Exalted: Out Of The Eater

Wheel of time · Mar 1, 2021

Imrix said:
Uh... Like every Charm that's been on display so far? Canon Abyssals trend more towards Solars with a coat of black paint, untouchable goths and all. Not so much growing porcelain skin and cloaks of midnight fire and making peoples blood literally explode.

That's a shame. Because this is some cool shit. Just doing Solars but CRAWLING IN MY SKIN colors is a letdown in comparison. This story is getting me into Exalted.

TenfoldShields · Apr 21, 2021

Liege (Steel-and-Ember Elegia): Distinguished (0/875xp)
He fell once. He fell deep, deep below the earth- a meteor and a comet and a star hissing and steaming as it plunged into a midnight sea, calcifying in the freezing water. Murdered imperium formed his shell. Stillborn futures his yolk sac.
A conduit established through Harrower's Monstrance; a vector for power, influence and...gifts. A measure of Harrower's faith in his Deathlord, the trust he is granted in turn, and what is built upon such foundations. Far and forever beneath Creation is a dead continent- the land of the Covenant. Cities and fortress-colonies grow thickly on its ruined, rain-lashed coasts: Pelagia and Abyssia. Third Obelisk, Cinder Regalia, and Trisagion of the Deluge. One running into the next into another and each and all centered upon the first and the greatest: Elegia. This is the throne of your lord. This is your home should you ever have need to call upon it.

Hearthstone (The Ram of Red Splendor): Elite (N/A)
With wonders such as these they wrought their own ruin.
Megalith-II is a cruciform complex of immense scale, a titan of industry in truth. Layer stacked upon layer, block upon block, a brutalist installation bound by elevators and internal rail; filigreed with Xauman shrines and Age of Sorrows laboratories. The forges stand silent (for now), the apartments empty (for now); but can you feel it? The anticipation in the air. The hunger. The cthonic metals the Ram will pull, molten and glowing from the deep, the flesh you will provide and so the beast shall be fed.

Necrotechnology (Arsinoe-class Amphibious Assault Frames): Adept (Locked)
River Dragon anatomy represents one of the most tried and true designs in Creation.
Created via multiple corpses fused into a single hulking, crocodilian armature, an Arsinoe boasts strength and speed outstripping its already impressive frame. Dead, tireless muscle powering crushing jaws and rending claws; predatory instinct guiding physiology already well-suited to the dark waters of the Yanaze. A fearsome ambush hunter...yet the design already begs refinement and development. The animating force is all shades and echoes, the meridian-network simplistic, and inbuilt weaponry and defenses are, necessarily, limited.

The Ram of Red Splendor
They died in the destruction of the facility of course, but even now you can taste the last vestige of their spiteful triumph and enduring fidelity.
The orichalcum of the armband is tainted, something like smoke, something like shadow staining the edges of the supernal gold. The skull-head of the Ram itself is carved from a single scarlet gemstone -a thing of perfect proportions and fractal registers- and the two interweave magnificently. Until it's as if they were smelted together, the stone and its setting seemingly impossible to separate. Harrower, unlettered and uneducated, is tethered fundamentally to his industrial altar. A shrine that can call forth plutonian prosperity or the magmatic fury of deep Creation alike- the two being, in truth, one and the same.

When you were alive, when you still sweat in the heat and shivered in the cold, drew breath and clung so tightly to the Sun you understood the Underworld as-

As…

An abstract is the word. A thing-that-is-not-itself but has something of the truth in its shape, its structure. The Underworld to you was a low voice singing, soft and somber and rough in the evening air; a horizon the color of brass and copper in the far-off distance, while darkness steadily poured itself through the cracks in the world made by silhouetted trees and the tall grass. It was never a place exactly. Not a tangible thing that could be held in the scope of one's senses and regarded as such. Just a moment; something half-imagined, a maybe-memory. The feeling of shivering as you watched shadows creep through fields of grain.

This was only true for you, of course. Your own personal enlightenment such as it was. The Exalted of the City were so much more practical- their scholars and sages understood it to be a region, possessed of its own geography and topography and tethers to this world, and they taught you, through gospel and rote, how to ward it. Defy its reaching, raking grasp. Your souls were not your own, after all- they belonged to the Hierarchy, the great wheel of rebirth and reincarnation. Which is to say they belonged to the Dragons.

Which is to say they belonged to Lookshy.

Listener's sermons painted it as a yawning black chasm beneath Creation. A titanic maw of stone and rock and sterile earth. Jaws hanging wide, waiting to swallow the impious and polluted. A soul, they assured you, could fall forever in that darkness. If not washed in the River an unrighteous spirit could fall for an aeon and an age, lashed with the steel chains and iron weights of their mortal attachments, their selfishness and vice. Sometimes instead (and particularly if the preacher was pulling from the well of older tales) they described it as a labyrinth of claustrophobic crypts, an infinite maze of crushingly tight corridors punctuated by pools of filthy, stagnant water. A great prison constructed by and of Pasiap himself to contain and confuse all manner of wicked things who might oppose the City, who might threaten its faithful. Monsters from deep time and nightmares from dead worlds, things without name and horrors without description that were as to the Hungry Ghost and revenant as such specters were to a newborn babe.

His sister Daana'd may have swam into the depths, so far into the gloom that she left the world of the living behind entirely- weighing down the captured Anathema beneath all the world's oceans. But it was Pasiap who sealed their tomb with a plain of black mud. The Dragon of the Earth stood as their warden and watchmen, the master of purification and penitent rite. Jail and jailor alike.

The particulars of the telling were unimportant you suppose: ultimately the Underworld was always the thing beneath, the realm below, a great beast lurking under your feet covered by the thinnest layer of soil. If Heaven was a realm of endlessly perfecting celestial order -and if Hell was a realm of anarchy and alien rage- then the Underworld was simply a place of...trash. Vermin. Pale, squirming, always-dead and ever-dying things, crushed and broken and reduced to crawling by the tectonic mass of Creation above. Things that should never see the light of day. Things that thirsted for that which they could never have. Things without purpose. Things without a use.

Justice flows from on high and in its ineffable current bears all manner of wicked things down.

Wrong of course. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. you know that now. But you still like that thought despite yourself. That Heaven itself and all that is holy have decreed this is where you truly belong. That this is what you deserve.

Bare feet on steel grey sand. A bare chest painted in pink and orange by the bloody light that filters through shallow water. The surface heaving, receding, rippling a meter above, then half a meter, then close enough to ruffle and feather your hair; bare shoulders breaking the surface as you trudge towards the shore. The rich, wine-dark waves foam white as they break over your back, roaring and crashing against stone and sand. Plastering bone-white hair to your scalp, leaving it hanging dripping and wet as you find purchase on half-buried pavers. Climbing gingerly out of the water and onto the "beach", stooping once to brace yourself against a broken pillar as the waves threaten to pull you back down, wash you back out to sea.

You hiss under your breath as the ugly, crusted scab across your thigh cracks open, trickling inhuman ichor down your ragged leggings. Pain laces across your leg, bright and hot. Bite your tongue. Take a moment and just stand there stiffly, trying to move as little as possible as you wait for the feeling to subside- the wound throbbing in time with its twin on your shoulder all the while. You screw your eyes shut, breathe deep through your nose and hope, with every ounce of strength in your dead, unbeating heart, that wherever she is, if she lives, Winglord Thalia is having a worse fucking time of it.

Seconds pass. Your shadow emerges in your wake, shifting from all fours to its hind legs. The shape hulking-huge; pale skin slick from the surf and almost luminous in the gloom, poison yellow irises gleaming as it wordlessly takes it all in. Its motions are placid and unhurried. You reach up to pat a bicep as draws level with you and its like slapping your hand against wet stone.

The pain ebbs to a dull, background ache and slowly, slowly you open your eyes once more. You can grin, you can even bear it, but it's kind of thing that eats away at your energy, slowly saps your strength- and you're already so exhausted, so tired, and you know you know that you'll only feel worse once you press on, but it's mild enough now that you can manage. One black nailed hand pushed up through your hair; a yawn working its way up your throat, slowly prying open your mouth, lips peeling back from too sharp teeth as you let your arm fall. Let those nails drag along your face.

You pause, tentatively roll your right shoulder, testing the rotation. Gauging the feeling of the unfamiliar weight as you fidget with the lustrous band wrapped around your bicep. Hesitate again and crook a small, razored claw, reaching out with some flicker of will, some impulsive wish- not enough to call your other gift into being, no, but enough to feel the tug, the snag and catch as some unseen thread goes taut. The other end stretching into the shadows and singing with promise. You let it go slack after a while, the knowledge that those mirror shards, those fragments of a dead god's eye, are still there, really there, is like a burr in your perception. An unobtrusive aberration you can't help but notice every time your eyes slide past. Does it make you anxious? Maybe. But it's not like this place judges you for that.

It understands, you think.

The sky above boils and seethes with thick black clouds, somewhere between thunderheads and billowing coal smoke, the plume of some vast forge. In the cracks, the sometimes gaps and swift-sealing fissures you can see the machine behind it, above it. The thing that Nerius and Elegia called the Calendar. A colossal clockwork assembly that stretches from horizon to horizon, a monstrous mandala of nested gears, miles-long beams and pumping pistons. Gleaming points that might be, could be stars jerkily marching on their fixed tracks. There is no Sun here, just an aching, sucking wound, an empty socket the size of your outstretched hand where Something should clearly be in the East. A ragged rent dripping rivers of cherry-red light onto torqued and tortured mechanisms, flurries of sparks flitting up from the cavernous hollow.

