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Exalted: Out Of The Eater

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Well, listening to NIN's "1 Ghosts I" was a pretty good choice for this chapter. It's like a mindless dirge for the horrors yet to come.

I'll admit to not having much idea about how the Encrypted work, how Lookshy keeps them from turning against the empire when they're explicitly treated the same as the helots themselves; my current guess is that they're raised from birth for that explicit purpose, indoctrinated into hardcore Lookshyan Immaculism until they'd quite literally commit suicide on the fleeting whim of their Dragonblood masters. Whatever leash is used to constrain them, Jason is clearly reaching its limit. Does he realize that even if he saves us from this purge, it will only mean further suffering for us? Does he hate himself for wanting you to live, when he's spent his life in service to destroying helots just like us?

We'll see, I suppose.

[X] Tell him you love him. You don't...know if you do, really, you don't know what love feels like. But he makes you feel something like whole, something like wanted, and you want to make him feel the same way too.
 
[X] Tell him thank you. He was there for you that first night, he's been there for you in the days since. You don't know what you are to each other exactly but he is your friend. And you would die for for your friends.
 
Woof. A lot to unpack here.

TenfoldShields said:
There's at least a hundred people here; the church has no decoration but the crowd is a mosaic all its own. Flesh done in gradients of fur and feather and scale. Monsters twisted into human shapes. You've heard that in the West, the Realm devises complex systems and citizen-tiers for their subjugated populations; dividing and segmenting and segregating, a scaffolding of relative positions and absolute favor. Martial race or menial? Celestial in affinity or corrupt in aspect? Capable of higher reasoning and mature thought or restricted, hobbled by one's primitive instincts? Lookshy holds you in no such regard: you are the weak, you are the cowardly and the craven. You are all alike in your unworthiness, all equal as you kneel in the dirt.

If who you were mattered at all, you'd be a Citizen now wouldn't you?

Even so, there are stories and you know some of them.

There, in the shoulder-to-shoulder press, rising above the rest: the spotted leopards, the grassland lions, the thick-furred tigers. Beastmen stripped to the waist or clad in overlarge jackets, bodies dappled in spots or stripes or uniform tawny-gold. Abhor them, they came from Outside in the armies of the raksha and the City broke them upon its walls. Their bondage is their atonement, chaos and Wyld things made to serve the designs of enlightened women and disciplined men. You know that they must clip their pelts short and cut their claws to the quick, paring them back to the soft beds.

the overseer was a fat woman, a jovial woman, her body thick with muscle from years of service on the front lines, blurred by years more of good eating.
you remember the way her tiger-skin belt strained to contain her waist.
"I could always use another," she used to say as she slapped her stomach, laughing at her own joke.​


There, against the walls, on the edges, in knots of their own kind: the river-serpents. Their frames long and lean; too many slitted black eyes glittering in saurian faces. Frilled hoods climbing up their shoulders, anchoring into their scaled scalps. Scorn them, they were born from the filth of the Yanaze and stood against the founding Gentes, siding with the tyrants of Deheleshen against what was good and right. Against the course of history, the future path. Black mud clings to their bodies, wetland greenery sprouting from lanky limbs. The blessings of a God. It means nothing.

he sat on the bench, arms resting on his thighs. towering over you, sighing as he pressed a cool cloth to the back of his neck.
you asked what happened to his teeth, your small hands reaching up to touch your own canines.
they were pulled when he was born, he said, to take his venom and make him "safe".​

And there, lining the highest levels, hunched over and peering down at the assembled mass: the ossifrage, the bone-eaters. Black wings and heavy, hooked beaks. The yellow-white feathers of their chests and necks and scalps stained rust red. Hate them, when the City found their tribe they knew them to be degenerate corpse-eaters, ghost-worshippers. Vultures feasting upon the bones of citizens; they were scourged with fire and salt as all wicked things must be. One turns and you see her face has been half shattered, pink tissue welling up between the cracked keratin.

