and identities and the whole/sum-of-parts thing that's probably going to get mentioned next time Ney pops up, so I won't go into it now, but it's an interesting topic and one that Keris in particular has definite Thoughts on.
We alsodiscover confirm re-confirm that Keris's habit of picking up strays is nothing new, and in fact seems to have been carried with her since childhood; only altered by scale and success rate. I am this close to commissioning some art of chibi-Keris with short brown pre-Dulmea hair in Tairan peasant clothing offering up a mouse or a baby bird or a grass snake or something, from the PoV of a parent.
God only knows what adorable and headache-inducing little habits her own children are going to pick up.
Sibling Synergy
... such as blowing up kilns, to take an example at random. When I mentioned last time that some of the sibling-pairs have stronger dynamics and better-characterised connections than others, @EarthScorpion apparently took that as a prompt to flesh the lacking ones out more. So we have Vali and Zanara merrily throwing things in the metaphorical microwave-equivalent to see what happens. It's cute. If ES wants more such ideas to play with, I'll note that triad-dynamics are probably a valid thing - certainly we have for evidence the way that Eko, Haneyl and Calesco all join forces to put their brothers in dresses and braid ribbons into their hair. Quartets and up probably just decay into two pairs, though, so there's no real need to characterise them.
A Special Child
And speaking of siblings, it looks like the twins will be getting another one. Little River is a Water-Aspected Dragonblood who had a Tengese sweetheart and needs to go back to the Hui Cha with a baby. Kali and Ogin are obviously-inhuman emberi, neither of whom look anything like a Realm-Tengese hybrid child.
This is, to put it mildly, a problem.
And it looks like it's one that Keris has come up with a solution for - a solution that may in a roundabout way give Kerisa another shot at life, albeit with different instinctual drives and one that'll make her a different person than the five-year old who died in Eshtock. If her twins can't pass for being Little River's and Sasi can't find her an adorable sibling for them that she can adopt, she'll just have another baby via a different method - and put about the same amount of work into making them special as her twins, who were each fed the bodies of multiple Celestial Exalted to catalyse their power.
Clearly, nothing can possibly go wrong with this plan. It's genius through and through.
(feel free to disagree with this undeniably accurate statement if you so wish, though : P)
That No-Good Thieving Scoundrel, Grr
First he spotted her when she was trying to hide. Then he out-ran her when she tried to flee. Then he cold-read her when she tried to bluff. And now he filched her stolen spoils back along with her own hair ornaments!
He is the most frustrating person in the ARGH!
*grinds teeth*
... ahem. But yes, annoyance aside; I like Ney. I'm really enjoying him as a character. His dynamic with Keris is hilarious, he's skilled enough to challenge her, and his personality is a good match for hers - or at least the lazy smiling cheerfulness he puts on as a mask is, and beneath that he's always thinking and planning and watching in a way that means she can't stymie and confuse him like she does so many other people. He does things like seed Tiger Warriors in the woods and watch her from a Perfect Mirror disguise and subtly probe as to what she thinks of the fae - and does it well enough that she gets scared of him out-thinking her entirely like when she was worried he'd gone to peek at the barge while she was tied up in town; turning her own scheme back on her. But he's also laid-back and relaxing and fun enough that she enjoys herself while she's with him, has no apparent prejudices against what he's seen of her so far, and is respectful of her boundaries and hot-buttons.
Not gonna lie, I am considering how to husbando him. Or at least long-distance-boyfriendo him if husbandoing is out.
The way he so readily plays along with her tsundere thing, where she pretends not to like him or jibes and prods at him and he rolls with it and expertly parried, is great fun to play as well. And if Haneyl is Keris without the horrific defining fear-installing trauma, we can see that she is naturally a bit tsundere; it's just that the fear of conflict and the Be Loved urges make her artificially dere unless she feels safe enough to argue. She'd feel safe enough with Sasi, too, but she knows Sasi isn't the type to enjoy that; her personality is all wrong. Both Keris and I had a great time on that date, and I'm genuinely not surprised she fell into bed with him so soon.
Elder Exalts and Keris
... and then yeah. That happened.
21 successes. On 21 dice. About a 1-in-a-thousand roll, for those interested. Well, technically it was 22 dice since ES retroactively awarded me a 3-dot stunt, but that didn't net me an extra success and I still made the 21 sux on my initial roll.
It's perhaps somewhat appropriate that I did so on maybe the most narratively important rolls of both combined sessions - or even of this whole post-Baisha miniarc, depending. Not only is it liable to have probably-positive but definitely-noticeable ramifications on the Keris-Ney relationship going forward and Ney's attitudes in general, but it sailed past both JET and SRoI (which as @EarthScorpion mentioned is a very well-designed social perfect, but I'll let him say more on that), because Keris was indeed speaking absolute, awful truth there. If there's one thing that terrifies her (yes, I know, there are lots, but if there's one that especially terrifies her), it's elder Exalts and the way they seem to so readily slip into inhumanity. I'd like to think it's not really metagaming, because she doesn't know about the Great Curse and in fact has some amusingly wrong notions of why it happens - such as her brilliant theory about how the souls of men aren't meant to have power without a soul hierarchy and her other theory that the Exaltations predate the Primordials because none of the All-Makers would or could create something that raises the weak above the strong like that. But even strictly from in-game knowledge; her particular sense of fear and paranoia combined with Past Lives from a young High First Age Solar make her quite well-suited to spotting its practical effects, and what Celestial Exalted can eventually turn into and why.
Harmonious Jade? Really?
... such as Ney's past life. And I'm pretty sure @EarthScorpion hasn't realised I worked this out, because I avoided telling him about it as I was writing this post up and he was dropping clever little hints about how I might want to talk about what I got about Ney's past life and how Exaltations have preferences, but that ancient paranoid spymaster he mentioned? Odds are pretty good that he's talking about Gold-Shadowed Arrow. Which means Ney is prooooobably the successor of Harmonious Jade - who along with Arianna tried to rob the Tomb of Singing Blades waaaaaaaay back in the very first arc of Kerisgame, using information Keris had given them. And when she went back into that tomb during Vengeance Served Cold, she found that they'd both died there; about two and a half years ago. Enough time for it to have been Ney's Exaltation.
I'll admit, in @EarthScorpion's favour, that it took me until a couple of hours after Part 104 when I was lying in bed waiting to go to sleep before I got it.
But yes, this means that this is the second time this Exaltation has encountered Keris (who in fact fed the body of its previous host to one of her twins), and its original bearer was super-fixated on infernalists, and Harmonious Jade was a Sondok cultist. Apparently it's a very curious Exaltation that really wants to poke Hellish stuff, or something. Exaltations certainly seem to have "types" - Keris loves her Athletics and her athleticism as much as Yamal did, and both Sasi and Salina are easy to distract if you get them in the curiosity. This one seems fond of spymasters who can't quite stay away from the demonic stuff from what we're sure of, though I'm not sure how Harmonious Jade would fit into that if he is her successor as theorised.
Alas, we have confirmed that Maryam no longer remembers the good times, really, and it's ripping Keris up inside that she... basically doesn't seem to love Keris anymore. For someone with Be Loved 4, that hurts. A lot. And it's one of the ways in which the old adage of "don't ever mistake ghosts for people" holds true - the depth of feeling and capacity for true emotion and the source of instinct are all with the po (which amusingly means that if the greater yidak realised Keris was its daughter it might potentially respond to her somehow, though I don't think it has the reason necessary to recognise her as such). This is part of a whole theme of souls and identities and the whole/sum-of-parts thing that's probably going to get mentioned next time Ney pops up, so I won't go into it now, but it's an interesting topic and one that Keris in particular has definite Thoughts on.
We also
God only knows what adorable and headache-inducing little habits her own children are going to pick up.
Sibling Synergy
... such as blowing up kilns, to take an example at random. When I mentioned last time that some of the sibling-pairs have stronger dynamics and better-characterised connections than others, @EarthScorpion apparently took that as a prompt to flesh the lacking ones out more. So we have Vali and Zanara merrily throwing things in the metaphorical microwave-equivalent to see what happens. It's cute. If ES wants more such ideas to play with, I'll note that triad-dynamics are probably a valid thing - certainly we have for evidence the way that Eko, Haneyl and Calesco all join forces to put their brothers in dresses and braid ribbons into their hair. Quartets and up probably just decay into two pairs, though, so there's no real need to characterise them.