The only light comes from the machine itself and it is the color of rust and corrugation. You don't need it strictly speaking, but it's so much more gentle, so much more tender than the harsh glow of the Sun -the distant king who you know, you know with a bone deep certainty calls that spark in your soul son- and you do like the way it paints the ruins that crouch on the coastline.The way it creeps and flows through the carcass of a fallen city.

The Underworld of Xauma is ruled by faded glory and ruined grandeur. You don't need to be told this, you can sense it. Taste it on your tongue like the ghosts of spice and sandalwood and the last traces of once-thick incense haunting an abandoned temple. A worm-chewed shrine given over to drifts of dead leaves and rotting timbers, where branches rustle and rasp against the eaves and the wind sighs through the holes in the wall. Carrying with it the scent of Autumn.

You limp on, you and your companion, your creature, your construct. The structure that rises up all around the two of you was a palace once you think, or a theater maybe- you're not sure, can't be sure. You know that it was a place of lavish indulgence, of carefully curated beauty. You know that it drew people from all across the metropolitan sprawl, people of taste and people of grace, those of means (and they were on display as much as the performers, there to be admired by the teeming masses who filled most of the seats, there to be framed and noticed and seen by so many hungry eyes). It's all empty now of course. Not even the Dead come here, not really. The Xaumans prefer to stick closer to the fog-mantled forest, the sheer hills overgrown with pines and swamp-cypress and tangling, waist-thick roots that twine together. Where the eyes of wolves and things that are almost-wolves peer from the gloom.

There's nobody here but you to appreciate it all.

Five stories of shadowed, interconnected villas and slender columns, five stories of once-white marble, of airy arcades and towering, free-standing arches. Closed and open amphitheaters hosting collapsed stages and rotting boxes, blank silvery tapestries hanging ragged and limp over metallic scaffolding. The elegant geometries of this place are riddled with hairline fractures, deep cracks that run from the foundations to the sloping, tiled roofs. The stones here still kissed by char and Essence-burn. The sprawling gardens are half-drowned, breakers sluicing through the entryway, washing over paved paths and beating against the pillars. Rushing past your calves every few seconds as you climb higher up the gradual incline. The flood turning ponds to seaweed choked tidal pools and flowerbeds to raised islands, the flowers that bloom there dripping red into the water. Their petals edged in strange salts.

Yes. This will be a good place, you think. You turn your head to your monster and the beast, the machine, the synthetic shade cranes its thick neck to regard you. Jaws hanging open, clouds of mist rolling over its tongue, filtered and forked through a cage of finger-long fangs. You can see your reflection in its mask. Its slitted eyes focus on you, a few lagging, the pupil of one slow to adjust. You'll have to fix that but- later, later. There'll be time for that later.

Hold out your hand, fingers splayed. "...Stay." You say, a faint note of hesitation, of skin-crawling discomfort at the order. You watch as the creature obediently sinks to all fours. Resting on its belly in the flooded garden. You consider it.

"Range in the ruins as you like," you say. "But do not go far. I will have need of you."

It doesn't move but it does make a kind of rumbling noise deep in its chest, a vibration so bassy and so deep that you watch water droplets shudder over its almost-human back. The raised metallic spine poking above the water like so many scutes. You nod to yourself, more for your own benefit than anyone else's and continue your long climb. Through the theater and its staircases, out of the ruins and onto the slopes. Following winding, jagged trails through the bluffs and bleak cliffs that rise over the complex's roof. The theater and its lone occupant slowly shrinking behind you. The sound of the waves marking the pace, beams of rusted light playing over your path as the clouds break and reform. Chrysaor emerges eventually, after you leave the coast well and truly behind and he's sure there's no more water to come- draping wings that smolder and steam over your shoulders, his tail trailing down your back. The warmth slowly soaking into you. The parts of him that burn like cinders shining in the deep shadow as he nips at your throat, making soft chittering, squeaking sounds until you give in and scratch him under the jaw.

Minutes pass.

The sea rushes out and it does not return. If you strain you can hear the sound of the surf retreating far, far into the distance.

You don't turn around. You just keep climbing.

It's not...it's not that it doesn't hurt. It's the how of it you think. You're familiar with pain, familiar with the deep burn of muscle pushed to the point of almost tearing, bone that feels as if it'll crack, the sharp points where overtaxed tendon anchors to the joint. A back wound tight with tension, vertebrae grinding on vertebrae. Cramps working their way beneath your ribs. The sick nausea of hunger, the grinding headache of dehydration. You've felt none of that since Ivory Bones, you feel none of it here. Even the exhaustion that came with overtaxing yourself against the General and their circle, the Lookshyan army, is less the weariness of a long day's work and more-

A kind of scorched out feeling. Like a lightning struck tree in the height of the dry season, fire worming beneath its bark, licking along its branches. Fractals carved into the flesh. The air heavy and warm and still. Like all your nerves were set alight in a blinding flash and then left blackened and cooling; brittle and desiccated.

But your shoulder and leg- you're not sure what the Dragon-Blood did or how it worked, you don't know even know what it was beyond "holy", something -hah- anathema to your new nature. But where the rest of you fundamentally functions fine, dead muscle barely troubled by the walk ashore, the hike up the cliffs, your thigh and back are stiff. Slow to respond. Even slower to heal. These two jagged wounds clotted thick with coagulated blood, dripping red and sometimes black and sometimes wisps of dying sunlight as they creep closed. The pain is a static thing, it doesn't shift or grow or radiate across your body, it remains constant. Even. Pieces of you that won't, can't work.

But Chrysaor helps, the warmth leeches away the worst of it you think. And even if you're not precisely excited at the thought of being back in Creation proper, at least when you see the Xauman laborers and their works spreading across the hillside up ahead you're not run too ragged.

"Hello," you say, damp scarecrow that you are as you trudge around a rocky outcrop, up towards the broken steps of a renovated temple, a brutal edifice held together by the roots and boughs that wind through it. You're shirtless and stripped to the scraps of sleek, skintight darkness that clings to your legs. You have a drowsy elemental clinging to your back. You take resolute aim at casual confidence, the utter certainty that you have every right to be here, walking this crooked path beneath the spreading branches of an unworldly, cyclopean forest.

A few on the edges of the crowd start as they notice you. Few even do so much as that. The Xaumans are a mix- towering wolfblooded-beastmen with silvery-black fur and blue tunics, hefting picks and spades of proportionate scale. Shades with silver death masks and bodies of smoke and mist and slowly-shedding ash- the incorporeal held together by armor sculpted in the shape of an idealized anatomy. Legionnaires from the other side of the shadowland in their lupine cloaks, the ephemeral things wrapped tightly around them. Spirits from the near side of the Underworld, sharp -almost serrated- canid forms made from dead leaves and naked branches and broken rubble, dark glass gleaming in their jaws. You see thaumaturges in their intricate azure robes, stitched in argent, armored in enameled stee and guiding the now-stilled work.

They're all looking down those sheer slopes. Down to the coast. Down to the shore of that endless ocean.

There is a shape rising from the deep, bringing with it crashing waves and a wrathful sea- no. That is wrong, "shape" implies that you can see the edges, see the borders, see some impression of the wholeness of it. There is a presence, a vastness emerging from the depths. Mantled in steam and fog, surrounded by darkly gleaming stars, trailing rain in its wake as it slithers closer, and closer. Something that looms over the ruins, looms over the hills and the swamps and the forest, looms over the assembled laborers. A mountain range. A serpent-man. A brutalist city. A many-handed God clad in purple, bereft of skin, carrying cradled in its palms a gift.

Elegia sways, viperous head dipping as he casts about for an empty area on the expanse of those otherworldly hills. Finding one at last, reaching out flayed fingers and crescent claws to simply scoop a titanic furrow through the stone.

The ground rumbles and rocks underfoot like a ship in a storm. Wind howls through the vast lattice of branches, the labyrinth of trunk and root. A wolfman drops his pick and sits down -falls down maybe- numbly on the steps. Staring up at the sky, the stars, the eyes that stare back curiously, hungrily.

For want of anything better to do you pat the stranger on the shoulder and continue up the stairs as your Deathlord gets to work. You don't think he notices. It's fine. You did your best.

The beast made from flesh is waiting for you halfway up. The bull-skulled monster with the scythe, who serves as Nerius's right hand is resting beneath the eaves of a geometric arch. Blocky and intricately carved with scenes of long-ago triumph, now overgrown with almost vein-like roots, wrapped in dry orange and amber leaves. On the other side of the archeway two of the statuesque, inhuman praetorians stir from a relaxed vigil. Their captain looks from the scene below, the deep, resonant booming of a God's labor, to you

"I have-" you say, voice rough and worn for all that it's so flat, making you suddenly so conscious of how dry your throat feels.

"You are-" the slaughterhouse thing begins, voice a deep wet rumble.

The two of you pause. You motion for him to speak after a second, half a moment before he moved to do the same. You both pause again. In the far background there is a sound of stone grinding, tearing on an unimaginable scale, talons raking over the ribs of the earth.

"...King Nerius requests your presence," the ghost whose name, it occurs to you, you don't actually know. "When you are available?"

"I am available now," you say, "Or- I will be. After a...bath?"

Your eyes search those pits of flame, inadvertently twisting the statement up into a question, an implicit asking of permission as much as that jarrs you. But the ghost just nods.

"And a meal." You add. A little more confident.

He nods again.

"...Is there time to rest-," you ask, the start of an actually intended question but he's already shaking that bleak bone head.

Fair, you suppose.