at night, when you two were done, he'd wrap his useless wings around you and hold you kindly. what happened to him wasn't your fault. more than anything he wanted to fly.
he was smiling, you think, when he looked back at you.
he was smiling, you think, when he went over the cliff. useless wings outstretched. ​

Stories are just ghosts, pieces of the past that haunt you; dogging your footsteps. An echo where there was no sound, a murmur where there was no conversation. You know that in their academies they teach the children of Lookshy the history of your own ancestors. They say that you were born from uncivilized barbarians and stupid brutes, that your forefathers and mothers were feeble and feckless and their very blood seethed with impurities. That slavery was a kindness, a taming of beasts.

You're all just beasts to them, in the end.
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I absolutely love this passage. It introduces all these badass-looking nonhumans, huge bara furries and cool demigod scalies and the raddest ghostbirbs based on those ones that eat bone and cover themselves in red dirt to look cool, and at every turn just bluntly says "yeah you're all equally shit in the eyes of the Real People". It's dark as hell and so appropriate. And also a few more scattered memories of Alexius' life! At least one poor birb boyfriend and possibly a snek.

Snippets of discussion float through the air, you have some time before the sermon starts. You tug Jason's arm, tipping your head towards a small throng around a river-serpent. He starts a little, rubbing his neck sheepishly. Just past his ear you see a serious faced young woman scowling at nothing. Her hair the color of ash and cold, crumbling coals; a padded vest baring deeply tanned, deeply muscled arms. Her focus shifts and she catches your eyes; holds them for a moment, just a moment, a second of connection in the churn and then it's gone and so is she.
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uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

methinks another encrypted one dropping in to see if these fucking helots are starting to think they're people

"They say you are the meek! And to ensure this they have seen you abused, mutilated and shamed. To ensure this they send soldiers amongst you to slaughter and maim and keep you shackled by fear. But I am not afraid, for I have faith! In the Dragons! In the world that they have made! In you! And I stand before you tonight to tell you that your masters lie. Even the most impious soldier would say that I am holy, sacred in a way a helot is not and can never be. Something like a citizen in my own right," She spreads her arms as if to embrace you all and you? You're squeezing Jason's fingers all but bloodless, the tears returned, you're rocking up on your tip-toes as if you can be that much closer to her. That much nearer.

"But they are wrong," she says, "for you are my sisters and my brothers and my brethren in faith if not in blood. And that it is not you who should be afraid."

You don't cheer, you can't, you can barely bring yourself to raise your voice. But as she begins to read from the Text, to recount the story of Pasiap and the Pilgrim and the Tyrant Humbled, you see the same expression on everyone's face and feel it mirrored on your own: joy, raw and radiant and awed.
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And then a cataphract just bursts in and hits her with the fucking Citizen's Elbow off the top rope, shattering her spine and killing her instantly.


Who is it who offers first? Who asks and who reciprocates? Do you even know? Does it even matter?

There's no real privacy in the helot quarter but the two of you still find a space, a little alley between the buildings where the shadows cluster thick. It's cramped but it's cool and the wind is softer here, people walk past now and then but none cut through, none disturb you. You kiss him and he buries his face in the crook of your neck, the joint between shoulder and throat. His arms wrapped around you, his hands slipping lower. Your own exploring him, feeling the hard planes of muscle and the starker spars of bone. Stroking the heavy brawn of his breast, fingers gliding across the tanned skin; lacing together beneath his tunic, across his back. Savoring the way you make him shiver despite himself. Blonde hair hangs half over his eyes, he doesn't quite look at you.

"Do you enjoy me?" Jason murmurs.

"I think you're beautiful," you say. He laughs, a hitching, hiccuping noise in the sharp bark and holds you tighter. He steps in closer, all but pinning you against the wall. It goes fast after that, a steady degeneration. Preparing you and asking if you're alright and then kinder concerns giving way to harsh gasps and barely stifled moans. He's gentler with you than he really needs to be; like he's worried you'll break or shatter in your grip. You take him with your back braced against the side of the building, your legs around his waist. The two of you more than half naked, nearly nude but for open jackets and hiked up shirts.