A Special Child
And speaking of siblings, it looks like the twins will be getting another one. Little River is a Water-Aspected Dragonblood who had a Tengese sweetheart and needs to go back to the Hui Cha with a baby. Kali and Ogin are obviously-inhuman emberi, neither of whom look anything like a Realm-Tengese hybrid child.
This is, to put it mildly, a problem.
And it looks like it's one that Keris has come up with a solution for - a solution that may in a roundabout way give Kerisa another shot at life, albeit with different instinctual drives and one that'll make her a different person than the five-year old who died in Eshtock. If her twins can't pass for being Little River's and Sasi can't find her an adorable sibling for them that she can adopt, she'll just have another baby via a different method - and put about the same amount of work into making them special as her twins, who were each fed the bodies of multiple Celestial Exalted to catalyse their power.
Clearly, nothing can possibly go wrong with this plan. It's genius through and through.
(feel free to disagree with this undeniably accurate statement if you so wish, though : P)
That No-Good Thieving Scoundrel, Grr
First he spotted her when she was trying to hide. Then he out-ran her when she tried to flee. Then he cold-read her when she tried to bluff. And now he filched her stolen spoils back along with her own hair ornaments!
He is the most frustrating person in the ARGH!
*grinds teeth*
... ahem. But yes, annoyance aside; I like Ney. I'm really enjoying him as a character. His dynamic with Keris is hilarious, he's skilled enough to challenge her, and his personality is a good match for hers - or at least the lazy smiling cheerfulness he puts on as a mask is, and beneath that he's always thinking and planning and watching in a way that means she can't stymie and confuse him like she does so many other people. He does things like seed Tiger Warriors in the woods and watch her from a Perfect Mirror disguise and subtly probe as to what she thinks of the fae - and does it well enough that she gets scared of him out-thinking her entirely like when she was worried he'd gone to peek at the barge while she was tied up in town; turning her own scheme back on her. But he's also laid-back and relaxing and fun enough that she enjoys herself while she's with him, has no apparent prejudices against what he's seen of her so far, and is respectful of her boundaries and hot-buttons.
Not gonna lie, I am considering how to husbando him. Or at least long-distance-boyfriendo him if husbandoing is out.
The way he so readily plays along with her tsundere thing, where she pretends not to like him or jibes and prods at him and he rolls with it and expertly parried, is great fun to play as well. And if Haneyl is Keris without the horrific defining fear-installing trauma, we can see that she is naturally a bit tsundere; it's just that the fear of conflict and the Be Loved urges make her artificially dere unless she feels safe enough to argue. She'd feel safe enough with Sasi, too, but she knows Sasi isn't the type to enjoy that; her personality is all wrong. Both Keris and I had a great time on that date, and I'm genuinely not surprised she fell into bed with him so soon.
Elder Exalts and Keris
... and then yeah. That happened.
21 successes. On 21 dice. About a 1-in-a-thousand roll, for those interested. Well, technically it was 22 dice since ES retroactively awarded me a 3-dot stunt, but that didn't net me an extra success and I still made the 21 sux on my initial roll.
It's perhaps somewhat appropriate that I did so on maybe the most narratively important rolls of both combined sessions - or even of this whole post-Baisha miniarc, depending. Not only is it liable to have probably-positive but definitely-noticeable ramifications on the Keris-Ney relationship going forward and Ney's attitudes in general, but it sailed past both JET and SRoI (which as @EarthScorpion mentioned is a very well-designed social perfect, but I'll let him say more on that), because Keris was indeed speaking absolute, awful truth there. If there's one thing that terrifies her (yes, I know, there are lots, but if there's one that especially terrifies her), it's elder Exalts and the way they seem to so readily slip into inhumanity. I'd like to think it's not really metagaming, because she doesn't know about the Great Curse and in fact has some amusingly wrong notions of why it happens - such as her brilliant theory about how the souls of men aren't meant to have power without a soul hierarchy and her other theory that the Exaltations predate the Primordials because none of the All-Makers would or could create something that raises the weak above the strong like that. But even strictly from in-game knowledge; her particular sense of fear and paranoia combined with Past Lives from a young High First Age Solar make her quite well-suited to spotting its practical effects, and what Celestial Exalted can eventually turn into and why.
Harmonious Jade? Really?
... such as Ney's past life. And I'm pretty sure @EarthScorpion hasn't realised I worked this out, because I avoided telling him about it as I was writing this post up and he was dropping clever little hints about how I might want to talk about what I got about Ney's past life and how Exaltations have preferences, but that ancient paranoid spymaster he mentioned? Odds are pretty good that he's talking about Gold-Shadowed Arrow. Which means Ney is prooooobably the successor of Harmonious Jade - who along with Arianna tried to rob the Tomb of Singing Blades waaaaaaaay back in the very first arc of Kerisgame, using information Keris had given them. And when she went back into that tomb during Vengeance Served Cold, she found that they'd both died there; about two and a half years ago. Enough time for it to have been Ney's Exaltation.
I'll admit, in @EarthScorpion's favour, that it took me until a couple of hours after Part 104 when I was lying in bed waiting to go to sleep before I got it.
But yes, this means that this is the second time this Exaltation has encountered Keris (who in fact fed the body of its previous host to one of her twins), and its original bearer was super-fixated on infernalists, and Harmonious Jade was a Sondok cultist. Apparently it's a very curious Exaltation that really wants to poke Hellish stuff, or something. Exaltations certainly seem to have "types" - Keris loves her Athletics and her athleticism as much as Yamal did, and both Sasi and Salina are easy to distract if you get them in the curiosity. This one seems fond of spymasters who can't quite stay away from the demonic stuff from what we're sure of, though I'm not sure how Harmonious Jade would fit into that if he is her successor as theorised.
Part 103 extras:
<during the talk with Maryam>
EarthScorpion: Every time Maryam answers something, she's having to make Cog + Lore rolls - and the more distant it is from her passions, the higher the difficulty. She honestly doesn't remember many of the good times as more than academic descriptions, like through a fogged window.
Aleph: Yeah, I figured.
Aleph: : (
Aleph: Poor Keris.
...
Aleph: This... yeah, this is going to make for an interesting second date.
Aleph: hee
EarthScorpion: Oh, Keris. Maryam is really ruining her day.
Aleph: poor keris
Aleph: she was all happy about getting to do Nighty things
Aleph: then her children started yelling at her and her mother demanded she murder the guy she was doing Nighty things with
Aleph: she r the mysterious love interest on the opposite side to the protagonist who has been ordered to kill him but doesn't really want to
EarthScorpion: She probably wants to nap right now, or find some water to have a think and some time away from babies in her soul. With non-mean-non-Rathan-or-Calesco soulbabies.
EarthScorpion: (and some playtime with Zana for aaaaaaaaart)
Aleph: also lol, I'm just picturing, like...
Chibi!Keris: "Mama, mama, look!" *holds up a literal fucking snake that's hidden under her sleeve; wound around her arm*EarthScorpion: (it was just a grass snake)
Maryam: "... where did you even find..."
Kallash: "Tell me that's not venomous."
Aleph: : P
Aleph: sigh
Aleph: maybe that's part of why Calesco's aura when she's summoned into Creation attracts predators to follow her and cluster near where she is
Aleph: Oh Keris
*sends a Messenger back to Haneyl* "I'm doing fine, sweetie! The search is going well!"Aleph: : (
Sasi: *is listening*
Sasi: *can hear the lie*
EarthScorpion: Vali's going to be mad at her too because she values her mother over her promise.
Aleph: Hmm. The wording of her vow was...
"As long as you want to come with me, I will do everything in my power to get [Zany], Ali, Hany and Xasan out of Taira and across Creation; safe and unharmed, to a new life in the Southwest. I may not be able to be with you for every step of the journey, but I swear to you; I will see it done."Aleph: She knew when she made it that she wasn't going to take them through Hell and they'd therefore need to go the sea route that would take them past Lookshy and the Blessed Isle, and, like... it genuinely is probably safer for them to be travelling with a strong retinue of mortal guards who have nothing much objectionable about them by Immaculate standards than with a hellish princess on the level of a demon prince whose body and essence all but scream "demonic" to anyone with essence sight tools like the shozei's eyepiece.
