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Exalted: Out Of The Eater

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[X] It's more than just spite. It's more than just vengeance. You came here to hurt them purely for the sake of hurting them. The pain is the point. So is the power, the rush. You're enjoying yourself.
 
Incredible.

Also, Damianos vs other Dragonbloods has some amazing "ok boomer" energy

[X] Your body is fueled by death, an engine of destruction. But as profane as it is your power is far from limitless and your control far from absolute. And within you there is...something else. Some darker shadow.
 
[X] It's more than just spite. It's more than just vengeance. You came here to hurt them purely for the sake of hurting them. The pain is the point. So is the power, the rush. You're enjoying yourself.
 
[x] It's more than just spite. It's more than just vengeance. You came here to hurt them purely for the sake of hurting them. The pain is the point. So is the power, the rush. You're enjoying yourself.

There is a real, genuine pleasure to be taken into being a goddamn supervillain.

Embrace it!
 
[X] It's more than just spite. It's more than just vengeance. You came here to hurt them purely for the sake of hurting them. The pain is the point. So is the power, the rush. You're enjoying yourself.

I wonder, are we voting on his limit break condition/trigger or something like that?
 
So it sounds like we are choosing from Sadist, Mad Scientist (in the Doctor Frankenstein fashion), or Past Lives are a Bitch.

[X] The genius at work is definite, diabolical, but it's not a thing of stricture. Of clean structure. There are jagged edges to your mind, dark arcades and deep idiosyncrasies. It is something almost like madness.

I just really like the idea of TenFold getting really Purple on the Prose as we get an insight into Harrower's mind amidst combat.
 
[X] Your body is fueled by death, an engine of destruction. But as profane as it is your power is far from limitless and your control far from absolute. And within you there is...something else. Some darker shadow.

"Harrower, I chuuni you!"

HARROWER used EDGE

"No, dammit Harrower, you were meant to use Sand Attack!"

HARROWER used BROOD. HARROWER's Defence increased.

TenfoldShields said:
All of Lookshy's heroes are dead. The bones of soldier-martyrs are recovered from far-flung battlefields, couriered with love and care to the City's great underground basilicas; draped in jade and framed by gleaming glass for the edification of the pious. Every household manse, every familial shrine, counts an ancestor as honored attendant and intercessory to the gods. In their crimson-draped armor the gunzosha's blood boils and writhes and squirms, each breath tinged with carrion sweetness; the sacred guardians of the democratic state.

It is an obsession, all-consuming and all-devouring.

The helot dead that underlay the foundations are innumerable. They are as unto an ocean, a vast Threshold sea. That the soil does not weep scarlet when you score it, that the banks of the Yanaze are not heaped high with white enamel teeth worn as smooth as river stones, is the greatest and most detestable lie of this Age. Falsity sung so loudly that it becomes truth in and of itself.

It is what one might call worship. It is what one may describe as faith.
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Well, that's just it, isn't it? The thickest irony in the quest. That this land of dragons is in truth an ancestor cult; worshipping a faceless ancestor known as Lookshy. The Listeners say "Do not worship the dead; let them pass on", but Lookshy defines itself by its veneration of the dead. The men of a dying city whispers "Things were better in the past, when our blood was purer"; the women say when they think no one is listening "I wish I had been alive back then".

But Harrower is a wretched thing of kegare, climbing out of the pit filled with the bodies which are Lookshy's mortar and foundations. And they shun him, because the Lookshyian conception of death of men is an honourable thing and the death of their city is a slow, melancholy thing. But that is not Harrower's way.

TenfoldShields said:
Lookshy has always been a land of dragons.
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Ah yes, the conflict between the noble eastern dragon of wisdom, and the European wyrm of greed, vice and wickedness. Lookshy claims to be the former; Harrower affirms it is the latter.