You're back. You're...home. With a bath and a meal waiting for you and an escort. Whose name you don't know. And who you, broadly speaking, know nothing about. At least, you think, as another gale keens through the woods, catching your hair in the current and setting the dead leaves rustling- at least nobody seems terribly angry about you setting fire to a Lookshyan river fleet.

You, theoretically, have much to discuss with this not-quite stranger who, you think, has probably been assigned to your...cotiere? Retinue? Staff. You like the sound of "staff".
[ ] Discuss yourself. You know a great deal about yourself. It is, in fact, one of the few things you know about that wasn't laced into your brain by a dead sun. For example: you recently set fire to a Lookshyan river fleet, built a corpse-monster, and contemplated the mysteries of the Underworld- that must be interesting to a soldier right?
[ ] Discuss Xauma. Nerius. The repurposed war-machine that crouches among the repopulated ruins and how a famine-spirit came to guard its king. It occurs to you that virtually everything you know of the place stems from Lookshy, and your current actual understanding largely begins and ends at "wolves" and "ruins". You're sure there must be more.
[ ] Discuss the man who has come to fetch you. A creature who reeks of hunger, whose likes you have never met before. You're not particularly sure how to go about that, and demanding that he simply explicate his entire existence at your whim feels crass. Perhaps if you simply let the silence drag on he'll fill it himself.

Negation · Apr 21, 2021

[X] Discuss the man who has come to fetch you. A creature who reeks of hunger, whose likes you have never met before. You're not particularly sure how to go about that, and demanding that he simply explicate his entire existence at your whim feels crass. Perhaps if you simply let the silence drag on he'll fill it himself.

Wade Garrett · Apr 21, 2021

[X] ] Discuss Xauma. Nerius. The repurposed war-machine that crouches among the repopulated ruins and how a famine-spirit came to guard its king. It occurs to you that virtually everything you know of the place stems from Lookshy, and your current actual understanding largely begins and ends at "wolves" and "ruins". You're sure there must be more.

In which one dead boy tries to give another the grand tour + exposition speech, both of them possessing the social skills of a concussed duckling.

QafianSage · Apr 21, 2021

[X] Discuss Xauma. Nerius. The repurposed war-machine that crouches among the repopulated ruins and how a famine-spirit came to guard its king. It occurs to you that virtually everything you know of the place stems from Lookshy, and your current actual understanding largely begins and ends at "wolves" and "ruins". You're sure there must be more.

GardenerBriareus · Apr 21, 2021

TenfoldShields said:
and you know you know that

TenfoldShields said:
armored in enameled stee and

Possible typos?

[X] Discuss Xauma. Nerius. The repurposed war-machine that crouches among the repopulated ruins and how a famine-spirit came to guard its king. It occurs to you that virtually everything you know of the place stems from Lookshy, and your current actual understanding largely begins and ends at "wolves" and "ruins". You're sure there must be more.

Beyond that, I'm always amazed at your ability to visualize the Underworld; every time I read one of your descriptions of it, at least two-thirds of it gets filed away in my head under "how to describe the Underworld". This time, your use of plant life was what really stood out for me, especially the withered yellow-orange creeper vine imagery near the end, as someone who's seen more than their share of dead plants.

I'm unclear on whether the Calendar is meant to be the sky of this domain, or if this is the Deep Underworld and the Calendar covers the cavern roof above the whole of that place, looming over the Labyrinth and the various long-Dead lands from every Direction scattered atop it. If it's the former, I'm assuming it's a reflection of the people who left this domain having a pronounced interest in either Heaven or astronomy, and it's sunk down far enough that instead of being the domain of a specific era of this city (or facility, or whatever it was formed in reflection of) it's now a sort of Labyrinth-tainted tombstone collage of its entirety.

~~Either way it means there's a planetarium to go with the outdoor movie theaters and public parks, this place is a Dead amusement park~~ ~~change my miiiiiiiiiiiiiind~~

ZerbanDaGreat · Apr 21, 2021

TenfoldShields said:
When you were alive, when you still sweat in the heat and shivered in the cold, drew breath and clung so tightly to the Sun you understood the Underworld as-

As…

An abstract is the word. A thing-that-is-not-itself but has something of the truth in its shape, its structure. The Underworld to you was a low voice singing, soft and somber and rough in the evening air; a horizon the color of brass and copper in the far-off distance, while darkness steadily poured itself through the cracks in the world made by silhouetted trees and the tall grass. It was never a place exactly. Not a tangible thing that could be held in the scope of one's senses and regarded as such. Just a moment; something half-imagined, a maybe-memory. The feeling of shivering as you watched shadows creep through fields of grain.

This was only true for you, of course. Your own personal enlightenment such as it was. The Exalted of the City were so much more practical- their scholars and sages understood it to be a region, possessed of its own geography and topography and tethers to this world, and they taught you, through gospel and rote, how to ward it. Defy its reaching, raking grasp. Your souls were not your own, after all- they belonged to the Hierarchy, the great wheel of rebirth and reincarnation. Which is to say they belonged to the Dragons.

Which is to say they belonged to Lookshy.

Listener's sermons painted it as a yawning black chasm beneath Creation. A titanic maw of stone and rock and sterile earth. Jaws hanging wide, waiting to swallow the impious and polluted. A soul, they assured you, could fall forever in that darkness. If not washed in the River an unrighteous spirit could fall for an aeon and an age, lashed with the steel chains and iron weights of their mortal attachments, their selfishness and vice. Sometimes instead (and particularly if the preacher was pulling from the well of older tales) they described it as a labyrinth of claustrophobic crypts, an infinite maze of crushingly tight corridors punctuated by pools of filthy, stagnant water. A great prison constructed by and of Pasiap himself to contain and confuse all manner of wicked things who might oppose the City, who might threaten its faithful. Monsters from deep time and nightmares from dead worlds, things without name and horrors without description that were as to the Hungry Ghost and revenant as such specters were to a newborn babe.

His sister Daana'd may have swam into the depths, so far into the gloom that she left the world of the living behind entirely- weighing down the captured Anathema beneath all the world's oceans. But it was Pasiap who sealed their tomb with a plain of black mud. The Dragon of the Earth stood as their warden and watchmen, the master of purification and penitent rite. Jail and jailor alike.

The particulars of the telling were unimportant you suppose: ultimately the Underworld was always the thing beneath, the realm below, a great beast lurking under your feet covered by the thinnest layer of soil. If Heaven was a realm of endlessly perfecting celestial order -and if Hell was a realm of anarchy and alien rage- then the Underworld was simply a place of...trash. Vermin. Pale, squirming, always-dead and ever-dying things, crushed and broken and reduced to crawling by the tectonic mass of Creation above. Things that should never see the light of day. Things that thirsted for that which they could never have. Things without purpose. Things without a use.

Justice flows from on high and in its ineffable current bears all manner of wicked things down.

Wrong of course. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. you know that now. But you still like that thought despite yourself. That Heaven itself and all that is holy have decreed this is where you truly belong. That this is what you deserve.

This is absolutely my shit. It grabbed that Montero energy and then slathered it all in eyeshadow and hair dye to engothify it. Sometimes the most satisfying rebellion is reclaiming everything that society told you was evil and bad and wrong just like you. Also, often has superior aesthetics and is hotter.

The sky above boils and seethes with thick black clouds, somewhere between thunderheads and billowing coal smoke, the plume of some vast forge. In the cracks, the sometimes gaps and swift-sealing fissures you can see the machine behind it, above it. The thing that Nerius and Elegia called the Calendar. A colossal clockwork assembly that stretches from horizon to horizon, a monstrous mandala of nested gears, miles-long beams and pumping pistons. Gleaming points that might be, could be stars jerkily marching on their fixed tracks. There is no Sun here, just an aching, sucking wound, an empty socket the size of your outstretched hand where Something should clearly be in the East. A ragged rent dripping rivers of cherry-red light onto torqued and tortured mechanisms, flurries of sparks flitting up from the cavernous hollow.

The only light comes from the machine itself and it is the color of rust and corrugation. You don't need it strictly speaking, but it's so much more gentle, so much more tender than the harsh glow of the Sun -the distant king who you know, you know with a bone deep certainty calls that spark in your soul son- and you do like the way it paints the ruins that crouch on the coastline.The way it creeps and flows through the carcass of a fallen city.

damn son you didn't tell me the underworld was unlimited blade works

Yes. This will be a good place, you think. You turn your head to your monster and the beast, the machine, the synthetic shade cranes its thick neck to regard you. Jaws hanging open, clouds of mist rolling over its tongue, filtered and forked through a cage of finger-long fangs. You can see your reflection in its mask. Its slitted eyes focus on you, a few lagging, the pupil of one slow to adjust. You'll have to fix that but- later, later. There'll be time for that later.

Hold out your hand, fingers splayed. "...Stay." You say, a faint note of hesitation, of skin-crawling discomfort at the order. You watch as the creature obediently sinks to all fours. Resting on its belly in the flooded garden. You consider it.

"Range in the ruins as you like," you say. "But do not go far. I will have need of you."

