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Exalted: Out Of The Eater

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[x] A small black stone, carefully etched with a crude image of Daana'd: Elemental Dragon of Water. She who changes, who is chaotic and secretive. Who is sublime. Who held sway when you were born.
 
[X] A small black stone, carefully etched with a crude image of Daana'd: Elemental Dragon of Water. She who changes, who is chaotic and secretive. Who is sublime. Who held sway when you were born.
 
[X] A small white stone, carefully etched with a crude image of Pasiap: Elemental Dragon of Earth. He who endures, who anchors and sustains. Who forms the foundations. Who held sway when you were born.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy time for more of tenfold's excellent sad gay funtimes. Definitely interested.
 
[X] A small red stone, carefully etched with a crude image of Hesiesh: Elemental Dragon of Fire. He who consumes, who destroys and renews. Who cannot be contained. Who held sway when you were born.

Yes Exalted Spartacus oh gods yes
 
[X] A small blue stone, carefully etched with a crude image of Mela: Elemental Dragon of Air. She who uplifts, who inspires and enlightens. Who breathes spirit into cold flesh. Who held sway when you were born.
 
[X] A small red stone, carefully etched with a crude image of Hesiesh: Elemental Dragon of Fire. He who consumes, who destroys and renews. Who cannot be contained. Who held sway when you were born.
 
Thought about it more, changing my vote:

[X] A small red stone, carefully etched with a crude image of Hesiesh: Elemental Dragon of Fire. He who consumes, who destroys and renews. Who cannot be contained. Who held sway when you were born.

Slave rebellion, anybody?
 
Hmmm, it seems I'll have to end my time of lurking. Trust exalted to be the poison that draws me out.
Speaking of poisons.
[X] A small green stone, carefully etched with a crude image of Sextes Jylis: Elemental Dragon of Wood. He who encroaches, who nurtures and heals. Who overcomes all. Who held sway when you were born.

It's been a while since I read my 2e copy of the dragonbloded but I always liked the wood aspects.
 
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Prologue Part One: Born To Die
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    • PROLOGUE: UNWORTHY
    ​
    There are no gods for helots. If there ever were they were taken and bound in the Subjugation, shackled as were their faithful. If there ever were they turned their coats and betrayed their worshippers or were scythed down and slaughtered by the dragon-scaled lords of Lookshy. Or simply carried forth on the prayers of exiles fleeing the carnage as they spread across the half-empty, Contagion-gutted Scavenger Lands; refugees alongside refugees.

    There are no shrines for helots. If there ever were they were torn down, destroyed in the Subjugation, congregations driven forth into the dark or barred within while the fires were set. If there ever were they are graves and ghosts now, host only to soot-caked skeletons and worms. Only known by the impressions they left behind; an imprint upon stone, rotted cloth on a high crag, sunken foundations forming depressions in regimented, razor-perfect fields.

    You worship as your brothers and sisters do, as your parents did, as theirs did, as did generations unbroken back to the last days of Deheleshen. To the advent of Lookshy from the ashes of Contagion and Invasion, come to deliver the world from an existence without itself. You pray beneath an empty sky, with your head bowed and your knees in the dirt. The morning mists clammy against your skin; The Listener to Untold Sorrows holding forth his sermon. You pray to gods that do not know you, do not love you, and are not yours. Gods of Industry and Military Might, Gods of Fertility and the Fortress-City that Spans Rivers. Daevas of Obedience and Meekness and Fidelity. You pray knowing your incarnation is bound, shackled to a slow turning, ever-grinding wheel and that is only with death that you will be free. That is only your suffering, your service, that will absolve you from past-lives full of sin.

    There is no mercy for helots. Mercy is for citizens, for men and women; you? You're just...a thing. An effigy of meat and ivory, dead behind its mud-brown eyes. Hair stitched into its cold scalp; a few shades darker than those irises, edging into nearly black, standing up in licks and small spikes. Wearing features that someone once said are more suited to a smile and was it a compliment? Was it a warning, a cruel joke? The Encrypted Ones take the strong, the beautiful, the brave and leave them hanging half-gutted from the trees; with their fingers like fat sausages and tongue bloated between pried apart jaws. A wretched sort of fruit made all the worse when it's ripe.