Aleph: At least when they're going through or past strongly-Immaculate territory.
EarthScorpion: Yes, but Vali doesn't like how Keris is being chained by these "cultural expectations" she never agreed to
Aleph: ah
Aleph: well yes
Aleph: though in total fairness she can argue that she's going to beat up slavers
EarthScorpion: Yes, but someone is trying to make her do it. Also, Maryam tried to take over Mama's body and Vali is very not happy about that.
Aleph: Keris: "all my babies are mad at me :c"
EarthScorpion: To be fair, Kali and Ogin forgave her after milk and hugs.
Aleph: Indeed. And she will be sure to leave them with bottles of milk that can be warmed up for them, and catch a rabbit or something so that Kali's can have a little bit of blood in it as well.
Keris: "See, that way she's way more likely to shift into either baby or kitten form, because she likes the milk-with-blood-in-it a lot better in those shapes."EarthScorpion: Calesco: "If she's a bird, do I need to chew up meat and spit it down her gullet?"
Keris: "It's a cunning trick to get her to be the right shape for feeding."
Calesco: "Wait, why do I need to do it? Why can't Rathan?"
...
Aleph: ... actually, huh
EarthScorpion: ?
Aleph: you know, I bet it's really hard - and getting progressively harder and harder as she grows more and more instinctive with it - to avoid using her hair as a counterweight while she's running flat-out, the same way raptors and cats use their tails
Aleph: Unless she concentrates, her hair has a tendency to stream out behind her and curve outward from her turns to help her corner faster, as well as acting as a balance-corrector which, heh
Aleph: is part of her paradigm for using Unimpeded Perfection of Exertion, probably
Aleph: she finds it a little harder to hit that weightless-grace state of motion when she's concentrating on keeping her hair under control
...
EarthScorpion: Heh. Keris probably asked Sasi about a bunch of "post giving birth" questions for Exalted mothers before they parted.
Aleph: Heh.
EarthScorpion: Keris: "When can I be active again?"
Sasi: "Well, my aunt gave birth mid-battle and handed her baby off to a nursemaid and got back to fighting."Aleph: Sasi: "Mortal mothers need to be very careful for a while after giving birth. Exalted mothers have it far easier, as our bodies are hardier, and your regenerative abilities are exceptional even by Exalted standards."
Sasi: "Or to put it another way, you should be in fit shape to fight another raksha prince within an hour or so of having given birth."EarthScorpion: Keris: "Will it make my boobs sag?"
Sasi: "..."Aleph: : P
Keris: "What? They'd make all my clothes not fit! And you might think I was ugly."
Sasi: "Keris, darling, I don't care what you look like."
Keris: "I know. But I do! I don't want to have saggy boobs!"
Sasi: "Do mine?"
Keris: "I might need an inspection..."
EarthScorpion: Oh, Keris. Sometimes you wish Sasi cared a bit more about how you looked.
...
EarthScorpion: o haneyl
Aleph: Vali: "I think she's upset."
Calesco: "Really? Whatever gave you that impression?"
Vali: "The pillar of fire surrounding her and boiling off her hair."
...
EarthScorpion: Heh. Where does Keris consider herself to "live" at the moment?
Aleph: Hmm. "The South-West" - I don't think she's more localised than that yet.
EarthScorpion: Not her townhouse in Hell?
Aleph: No - I don't think she's ever thought of that as home so much as a, heh, super-luxury holiday-home.
Aleph: though, sigh
EarthScorpion: Hmm. Are you sure? She went from being a homeless street rat to living there for several months when she was first initiated.
Aleph: Hmm.
Aleph: ... I think it largely depends on whether her trained perception of not getting attached to any place she laid her head down survived her Sacrifice. Because as a street rat, she lived in "Nexus", but she never identified deeply with any single squat or lodging-house or den, because she knew they came and went unpredictably and that she might have to move on to another one in a few months. So it was areas she identified with rather than single buildings.
Aleph: Because she'd run around the same streets and markets every day no matter where she slept.
...
Aleph: aww man
Aleph: I'm reading through Solar Investigation
Aleph: some of these are kind of hilarious
Aleph: "The intentions of others are transparent to the Chosen of the Sun. The Exalt uses this Charm immediately after interacting with a target. The Solar's player rolls (Perception + Investigation). The difficulty of this roll is 1, but subtract an external penalty of ([the target's Manipulation + Socialize] ÷ 2) from the successes on the Investigation roll. On a success, this Charm forces the target's player to declare the target's intentions in this interaction."
Aleph: Ney: *can tell that a good half or so of the reason Keris is having dinner with him is to keep him from playing lookout for her companions who are sneaking past the town*
EarthScorpion: Poor Keris
EarthScorpion: she hasn't had to deal with this kind of shenanigans before
Aleph: of course, the other half is to see how involved he is in the slavery trade, and...
Aleph: ...
Aleph: ... you know, I'm not sure she knows what she'll do if he is, so he'd probably just pick up on that.
EarthScorpion: And the entire corebook Investigation tree is E2 or lower.
Aleph: If he gets a big enough threshold he might be able to pick up that she agrees at a gut level that a clan-chief should either punish his followers for their sins or own them and pay any blood-price that's demanded of him; eg either he helps them against the slave-mines or she'll be tempted to attack him.
Aleph: sigh
Aleph: oh keris
Aleph: you really are your mother's daughter
Aleph: you think the same way
EarthScorpion: Well, you know
EarthScorpion: Maryam did say:
"I think I must have succeeded with you. You understand about proper revenge, don't you? All of us know it - even farmers and," she makes a disgusted noise, "goat herders. You know not to rest while your mother's killer still breathes, because that's how it should be. You learned the ways in blood, salt and milk."Aleph: Yes
Aleph: hee
Aleph: Ali didn't really inherit the Daiwye worldview, but Keris hews surprisingly close to it in a lot of ways.
Aleph: Sigh.
...
EarthScorpion: Oh, Keris. It's kind of funny that she's less of a kleptomaniac than Nemo.
EarthScorpion: Keris, after all, has never stolen from her boss.
Aleph: she literally stole Dulmea from her boss this arc
Aleph: Dulmea being the thing her bosses put in her to stop her betraying them.
EarthScorpion: Nah, that's luring her into treachery.
Aleph: : P
EarthScorpion: That's not really theft.
EarthScorpion: She's never done something like steal research she was meant to be returning to Ligier.
Aleph: ... not steal, no, but she did copy down all the research she got for Orange Blossom
EarthScorpion: But she did hand it all over.
Aleph: heh
Aleph: oh keris
Aleph: what's our current count of "things that would get her in a lot of trouble if Orabilis knew about them"?
EarthScorpion: Nemo-like
Aleph: pseudo-alliances with Lunars and Solars, deliberate invocation of her Past Life, knowing Secrets Meant Only For The Yozis, explicit intention not to set the Unquestionable free to ravage Creation, successfully luring her coadjutor into treachery, considerable effort put into keeping her own soul-world and her subsouls free from the Laws of Cecelyne, explicit intention to murder the Unquestionable if her children are severely threatened, promise to unshackle Lilunu's souls and give her more power and freedom relative to her current status compared to other Unquestionable, promise to Adorjan to effectively betray the Reclamation and throw it into chaos in some ironic and hilarious fashion...
EarthScorpion: But is it treachery to the Reclamation if you're following the orders of a Yozi? :d
...
EarthScorpion: Hee. I do like one of Zanara's traits that I've sort of come up with for their dialogue, especially Zana's.
Aleph: hmm?
Aleph: I do like that Zana always has heterochromia
Aleph: : D
Aleph: you really did like those pictures with a colour split down the middle, didn't you?
EarthScorpion: They make aesthetics equal to morality, so Zana doesn't call things "good", she calls them "pretty".