It doesn't move but it does make a kind of rumbling noise deep in its chest, a vibration so bassy and so deep that you watch water droplets shudder over its almost-human back. The raised metallic spine poking above the water like so many scutes.

what a well-behaved floridian shorthair, i hope harrower brings treats when he comes back

Chrysaor emerges eventually, after you leave the coast well and truly behind and he's sure there's no more water to come- draping wings that smolder and steam over your shoulders, his tail trailing down your back. The warmth slowly soaking into you. The parts of him that burn like cinders shining in the deep shadow as he nips at your throat, making soft chittering, squeaking sounds until you give in and scratch him under the jaw.

la creatura

There is a shape rising from the deep, bringing with it crashing waves and a wrathful sea- no. That is wrong, "shape" implies that you can see the edges, see the borders, see some impression of the wholeness of it. There is a presence, a vastness emerging from the depths. Mantled in steam and fog, surrounded by darkly gleaming stars, trailing rain in its wake as it slithers closer, and closer. Something that looms over the ruins, looms over the hills and the swamps and the forest, looms over the assembled laborers. A mountain range. A serpent-man. A brutalist city. A many-handed God clad in purple, bereft of skin, carrying cradled in its palms a gift.

Elegia sways, viperous head dipping as he casts about for an empty area on the expanse of those otherworldly hills. Finding one at last, reaching out flayed fingers and crescent claws to simply scoop a titanic furrow through the stone.

The ground rumbles and rocks underfoot like a ship in a storm. Wind howls through the vast lattice of branches, the labyrinth of trunk and root. A wolfman drops his pick and sits down -falls down maybe- numbly on the steps. Staring up at the sky, the stars, the eyes that stare back curiously, hungrily.

For want of anything better to do you pat the stranger on the shoulder and continue up the stairs as your Deathlord gets to work. You don't think he notices. It's fine. You did your best.

Elegia, looming over the game world as a part of the fucking skybox, if he got any closer the game wound crash trying to render all his fine detail, speaking in a voice that blows out your speakers and requires subtitles to understand: "hello have you met my big brother harrower he is doing his best "

The beast made from flesh is waiting for you halfway up. The bull-skulled monster with the scythe, who serves as Nerius's right hand is resting beneath the eaves of a geometric arch. Blocky and intricately carved with scenes of long-ago triumph, now overgrown with almost vein-like roots, wrapped in dry orange and amber leaves. On the other side of the archeway two of the statuesque, inhuman praetorians stir from a relaxed vigil. Their captain looks from the scene below, the deep, resonant booming of a God's labor, to you

"I have-" you say, voice rough and worn for all that it's so flat, making you suddenly so conscious of how dry your throat feels.

"You are-" the slaughterhouse thing begins, voice a deep wet rumble.

The two of you pause. You motion for him to speak after a second, half a moment before he moved to do the same. You both pause again. In the far background there is a sound of stone grinding, tearing on an unimaginable scale, talons raking over the ribs of the earth.

"...King Nerius requests your presence," the ghost whose name, it occurs to you, you don't actually know. "When you are available?"

"I am available now," you say, "Or- I will be. After a...bath?"

Your eyes search those pits of flame, inadvertently twisting the statement up into a question, an implicit asking of permission as much as that jarrs you. But the ghost just nods.

"And a meal." You add. A little more confident.

He nods again.

"...Is there time to rest-," you ask, the start of an actually intended question but he's already shaking that bleak bone head.

Fair, you suppose.

You're back. You're...home. With a bath and a meal waiting for you and an escort. Whose name you don't know. And who you, broadly speaking, know nothing about. At least, you think, as another gale keens through the woods, catching your hair in the current and setting the dead leaves rustling- at least nobody seems terribly angry about you setting fire to a Lookshyan river fleet.

You, theoretically, have much to discuss with this not-quite stranger who, you think, has probably been assigned to your...cotiere? Retinue? Staff. You like the sound of "staff".

It's a huge buff bull monster and he's even got a scythe for extra Aesthetic points. What's the over-under on Harrower getting a new scary boyfriend? :thonk:

[X] Discuss yourself. You know a great deal about yourself. It is, in fact, one of the few things you know about that wasn't laced into your brain by a dead sun. For example: you recently set fire to a Lookshyan river fleet, built a corpse-monster, and contemplated the mysteries of the Underworld- that must be interesting to a soldier right?

I really want Harrower to talk about how he cannonballed into a Lookshyan camp, trolled an entire Dragonblood circle and then lit the fleet on fire, and the rawhead looking motherfucker to just go *snort* "based" in the Asterius Hadesgame voice.

Terribleangel · Apr 21, 2021

[X] ] Discuss Xauma. Nerius. The repurposed war-machine that crouches among the repopulated ruins and how a famine-spirit came to guard its king. It occurs to you that virtually everything you know of the place stems from Lookshy, and your current actual understanding largely begins and ends at "wolves" and "ruins". You're sure there must be more.

Legionman · Apr 21, 2021

[X] Discuss Xauma. Nerius. The repurposed war-machine that crouches among the repopulated ruins and how a famine-spirit came to guard its king. It occurs to you that virtually everything you know of the place stems from Lookshy, and your current actual understanding largely begins and ends at "wolves" and "ruins". You're sure there must be more.

Indivisible · Apr 21, 2021

[X] Discuss Xauma. Nerius. The repurposed war-machine that crouches among the repopulated ruins and how a famine-spirit came to guard its king. It occurs to you that virtually everything you know of the place stems from Lookshy, and your current actual understanding largely begins and ends at "wolves" and "ruins". You're sure there must be more.

ragnablaze · Apr 21, 2021

[X] Discuss yourself. You know a great deal about yourself. It is, in fact, one of the few things you know about that wasn't laced into your brain by a dead sun. For example: you recently set fire to a Lookshyan river fleet, built a corpse-monster, and contemplated the mysteries of the Underworld- that must be interesting to a soldier right?

Strypgia · Apr 22, 2021

TenfoldShields said:
You don't think he notices. It's fine. You did your best.

Here is Harrower's personal motto in succinct form.

TenfoldShields said:
"I have-" you say, voice rough and worn for all that it's so flat, making you suddenly so conscious of how dry your throat feels.

"You are-" the slaughterhouse thing begins, voice a deep wet rumble.

The two of you pause. You motion for him to speak after a second, half a moment before he moved to do the same. You both pause again. In the far background there is a sound of stone grinding, tearing on an unimaginable scale, talons raking over the ribs of the earth.

Oh FFS... We are powered entirely by awkward social misunderstandings. On the other hand, we're going to have an endless supply of unlimited power because of that.

[X] Discuss Xauma. Nerius. The repurposed war-machine that crouches among the repopulated ruins and how a famine-spirit came to guard its king. It occurs to you that virtually everything you know of the place stems from Lookshy, and your current actual understanding largely begins and ends at "wolves" and "ruins". You're sure there must be more.

thewatcher · Apr 22, 2021

[X] Discuss yourself. You know a great deal about yourself. It is, in fact, one of the few things you know about that wasn't laced into your brain by a dead sun. For example: you recently set fire to a Lookshyan river fleet, built a corpse-monster, and contemplated the mysteries of the Underworld- that must be interesting to a soldier right?

GGreader · Apr 22, 2021

[X] Discuss Xauma. Nerius. The repurposed war-machine that crouches among the repopulated ruins and how a famine-spirit came to guard its king. It occurs to you that virtually everything you know of the place stems from Lookshy, and your current actual understanding largely begins and ends at "wolves" and "ruins". You're sure there must be more.

Sarpedon · Apr 22, 2021

[X] ] Discuss Xauma. Nerius. The repurposed war-machine that crouches among the repopulated ruins and how a famine-spirit came to guard its king. It occurs to you that virtually everything you know of the place stems from Lookshy, and your current actual understanding largely begins and ends at "wolves" and "ruins". You're sure there must be more.

Squirtodyle · Apr 22, 2021

TenfoldShields said:
An abstract is the word. A thing-that-is-not-itself but has something of the truth in its shape, its structure. The Underworld to you was a low voice singing, soft and somber and rough in the evening air; a horizon the color of brass and copper in the far-off distance, while darkness steadily poured itself through the cracks in the world made by silhouetted trees and the tall grass. It was never a place exactly. Not a tangible thing that could be held in the scope of one's senses and regarded as such. Just a moment; something half-imagined, a maybe-memory. The feeling of shivering as you watched shadows creep through fields of grain.

This was only true for you, of course. Your own personal enlightenment such as it was. The Exalted of the City were so much more practical- their scholars and sages understood it to be a region, possessed of its own geography and topography and tethers to this world, and they taught you, through gospel and rote, how to ward it. Defy its reaching, raking grasp. Your souls were not your own, after all- they belonged to the Hierarchy, the great wheel of rebirth and reincarnation. Which is to say they belonged to the Dragons.

Which is to say they belonged to Lookshy.

I think I say it every time but I love your intros, they're insanely evocative and a wonderful way to slip back into Harrower's mindset. The finale being a spiteful satisfaction at what he has now being all the world told him he always deserved is a very nice touch.

TenfoldShields said:
Hold out your hand, fingers splayed. "...Stay." You say, a faint note of hesitation, of skin-crawling discomfort at the order. You watch as the creature obediently sinks to all fours. Resting on its belly in the flooded garden. You consider it.

"Range in the ruins as you like," you say. "But do not go far. I will have need of you."

It doesn't move but it does make a kind of rumbling noise deep in its chest, a vibration so bassy and so deep that you watch water droplets shudder over its almost-human back. The raised metallic spine poking above the water like so many scutes. You nod to yourself, more for your own benefit than anyone else's and continue your long climb. Through the theater and its staircases, out of the ruins and onto the slopes. Following winding, jagged trails through the bluffs and bleak cliffs that rise over the complex's roof. The theater and its lone occupant slowly shrinking behind you. The sound of the waves marking the pace, beams of rusted light playing over your path as the clouds break and reform. Chrysaor emerges eventually, after you leave the coast well and truly behind and he's sure there's no more water to come- draping wings that smolder and steam over your shoulders, his tail trailing down your back. The warmth slowly soaking into you. The parts of him that burn like cinders shining in the deep shadow as he nips at your throat, making soft chittering, squeaking sounds until you give in and scratch him under the jaw.