    Maybe you're lucky in that sense: if you're handsome it's not meaningfully more than anyone else. If you're pleasant to look upon, to speak to, to see smile it's never been enough to be dangerous. Not tall enough to stand above a crowd nor short enough to be mistaken for the weak, the ill, the infirm. Able to do the work demanded with a body that's all muscle and bone and little else and precious little of that to begin with. There's never been a day where you haven't been able to count every rib. There's never been a time when you haven't been able to all but see the sinews work beneath the skin.

    What a wonderful helot you are. If they could stamp a million in your mold you know they'd be glad to do it, and what is that if not a compliment? What more could any slave desire? Is that not something like affection?

    ...How would you know?

    You've had men or, maybe it'd be more accurate to say that they've mostly had you and maybe that was something near enough. A kind of warmth, a sort of heat, something to clutch close in the darkness and stillness and pre-dawn hush. And you adore the Dragons because even the Listeners to Untold Sorrows say that anyone, anything, can find peace and balance within the Five. Can be blessed and beloved in turn. The Dragons made all mankind, their names are written on your organs, tattooed on your tendons and etched into the very essence of your being. Pasiap, Daana'd, Mela, Sextes Jylis, and Hesiesh. Your Hesiesh. You venerate them with each and every breath. Venerate him.

    Avatar of the Elemental Pole of Fire, Lord of the South: the Destroyer and the Renewer. A living, raging, inferno who cannot be contained, cannot be constrained; who can never be extinguished, who will never cease.

    Who will never cease.

    You were born in the last week of Ascending Fire. And a year later, when your mother and father knew you'd survive and grow, they gave you a gift. She was the one who found it when she was walking back from the fields: a stone small as a forefinger and a thumb touched together. A wind-polished rock that gleamed red as cherries, red as fresh spilled blood; baking in the Summer sun and hot to the touch. She glued it to a wood backing and bound it tightly, your father etched it, set it with the impression of coils and claws and a reptilian face in profile. Some latent shred of artistry, brought back out into the light if only for a night. When they gave you to the Listener for your naming you wore it around your neck on a leather thong.

    He's always been there for you; something like a constant companion, something like an enduring dream. A creature of flame wrapped around you, embracing you with arms of ember and smoke; claws that gleam molten resting so gently on your chest. A kind of comfort for the long hours alone, when the emptiness inside threatens to eat you alive from the inside out. Those nights that are so cold beneath the ragged blankets that you're afraid the enamel in your teeth will chip and crack they're chattering so hard.

    If you can hold affection for anything you hold it for him. If you can love anything you love him. And if you can do that then maybe the feeling within you will grow and spread like so much fire and one day, in this life or the next, you can be more than just an effigy. More than just a thing, silently screaming with a mouth long-since sewn shut.

    You stand in the square, in the dust and the blood and feel the leather cord rest around your neck. You feel the stone itself beneath your tunic, flat against your chest and it's a kind of warmth, a sort of heat. Something better than the roaring pillar of orange and yellow, the bodies within breaking as they decohere. The heat distortion roiling through the air like liquid fat and shed oils, grease floating on the skin of the water.

    "Helots face front!" Instinctive discipline and the bare bones of drilling, long experience and the expectation of blows, make the response, if not perfect, then at least automatic. The curve of keloid over your right cheekbone aching at the memory as you pivot in place with the others. The bonfire bathing half your face in its ambient glow. The entire block shuffling, shifting, around you.

    Ahead: the open road, flanked on either side by waves of golden grain. The shadow of the Talon-Captain passes by, racing along the ground and you feel more than hear the heavy impact of hooves. The commander and her escort close enough that a brief wind tugs and toys with locks of your hair. All around you men and women in scarlet and silver and dark brown leather are forming up. A few setting out already in neat, razor-lined columns; perfect formations.

    Behind you, all around you: the sounds of whips slithering to the ground. Hunch down, grit your teeth; breath hitching as the long lines of paler tissue across your back throb. Tiny tremors working their way up through your limbs. There's an ear splitting crack, like a wood log shattering, and the front lines of the block jerk into motion. The five hundred of you unfurling in an accordion motion as the ranks compress and squeeze together and space out again, uneven paces and asymmetrical strides ruining the synchronicity. Fear and punishment driving you on. Everyone walks past the pyre, some around you tilt their heads and turn to see it up close and personal.

    But no one looks back. They don't let you.