Aleph: oh zanara
EarthScorpion: I knew a guy with heterochromia at secondary school
EarthScorpion: And, heh, yes, it's perhaps a hint that Zana isn't as dominant as she acts
EarthScorpion: She can't keep duality out of her eyes
EarthScorpion: The doorway to the soul
EarthScorpion: And yes, Vali and Zanara were basically being kids putting things in the microwave to see what happened
EarthScorpion: ... it's kind of funny that her male souls are the "science" ones
Aleph: hee
EarthScorpion: Well, hmm, it's more that Calesco and Haneyl are much more interested in people. Haneyl is greedy, but her greed is more a social thing.
EarthScorpion: So, yeah, did you like Zanara and Vali in the session? Anything in their characterising that you liked, or contrary think I should have done differently?
Aleph: I did, yeah. Hee.
Aleph: It's not a full dynamic yet, but it's a nice glimpse at one and a good foundation for more. And nicely showcases the areas where they agree.
EarthScorpion: And their personalities?
Aleph: I hadn't actually noticed the pretty-as-good thing of Zanara. It's subtle, and a little unsettling in a good way.
Aleph: And I do like Vali's attitude, hee.
Aleph: I'm going to enjoy having him out when I fix up her Saatan estate.
EarthScorpion: He's about as loud as construction equipment, lawl.
EarthScorpion: if not louder.
Aleph: heh
EarthScorpion: Zanara - especially Zana - does show how Keris sort of left them to Haneyl for their core formative period, unlike the attention she lavished on the first four.
EarthScorpion: Hee. So when Keris gets working on her mansion and rebuilding it, she'll have three young babies around, a probably-still-six year old who's obviously a monster half the time, and a ten year old who refuses to do what people order him to
Aleph: Keris: "In retrospect I did not consider how much of a headache this was going to be."
EarthScorpion: Also, she'll probably need to compromise some kind of workforce or else questions might be asked.
Aleph: indeed
EarthScorpion: Hmm. The problem here is that the Hui Cha, who would usually be the loyal people that Little River should be calling on, can't know the truth yet.
Aleph: hmm
Aleph: dammit keris, trying to take on too many things at once
...
<assaulting the Tiger Warrior hide>
Aleph: What kind of Diff would it be to march off and then swing back around and stealthily sleepy-poison them?
EarthScorpion: So, that'd be an attempt to re-establish surprise, effectively, handicapped by how they'd be on full alert and know what she's wearing. Charms may assist.
Aleph: HPC allows her to, yeah.
EarthScorpion: Then yes, contested Phys + Subterfuge vs Reaction + Awareness + 2, and Keris turns out to be at Diff 4 because the bastards have littered the approaches to their hideout with traps and tripwires and noisemakers and other cunningly hidden acts of the utter bastard.
Aleph: curse them so, indeed. though lol, if she runs and uses her anima power, she's got perfect balance and no sound can escape her vicinity. the downside is that's heavy on motes, which she's likely to need. hmm.
EarthScorpion: They're also spending 2m on 2 Awareness ExD, so 17 dice - 10 successes.
EarthScorpion: Tiger Warriors are scary.
Aleph: That means I need to beat 14 sux unless I negate the traps and so on?
EarthScorpion: Yes. Also remember that if she can find an approach using cover, HPC doubles the benefits of cover.
EarthScorpion: Consider this a tutorial of how when against Tiger Warriors, excellencies aren't enough when they've had a chance to set up.
...
EarthScorpion: So, enjoying things?
EarthScorpion: Liking Ney? Not feeling he counters Keris too much, but still provides a challenge?
Aleph: No, I'm loving him so far. I kind of want him to pierce her half-truths and bluffs - which is why I'm having her make mistakes here and there - because I'm genuinely interested in his reaction to, heh, the series of events he's likely to assemble from them.
Aleph: I guess I'm sort of meta-Kerising
Aleph: because from what she's slipped up on so far, he probably has enough to work out that it's her mother, but... that just tells him that she came looking for her parents, found her mother was dead, and is probably trying to figure out a way to lay her to rest without letting anyone else know of the relationship
Aleph: which is sympathy-provoking, as is right and proper for the Prickly Tsundere Love Interest On The Opposite Side. : P
EarthScorpion: Also, if you can trust him, he's not an occulty guy, and she's demonstrated already she's an occulty girl.
Aleph: indeed
Aleph: and also an expressive girl, sigh
EarthScorpion: So when they have to inevitably team up, she brings things he needs to the table... if he can trust her
Aleph: Indeed.
EarthScorpion: (he can't trust her)
Aleph: Oh, Keris and your Occult/Expression to his Investigation/Command
Aleph: ... goddammit that's actually a really good matchup
Aleph: she can lure it in with praise-songs and spirit-placating acts and then trap it
Aleph: he can coordinate his ninjas to help her do so and then help her figure out where her papa is in payment
EarthScorpion: Testolagh is not coming across well to him in her "I want their dick" stakes.
Aleph: Ney would be very smug about this if he knew.
Aleph: Though admittedly he would be less smug when her Sasi-Principle blew him out of the water without even noticing him.
Aleph: ... or he'd just say something ecchi about two beautiful ladies not upsetting him at all
Aleph: rrrgh, so annoying
...
Aleph: Heh. So, what does Ney know about what she can do - or what will he know, by after his guards report in? Hmm.
"La, la. Well, obviously she's very fast and sneaky and beautiful, and has the basic skills of an angyalka in the hair and the playing and so on and so forth; whatever she is was probably made with one somehow. I suspect she has either incredibly good senses or some way of knowing when she's being watched, because she caught me and the river-outlook but not, if we are to trust her word, the cursed thing in the valley. Her great beauty - as well as naturally making her attractive to simple men such as myself - also lets her make herself seem especially captivating and innocent. And then there are those contact poisons. La, those are going to be a pain, because they knocked out three of my Tiger Warriors - and are another hint that she's as dangerous a lady as she is a beautiful one, because I bet she can make lethal ones as well. Her pride was stung by the monster of the valley getting the drop on her, too, so she's at least deadly enough that she expects to win against a creature she herself compared to a demon lord in strength. That she can guess at its potency like that might be more magic or it might just be that she's a clever and mysterious woman who knows a lot about occult and artistic matters that go above my head."EarthScorpion: Well, I can't tell you what he's guessed or suspected so far. That'd ruin the ~fun~
Aleph: Of course.
Aleph: But that's probably a low bar to what he knows or suspects.
EarthScorpion: Yes. Keris is actually quite bad at hiding she's powerful enough to consider a 1CD a non problem.
Aleph: : P
Aleph: She's defined by fear, but she's also defined by how noticeable its absence is.
EarthScorpion: She actually, uh, does a pretty good job at excluding swathes of supernatural creatures from what she could be.
Aleph: ?
Aleph: ... goddammit was he watching her reaction to his mention of fae things?
EarthScorpion: She's too powerful to be blooded, she doesn't have the elemental things of a DB, she gives away that she at the very least used to be human...
Aleph: Hah
Aleph: Oh Keris
EarthScorpion: He watches everything. And may have told her that story just to see how she reacts to fae stuff.
Aleph: THIS MAN
Aleph: RRRGH
Aleph: Goddammit I'm starting to ship them.
Aleph: He can keep up with her, and I hadn't realised how attractive that was.
EarthScorpion: Poor Keris. She really has a hole in her heart left by Rat that she doesn't even realise because she forgot the bad times with him and how he'd annoy and frustrate her.
Aleph: He can counter the unpredictability and hidden aces that Sasi isn't as well-equipped to deal with just by sheer pre-planning arête and not having Sasi's flaw when it comes to adapting to changing circumstances.
EarthScorpion: He's also way more chill than Sasi or Testolagh so Keris reacts when she probably shouldn't because he doesn't demand her watchfulness.
Aleph: Yes. Heh.
EarthScorpion: And his laziness disarms her.
Aleph: He lets her have fun, and that in turn makes her drop her guard a bit.
Aleph: ... he also has an edge over Kakashi flirting with Narutoverse!Keris in that he doesn't have two annoying little brats hanging around and ruining his attempts at getting laid. : P
Aleph: (Sakura, meanwhile, would probably have managed to inadvertently get her to reveal her medical jutsu and be a good two thirds of the way into hero-worship)
EarthScorpion: What do you call Calesco and Rathan, if not two brats cock blocking him?