D'aww. I like that Harrower almost immediately switches from a restrictive order to something significantly less constraining, and I especially like Chrysaor being the cutest and goodest boy.

TenfoldShields said:
But Chrysaor helps, the warmth leeches away the worst of it you think. And even if you're not precisely excited at the thought of being back in Creation proper, at least when you see the Xauman laborers and their works spreading across the hillside up ahead you're not run too ragged.

"Hello," you say, damp scarecrow that you are as you trudge around a rocky outcrop, up towards the broken steps of a renovated temple, a brutal edifice held together by the roots and boughs that wind through it. You're shirtless and stripped to the scraps of sleek, skintight darkness that clings to your legs. You have a drowsy elemental clinging to your back. You take resolute aim at casual confidence, the utter certainty that you have every right to be here, walking this crooked path beneath the spreading branches of an unworldly, cyclopean forest.

God. A dead man who looks the part wading up the steps to a temple with an elemental round his neck and he's just like "sup".

King shit, we stan

TenfoldShields said:
There is a shape rising from the deep, bringing with it crashing waves and a wrathful sea- no. That is wrong, "shape" implies that you can see the edges, see the borders, see some impression of the wholeness of it. There is a presence, a vastness emerging from the depths. Mantled in steam and fog, surrounded by darkly gleaming stars, trailing rain in its wake as it slithers closer, and closer. Something that looms over the ruins, looms over the hills and the swamps and the forest, looms over the assembled laborers. A mountain range. A serpent-man. A brutalist city. A many-handed God clad in purple, bereft of skin, carrying cradled in its palms a gift.

Elegia sways, viperous head dipping as he casts about for an empty area on the expanse of those otherworldly hills. Finding one at last, reaching out flayed fingers and crescent claws to simply scoop a titanic furrow through the stone.

The ground rumbles and rocks underfoot like a ship in a storm. Wind howls through the vast lattice of branches, the labyrinth of trunk and root. A wolfman drops his pick and sits down -falls down maybe- numbly on the steps. Staring up at the sky, the stars, the eyes that stare back curiously, hungrily.

For want of anything better to do you pat the stranger on the shoulder and continue up the stairs as your Deathlord gets to work. You don't think he notices. It's fine. You did your best.

Yoooooooo.

I love the way you're selling Elegia as like, genuine cosmic horror that's borderline impossible for anyone to parse, Cthulu coming to land and starting some renovations for his cool big brother. It's really really sick.

[X] Discuss yourself. You know a great deal about yourself. It is, in fact, one of the few things you know about that wasn't laced into your brain by a dead sun. For example: you recently set fire to a Lookshyan river fleet, built a corpse-monster, and contemplated the mysteries of the Underworld- that must be interesting to a soldier right?

Honestly I like Harrower introspecting a lot and also I think him talking about himself would be neat.

mothematics · Apr 22, 2021

[X] Discuss Xauma. Nerius. The repurposed war-machine that crouches among the repopulated ruins and how a famine-spirit came to guard its king. It occurs to you that virtually everything you know of the place stems from Lookshy, and your current actual understanding largely begins and ends at "wolves" and "ruins". You're sure there must be more.

declaim the glory of wolf-daddy to me, stranger

TheOneMoiderah · Apr 23, 2021

[X] Discuss yourself. You know a great deal about yourself. It is, in fact, one of the few things you know about that wasn't laced into your brain by a dead sun. For example: you recently set fire to a Lookshyan river fleet, built a corpse-monster, and contemplated the mysteries of the Underworld- that must be interesting to a soldier right?

hey there's probably gonna be something interesting to discuss and talk about given what you've done and if not it'll be funny.

Spear · Apr 24, 2021

[X] Discuss Xauma. Nerius. The repurposed war-machine that crouches among the repopulated ruins and how a famine-spirit came to guard its king. It occurs to you that virtually everything you know of the place stems from Lookshy, and your current actual understanding largely begins and ends at "wolves" and "ruins". You're sure there must be more.

Maugan Ra · Apr 24, 2021

[x] Discuss Xauma. Nerius. The repurposed war-machine that crouches among the repopulated ruins and how a famine-spirit came to guard its king. It occurs to you that virtually everything you know of the place stems from Lookshy, and your current actual understanding largely begins and ends at "wolves" and "ruins". You're sure there must be more.

Yes. I require the lore. Give it to me. I need it. Tell me of the ghost wolf-roman people.

Omicron · Apr 25, 2021

[X] ] Discuss Xauma. Nerius. The repurposed war-machine that crouches among the repopulated ruins and how a famine-spirit came to guard its king. It occurs to you that virtually everything you know of the place stems from Lookshy, and your current actual understanding largely begins and ends at "wolves" and "ruins". You're sure there must be more.

i can't wait for harrower to do a cultural insensitivity

Who? · Apr 29, 2021

TenfoldShields said:
This was only true for you, of course. Your own personal enlightenment such as it was. The Exalted of the City were so much more practical- their scholars and sages understood it to be a region, possessed of its own geography and topography and tethers to this world, and they taught you, through gospel and rote, how to ward it. Defy its reaching, raking grasp. Your souls were not your own, after all- they belonged to the Hierarchy, the great wheel of rebirth and reincarnation. Which is to say they belonged to the Dragons.

Which is to say they belonged to Lookshy.

Being owned down to your souls... what a genuinely disturbing prospect. Rather apropos for techno-magic Sparta.

TenfoldShields said:
Things that should never see the light of day. Things that thirsted for that which they could never have. Things without purpose. Things without a use.

This says a lot about Lookshy's view of people. The final words wrt the Underworld are Lookshy's - "without use". Though the Realm is the Empire, Lookshy is still an imperial, slaving power; people are of utility to maintaining the superstructure, to feeding the evergaping maw of the metropole, but they have no inherent value. Someone in the Underworld is not on the Wheel, and so is no longer of use.

TenfoldShields said:
Justice flows from on high and in its ineffable current bears all manner of wicked things down.

Wrong of course. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. you know that now. But you still like that thought despite yourself. That Heaven itself and all that is holy have decreed this is where you truly belong. That this is what you deserve.

This is just - mmmmmmh. Delicious. Not a recontextualisation; "I am morally correct and you are wrong", but "by all the dictates of Heaven, I am wrong, and I am still going to break it all." That kind of defiance is just... chef's kiss.

TenfoldShields said:
"I am available now," you say, "Or- I will be. After a...bath?"

Your eyes search those pits of flame, inadvertently twisting the statement up into a question, an implicit asking of permission as much as that jarrs you. But the ghost just nods.

"And a meal." You add. A little more confident.

He nods again.

"...Is there time to rest-," you ask, the start of an actually intended question but he's already shaking that bleak bone head.

Fair, you suppose.

Harrower: "Am I allowed to actually have shit?"
Ghost-man: "Yes, but His Majesty does have a schedule, apologies,."

[X] Discuss yourself. You know a great deal about yourself. It is, in fact, one of the few things you know about that wasn't laced into your brain by a dead sun. For example: you recently set fire to a Lookshyan river fleet, built a corpse-monster, and contemplated the mysteries of the Underworld- that must be interesting to a soldier right?

Look, its important to get experience giving ~~boasts~~ after-action reports. Build that confidence.

Razios · Apr 30, 2021

[X] Discuss yourself. You know a great deal about yourself. It is, in fact, one of the few things you know about that wasn't laced into your brain by a dead sun. For example: you recently set fire to a Lookshyan river fleet, built a corpse-monster, and contemplated the mysteries of the Underworld- that must be interesting to a soldier right?

Eventually harrower, you will need to face the most horrid of experience.

that despise everything, you were important, people around you were not.

Imrix · May 1, 2021

TenfoldShields said:
Necrotechnology (Arsinoe-class Amphibious Assault Frames): Adept (Locked)
River Dragon anatomy represents one of the most tried and true designs in Creation.
Created via multiple corpses fused into a single hulking, crocodilian armature, an Arsinoe boasts strength and speed outstripping its already impressive frame. Dead, tireless muscle powering crushing jaws and rending claws; predatory instinct guiding physiology already well-suited to the dark waters of the Yanaze. A fearsome ambush hunter...yet the design already begs refinement and development. The animating force is all shades and echoes, the meridian-network simplistic, and inbuilt weaponry and defenses are, necessarily, limited.

This is absolutely my shit, this highly technical, mechanised description of a bloody zombified croc-monster. I love it. I want more.

TenfoldShields said:
You screw your eyes shut, breathe deep through your nose and hope, with every ounce of strength in your dead, unbeating heart, that wherever she is, if she lives, Winglord Thalia is having a worse fucking time of it.

Ahh, yes, the immensely motivating power of spite. Good on you, Harrower. Don't let the bastards get you down.

TenfoldShields said:
The pain ebbs to a dull, background ache and slowly, slowly you open your eyes once more. You can grin, you can even bear it, but it's kind of thing that eats away at your energy, slowly saps your strength- and you're already so exhausted, so tired, and you know you know that you'll only feel worse once you press on, but it's mild enough now that you can manage. One black nailed hand pushed up through your hair; a yawn working its way up your throat, slowly prying open your mouth, lips peeling back from too sharp teeth as you let your arm fall. Let those nails drag along your face.

This is just- it's such an intensely Tenfold bit of writing that it makes me crack a grin. You can't just say he yawned and dragged his fingers down his face, you've got to lavish description on the mechanism of the body - and, of course, the black nail paint, because None More Goth. Delightful!