His face buried beneath your jaw, your nails digging into the dense muscle, both your breathing coming in ragged pants as you finish. He makes no mood to clean up, to get decent, just standing there chest to chest. Letting it last as long as he can.

"(It'll be alright)," he says, repeating it like a mantra as the two of you cling to each other. The rest of the world dead and gone. "(It'll be alright, I'll make it alright)."
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:) / :(

I like this scene in the worst possible way. It's rushed and messy and what Alexius really needs is a nice soft bed to spoon with someone in, but this is pretty much the best he could ever hope for. Annnnd from the sounds of it Jason is starting to internally come around to this. Hey, it's not miscegenation if it's gay right? :V

In the morning you wake to see a hundred carrion crows circling the town of Ivory Bones, watching, waiting, as a new brace of "battle-standards" are raised, the old ones, the rotting carcasses finally cut down. The next day they slash everyone's rations, working you all double-pace. Working you until your arms are trembling, shaking, and the haft of your pick is stained scarlet, smudged in crimson. Only some of it yours. The day after you and the others watch as a column of armored cataphracts spills out of the gates of the town, pouring through the narrow paths through the earth-works. Quilted red cloth over bronze-washed scale. Their chargers draped in barding, faded gold segments rippling with every step. They burn like the setting sun. Hundreds of pounds of armored strength, veteran soldiers. Packs of mounted scouts, skirmishers in chain at the front. They return that evening, bloodied and battered and badly diminished in number. And all throughout Listener Karatzas walks among the slaves and speaks to so many of you, she says she will hold another service to welcome calendar's end, to huddle together against the encroaching dark. All throughout the week Jason stands beside you, watching you; you take comfort in each other when you can, you're there for each other still when you can't. You hold him in the night as he mumbles, caught in the grip of his own nightmares. You don't judge him, you understand.

Calibration is coming and it won't spare any of you. Calibration is coming and with it an answer to the question that's been plaguing you. Calibration is coming, tonight the Unconquered Sun will set and he will not rise.

It is dusk. It is starting.

You and Jason kneel alongside the others, the hundreds, the thousands close enough that there's barely any room to sink down lower. You do it anyway, every helot genuflecting before the horizon, sinking down to prostrate themselves in the dust alongside every guard in the camp. A Listener -not her, not yours- begins to sign a hymn. The mournful melody drifting out over the marshaled soldiers and slaves. The sky above burns like molten copper, the shadow of the Silver Chair interposed upon face of a divine inferno. A black disk carving Sol Invictus into a blazing crescent. One by one the Maidens flicker and flare to life around them. Yellow and blue and red and green and violent, a coronet of color; a pentacle framing the Sun and Moon as together they start to sink below the rim of the world.
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Imma keep it real witchu, I didn't actually know what the fuck a Calibration was this entire time, so I'm glad to discover it's a cool-looking complete lunar eclipse as seemingly both the sun and moon just kinda leave for routine maintenance. Sweet visual!

The song ends, you press your forehead to the stone and make to rise along with the rest only for Jason to catch your arm. You freeze, hesitant and unsure, studying him with concern.

"Is everything-"

"Don't," he says, his voice thick and hoarse. He won't look up at you, he's just staring off, into the middle distance, at the impaling spears; at the raven worrying at the ruins of a woman's face. Ripping gory strips from glistening bone. "Don't go to her sermon tonight. Listener Karatzas. Don't, just stay by me."

You...smile, awkwardly, uncertainly, not quite understanding. Not quite comprehending. But you can feel the pressure in his grip, feel the tension, feel the strain as he makes claws out of his hands.