    An hour in and your thighs are already burning, this steady, slow-chewing ache that starts at heel tendons and works its way up to the base of your spine. Sweat dripping down your back, a damp blotch that runs across your lean shoulders and down to your tailbone. Planned fields and packed dirt roads have given way to sparse groves of cypress trees, yellowed grass in the shade. To the paved Shogunate road, faintly cracked slabs of supercrete; lines of paint and stripes worn down and eroded by centuries of wind and rain and elemental exposure. Broad enough that even marching almost twenty abreast the Talon and its convoy barely take up half of it.

    Other companies have joined you since you left Sublime Bounty, flowing up the curving ramps that fan out from the ancient, elevated avenue. The trickle of humanity growing, bloating, as the theme reconvenes, rebuilding itself to full muster. The mass of shepherded helots doubling once, then again, until you're lost in a sea of unfamiliar faces. The inhabitants of other villages, agricultural settlements and construction crews and fishing enclaves melted and merged together. Jostling you and pressing in on every side; flinching instinctively as you hear whip-cracks on the fringes. The sharp cries of the injured.

    Still, small mercies. It's been long enough that you can talk if you're careful and the crowd around you stirs with muttered conversation. Words lost beneath the whisper of countless cloth-and-hide shoes, beneath the steady trudging of the soldiers ahead and behind; the impact of their boots like rolling thunder, punctuated by the jingle of shining chain. The marching music rings out over the landscape; a steady, utilitarian tempo beneath stirring strings and light pipes. Underneath it all the creak of the wagoncarts piled high with rations and casks of chilled water (some for you, most for them).

    Glance to your right and see a young girl with red rimmed eyes and a running nose. Walking hand in hand with a stone-faced man, his features too similar to be anything but a close relation. His shoulders set against the crush of people, forcing them to move around him, around them. Holding her like he's seconds away from dragging her in and wrapping his arms around her or carrying her outright. You hear the girl's voice, soft and gutwrenching, as she asks a question. You only catch a single word, a half-choked "mama?" The corner of the man's mouth twitches, he starts to reply and it's then that he notices you, his expression changing into something wary bordering on outright hostile as he pulls the girl in closer. You can't even find it in yourself to fault him.

    You look to your left. "Do you know where we're going?" You ask.

    The man runs his tongue over slightly too-sharp teeth and grimaces. "Not a fucking clue," he replies.

    Part your lips and pause, your gaze lingering on him. He's straw blonde and suntanned, younger than you by at least a few years yet still he stands head-if-not-shoulders taller. A solid jaw and open, almost trusting features, that still smolder with a deep intensity. Muscle clings to him, even half-starved and half-wasted he still looks as if he's been fed fairly regularly. A fisherman's son? You're jealous.

    "Alexius," you say after a second.

    "Jason," he replies, grey eyes flickering over you. A moment and he slows his stride, you adjust your pace, the two of you walking side by side. You open your mouth to say something, to add something, suddenly so hesitant, almost shy when the world around you darkens. A shadow sweeping over the crowd. You hear a distant thrum, a vibration faintly resonating in the hollow parts of your chest. You see people pointing, gesturing. Slowly, slowly, you look up.

    The airship is a massive thing, a single titanic arrow-head wing wreathed in visible wind-currents. Enormous props slowly turning, at the back, bound elementals as thick as any fog around the blades. The underside studded and blistered by an arc of ribbed oblongs. Beams of sunlight filtering through the colossal crimson membranes. Gleaming off the latticework of gantries and and lightweight cabins that cling to the underside in a spider's web of steel. The heraldry of Gens Nefvarin emblazoned across the largest portions. Surrounded by a flight of smaller craft, riverine junks taken to the sky. Bristling with cloth sails on every side and suspended beneath long balloons of their own. Sharing the prevailing, concentrated gale. Gliding along, barely seeming to move and yet easily, trivially, outstripping the ground-bound army. The shadow receding, the temperature spiking as it leaves you entirely.

    The two of you are silent.

    "I mean," you say at last, "That's a good sign right?"

    "Wouldn't bother with all this if we were just going to be digging our own graves eh?"

    You laugh at that, he joins in. Gods you hope he's right.

    But. Still. Gallows humor aside, you're making a friend, you think. That's good. He looks like he can take care of himself too and that's even better because you don't have anyone else right now. And you don't want to be by yourself with no one to watch your back when you finally arrive to...wherever you've been tasked to. "The Front".