Aleph: Sigh. What would that be; a filler movie where Team 7 is assigned to guard a town and encounters a strange kunoichi who doesn't wear a headband - not even a scratched missing-nin one - and who kicks off a plotline about vengeful ghosts and revenge plots that relates to Kakashi's past?
EarthScorpion: If it's dramatic filler, there's half a chance she's related to Rin somehow. Or at least has the same face markings.
Aleph: Naruto probably Rasengans the greater yidak in the face with a special Ghost Rasengan.
EarthScorpion: But who falls in love with him because of that?
...
Aleph: ... sigh.
Aleph: She may already, by hugging them a lot and feeding them and cooing and singing and playing for them every night to get them to sleep and telling them she loves them frequently and rocking them and coaxing them to behave at feeding time and keeping them cuddled up against her in hair-slings as much as possible, be teaching Kali and Ogin Mother Before Daughter.
Keris: "Look, it makes them a bit more well-inclined to behave, and also means I can get started on teaching them Old Realm, Riverspeak and Firetongue early."Aleph: Heh. As infants they can probably only learn a single dot of a language style - but they can learn a single dot in three languages where they can't learn three dots in one.
Aleph: Which... means that unlike Keris, who learned Old Realm and Firetongue late and who still thinks of Riverspeak as her mother tongue, they're going to be trilingual from as far back as they can remember.
Aleph: Quattrolingual, if you count their eerie synchronised twinspeak that doesn't seem to require any actual audible communication and may be related to Ekoese somehow.
EarthScorpion: Heh. Just giving a baby the ability to speak enough to say "want food" or "poo" makes mothering so much easier
Aleph: yes
...
EarthScorpion: Heh
EarthScorpion: Calesco is probably going to give Keris a big hug when she gets back for that compassion thing, even if she doesn't know exactly what went on there
Aleph: Niiice
Aleph: Heh
Aleph: Hmm
Aleph: So he's seen Love of Art, Never Be Chained Again and Compassion for sure.
Aleph: He may have picked up on Pay Each Man Back In Kind and Be Loved with her innate not-quite-Harbourite sense of "fair payback" and her quiet devastation over Maryam not having Passions related to her children.
EarthScorpion: Mmm
Aleph: The only one I'm pretty sure he might not have picked up on is Greed - amusingly, the only one whose soul isn't with her.
Aleph: Because while she's stolen things, he hasn't seen much of her klepto side or possessiveness.
EarthScorpion: Poor Keris. She keeps on getting tangled up with men with their own particular honour codes that she doesn't share.
Aleph: There's also a sense of bittersweet amusement in the fact that of the witnesses and people involved in this, the only one who realises he's filling the hole that Rat left is Dulmea. Keris herself will think "no, it's not Rat he reminds me of - I always got on with Rat, he was never this irritating, grr".
Aleph: And Dulmea will be like 'you think that, child, but he was. You just chose to forget it', though whether she'll voice that I don't know.
...
Aleph: It occurred to me that someone with superhuman vision or hearing can probably pick up the scar at the base of Keris's tongue pretty easily, either by spotting it when she opens her mouth slightly to talk, or by hearing how it slightly shifts the pattern of her speech.
Aleph: Or Medicine Charms. If Inks ever used Flawless Diagnosis on Keris, she'd be extremely freaked out.
Aleph: Three sets of scarring that went through steel-hard skin and ignored her regeneration, as well as the various weird ways her body works that Rat picked up on.
EarthScorpion: Like a gentleman, Ney didn't mention she only breathes when she needs to talk.
Aleph: He was thinking about what it would mean in bed.
Aleph: I don't think that's very gentlemanly.
EarthScorpion: ... yeah, probably
Aleph: : P
Aleph: Keris: "You could at least deny it, you pervert!"
EarthScorpion: And Inks would start screaming about how much mercury Keris has in her blood.
Aleph: ...
Aleph: Yes
Aleph: Yes she would
Aleph: Both in the Mercurial Sap Embrace sense and also in terms of heartsap.
Aleph: Inks: "How are you not crippled for life?"
EarthScorpion: Also, stare in horror at how the blood sample she took clotted into mercury, brass and basalt.
...
Aleph: Oh, Keris. She's really not good at fighting seriously as part of a team.
Aleph: Even if she has someone built to be as deadly as her; she tends to throw around environmental clinch vectors and Knockback effects and blinding effects and instability penalties and AoE attacks and environmental hazards that apply toxins like they're going out of style.
Aleph: Which are not friendly to allies.
Aleph: So unless someone is built with the same kind of mobility and hazard-immunity as her, she basically just gets in their way.
EarthScorpion: Heh, yes. She's taken that bit of Adorjan and Kimbery to heart
Aleph: I noted to horngeek that a lot of her fighting style is basically running away and getting the environment to hurt her opponent for her until it's safe to come up and stab them
Aleph: I mean, there's more to it than that, but it's a notable factor.
...
Aleph: sigh
Aleph: if it's Keris in Predator the Musical, then Arnie has to be a Solar
Aleph: or they're all DBs
Aleph: otherwise she'd just have oneshotted them all
EarthScorpion: Well, the Predator is explicitly playing with them
Aleph: yes, but Keris doesn't tend to do that
EarthScorpion: It could just kill them all easily, but it's sport to it
EarthScorpion: Honestly, yeah, they're elite spec ops forces belonging to the world superpower and the early part of the film is them being the Predator to south American guerrillas
EarthScorpion: They're totally Dragonblooded
Aleph: : P
Aleph: and yeah, that definitely means, heh
Aleph: Keris could in theory probably kill them all if she hit them right
Aleph: but she instead lurks in the trees and picks them off one by one
EarthScorpion: And doesn't kill the cute civilian girl with them
Aleph: Keris: "Bet I can make a Yozi worshipper of her."
EarthScorpion: Hilariously, Keris would be invisible to the Predator thanks to her po Charms
Aleph: : V
EarthScorpion: And its invisibility is pretty worthless against her since it still makes sound
Aleph: "and then the Predator that was preying on the commandos who were preying on guerillas was itself targetted and hunted down by a higher-level predator"
Aleph: Keris: "Ahhh. It's good to be on top. : 3"
Aleph: Sigh. Yes, honestly, you probably can also treat that film as mortal guerillas, Tiger Warrior commandos and ~2CD level akuma-thing.
Aleph: Keris: "Aww, it's a Metagaoiyn akuma-thing. Haneyl, do you want its head to see if you can replicate it?"
Aleph: Keris: "Be careful, it might still be infectious after it's dead."
Aleph: Haneyl: "I know what I'm doing, mama! Geez!"
Part 104 extras:
EarthScorpion:... sigh. If it wasn't a horrific waste of time for all concerned, I'd have bandits try to attack Keris' barge.
Aleph: oh my god, please, do
Aleph: She might actually just collapse laughing so hard that she was unable to help.
Aleph: Then there'd only be two demon lords and a Keris-trained First Circle and an ex-mercenary to defend them!
Aleph: ... honestly, that deserves to be written up as a short extra from the bandit's point of view.
Aleph: so they're describing "the short redhead" purely externally
Aleph: with no idea of what they're attacking
EarthScorpion:Well, I don't know.
EarthScorpion:They might start by harassing the short pretty pink-haired girl who's dangling her feet over the side of the boat.
Aleph: oh dear
Aleph: hmm
Aleph: Actually, that would be interesting. I don't think we've ever seen from the PoV of a relatively normal person as they get a look at what Keris is. Ali and Zany went through that, and so have Kuha and Xasan, but we saw it from outside their perspective.
Aleph: And for a proper horror monster you really need a semi-characterised bandit protagonist and a few named and base-level-characterised friends and the dawning horror as they realise what they've just mugged.
...
Aleph: oh, Keris
Aleph: : (
Aleph: Hee
Aleph: you know the funny thing?
EarthScorpion: Hmm?
Aleph: "But you... you were someone who took the power of the demons, weren't you? And you still have it."
Aleph: she never even answered him
Aleph: if that was the social version of a probing attack, she didn't parry or riposte, she just ignored the thrust and retaliated by obliterating him with a kamehameha
EarthScorpion:
Aleph: Her response to a gentle accusation was a verbal Starlight Breaker
...