"Jason if you're worried we can-"

"It's not that," he hisses, rounding on you and you can see, now that his eyes are glassy, bloodshot, the skin around them slightly swollen and puffy. All around you the helots are milling about, the edges of the crowd dissolving and fraying as people filter away. Nobody pays attention to you to,w nobody has the energy to care. "Xauma is coming now Alexius, they'll be here in a few hours, less maybe. Sidonia's ordered the army to liquidate the slaves. You were right. You were fucking right."

The smile slowly, slowly slips from your face. Every feeling ebbs away, empties you out. Somewhere, far from you, you feel the panic start. A rolling wave building and building, rising to catastrophic heights.

"Oh," you say.

But...Jason has a plan, right? Jason has a way out and even if it's not fully fleshed you're smart enough and you're clever and you can take a lot of punishment. You'll improvise. The two of you can make it through.

Still. These might be the last meaningful words you get to say to him.
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Alexius: "why did your twitter bio say 'all lives matter'?"
Jason: "UHHH HEY LOOK OVER THERE A HIDING SPOT

But seriously though, no way this doesn't end absolutely terribly, I can't wait to see how.

[X] Tell him you love him. You don't...know if you do, really, you don't know what love feels like. But he makes you feel something like whole, something like wanted, and you want to make him feel the same way too.


Tbh I'm picking this A) because Jason is 110% an Encrypted One which means this will hopefully make him hurt even more because obliviously torturing undercover Gestapo is the best and B) because it's just kind of horribly appropriate for Alexius to say "I love you" to this guy just because they've been kinda together for a little bit because it's probably the longest and most intimately he's known anyone in his life.

When he exalts we are getting Alexius several boyfriends. Real ones. And a bed big enough to hold them all. On a cruise ship. That flies.
 
GardenerBriareus said:
I'll admit to not having much idea about how the Encrypted work, how Lookshy keeps them from turning against the empire when they're explicitly treated the same as the helots themselves; my current guess is that they're raised from birth for that explicit purpose, indoctrinated into hardcore Lookshyan Immaculism until they'd quite literally commit suicide on the fleeting whim of their Dragonblood masters. Whatever leash is used to constrain them, Jason is clearly reaching its limit. Does he realize that even if he saves us from this purge, it will only mean further suffering for us? Does he hate himself for wanting you to live, when he's spent his life in service to destroying helots just like us?
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The Encrypted Ones are not treated as helots, they just infiltrate their ranks. They're taken from Citizenry and the gentes and they're inspired by the very real kryptaeia from Sparta.

A special force known as the Encrypted Ones wage a yearly ritual shadow war on the helotry, infiltrating their ranks, poisoning food and killing key figures to destroy all pretensions of hope. It is common for officers and leaders of Lookshy to have served with the Encrypted Ones as part of their military service. But the Encrypted Ones are not immune, and use conscripted helots themselves to report and spread rumours; several of which have recently formed into a conspiracy aiming to once and for all blind the eyes of Lookshy. Already, talk has begun of the secretive Twice Encrypted.
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[X] Tell him thank you. He was there for you that first night, he's been there for you in the days since. You don't know what you are to each other exactly but he is your friend. And you would die for for your friends.
 
ZerbanDaGreat said:
Imma keep it real witchu, I didn't actually know what the fuck a Calibration was this entire time, so I'm glad to discover it's a cool-looking complete lunar eclipse as seemingly both the sun and moon just kinda leave for routine maintenance. Sweet visual!
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It's also the reason the year goes from ending in the summer equivalent to starting in the winter equivalent five days later.

If I recall the calendar correctly
 
[X] Tell him thank you. He was there for you that first night, he's been there for you in the days since. You don't know what you are to each other exactly but he is your friend. And you would die for for your friends.
 
[X] Tell him thank you. He was there for you that first night, he's been there for you in the days since. You don't know what you are to each other exactly but he is your friend. And you would die for for your friends.

Tenfold why you gotta make me feel things, man?

Why you gotta? I'm so scared for these people :(
 
[X] Tell him you love him. You don't...know if you do, really, you don't know what love feels like. But he makes you feel something like whole, something like wanted, and you want to make him feel the same way too.
 
