I'm really just not fond of its combat system. It does the very basic job of being a system where you're trying to bonk the guy to zero health before he does it to you, but there's not much you can actually do with it.
General Exalted Thread
I'm really just not fond of its combat system. It does the very basic job of being a system where you're trying to bonk the guy to zero health before he does it to you, but there's not much you can actually do with it.
Manic Dogma
This, I can't deny.
- Location
- The far side of tired
- Pronouns
- Whatever
Honestly, and I acknowledge this is mostly a me thing, I find Scion 2e mostly unplayable. Among other things, when in combat I want it to feel like combat, and Scion 2e just feels like bartering for goods and services.
Sail is absolutely that bad though, holy shit. I wish the current leads had been in charge from the start.
Craft isn't even that bad, it's just that Solar Craft is bloated as hell and a lot of people aren't willing to engage with the system as it is, rather than the prelapsarian vision they want. SV's problem with 3e, as far as I can tell, is mostly a contingent of influential die-hard 2e fans unwilling to give 3e the time of day.
Sail is absolutely that bad though, holy shit. I wish the current leads had been in charge from the start.
There's two problems with Sail: the first is that there's not much that a person with no dots of sail can do in a ship encounter. It really assumed that if other players want to participate, then they are captains of their own ship in a fleet, rather than the crewmembers of a single vessel.
The other issue is that extended chases are impossible to resolve quickly when one captain is trying to chase down a fleeing captain who is equally skilled. This isn't an issue when a Solar captain tries to catch a fleeing mortal or Dragonblood, which is the bulk of naval encounters a corebook PC would encounter in the setting. The problem is if they're equally skilled, it's VERY hard for someone to get the +10 threshold successes needed to catch up to or break away from the other guy.
Actual naval combat on the other hand, is fine because Momentum doesn't work like initiative and you don't drain it from each other. So the dice are swingy enough that you can gain Momentum to pull off Maneuvers and one mortal Captain can duke it out with another equally skilled one without issue. The issue is the Pursuit rolls for naval chases, which were ill conceived.
Last edited:
HalfTangible
Only half sane (it's less cringe)
- Location
- Valkyrie, Primus
The issue as I see it is that there's nothing out there quite like Exalted. The rules don't *need* to be particularly good; anything that even comes close to its appeal (see Godbound) just reminds you of what it lacks that Exalted has. 3e is, at least, functional enough to play without breaking over your knee. It's still a huge mess, in no small part because the core is a huge mess.
Craft, for example, is a broken mess of a system but is so heavily tied into its charms that you can't really extricate the two. Ya need to either deal with the Craft as-is or create a new set of charms and mechanics from scratch. Or just ignore the system and its charms entirely.
Craft, for example, is a broken mess of a system but is so heavily tied into its charms that you can't really extricate the two. Ya need to either deal with the Craft as-is or create a new set of charms and mechanics from scratch. Or just ignore the system and its charms entirely.
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
is that a bunch of folks hate dice fuckery.
Huge mess probably overstates it: the bulk of what you do involves fighting or talking, and both systems for those things are rock solid. My best advice for Crafters, though, is to simply not do so. Maybe Craft revisions in Crucible will do the job, idk.
That said, I really am getting a surprising amount of mileage out of Exalted vs World of Darkness, and I'm entering year two of a game of it that's separate from my 3E group. It's certainly more evocative of 1E, but I really wouldn't use it to model battles between two Exalts except for occasional one-offs for novelty. 3E still does a far better job of modeling a fight between two Demigods in that regard. But that's not what ExWoD is for, anyways.
They're not dice tricks, they're dice treats. 🧐
Last edited:
- Location
- Vermont
I played it once, and I found that the non-combat charms were rather weak, while the combat charms were absurdly powerful. How does your ST balance that?
MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
- Location
- DOOR STUCK DOOR STUCK PLEASE I BEG U
I don't really engage with... I dunno, tabletop gaming press, or whatever? So I can't really comment on Godbound's general reception, but it was well-received on the Exalted Discord server. In fact, some of the comments were along the lines of 'the author wanted a generic-ish setting for the book that people would use to build their own, but he made it too good so everyone just uses it'. But I will say that as far as its supplements go the Ancalia book is legitimately kind of great (another of those comments from the Discord was 'it's a better Curse of Strahd'. It's an oversimplification but not totally off-base), and 16 Sorrows is a sweet GM tool. Overall I like Ex3 more because Godbound's combat is a lot like 2e Exalted without the rocket tag aspect in that you spend a lot of time throwing damage into perfect defenses (and other stuff, but this is already getting long), but it's a hell of lot more lightweight as a system, and has much better tools for the GM. I've been running an Ancalia game on Roll20 for some friends of mine for a couple years now (Scheduling for adults is laaaame! >.<) and we've been having a lot of fun with it.