    Keep the conversation going.
    [ ] Ask if he's seen the Dragonblooded in charge of this theme. Every significant army division has at least one, if not more, and you know many by reputation. And for good reason.
    [ ] Ask if he knows anything about The Front. You don't get many soldiers in Sublime Bounty but maybe he's heard more. It must be getting bad if they've got so many of you like this.
    [ ] Ask Jason about himself. It's useful to know more and it's always good to be wary, informers and collaborators are everywhere. But you've always excelled at keeping your head down.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Ask Jason about himself. It's useful to know more and it's always good to be wary, informers and collaborators are everywhere. But you've always excelled at keeping your head down

    Not like we can act on the rest
     
    [X] Ask Jason about himself. It's useful to know more and it's always good to be wary, informers and collaborators are everywhere. But you've always excelled at keeping your head down.
     
    [X] Ask if he's seen the Dragonblooded in charge of this theme. Every significant army division has at least one, if not more, and you know many by reputation. And for good reason.

    A wise slave knows who the master is, if they're kind or cruel or just uncaring. Wise Helots Of The World Unite (And Punch The Dragon)!

    One the plus side, Alexius is a Fire Boye, so he's hawwwt!
     
    [X] Ask Jason about himself. It's useful to know more and it's always good to be wary, informers and collaborators are everywhere. But you've always excelled at keeping your head down.

    Hello Doomed Love Interest, tell me about your hobbies and hopes for the future and try not to be distracted by those vultures making ominous circles over you.
     
    [X] Ask Jason about himself. It's useful to know more and it's always good to be wary, informers and collaborators are everywhere. But you've always excelled at keeping your head down
     
    veekie said:
    Not like we can act on the rest
    Click to expand...
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    I usually don't comment post-...well the post. But it's probably worth doing so in this case since this is honestly shaping up to be a bit larger (hopefully?) than my other projects, and some clarification might be useful going forward.

    Which is a long-winded way of saying that yes every option will yield something worthwhile and actionable. "I don't do trap options," is kind of a refrain I see a lot but it does apply here.
     
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    [X] Ask if he knows anything about The Front. You don't get many soldiers in Sublime Bounty but maybe he's heard more. It must be getting bad if they've got so many of you like this.

    By the fucking Five we are going to burn this shitshow to the fucking ground I swear it.
     
    [x] Ask if he's seen the Dragonblooded in charge of this theme. Every significant army division has at least one, if not more, and you know many by reputation. And for good reason.

    Good to see if known quantities match up with what we've got rolling around in our noggin already.
     
    [X] Ask if he's seen the Dragonblooded in charge of this theme. Every significant army division has at least one, if not more, and you know many by reputation. And for good reason
     
    [X] Ask if he's seen the Dragonblooded in charge of this theme. Every significant army division has at least one, if not more, and you know many by reputation. And for good reason.

    we should start building up heat for our first arc antagonist who is inevitably going to fuck us over before we somehow come back exalted and wreck their face
     
    Omicron said:
    we should start building up heat for our first arc antagonist who is inevitably going to fuck us over before we somehow come back exalted and wreck their face
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    Click to shrink...
    wise words omicron

    [X] Ask if he's seen the Dragonblooded in charge of this theme. Every significant army division has at least one, if not more, and you know many by reputation. And for good reason.
     
    [X] Ask if he's seen the Dragonblooded in charge of this theme. Every significant army division has at least one, if not more, and you know many by reputation. And for good reason.
     
    Omicron said:
    we should start building up heat for our first arc antagonist who is inevitably going to fuck us over before we somehow come back exalted and wreck their face
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Indeed, insightful.

    [X] Ask if he's seen the Dragonblooded in charge of this theme. Every significant army division has at least one, if not more, and you know many by reputation. And for good reason.
     
    [X] Ask if he knows anything about The Front. You don't get many soldiers in Sublime Bounty but maybe he's heard more. It must be getting bad if they've got so many of you like this.

    Even if we know of the Dragonblooded, a not yet Exalted person can't hope to oppose them as a slave. Even after we Exalt it'll take years of training to kill them, since I'm not sure if we have too good combat skills compared to a Gente trained from childhood in combat.

    The situation in the Front is most likely the big plot issue that will be resolved this arc / a recurring problem we can somewhat engage with when we Exalt. I think building up this arc's main plot's hype is relatively more important, since planning too long term may lead to disappointment.
     
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    [X] Ask Jason about himself. It's useful to know more and it's always good to be wary, informers and collaborators are everywhere. But you've always excelled at keeping your head down.

    the shipping begins
     
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