TenfoldShields said:
A few on the edges of the crowd start as they notice you. Few even do so much as that. The Xaumans are a mix- towering wolfblooded-beastmen with silvery-black fur and blue tunics, hefting picks and spades of proportionate scale. Shades with silver death masks and bodies of smoke and mist and slowly-shedding ash- the incorporeal held together by armor sculpted in the shape of an idealized anatomy. Legionnaires from the other side of the shadowland in their lupine cloaks, the ephemeral things wrapped tightly around them. Spirits from the near side of the Underworld, sharp -almost serrated- canid forms made from dead leaves and naked branches and broken rubble, dark glass gleaming in their jaws. You see thaumaturges in their intricate azure robes, stitched in argent, armored in enameled stee and guiding the now-stilled work.

... I think this might be the first description we've had of like, the Xauman rank and file? Good shit, it's got that sense of- like, the ubiquity of small magics that thrills me so about Exalted. Bravo.

TenfoldShields said:
The ground rumbles and rocks underfoot like a ship in a storm. Wind howls through the vast lattice of branches, the labyrinth of trunk and root. A wolfman drops his pick and sits down -falls down maybe- numbly on the steps. Staring up at the sky, the stars, the eyes that stare back curiously, hungrily.

For want of anything better to do you pat the stranger on the shoulder and continue up the stairs as your Deathlord gets to work. You don't think he notices. It's fine. You did your best.

pfft. I properly cracked up on reading this, it's just - Zerban's already said it better, about the portrayal of Elegia, but the bit that tickles me here is the little grace note of Harrower trying gamely to do An Social Interaction with the miner. It's not exactly the same but it's got a powerful "that's rough buddy" energy to it that got me good.

TenfoldShields said:
"I have-" you say, voice rough and worn for all that it's so flat, making you suddenly so conscious of how dry your throat feels.

"You are-" the slaughterhouse thing begins, voice a deep wet rumble.

The two of you pause. You motion for him to speak after a second, half a moment before he moved to do the same. You both pause again. In the far background there is a sound of stone grinding, tearing on an unimaginable scale, talons raking over the ribs of the earth.

oh no i love him

[X] Discuss Xauma. Nerius. The repurposed war-machine that crouches among the repopulated ruins and how a famine-spirit came to guard its king. It occurs to you that virtually everything you know of the place stems from Lookshy, and your current actual understanding largely begins and ends at "wolves" and "ruins". You're sure there must be more.

Look you can't just lay that smorgasboard of small magics before me and not expect me to pounce on it.

TenfoldShields · Jun 28, 2021

After a minute of walking the Dead pulls his pristine, silvery-white cloak from around his shoulders and offers it to you. You do not ask him to. You do not need it. And while he doesn't quite look at you, the motion brusque and almost indifferent, you can't miss the way he tilts his head just so, just enough to see you out of the corner of his eye. There's something awfully self conscious in it, something so achingly earnest in that face of immobile bone that you don't have it in you to push him away. And you're too tired to explain, as brief as such an explanation would be.

So you accept and are immediately swathed in the rich, heavy fabric. All but drowning in the ocean of cloth, gamely doing your best to keep the trailing hem from dragging on the steps behind you. Chrysaor squeaking softly as he's bundled up against you. The captain alongside you, doing his best to match his stride with yours which mostly means he's moving at a slow, leisurely stroll. The two Praetorians follow in your wake, faceless and silent and statuesque. Bodies dyed in glistening ink, accentuated with gleaming sapphire; anatomy shining with silver points and argent bands.

The woods press in thick on every side. Limbs lacing together in an impenetrable lattice. An echo of a primeval darkness, when all the East was river and water-cut canyon and deepening forest. Trees rise up from the thickets, each as wide as a village square, but still they twist and crawl and climb like lithe vines. Coiling root indistinguishable from forking branch from serpentine trunk. All of it swathed in shadow, all of it dripping that bloody red sap. In the gaps and the arcades and the high-arched hollow spaces you can still see the leaves. All the colors of fire, of an Autumn inferno, their rustling magnified again and again by the sheer multitude of them. The sound they make in the wind like the crash and muted roar of waves breaking against the shore.

The ruined stairs climb up, ever up, disappearing into the shifting shadows and the rusted light. Sometimes they take you through the ruins of a place, a building, part of another causeway, another arch- but here they've all been overtaken by the forest. Claimed by the crawling mass; suspended and jointed and frozen in place, their brutal edifices half-wrenched apart. Small creeks of pitch black water running through them, cascading away into the undergrowth.

"My name is Harrower," you say at last. For want of anything to say at all.

"Yes," the reply is a sound like stone rumbling against stone, this kind of resonant echo deep in his chest.

You stop, one bare foot on the edge of a cracked stone landing and you just sort of...turn to look at him. You're a few steps ahead so you're at something like eye-level. Chrysaor resting his jaw on your shoulder, flicking his leaf-shaped ears and sniffing as he peers curiously in the same direction. The ghost stops abruptly, ever so slightly flustered, unsure of what he did. You see it in his eyes, the way the flames dim and contract as he squints. You see the brief flaring of yellow and orange and red as he makes the connection. He turns his head away and huffs, a wet, racking sound.

"Long Night of Hunger." A pause. He pats one heavy, taloned hand to the staff of his colossal warscythe. "Final Feast."

"Thank you," you say.

You...decide in that moment you like him. You like this spirit- this man (and he is a man). You like his armor, the way it's so mismatched and patchwork, painstakingly pieced together from what must be half a dozen sets scavenged from antique ruins and tailored for his physique. Lovingly painted an even pitch, accented on the gauntlets and shin-greaves, the breast and the back with careful blue-daubed designs. Edged in intricate silver patterns of fang and tangling root. You like his scythe and the way he carries the monstrous thing nestled tenderly in the crook of his arm, bearing the weight with an easy, unconscious grace- and it reminds you, somehow, of the elemental dozing, bat-wings draped over your shoulders. A precious pet, spoiled and indulged.

You like his body, his anatomy. Is that ghoulish? It feels a little perverse and you can't quite convince yourself it's just innocent fascination. You like watching the way the flayed, exposed skeins of scarlet muscle tense and twist and shift and strain with every little motion. White spurs of bone jutting up from the scarlet, rising along his spine, rocks in the center of so many red, red rivers. White slopes of osseous plate integrated into the bulk of his being, both anchoring and armoring the meat that is his self. White bull skull a many-fanged death mask; flames ringed in shadow sitting nestled in the sockets, flicking back to you now and then. Wondering, you think, why your gaze lingers.

You like the way his strength sits thickly across his back, girdles his waist and stomach with a solid slab. The way his arms and thighs bulge with power. His chest broadened and deepened with brawn. The sound of his hooves is a steady metronome, following you along your twilight path between the worlds of the living and the dead. Somewhere in the distance you can still hear Elegia at his work. From this far away it just sounds like an endless roll of thunder. Or maybe an earthquake, rumbling below your feet.

Long Night of Hunger eventually looks down at himself then over at you. "Is there a problem?" He asks, and it's brusque but you think he's genuinely….curious. Asking if something's wrong. If he did something wrong. You try for a smile, easy and light, the kind of thing you've seen Nerius flash, easy as drawing breath.

"Just wondering about you is all."

The smile is too wan, too crooked and too ragged, stretched too wide across a face that isn't really suited for it. Do you look ill? You already seemed dead on your feet and now you think you must look ill because Long Night of Hunger now seems an entirely different of concerned. Perhaps worried that you might pitch over in the middle of the path.

...And you know what? That's fair, honestly. You think the woods around you are starting to become just woods now, the water that trickles and pools the thing of wetlands and marshes, rather than countless black rivulets flowing down, down, down. You can feel your strength slowly leeching from your body as you gradually leave the Underworld behind. You do your best to ignore it. Do your best to hold that wavering, slightly sickly smile. If for no other reason than you're committed and you don't know enough about politesse and personal diplomacy to confidently change course in the middle of a conversation.

"What's there to wonder?" He asks eventually.

There's a silence as you frown, letting that grimace-grin go with something like relief. Curled knuckles touched to your chin as you think. "Well," you reply, "Hhhhow are you finding Xauma? Unless I'm mistaken, you're a famine ghost. You have that...smell? Taste. About you. And I know what an empty belly feels like. But this is a land of plenty, as far as cereals and meat go. So- you came here from Lookshy too, didn't you?"

"...It is impolite to assume so much about a person," he says, and with the low, shuddering vibration that laces his words it's difficult to tell if he's amused, or closer to annoyed. You wince and adjust and readjust the sit of the borrowed cloak, busying yourself with the motion.

"I apologize then," you say. He grunts in reply. The two of you walk in silence for a time.

"Xauma is not old. There is the Kingdom. But before that there were only the tribes. The forests. The ruins. And there still are those things but- no." A note of frustration laces his voice. "I am telling it wrong."

It's strange. He could be addressing nobody. The empty air, the slow-shifting, changing woods around you, the guards trailing in your wake. He doesn't even quite look at you but you think that's more for his comfort, his confidence than any real animosity. His voice is deep, backed by a guttural rasp. And with words that all but buzz in your bones he starts again, starts to describe his home.

"King Nerius made Xauma," he says. "From forest and rain-soaked ruins. Out of life and death, oaths and compact. Out of the many gods, one court under the She-Who-Eats-The-Light. Out of the many tribes of Old Xauma, one nation once more. One army. One hand, one fist, to strike against Lookshy. He fells trees, sends treasures to Greak Forks. Trades for jade and steel. But his silver buys the service of Strix, buys Scavenger Lords, buys Harvester war-herds. We come for that silver. But we stay for the things he says, the world he promises."