ManusDomini said:
Already, talk has begun of the secretive Twice Encrypted.
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This is just like fucking Mankind Divided once you get to the end of the story and realise that Task Force 29 is an anti-terror organisation whose leader's boss is a puppet for the Illuminati, the chopper pilot is an Illuminati plant, the therapist is an Illuminati plant, and top operative is an Illuminati double-triple-sleeper-agent.

BEWARE THE QUADRUPLE-ENCRYPTED, FOR THEY'RE SO CONFUSED THEY BASICALLY JUST KILL EVERYONE THEY CAN REACH AND SAY THEY'RE A HELOT LATER
 
[X] Tell him thank you. He was there for you that first night, he's been there for you in the days since. You don't know what you are to each other exactly but he is your friend. And you would die for for your friends.
 
[X] Tell him you love him. You don't...know if you do, really, you don't know what love feels like. But he makes you feel something like whole, something like wanted, and you want to make him feel the same way too.
 
[X] Tell him thank you. He was there for you that first night, he's been there for you in the days since. You don't know what you are to each other exactly but he is your friend. And you would die for for your friends.
 
[X] Tell him you love him. You don't...know if you do, really, you don't know what love feels like. But he makes you feel something like whole, something like wanted, and you want to make him feel the same way too.

tragedy now.
 
God, you can just feel the incoming death spiral about to hit the city, your writing is so damn bleak and descriptive that I just kind of want Alexious to pass on so he doesn't have to deal with shit any more.
 
[X] Tell him you love him. You don't...know if you do, really, you don't know what love feels like. But he makes you feel something like whole, something like wanted, and you want to make him feel the same way too.
 
[X] Tell him thank you. He was there for you that first night, he's been there for you in the days since. You don't know what you are to each other exactly but he is your friend. And you would die for for your friends.
 
[X] Tell him thank you. He was there for you that first night, he's been there for you in the days since. You don't know what you are to each other exactly but he is your friend. And you would die for for your friends.
 
...

[X] Tell him you love him. You don't...know if you do, really, you don't know what love feels like. But he makes you feel something like whole, something like wanted, and you want to make him feel the same way too.

When we Exalt, we do not stop until Lookshy is a smoking crater.
Adhoc vote count started by BadAtScreenNames on Nov 21, 2018 at 5:12 PM, finished with 460 posts and 40 votes.
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Welp.

The river-serpent who's fangs were ripped out is what really got me. This has been seven updates-worth of emotional buildup, there is really no other option to go from here but to go all out on the suffering train:

[X] Tell him you love him. You don't...know if you do, really, you don't know what love feels like. But he makes you feel something like whole, something like wanted, and you want to make him feel the same way too.
 
[x] Tell him that it'll be alright. That he's done the best he can but you're just helots, and if you survive it'll be luck as much as skill and if you die it...won't matter as much to you. Because you'll be together.

it's a hard choice, but I think this one digs the knife it a bit deeper if he is encrypted. the reminder of how low we value ourselves.
 
[X] Tell him thank you. He was there for you that first night, he's been there for you in the days since. You don't know what you are to each other exactly but he is your friend. And you would die for for your friends.
 
[X] Tell him thank you. He was there for you that first night, he's been there for you in the days since. You don't know what you are to each other exactly but he is your friend. And you would die for for your friends.
 
djehuty3 said:
...

[X] Tell him you love him. You don't...know if you do, really, you don't know what love feels like. But he makes you feel something like whole, something like wanted, and you want to make him feel the same way too.

When we Exalt, we do not stop until Lookshy is a smoking crater.
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that seems like it'd create more problems than it solves. what about stopping when we have a firm grip on the power structures of lookshy and have killed all the big names profiting off of slavery and enforced a new order

[X] Tell him you love him. You don't...know if you do, really, you don't know what love feels like. But he makes you feel something like whole, something like wanted, and you want to make him feel the same way too.
 
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