Aleph: heh
Aleph: Don't think I didn't notice that Ney called Keris's caste mark "cute" as well as "hot".
Aleph: She's going to be pissed about that, too, when she remembers.
EarthScorpion: Well, you know, he wasn't going to call it threatening or intimidating or a burning ring of the light of hell's sun.
Aleph: Keris: "Cute? Cute? It's a symbol of unfathomable cosmic power! It's the manifestation of a god-soul capable of shattering the highest of gods and warping the fabric of Creation around it! It's the opened gate to an endless well of magic that might have existed since before existence was a thing!"
EarthScorpion: Ney: "It sets off your eyes well."
...
EarthScorpion: I liked that session. The forced flashback thing worked really well for pushing things on and prompting further progress
Aleph: Yeah.
Aleph: And god, I was laughing hysterically for half of it.
Aleph: "I-it's not green!"
Aleph: hi i would like to nominate keris "has pulled the wool over the eyes of multiple social-focused celestial exalted, the entire reclamation and the literal chief censor of hell" dulmeadokht for the Best Liar Of All Time award
Aleph: it is presented by Kara Zor-El "I loved learning all about this new planet... th-that I'm also from!" Danvers
EarthScorpion: Keris' crucial weakness when lying is actually having to directly lie
Aleph: oh, Keris
Aleph: Eko is not going to let her forget "I-it's not green!" for a while
Aleph: or her missing hair ornaments
...
EarthScorpion: Dammit, those two are super cute together.
Aleph: they are, urgh
Aleph: I'm having to resist the urge to try and steal him as Little River's husbando
EarthScorpion: It totally was at least partially Keris' fault that Rathan felt ready to say yes to Oula. Partly her fault for leaving her son with a room to himself with a pretty girl who loves him, of course, but also partly Keris' own feelings left him more willing because that led him to 'pay her feelings back' while Keris was exerting herself.
Aleph: dammit keris
EarthScorpion: Also, lol, I didn't plan for there to be two bedroom physical comedy farce bits
Aleph: I was going to have her just run away and have him catch up on a rooftop
Aleph: but then I was like "okay, but she probably just had a 20-30 success orgasm if that touch enhancer doubles her touch successes, are her legs really going to still be working?"
Aleph: and decided to have her fall over on the dressing table and steal his mask
EarthScorpion: Also, heh
EarthScorpion: She's probably going to go "wait, my eyes turn into cat eyes during sex? What? Why didn't anyone mention that before? When did that start happening?" when she re-reviews what he said
Aleph: yes, probably
Aleph: : P
...
EarthScorpion: Heh. You realise, the touch enhancer means that this was probably the best sex of her life to date. Beating out Sasi.
EarthScorpion: ... this being Keris, she's probably worrying less about "was it cheating?" and more about "how good is it going to be when I really get things started with Sasi with this?"
Aleph: heh, yes
EarthScorpion: And the fact she failed her sensory roll to notice the return theft was just the best thing for their hilarious relationship.
Aleph: : P
Aleph: it pretty much cements her as the tsundere love interest, yes
Aleph: from his view it's the perfect capstone
EarthScorpion: From her viewpoint, it's that baka Ney is a baka thief!
...
EarthScorpion: Heh. Keris has... uh, largely wriggled out of the possession thing
EarthScorpion: and is like "yeah, we're going to get revenge, but I need my body!"
Aleph: Yes, though she'll still lend her hands out to do the actual strangling.
Dynamesmouse
Bzzzzzz
I look forward to this come lunchtime!
This is probably a silly question but I keep seeing mentions of the ability to use Spiteful-Sea Tincture to turn someone into an addict but I cannot find the mechanical explanation for how this works in the text of the base Spiteful-Sea Tincture charm or the later Great Mother's Tears expansion charm. Is this a special poison variation for Keris game and if so where is it described?
Yeah, that was an old charm I wrote in... like, 2011 or something. Ages ago. It used to be on Keris' character sheet, but when I actually got around to doing some mechanical checks of my old charms, I was like "... what the hell was I thinking, giving you the ability to make people act like they were in Limit Break with regards to 'getting more of it', that's dumb" and since I couldn't get it working (because there are no existing addiction mechanics, and it was hard to balance) I just scrapped it.
So, we refunded the XP and I think @Aleph spent the XP on... the training charm? Something more useful, anyway - she'd used that Charm once.
That makes a lot of sense. I was thinking that you could perhaps justify the addiction by representing it mechanically as a mental mutation that can be applied using the mutation granting portion of Great Mother's Tears but I can see how the lack of addiction mechanics would make that difficult.
Now that you have expanded some of your work on Principals have you considered re-building the charm to represent the addiction effect as a Principle that starts small but increases in value based on number of times used and time since last use once a threshold is passed? This seems like one possible way to represent the effect of addiction using the more flexible Principle system that cannot be replicated in the baseline Virtue and Intimacy system.
Now that you have expanded some of your work on Principals have you considered re-building the charm to represent the addiction effect as a Principle that starts small but increases in value based on number of times used and time since last use once a threshold is passed? This seems like one possible way to represent the effect of addiction using the more flexible Principle system that cannot be replicated in the baseline Virtue and Intimacy system.
those last two updates were completely amazing; I absolutely loved this section and I really want to see Ney more. Actually I want to see Keris build a flying machine from scratch and go hey I know how to fly now that you don't have to worry about secrets so give me the art version.
- Location
- Columbus, OH
I don't know what to say to this. I have laughter, but no words.
I am delighted as to how Ney has turned out. The original purpose for him was somewhat different and the personality only took shape in that first conversation, but he's a lot of fun.
Of course, if you look all the way back to the start of the Eshtock arc, you can see that I've made a deliberate and concerted effort to put more meaningful NPCs into things who either have some kind of hold on Keris or are peer rivals to her. I'd noticed in previous arcs that she was a little too closed in on herself, running around with no real ties and only interacting with her souls in dream sequences. Since the start of Eshtock she's had an adhoc deal with a Lunar, met a Sidereal (and not realised what she was), done a lot of family stuff, got annoyed at Orange Blossom's DB lackey, wound up becoming Oula's mother-in-law, and now wound up becoming the tsundere romantic interest for a Solar ninja commander.
And now she's off to meet, apparently, a Wood-aspected mad scientist who's rather obsessed with plants.
I do love SROI, and the reason I love it is that it gives Solar players a reason to not just no-sell all social things aimed at them. It blocks everything fundamentally dangerous to you, and gives you enough info to make a somewhat informed decision as to whether to reject it.
But for something like this, where Ney's Solar charmset told him that yes, Keris was telling the truth, and yes, Keris actually wants him to listen to what she's saying and think about it because she thinks it's a genuine danger... it means that roll doesn't go to waste because it just gets auto-no-sold by WP expenditure. It's shaken him, and he's thinking about what this pretty, sexy, mysterious, tsundere Hell-Solar has told him - in good faith - and he isn't sure what to do.
(It's probable that some of what he's going to be doing when he's meant to be looking for the info Keris wants is trying to verify anything she told him, to see if she's mistaken or actually correct)
It is worth noting that Vali doesn't mind this as long as he's bribed with food, he likes having his hair braided (though the lightning tends to fry the ribbons quickly), and honestly the dresses they put him in wind up getting torn up and quickly converted into kilts, or passed onto some of his keruby who like the way they look.
Vali is very comfortable in his masculinity. Well, okay, it's more he doesn't question his masculinity at all and if someone called him a girl he'd call them an idiot and maybe punch them if they got annoying about it. It's much like how Haneyl is very comfortable in her femininity, and her response to anyone apart from Sasi saying she's acting in an unlady-like manner is to either fight them or point out how being a conquering tyrant is entirely lady-like behaviour in Creation.
Of course, as we all know, the real dice pool used for carnal acts is to find your highest Attribute and your highest Ability, and furiously bullshit as to why you should be allowed to roll them.
"It's... clearly a Stamina + Bureaucracy roll! Because... because I'm just going to keep going while licking out a full financial report onto their body!"
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Ah, it is time to establish minimum contact for personal jurisdiction I see.