Your gaze is somewhere between curious and avaricious, mismatched eyes drinking it in. You don't even have to ask. The hungry quiet does it for you.

"Food enough for soldiers," he says, voice soft and full of longing, "Food enough for all the slaves we'll free. Xauma will shatter the sevenfold walls and bring Lookshy low. We will take what was always ours. The destiny it denied us. The future it stole. We will be spoken of in the same breath as Sijan, as Nexus, as Great Forks. And The City will be spoken of not at all."

You shift in your seat, hands plucking at the edges of your tunic. Trying to make the cloth sit well over your too-lean, too-stark body. Your skin smells like flowers. You can still taste that thick and hearty shellfish stew on your tongue. Out at the limit of your endurance, the end of a fraying tether, and it's not sheer will that keeps you upright now or even curiosity. Just a nerve-deep anxiety, this kind of twitch and shudder between the bones that sends you straightening up every few seconds. Trying to feign alertness. Contrition? You have done nothing to apologize for, everything had Nerius's tacit permission, encouragement even- but it's still hard to shake the rat-scratching-in-the-skull feeling that somehow, despite everything, you might be in trouble.

You smooth your shirt again and sigh. Eyes immediately darting up, looking to see if you've annoyed anyone, given the impression of petulance but you're still alone.

There are no windows in the antechamber. There was a time when that would have made your skin crawl, when the sense of being hemmed in, penned in, would have made the bile rise and the sweat prickle your brow. But you have a different understanding of things now. A new place in the- call it the natural order. And with that station came new ingrained reflexes, new subconscious affinities and affections. Things in the otherwise familiar space of your mind that move and twitch and slither and shift in unexpected ways. The lack of pain or keen discomfort, the lack of wrongness, bringing with it its own kind of fascination. Because when you look at the walls of the antechamber, this open lounge tucked outside one of the Wolf-King's greater halls, this semi-sheltered space nestled between the bulkheads and grated decks of the war machine's corridors-

All you can think is how happy you are that the Sun can't get in.

You know it can't hurt you. Xauma is a shadowland, the ghost of a dead Age haunting the Scavenger Lands. A place where rain drums with frigid, icy fingers on the sides of broken skyscrapers. Where the trees grow thick and dark and the water runs cold, black as ink, black as pitch. Death is in the soil here. Death is in the superconcrete foundations and thrums in the trunks of trees who have never once bloomed with green. Spirits walk here by dusk and twilight- by daylight even, when the skies are leaden and grey. And you? You're made of something far stronger than any shade. You know that.

But you still don't like how it makes you feel.

It's like grease and thick oil running over your skin, matting your hair and clotting your pores. Oven-heat and still, stagnant air. A golden eye, high, high above you, watching you with the detached, vague displeasure of a perennially disappointed father.

Hypocrite.

As if Sol Invictus had any right to judge you.

Don't let it get to you. Don't let it worm its way in. This long, low couch beneath you is comfortable, the cushions soft and you find that you're increasingly at ease with the ambience, the aesthetic, of the palace. The suggestions of the wild encroaching forest, intertwined with the industrial ducts and vents and softly glowing orange-red light. The way the people of Xauma took this thing, this monstrosity that murdered them, and mantled its armor with paneled wood and flowing bolts of cloth. Coaxed red-sap dripping branches up its boulevard broad limbs. Etched and carved its insides and let the shadows without flourish within.

And it works actually, for all that that's worth. Letting your eyes trace the organic tangle that bulges in the corners and slopes sharply down the edges of the walls. Letting your spine rest against the back of the lounge, and the tension and lingering pain bleed away. Or at least, works well enough that anxiety gives way to annoyance. He's talking to someone inside, in the gunnery deck that's been converted into a kind of- whatever the opposite of a solarium is. And you know they can't be expected, because like Long Night of Hunger said he has a schedule to keep. And you know it can't be a formal petition otherwise it'd have been in that troop transport bay turned throne room. A confidant then? A friend perhaps. Someone who can demand as much of the King's time as they like, on little notice.

...Does Nerius have friends? He must, musn't he? His people seem to adore him. You've seen him address his Legates and grizzled living, oath-bound Dead, or lesser Divine, they all nod and listen seriously when he talks. When you spoke with them Renartus sounded fond, and you don't think that was an affectation. Long Night of Hunger had nothing but respect and Judecca -careless as he was when out of public view- at least wears the robes of a Magi, of priest and thaumaturge, and has stayed on retainer.

But is that really the same as a friend? No it doesn't- it doesn't quite fit does it? A constant game of almost-but-not-quite. If you had to nail down anyone as being close to the man you'd say it was the Fox-Breath spymaster and the famine-spirit that serves as Captain of his Praetorians, you're fairly sure he's slept with the former and you'd be willing to hedge on the latter but-

You should stop. It's not really your business or your concern. And picking at the idea, the notion, gives you this odd sense of guilt. All this private unkindness for your host, after all the generosity, all the indulgence he's given you. And it's not like you're much of an expert on the subject anyway, is it you maladjusted scarecrow? Exactly. It's nothing to do with you. You settle on this very firmly, drumming your fingers on the soft fabric of your seat and watching the lavender skin split bloodlessly along the webbing between your knuckles. Eyes tracking the pattern of swollen veins that fork and ladder down your arm. A rich violet against the ashen grey and lavender tinge.

And then the hatch hisses open and your gaze immediately flicks up to drink in who the Wolf-King's mysterious guest may be.

She is old. Not old in the way you understand it, the way you know it- worn to toughened leather and cured hide. Stooped and thin and layered with years and years of the accumulated hurt, the costs of hard labor. Bodies breaking down in slow motion as they try and try to find some way to contribute, to continue. Living to the edge of the tallies and the precise tables that optimize and organize a helot's life. Waiting and waiting and waiting for the day they'll finally be shuffled off and even if that day never comes. The waiting never stops. Not really.

Her hair is the color of charcoal, still tinged with a few long locks of raiton black. She is deeply tanned, darker than you ever were, and what lines and creases there are are of frowns and worry and barely held scowls rather than elemental wear. Her long, trailing robes are a blue so deep and perfect that it makes something in your chest ache. Trimmed in furs that curl and billow, a thick and roiling grey like the smoke of a burning city. Her tunic is the color of a moonless night, a match for the impossibly wide-brimmed hat she wears at a delicate angle. A curtain of silver beads hanging over her face.

Her back is straight and you cannot imagine she has ever bowed for anyone, begged for anything, in the whole of her life. Certainly nothing so small as mercy. Or forgiveness. When she pauses and smoothly changes direction to approach you, it doesn't even seem anything less than planned and wholly deliberate. She towers over you. You didn't- you didn't quite realize how tall she was for some reason, tall enough to put a hand on Nerius's shoulder without even having to reach. The woman holds out her hand and you take it hesitantly. Still unsure of what to do. Still reflexively biting back the ingrained urge for deference, trying to stop shy of open defiance, you are not a prisoner here you are a guest and you know enough to know that a guest must behave well. You feel the thick, heavy calluses of her palm, her fingers against your own. You watch as her wickedly curved claws delicately wrap around the whole of your hand. Hiding it utterly.

She smiles and her smile is lined with fangs. She looks down at you and her eyes gleam in the half-light, that same heartaching shade of sapphire.

"I am Suneater Wolf," she says, her voice light and airy for her frame. Words spoken with the smoothness of someone who is not accustomed to being interrupted. She looks at you expectantly.

"I- I'm Harrower. I…(ah)."

"Yes, you're that lovely boy my son met across the River. He was very excited to get to know you." She nods once and relinquishes her grip. Just so.

"I'm- I'm happy to hear that?" You say weakly. "I didn't know Nerius had family at the palace."

She laughs and it is a sharp, barking sound. Her teeth flashing as she tosses her head back, hand raised to her mouth. "Oh young man. All of Xauma are my children and all this city is my palace. Nerius is merely my favorite. As is this place, I suppose. Bold don't you think? To reclaim the instrument of your own attempted murder. But I suppose a Deathknight like you can understand."

Bereft of anything to say, belatedly wondering if you should stand, if you even have room to stand with her so near, you settle for nodding again. Unsure of how to take that, exactly.

"Well, I shan't take any more of your time Knight Harrower, and I'm sure the boy is eager to bother you over one of his games. I don't know how long you'll be staying with us- but please. You're not imposing in the slightest. Truth be told I'm glad. Nerius could use a positive influence."

You...definitely don't know how to take that. You're still processing the words as she makes her graceful exit from the lounge. Crossing the threshold of the antechamber and into the innards of the war machine proper. Or- no you don't-

Hear. Her. Out in the hallway. You're still staring blankly at your hand, sitting on the edge of the lounge. Wondering where you heard her name before. You remember, then, a scrap of what Hunger said. You remember then standing on the steps of her grand temple, her Altar, and making eyes at her son's back.

Oh.

You're still sitting on the lounge when the door opens again and the man himself rests a hand on the edge, half-leaning into view. Watching the woman, the god -his mother?- leave with a sour expression. Thin pitch black lip twitched up over a long ivory fang. Not a snarl, not exactly. Not even anger you think. Just a kind of sour annoyance. A petty kind of exasperation.

And then his head turns towards you, ears up and those strange, pitch-black and amber eyes tracing a line from the ragged corner of your mouth down to your carefully folded hands and back. He grins, tired but warm, sharp -so impossibly sharp- but not remotely unkind and for a second you wish you'd thought to pull on a more presentable layer of skin.