TenfoldShields said:
"Oh but don't worry dearest sibling," he whispers, his voice the softest hiss now, taken up again and again by a sibilant chorus. As he lifts his hand slowly, ever so slowly to his brow. Eyes gleaming behind a cage of fingers. "Because I died but then I got up. I came back and I did not come alone. You are right, General: I should dispense with pretense. You wanted my name, General? Then know that this is what I am called."
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The interesting thing is that Harrower has no idea what a chuuni is; has no cultural awareness of conventions. He hasn't seen the melodramatic plays of the Lookshyians, nor has he read the endlessly recycled conventions of Shogunate books which were pulp trash when they were written but Lookshy has raised to high literature.

He's a prodigy who's inventing this melodramatic chuuni-ness from first principles, through sheer natural talent at being an edgelord.

He'd probably be kinda irked if he wound up finding out that he was just living up to conventions and was not in fact a radical innovator in how he depicts himself.
 
EarthScorpion said:
He's a prodigy who's inventing this melodramatic chuuni-ness from first principles, through sheer natural talent at being an edgelord.
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Sold, changing vote.

[X] The genius at work is definite, diabolical, but it's not a thing of stricture. Of clean structure. There are jagged edges to your mind, dark arcades and deep idiosyncrasies. It is something almost like madness.
 
[X] Your body is fueled by death, an engine of destruction. But as profane as it is your power is far from limitless and your control far from absolute. And within you there is...something else. Some darker shadow.

So that update was glorious, and I adored everything in it: I loved the atmosphere and beautiful writing, I loved the perspective throughout this quest on exactly why and how the City is a soul crushing horror that's sin's have to back to roost. And yes I loved the inclusion this chapter of characters from @ManusDomini (@Omicron @mothematics @Gargulec @Pale Wolf @Spear )'s RP game.

Harrower continues to be a fascinating character, in all his dramatic glory and yeah I agree with @ZerbanDaGreat there is some serious -

"Your God knows we wouldn't be here without you, this is all your fault isn't it?"

energy in the air and that's just the perfect tone for this.
 
[x] It's more than just spite. It's more than just vengeance. You came here to hurt them purely for the sake of hurting them. The pain is the point. So is the power, the rush. You're enjoying yourself.
 
[X] The genius at work is definite, diabolical, but it's not a thing of stricture. Of clean structure. There are jagged edges to your mind, dark arcades and deep idiosyncrasies. It is something almost like madness.
 
TenfoldShields said:
Lookshy is addicted to death.

There is an old matriarch in dusty finery, she sits at the head of an empty table, at the head of a feast set for many and served only to one. She sups upon the richest, fattiest cuts of meat, grease pooling, clotting in shallow bowls as she eats. Slick and shiny where it smears her lips, her grey tinged teeth; spilling down her trembling chin. A fly crawls across her cheek. It is like a kiss. There is a young prince reclining upon a lounge, tendrils of fragrant smoke spilling off his tongue and curling around a pipe of carved bone. A goblet in one hand swirling with wine so rich and so dark it could stain pure white imperial purple. He is half-nude, his skin pale and tinged with fever-flush; his robes smell of incense, of sex, of ash.

It is an infatuation. Do you understand?

All of Lookshy's heroes are dead. The bones of soldier-martyrs are recovered from far-flung battlefields, couriered with love and care to the City's great underground basilicas; draped in jade and framed by gleaming glass for the edification of the pious. Every household manse, every familial shrine, counts an ancestor as honored attendant and intercessory to the gods. In their crimson-draped armor the gunzosha's blood boils and writhes and squirms, each breath tinged with carrion sweetness; the sacred guardians of the democratic state.

It is an obsession, all-consuming and all-devouring.

The helot dead that underlay the foundations are innumerable. They are as unto an ocean, a vast Threshold sea. That the soil does not weep scarlet when you score it, that the banks of the Yanaze are not heaped high with white enamel teeth worn as smooth as river stones, is the greatest and most detestable lie of this Age. Falsity sung so loudly that it becomes truth in and of itself.