Well, it depends on what you're trying to achieve with the sex. If you're *just* having fun between two consenting adults, then no roll required- the players of whichever characters are involved can quickly hash out how it was for everyone. Or pull out How Was the Sex? - Newstand Press | DriveThruRPG.com. But in that case, it doesn't really matter, so you can skip a formal roll.
If you're trying to achieve something, however, it depends on what you're trying to achieve. Expression in Kerisgame and Performance in vanilla Exalted- whatever edition- is a good standby.
You could justify all sorts of Attributes, though. Physique- or Dexterity if you want to hit juuuust the right spots, Perception if you're paying attention to your partner's reactions and doubling down on what turns them on really quickly and intensely.
You do just... need to handle things with a degree of maturity.
greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
Well, everyone's getting it on now.
So in regards to Keris's mother; how much of her recollections about her life are accurate? Does her status as a ghost perhaps alter the way she sees things, was her leg injury as bad as she says, or has those already bad memories been tainted even further since they directly relate to her death? And I also like how... unpleasant she is to be around.
She's a ghost who died a traumatic death, and the time she has spent strung up has only made bitter and mad. She cares about Keris, but she is so mono-focused on her revenge that it falls to the wayside.
It honestly makes me wonder what she'd be like she managed to get free and intergrate with a ghostly community, how would have she grown or changed?
She's scary and dangerous and honestly Keris would have done her a favor, and the world if she had just severed her fetters and let her find peace in Lethe.
Now for Ney; so he's a head-ninja who has a thing for a red-haired foreigner with a demon(s) inside of her... Minato, is that you?
But in all seriousness, he's a great character; funny, irreverant with his own code of ethics, that while not modern or western by any means is still internally consistent. He's fun, enjoyable to read and I like the fact that he's got memories of his past-life that aren't all rosy.
So in regards to Keris's mother; how much of her recollections about her life are accurate? Does her status as a ghost perhaps alter the way she sees things, was her leg injury as bad as she says, or has those already bad memories been tainted even further since they directly relate to her death? And I also like how... unpleasant she is to be around.
She's a ghost who died a traumatic death, and the time she has spent strung up has only made bitter and mad. She cares about Keris, but she is so mono-focused on her revenge that it falls to the wayside.
It honestly makes me wonder what she'd be like she managed to get free and intergrate with a ghostly community, how would have she grown or changed?
She's scary and dangerous and honestly Keris would have done her a favor, and the world if she had just severed her fetters and let her find peace in Lethe.
Now for Ney; so he's a head-ninja who has a thing for a red-haired foreigner with a demon(s) inside of her... Minato, is that you?
But in all seriousness, he's a great character; funny, irreverant with his own code of ethics, that while not modern or western by any means is still internally consistent. He's fun, enjoyable to read and I like the fact that he's got memories of his past-life that aren't all rosy.
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Now for Ney; so he's a head-ninja who has a thing for a red-haired foreigner with a demon(s) inside of her... Minato, is that you?
If I said "No", would you... believe it?
greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
First off, boo!
Secondly, I only thought of it because you guys mentioned Kakashi and Shikamaru. I wouldn't have thought of it if there wasn't Naruto references flying around everywhere.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Out of interest; did anybody spot the subtle implication Dulmea made?
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
Well, no wonder Keris gets on so well with Asarin. Although now I have this image of Keris summoning her just so she can compare Ney to Balanodo and go "see, here's what a man who's actually worth being tsundere over looks like!"
I also would love to see an omake of how the rest of Ney's circle reacts when he tells them about Keris. They're probably used to this sort of shit from him, of course, but not to quite the degree implied by "Hell has its own equivalent of Solars, I may now be in a long-distance relationship with one of them, and our past lives may have been even bigger monsters than the Immaculates say they were." The most surprising of those to his circle is probably the second one, because Ney strikes me as a man who's had friends with benefits and casual flings before but hasn't hitherto expressed any particular sign of looking for genuine romance.
I also have a thought on the subject of ghosts, given the two examples we now have of them in Kerisgame. It's probably not how you run them, but I feel like it's at least a plausible alternative that has interestingly awful implications. My thought is the following:
The ghosts of children are closer to being full people with actual emotions and the ability to change than the ghosts of adults are.
I'm basing it on how Kerisa seems, for lack of a better term, less obsessive over her guiding Principle than Maryam is. It takes longer for her to bring a conversation back around to finding her parents, her memories of her life are less warped around her ghostly nature, she's more capable of expressing interest in things that aren't her anchor, and so on. Which makes sense to me, in that the mind of a child, especially one as young as Kerisa was when she died, is less... calcified, I suppose, than a fully adult mind, and more openly driven by emotions and instinct than the average adult would be. Where Exalted metaphysics are concerned, it could be described as the hun and po souls being much less distinguishable and much more tightly linked at birth, with them gradually separating as the child matures and adolescence marked as the period where their soul structure achieves its final adult form. If the child dies before then, and becomes a ghost rather than passing on to Lethe, bits of the po soul are still attached, torn free with the hun when it separated.
This would in turn have a few practical effects. First, without outside influence (i.e. necromancy), children will practically never leave yidaks; there's just not enough of the po soul left to avoid fading away over the next three days. Second, a child's ghost can potentially learn weaker yidak-keyword charms, channeling them through the tattered remnants of their po that remain attached to their corpus, and do so without having to devour yidaks and become abominations the way a more standard ghost would. Third, child-ghosts are less predictable than the normal type, as their retaining of some fragments of their capacity for true emotion and natural instinct means they're more able to defy or ignore their driving Passions, and thus both less guaranteed to be manipulable through them and more likely to be aware that you're trying to do so.
This in turn means that the ghosts of children tend to be more dangerous than an adult ghost of equal Enlightenment, and are harder to immediately distinguish from the living without knowledge of the occult or supernatural abilities of your own. They're also more useful for a necromancer who needs a more flexible servant, or a less insane guardian, or just better raw material for crafting necrotech. And who's willing to sacrifice a few children to do it, of course.
To respond to the question posed while I was writing this post, there's the implication that Dulmea isn't necessarily against a potential relationship with Ney, given that Dulmea is by no means afraid to tell Keris "this is a bad idea, don't do it" even when she doesn't expect Keris to listen to her. Dulmea is also willing to not let the Unquestionable know that Keris exposed the existence of the Infernal Exalted, which is something I guarantee they expect a Coadjutor to do their utmost to prevent and to inform them of should their utmost fail. And, of course, Dulmea is willing to lie to Keris when the truth would do nothing but cause the latter pain.
I also would love to see an omake of how the rest of Ney's circle reacts when he tells them about Keris. They're probably used to this sort of shit from him, of course, but not to quite the degree implied by "Hell has its own equivalent of Solars, I may now be in a long-distance relationship with one of them, and our past lives may have been even bigger monsters than the Immaculates say they were." The most surprising of those to his circle is probably the second one, because Ney strikes me as a man who's had friends with benefits and casual flings before but hasn't hitherto expressed any particular sign of looking for genuine romance.
I also have a thought on the subject of ghosts, given the two examples we now have of them in Kerisgame. It's probably not how you run them, but I feel like it's at least a plausible alternative that has interestingly awful implications. My thought is the following:
The ghosts of children are closer to being full people with actual emotions and the ability to change than the ghosts of adults are.
I'm basing it on how Kerisa seems, for lack of a better term, less obsessive over her guiding Principle than Maryam is. It takes longer for her to bring a conversation back around to finding her parents, her memories of her life are less warped around her ghostly nature, she's more capable of expressing interest in things that aren't her anchor, and so on. Which makes sense to me, in that the mind of a child, especially one as young as Kerisa was when she died, is less... calcified, I suppose, than a fully adult mind, and more openly driven by emotions and instinct than the average adult would be. Where Exalted metaphysics are concerned, it could be described as the hun and po souls being much less distinguishable and much more tightly linked at birth, with them gradually separating as the child matures and adolescence marked as the period where their soul structure achieves its final adult form. If the child dies before then, and becomes a ghost rather than passing on to Lethe, bits of the po soul are still attached, torn free with the hun when it separated.
