Alas, no adorable tiger-girls today. Just ineffectual flailing.
We pick up where we left off last session, and this is actually very much how most of the games I ran or played in worked- single scenes got so long, they took several weeks to resolve, for one reason or another. Combat is a good example because of how granular and paced it is. For good or ill, we did not reach combat today.
So, I immediately start assessing how much these slaves are worth, and learn a few interesting things. We also have a moment of discussion regarding Frugal Merchant Method, which guarantees 3 automatic successes on haggling rolls if the seller is dishonest, 1 success if honest. Note that 2e does not have haggling mechanics, so we generally assume it applies to whatever the most relevant 'transaction' roll is, be it cha+pres, int+bur or whatnot. 1e DOES have a haggling mechanic though.
Here, I try to sell these slavers on The Better Way (tm). The Solar Way, the Long Term Investment way... but as I do this, Aleph keeps revealing more information, and Inks then arrives at an interesting conclusion...
Armed with that knowledge, it lets me make more of an informed decision, but here I am constrained a great deal by my lack of Charms and other options. I generally don't support 'charm for every problem' design, but even with inherent excellency houserule, I lack a lot of horsepower, and Inks was Presence 2 for this whole session.
I also want you to realize that she's Charisma 2, Presence 2, and has been successfully making deals throughout the whole game. The main reason for this is that most of her opponents are mortals, and we are using the Appearance modifier rules.
You'll note that I did not use Sexy Stunner Style against the slavers, as that... I could have, most assuredly, but I would not have enjoyed describing Inks vamping for these people. It would not have been fun or in-character for Inks.
So, Inks realizes that the slavers want Inks to quite litereally buy them out of Gem for the time it takes her to piss someone off and die- and then they'll go right back to what they're doing before. El Galabi is their usecase, and to be honest, it's a reasonable plan. Not one Inks likes, but she can respect it.
Now, I can safely say I was not as mentally prepared for this session as I wanted to be. I was willing to, yesterday, get into a fight about this, but since I did not arrive in time and had computer issues, i was not in the right headspace for it.
Because of that, I flailed a little and asked for help. After a bit of discussion, Aleph took an opportunity to move things along, maybe not the most elegant way (I personally think it was fine), but we both needed to kick things into gear. The slaver and cohorts essentially demanded an agreement of non-interference, represented by an Ally 1 background with these Sun Market Slavers. Inks is not happy with this arrangement, but she got an Artifact out of the deal...
Alas, Maji was not pleased. Maji expected fights. Maji is the shoulder demon.
And to be fair, I'm totally going to break slavery as an instutition in Gem. Just Smartly.
Having taken care of that (for now), we go back to what started this little excursion, getting Black Jade for the Baths! This is much more perfunctory- You'll note though that I needed to start caste mark flaring to regen motes, as I have about 19m personal (and no peripheral under the hack), so I was regenerating essentially 2m every time I 'talked'. (Gentleperson's agreement).
Anyway, here Inks happily invoked Sexy Stunner Style, which helped offset a lot of her dice issues, and saved up motes to use FMM one more time. She then negotiated the black jade horns down, and left with a somewhat successful trip. Also note to myself and Aleph, Inks'll be repairing those tablets she bought and attempting to translate them at some point.
Back at her townhouse. we take a moment to assess the gemstone. Now Aleph tends not to tell me Difficulties, and I generally have always run Exalted under the idea of transparent difficulty until told otherwise- 2e has a very specific rule that lets you assess difficulty before you try, and my impression of the system was 'transparent, unless not'. As opposed to 'opaque, until made clear.'
And, like with many challenges, Aleph did not expect me to roll so well.
So we reveal, in a snazzy form factor that suits Inks's aesthetics, a regional variant of one of my favorite artifacts ever. And, Aleph did a fantastic job of elaborating how it would have looked at felt to the user for the first time. The other interesting note is that it is a regional variant, so it changes out the 'canonical' power in favor of something more appropriate to Gem.
This willingness to adjust things for impact and fluff is an important skill to develop as a player and ST, and part of the experience is knowing how far you can push things. Aleph did a good job here.
And so that concludes Session 12. We expect to resolve the 'baths' project over downtime before picking up again in Session 13.