It is what one might call worship. It is what one may describe as faith.

What shape can salvation take for such a place? What divinity can deliver the people from themselves? How can one know the righteous when all are unclean, all are touched by the taint; filth and fever shared and shared alike.

Foolishness.

Lookshy has always been a land of dragons.
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God, others have said it but you have a serious way with words. It's evocative and powerful and genuinely compelling with how it strips away the shiny coverings that Lookshy prefers to use when it thinks about itself and shows the literal mountains of skeletons in the closet, the foundations, everything. It's a serious treat to read your stuff all the time because it's just legitimately wonderful.
TenfoldShields said:
"Wwwweeeeeeell," Opiter says as he slips out of the command tent behind them. Drawing the single syllable out into a lazy, dreamy drawl. Acting as if they can't see him still blinking away the wide-eyed shock and the faceful of smoke. He still has his cup, because of course he does. He hasn't spilled a drop, because of course he hasn't. "That was bracing. For a Xauman agent he did pretty well don't you think? Fumbled it a bit at the finish certainly but he made it all the way to your tent. That counts for something."

"Ironic admiration is still inappropriate," Thalia's near-monotone answers, her voice soft but the tension wound through it like so much wire. Navona can all but hear the set of her jaw, hear the creak of bone and the gritting teeth. "Did you see it's arm? Some new necrotic construct. A graft perhaps, or a specialized revenant. The Fox is getting craftier. Or maybe Xauma is simply surrendering desperation as the fleet approaches. Or both, potentially. We need Dia to-"

"Oh don't be like that, he's been dealt with. It's fine."

"We still need Dia to open the thing's chest."

"That really wasn't the point I was making..."
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Just another little reminder at the way Lookshy does things with its dragonblooded. Their reaction is to immediately assume everything was finished in one clean sweep, that they were in perfect control the whole time, that everything is all over and they can go back to their drinking and feasting and not caring. It's not cackling evil or anything but it's a sort of aggressive apathy mixed with arrogance that's genuinely maddening when you see everything Harrower's gone through, which just makes me even more excited to see what comes next.
TenfoldShields said:
"Name yourself, thing so that I might describe the scraps I leave behind to my superiors."

"Hah. Don't you know me sibling? I'm your brother-"

"You are no brother of mine. Name yourself."

"Oh but I am dear sibling," the stranger whispers, and his eyes, his eyes, there's something in his eyes that seems to catch, to reflect that roiling pyre. Something sullen and shadowed and scarlet. His voice still soft. His tone still flat. "Don't you remember? You murdered me and left my body in the fields."
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I want to quote this entire thing but I like this part of it a lot. It's not just his personal experiences that make Harrower like this, it's everything. It's Lookshy as a whole, it's the dragonblooded who hold themselves aloft, and it's especially someone like Navona who he seems to see as a complete traitor for being a helot who threw their lot in with Lookshy. The entire speech is a really really cool supervillain motive speech and I love how they go from being totally composed and arrogantly relaxed to like, Opiter all but puking as Harrower starts to bring his Prototype/Tokyo Ghoul/Shin Godzilla crossover designs to life.
TenfoldShields said:
Wings so vast they char buildings on either side of the street. Pinion-feathers in crimson and half-molten copper setting the air itself alight, every downbeat at furnace blast, every flare pulling dirt into superheated cylones, melting it into glass. A single breath of that inferno could scorch the lungs black. A single caress of those talons could render fat into sizzling grease. The titanic, twin-headed eagle's beaks are the size of wagons; it's eyes bright and avid and furious and cruel. This is the purest expression of Navona's soul, this is the purest expression of their self. The covenant and the crucible, Lookshy's battle standard given form in the flame. This is what it means to bear the brand of the Immaculate Monsters, and the anima banner of the Dragons themselves. They stand in the center of the crush, the clash. The very thickest part of the fight.