This would in turn have a few practical effects. First, without outside influence (i.e. necromancy), children will practically never leave yidaks; there's just not enough of the po soul left to avoid fading away over the next three days. Second, a child's ghost can potentially learn weaker yidak-keyword charms, channeling them through the tattered remnants of their po that remain attached to their corpus, and do so without having to devour yidaks and become abominations the way a more standard ghost would. Third, child-ghosts are less predictable than the normal type, as their retaining of some fragments of their capacity for true emotion and natural instinct means they're more able to defy or ignore their driving Passions, and thus both less guaranteed to be manipulable through them and more likely to be aware that you're trying to do so.
This in turn means that the ghosts of children tend to be more dangerous than an adult ghost of equal Enlightenment, and are harder to immediately distinguish from the living without knowledge of the occult or supernatural abilities of your own. They're also more useful for a necromancer who needs a more flexible servant, or a less insane guardian, or just better raw material for crafting necrotech. And who's willing to sacrifice a few children to do it, of course.
To respond to the question posed while I was writing this post, there's the implication that Dulmea isn't necessarily against a potential relationship with Ney, given that Dulmea is by no means afraid to tell Keris "this is a bad idea, don't do it" even when she doesn't expect Keris to listen to her. Dulmea is also willing to not let the Unquestionable know that Keris exposed the existence of the Infernal Exalted, which is something I guarantee they expect a Coadjutor to do their utmost to prevent and to inform them of should their utmost fail. And, of course, Dulmea is willing to lie to Keris when the truth would do nothing but cause the latter pain.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Hah. It looks like you caught the implication, then. Do expand~
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
Well, assuming it's not just a general "not spoiling Keris' fond memories with a dose of reality," it seems like a specific implication would be that whatever Rat went off and did that got him killed the first time, Keris feels responsible for it due to their last interaction before that being an argument. Whether because she provoked him into doing something stupid, or he was doing something stupid to apologize, or whatever other motivations he might have had, Keris still subconsciously believes that if they hadn't had that fight Rat wouldn't have died.
greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
Nah, gotta disagree. Kersia is more sane than Keris's mother because while she was lonely and afraid, she wasn't suffering all the time. And her death, while probably painful, was quick and over. Kerisa's haunting isn't because of her death, but rather her waiting for her mother. Compared to the woman who spent God knows how long hanging by a noose.
Yeah, Keris is either miss-remembering or suppressing the times when she'd argue and fight with Rat, and that Keris has a type. That is handsome, too cleaver for their own good and with the ability to charm his way into her dress. When Keris finds out, she's probably going to be tad upset and filled with melonchaley and other such emotions.
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deadcrystal
Slaaneshi Cultist
- Location
- The Warp
Avoiding revealing a painful truth?
Man, Dulmea really doesn't have that much Adorjan in her does she?
(I do know it's been a running theme that when Keris swings more towards Adorjan is one of the times when Dulmea comprehends Keris the least. Heh. She'd understand Cecelian or SWLIHN-ian Keris a lot better. Don't think they'd get on as well though.)
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh, it's
Keris did fight with Rat. They fought all the time, in play and as an act to scam marks and for real. He was very much like Ney; clever and frustrating and willing to play along with her tsunning at him and pretending not to like him. They used the appearance of discord and fights and false dichotomies to engineer sides for people to take which they could then profit from in scams and thefts. And sometimes they fought more seriously too; when stress got to one or both of them - she hated how he took risks and bluffed too much and got himself overestimated deliberately to pull off some of his stunts. When he vanished, as much as she loved him and grieved him, she also hated him a little bit for leaving her - and when she found him again as an Abyssal that built on itself into a furious bitter thing that balanced love and hatred almost equally, because he died and came back and left the city and he never even said goodbye to her when he could have done it so easily.
And then she killed him. She killed him, and as she did she had two Principles towards him; one of aching bittersweet grief-struck love and the other of furious bitter abandoned hatred.
And the thing is, guys, Keris has Freedom Lets Go.
So she cut one of them loose, and all the memories associated with it. But that wasn't just "I hate him for abandoning me". It was all of the bad memories of him. All of the ones where they were fighting - even in play - because the reminder hurt too much after what she'd done.
Eko was less than two weeks old and not even sapient yet. Sasi - even now - knows only that Keris knew him before, and loved him, and killed him to free him from the ancient ghost who'd trapped him. Nobody in Nexus still remembers a pair of random street rats from six or seven years ago. Keris herself is unaware of the hole she left in her heart and the gap she left in her life by doing that.
The only living being that understands the empty space that Ney is filling and why Keris took such an instant shine to him is the only living being who knew about her relationship with Rat from first-hand thoughts and memories, saw the turmoil and the seething mixture of love and hatred when she saw him again, and had a front row seat to her killing him and fleeing into the night in tears and then just... ceasing to think about fully half of their dynamic together; leaving only bittersweet memories of grief behind.
Her coadjutor. Dulmea.
Poor Dulmama, what a troublesome child she has.
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
This is the sort of thing that makes me feel that at some point we really should see at least the relevant bits of Matasque.
Another thought: given his Charm loadout, to what degree can Ney see that he's fitting in a hole in her heart that someone else left behind?
And given that Keris has "Girls Over Boys" as a Principle, how amusing do you find it that she's actually got a more complicated love life with regards to men than women?
Another thought: given his Charm loadout, to what degree can Ney see that he's fitting in a hole in her heart that someone else left behind?
And given that Keris has "Girls Over Boys" as a Principle, how amusing do you find it that she's actually got a more complicated love life with regards to men than women?
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
Can I just say that I think how Ney 'changes/focuses' as he becomes an Elder Exalt is probably going to be really interesting now?
I mean, provided he survives that long but let's ignore that detail as the triviality that it is (it's not). His exaltation's last 'major' incarnation was someone who I suspect lived through the Primordial War. This meant that as they got older, they focused all their investigative abilities (and they were really potent by then) on ensuring that the Yozi could never come back and become anything like the Primordials were. And now we have Ney. Someone who is going down a very similar path... and right as he's still building up the foundation of what he will become in the future, he is told this terrible, awful, unavoidable Truth. That the older an exalted gets, especially a Solar, the less 'human' and the more 'monster' they become in all but a few cases. So much so that all the horrors and terrors that have happened since the Usurpation, said Usurpation might still have been the better path.
And no matter what beauty and wonder he is told about what they created, it always comes back to the fact that, given time and nothing stopping them, Elder Solar Exalted can potentially become as great a monster as, well, maybe not a full Yozi, but at least a 3rd Circle Demon. Anyone want to take bets on whether if Ney becomes an Elder Exalted like the Solars of before where, his focus is on something like 'The Yozi and their Demons, the Neverborn and their Dead are all Monsters that Creation needs to be guarded against. But Creation also needs to be guarded against Elder Exalted who lose their humanity. Including me if that happens. For we can be just as great a monster in such a case'.
That has a story to it... And it would be really interesting to see where it would go...
I mean, provided he survives that long but let's ignore that detail as the triviality that it is (it's not). His exaltation's last 'major' incarnation was someone who I suspect lived through the Primordial War. This meant that as they got older, they focused all their investigative abilities (and they were really potent by then) on ensuring that the Yozi could never come back and become anything like the Primordials were. And now we have Ney. Someone who is going down a very similar path... and right as he's still building up the foundation of what he will become in the future, he is told this terrible, awful, unavoidable Truth. That the older an exalted gets, especially a Solar, the less 'human' and the more 'monster' they become in all but a few cases. So much so that all the horrors and terrors that have happened since the Usurpation, said Usurpation might still have been the better path.
And no matter what beauty and wonder he is told about what they created, it always comes back to the fact that, given time and nothing stopping them, Elder Solar Exalted can potentially become as great a monster as, well, maybe not a full Yozi, but at least a 3rd Circle Demon. Anyone want to take bets on whether if Ney becomes an Elder Exalted like the Solars of before where, his focus is on something like 'The Yozi and their Demons, the Neverborn and their Dead are all Monsters that Creation needs to be guarded against. But Creation also needs to be guarded against Elder Exalted who lose their humanity. Including me if that happens. For we can be just as great a monster in such a case'.
That has a story to it... And it would be really interesting to see where it would go...