"I hope she didn't impose on you too much. She can be," a pause as he muses, "a lot."

"Oh, n-no she was- your mother was...very polite? Cordial. It was nice to meet her?"

Nerius Canes Aventinus Rex huffs out something that could be a laugh, this ugly half-bark, half-forced exhalation. Eyes rolling, clawed hand digging into the oil black fur thick about his throat. "Ah, auguries and omens huh? Sure that bodes nothing but good things. Come in. My sincerest apologies, I've kept you waiting long enough."

He turns and beckons you in like an old friend and even if it would, really, be ridiculous to do anything else, to announce that no, actually, you came all this way just to tell him to go fuck himself, you would be staying put entirely on principle, possibly indefinitely- you can't help but feel warm. Welcome. For all that you've heard of kingly grace in sermon and parable, that air of regal authority, you've never felt anything like it so keenly as the Lunar's expression. That sly, sardonic smile that makes you feel as if you're in on some kind of filthy joke. Some kind of dirty secret. That you can laugh along with him, he won't mind, he won't judge.

The room-that-is-not-a-solarium (salon, perhaps, that feels about right) is lined with heavy wooden shutters along the far wall. All of them open to a mid-morning that, to your infinite relief, is more iron grey mist and steel colored clouds than proper sunlight. The air that swirls in is cool and damp. Tinged with the swift onset of an Eastern Winter. Outside, in the depths of those clouds, you can see the orange lights of the forts and halls and reclaimed city-sprawl beneath the war machine's legs. The older ruins rising, looming above the swirling sea of fog like so many concrete monoliths. Stark shadows and bleak, brutal silhouettes marching into the distance.

Inside the salon a fire crackles in an ornate metal brazier, the coals a cheery red. Flowers with geometric petals, skin as thin as paper lanterns grow from carefully kept pots of dark earth. Their throats aglow with a gentle golden light. Heavy cabinets line a far wall, a collection of little curiosities, slivers collected from all across the Continent sitting on stands, resting on cloth. All of it fanning out beneath a colossal set of four-branching stag-horns mounted on the bulkhead. The things jagged and geologic. Shaped or grown or transformed into swirling opal in place of bone and velvet. The furniture is solid and heaped high with cushions.

It still groans with Nerius's weight as he settles down next to you. One arm along the back, vicious, claw-tipped fingers dangling by your ear.

You are acutely aware that the man is wearing nothing but a blue waistwrap. That his arm might actually be thicker than your entire thigh. And that even sitting you still barely come up to his shoulder.

For all these reasons you find yourself doing your best to sit up as straight as you can. Hands resting again on the hem of your tunic, as you do your best to stave off the slow-encroaching, slow-circling exhaustion and focus on the elaborate board set up in front of you. It shows a dense forested terrain in impossible miniature, hundreds of trees rendered at a thousandth of the scale in lifelike detail. As you watch a tiny flock of birds, each no bigger than the head of a needle, takes flight from a grove wings its way over a broad, flowing river. They hit the edge of the gameboard and vanish.

Beautifully painted figurines line the edge of the table in a loose, disorganized mess. You see hulking wolf-folk with polearms braced on their broad shoulders. Skirmishers in lupine pelts and thaumaturges in silver-stitched robes and cowled cloaks. Cult devotees in patchwork armor and Scavenger Lords in Shogunate salvage. There's more, for all the clear if casual division of the little models there's always something else, something new that jumps out at you. All of it reeks of sorcery and you cannot even begin to fathom how long the mundane parts must have taken.

"When I was…studying with my shahan-ya, Gateway was one of the better ways to pass the time," he says, voice wry, "Even if Ranotis was the only one who was ever interested in playing. Quite a lot of serious people in that jungle, and I suppose board games were a waste of time when they could have been- I don't know. Brooding in dark corners, crushing their balls between boulders as serious people do. Which is a shame really! I find Gateway wonderfully useful as a teaching tool."

"I...can't say I ever learned how to play," you reply. Fairly diplomatically you think. But he just flicks his wrist in a dismissive wave, fingers splayed. This close you can see the pattern of pads on the inside of his palm, separated along the digit joints. This close you can feel the heat that rolls off his body, feel the warmth on his breath as he speaks. Like the cold, the chill, it's just an abstracted sensation. Decoupled from any discomfort. But you...find yourself appreciating it. Even if it's steadily eroding your ability to keep that straight-backed posture in your seat. Even if you feel the bitter bite of your injuries from the camp keenly still, beneath it all.

He tilts his head. Eyes flicking to your shoulder as he tweaks the collar of your shirt, inspecting the shape of the slow-healing wound. He makes a small "hm" noise under his breath.

It takes you a solid second delay to realize you didn't quite flinch.

"...Apologies again," he says, "Renartus's report didn't mention your injuries being more than superficial. I wouldn't have kept you away from your bed if I had known. I'll have to have a word with them when they return. But you know...they did have a lot of positive things to say about your performance. You should be proud of that, they're very hard to impress."

Another flash of teeth. The dumb, echoing response of "I didn't know you were watching me" collides with a half-mumbled "Thank you" somewhere in your throat. The noise you make is equal parts ambiguous and exhausted.

"All told I can really get behind a man with that streak of suicidal boldness. Still, glad that they didn't have to pull you out by your ankles. Would you like to go back to your room?" He asks suddenly, a note of concern in his voice, sincere and genuine, "It's really no trouble. You don't need to feel obligated, I just thought it would be a nice...Welcome Back, You Really Had Them For A Bit present. If you follow."

You don't, not really, but the steady rise and fall of his voice, the low concerned tones are their own kind of comforting. And besides- the thought of getting up now, now that you've finally reached the terminal point of the last night, the last day, is increasingly seeming like it's own kind of heroic effort.

But you don't have real way to voice any of that, even with all your wits sharp and keen. So you just shake your head and mumble something about it being fine.

"Hm. Well. I'll try not to linger too much on the finer points of the rules then. Besides, I think the real strength of Gateway is in the abstractions. The way it teaches you to think about the battlefield as a holistic thing. The interplay of moving parts. It seems the kind of thing that'd speak to you, you have that grand, theatrical bent- don't you Harrower?"

You want to say that's very kind of him, but again the words seem like entirely too much effort. So you just nod your head and mumble something about it making sense.

You're not sure, in the end, when you do fall asleep. If you ever completely drift off. You know that you stay coherent and cognizant enough for Nerius to roll through the explanations of the different troops, his neatly organized army of model soldiers. For him to show you the kinds of things his board can show, the landscapes it can make, the little impossible worlds it can create. You know that despite your swiftly fading consciousness he never lets an ounce of annoyance creep into his voice. Just that eventually he nudges you once and then falls silent. The sound of him opening a leather bound folder from the table filtering through, the careful rasp of gutting claws sliding between thin papers.

And you know that even though he surely has things he needs to do, a schedule to keep as Hunger said, he doesn't disturb as you gradually list and slump against his chest. Your cheek to the heavy muscle and dense, soft fur.

For the first time in a long, long time you rest soundly, and all the nightmares that haunt the shadows of your mind are, for once, quiet.

As the Season of Air arrives, bringing Winter in force, conflict across the new Lookshy-Xauma front settles into skirmishing and entrenchment. The naval offensive you disrupted delayed past the point of snows and dangerous storms. Nerius has no particular need for your abilities, largely leaving you to your own devices and it will be some weeks before Elegia calls upon you to attend him. To accompany him to the mysterious and sinister Black Congress of the Deathlords.

What skills do you hone in this interim. Pick two. Vote by plan.
[ ] You find that Nerius was correct, you do have a grand, theatrical bent and the art of necrotechnology speaks to that artistic core like few things can. You spend much of your time in your new manse, familiarizing yourself with the tools, processes, and materials of your new craft.
[ ] The Wolf-King invites you intermittently to more games of Gateway, as the demands of his position and preparations for the Spring allow. Intrigued and considerably more coherent, it still takes you a few weeks to realize that he's tutoring you in the fundamentals of war and command.
[ ] Judecca, the pretty and exorbitantly paid Scavenger Lord with all the Elementals in his train offers to take you on a more extensive tour of the local Underworld. Over the course of these expeditions you learn more about the history of the Scavenger Lands and the city-states that dominate it.
[ ] Renartus, the handsomely androgynous Fox-Breath takes it upon themselves to guide you through some of the basics of diplomacy and spycraft. Then, realizing the futility, on the advantages of personal presentation and cultivated image. The latter go much better for everyone involved.
[ ] Long Night of Hunger, the oddly attractive Crimson Harvester eventually, through self-conscious persistence, talks (corners) you into adopting a more structured training regimen. Something to hone your natural talent beyond the point of flailing wildly. The results are…odd. But encouraging.

End Chapter One, a conclusion reached with appropriately zombie-like dogged persistence! A genuine and real sincere thank you to everyone who has stuck with it through All Of This or even those who just drop in to binge now and then.

As we move into the next arc, I'm going to be converting Harrower's sheet from the What Was I Thinking In 2018 Jesus system I've been using to a loose Essence work up. That and another Interlude should be ready soon, so something to check back in for if you're so inclined.

Exalted: Out Of The Eater

Lounging on a Hoard of Words

Just trying to do the right thing

Ascending Ape

Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S

Shadow Cabal Token Adult

Knight Errant

How wide is the concept of "you"?

threatening to become a con rat

Sun-In-Rags

"I already have dragons, I do not want men."

Periodically Malevolent QM

Lounging on a Hoard of Words