They stand alone. The side-streets and shadowed alleyways choked with dead ten ranks deep. Rivers of blood flowing in the darkness, in the night. Metal glowing where the beams scythed armor apart like paper. Eyes wide and staring, cloth matted and soaked. Behind them the Wisteria Guard, shields closed over the other Chosen, a few precious feet of ablative jadesteel and flesh. And that's all it is really.
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Devoting a paragraph to Navona's power to show that even for all of that Harrower just absolutely slaughtered his way through everyone not a dragonblooded and not protected by jadesteel to the point that Navona needed to go for a full on manifested anima banner to protect themselves was just exquisite.

What comes after is wonderful too, asking if that's really it, ordering them to stand up because he's not finished yet, Harrower is just this perfect storm of anger and edge and venom and power and it's just like, so viscerally satisfying to read. I wish I had the words to properly describe it but brain ain't working too good so just know that I reread this twice before posting because it was just that good.

[X] It's more than just spite. It's more than just vengeance. You came here to hurt them purely for the sake of hurting them. The pain is the point. So is the power, the rush. You're enjoying yourself.

I like this one, honestly. All of them are excellent, but this one is kind of...Harrower didn't come here with a plan, he came here to find his purpose and center himself and he's very clearly pleased with it, what with his speech about destiny to Navona. I know this is a vote meant to like, contextualize this for Navona, make it so that instead of this inexplicable nightmare dead-hydra thing they can at least start to fit Harrower into a mental box and with understanding comes a lessening of fear, but even so, this is still a character thing for Harrower too.

I like the idea that he's become so twisted that it's not just a case of him spitefully lashing out or him justly getting vengeance. It's power and it's intoxicating and it's only growing more so as he realises that the people who looked down on him, beat him, used him, him and every single other helot in existence are beneath him.

So, why not indulge? Why not let loose in the way he's dreamed about for so long, why not enjoy himself? The pain, the power, the rush is the point. Lookshy can pretend to a higher purpose all it likes, talk big about how immaculate and just and perfect it is, how the cruelty and monstrosity that it's founded on all has a point.

See how well that stands up against Harrower who wants to have fun ripping it to shreds for the sake of it.
 
[x] The genius at work is definite, diabolical, but it's not a thing of stricture. Of clean structure. There are jagged edges to your mind, dark arcades and deep idiosyncrasies. It is something almost like madness.
 
[X] Your body is fueled by death, an engine of destruction. But as profane as it is your power is far from limitless and your control far from absolute. And within you there is...something else. Some darker shadow.
 
[X] It's more than just spite. It's more than just vengeance. You came here to hurt them purely for the sake of hurting them. The pain is the point. So is the power, the rush. You're enjoying yourself.

Let's be honest, this quest has HAMMERED home the horror of Lookshy and the depths of Harrower's hate. This is just more in character. Also, yay this quest is back! :D
 
[X] It's more than just spite. It's more than just vengeance. You came here to hurt them purely for the sake of hurting them. The pain is the point. So is the power, the rush. You're enjoying yourself.

Lookshy must burn.... and Harrower is going to spend every minute of doing so laughing.

"You get what you fucking deserve!"
 
TenfoldShields said:
All of Lookshy's heroes are dead. The bones of soldier-martyrs are recovered from far-flung battlefields, couriered with love and care to the City's great underground basilicas; draped in jade and framed by gleaming glass for the edification of the pious.
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A fellow connoisseur, I see.

Alternatively, you just know about the historical inspiration for that particular boss.

For those not in the know, Melquiades is a boss from the game Blasphemous (TL;DR - it's a medieval Spanish Catholic version of Dark Souls by way of Castlevania), and you don't fight him so much as you do the various arms holding up his remains and miming attacks at you with them.

To quote the game:

"I have witnessed the exhumation of the Archbishop. I have witnessed how they cleansed his bones in wine to then dress him in silk and gold. I saw them place the most beautiful jewels on his face and kiss his forehead. I watched as they placed rings on his fingers and kissed his hands. They lifted him up, calling his name, and swayed him to make it look as if he was walking again."

The implication in-universe is that the long-dead Archbishop was seized upon by a group of priests within the Mother of Mothers as a possible savior from the calamity ravaging their homeland, and The Miracle (an enigmatic force which either grants the desires of the faithful or renders judgment upon the sinful, depending on how you interpret the eldritch perversions it inflicts) imbued their efforts with some sort of actual power. If nothing else, Melquiades seems rather more able to fill the role of protector and savior to his bearers than you'd expect from a centuries-old skeleton.

Melquiades was inspired by the actual historical phenomenon of "catacomb saints". The rise of iconoclastic sentiment during the 16th and 17th centuries saw a great many religious artifacts and other prominent symbols of the Catholic faith destroyed all across Europe; in response, the Vatican decided to... start dragging out skeletons from the Roman catacombs, declaring them to be saints and martyrs based on suspect-at-best evidence, then having these exhumed cadavers bedecked in jewels, fine silks, and precious metals before sending them off to parishes across Europe, where they were paraded before the people and enshrined as holy relics.

It was a very weird time to be alive.
 
[X] Your body is fueled by death, an engine of destruction. But as profane as it is your power is far from limitless and your control far from absolute. And within you there is...something else. Some darker shadow.
 
[X] Your body is fueled by death, an engine of destruction. But as profane as it is your power is far from limitless and your control far from absolute. And within you there is...something else. Some darker shadow.
 
[x] It's more than just spite. It's more than just vengeance. You came here to hurt them purely for the sake of hurting them. The pain is the point. So is the power, the rush. You're enjoying yourself.

Hmm yes. Changed my mind.
 
[X] The genius at work is definite, diabolical, but it's not a thing of stricture. Of clean structure. There are jagged edges to your mind, dark arcades and deep idiosyncrasies. It is something almost like madness.

Cards on the table, Navona is my Dragon-Blooded PC and I've helped Ten with the direction of Eater in general and this coming sequence in particular. Harrower and them are a fascinating pair, and it's almost a little obscene how well they foil each other given that they weren't designed together.

Navona is a lot of things. They're a zealot, a revolutionary, a demagogue, descended from a helot ancestor and grandfather... and also the ne plus ultra of their generation's military minds. They're a genius and they live for war. So I think that it would be fun to give Harrower's new, equally brilliant rival some way in to their mind. A way of comprehending how he thinks. I think that there could be a lot of really fun things that arise from that interplay.

Honestly, I'm not even convinced this is the best option. They're all great. I'm just really excited for next update, and that Eater's back at it (seriously bro this is your best work in a while).
 
mothematics said:
[X] The genius at work is definite, diabolical, but it's not a thing of stricture. Of clean structure. There are jagged edges to your mind, dark arcades and deep idiosyncrasies. It is something almost like madness.

Cards on the table, Navona is my Dragon-Blooded PC and I've helped Ten with the direction of Eater in general and this coming sequence in particular. Harrower and them are a fascinating pair, and it's almost a little obscene how well they foil each other given that they weren't designed together.

Navona is a lot of things. They're a zealot, a revolutionary, a demagogue, descended from a helot ancestor and grandfather... and also the ne plus ultra of their generation's military minds. They're a genius and they live for war. So I think that it would be fun to give Harrower's new, equally brilliant rival some way in to their mind. A way of comprehending how he thinks. I think that there could be a lot of really fun things that arise from that interplay.

Honestly, I'm not even convinced this is the best option. They're all great. I'm just really excited for next update, and that Eater's back at it (seriously bro this is your best work in a while).
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Out of curiosity are there any records of the game where all of these Dragon Blooded characters come from? I would really appreciate the additional context if it could be provided.

[X] The genius at work is definite, diabolical, but it's not a thing of stricture. Of clean structure. There are jagged edges to your mind, dark arcades and deep idiosyncrasies. It is something almost like madness.
 
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