For what it's worth, Godbound does actually pay off the demigod part of the premise better than Exalted does.
Edit:
Speaking from a place of having not played Scion 2e at all, I actually love the idea of getting to use threshold successes for more than just damage, and I can see the appeal of the whole 'approaches' way to create dice pools, but it's kind of offputting for some reason I can't quite explain to just... always roll your best pool because why would you ever not?
Last edited:
Manic Dogma
This, I can't deny.
- Location
- The far side of tired
- Pronouns
- Whatever
In my experience playing Storypath systems, both Scion 2e and some Trinity: Continuum, it felt...weird. Like, especially in Trinity my (weapon reliant) character would wreck house in her first action, but then be 100% helpless in all the turns after because her foe managed to roll 2 successes, which was enough to just buy completely disarming your opponent at the time.
I also see the appeal of the idea, but how they actually constructed it is strange to me. I think Essence is going to do a much better job with the Approaches thing, from what I've gleaned from the discord. The approaches there are much more cleanly defined in concept, but also not constrained by exclusive mechanical properties that dilute the idea.
I was the ST and I chose to leave it as is. The focus of the game is in dealing with the supernatural aspects of the WoD, and things like Gehenna, the Apocalypse, and so on. It's not about vastly reforming society from the ground up or world domination (though, I think overthrowing or reforming the Technocracy can do the job as well). So in that regard, I'm fine with a narrower scope of social charms, given that you usually need to mind-whammy a group of vampires or Mages in a single boardroom or penthouse, rather than get all of New York to be your fanatical devotees in one go.
Last edited:
- Location
- Ottawa
People's complaints are many, varied, and sometimes incompatible; you can't summarize them in a sentence.
That's even true of specific subsystems. When I did my big craft rewrite I did a survey of everyone's complaints, and discovered that basically nobody was talking about what I thought (and still think) was the main problem. It wasn't a united chorus of critique, not by a long shot. Everyone had their own beef.
Some of this was just different players wanting different things. But some of it was also people not understanding their own problems. Even stupid complaints are worth listening to; someone who thinks the Illuminati is giving them migraines with a special beam almost certainly has real migraines.
HalfTangible
Only half sane (it's less cringe)
- Location
- Valkyrie, Primus
Honestly when I say 3e is a mess, I'm mostly remembering the kickstarter for the original corebook.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Craft is absolutely 'that bad.' I am on record as saying that 2e craft is better, self-sabotaging boondoggle that it was, and I stand by that assertion - 3e's craft system exacerbates the Decker problem to an absurd degree, and seems to think that this is a good and desirable thing to do.
HalfTangible
Only half sane (it's less cringe)
- Location
- Valkyrie, Primus
I thought the Solar Craft charms were the only thing that made the Craft system *tolerable*
I'm looking forward to Essence, but there's not a lot to talk about for 3e that hasn't been discussed already. Homebrew has the advantage that it comes out more often, and is thus more often discussed. For Craft specifically, I recommend @Sanctaphrax 's Craft rewrite, which is much more functional and intuitive.
Yes and no. With a little investment you can basically ignore 2/3 of the base Craft Rules.
This is extra painful because the system says it actually is trying to accomplish the opposite of that. It wants the circle's crafter to be doing shit like fixing the village watermill, or building a raft to ford a river swollen with storm-season rains or whatever to build up their craft points. "Build your artifacts by engaging with the world and the story". It then proceeds to focus far too much on the first part of that, rather than the second.
Last edited:
- Location
- Ottawa
That's what happens when you think Cookie Clicker, of all things, is a good model for a TTRPG subsystem.
Admittedly, I've never actually played Cookie Clicker, but I have a hard time actually seeing the resemblance.
So I've been doing some fanfiction of backstory for a Modern Exalted game being planned by my current group. The game concept is that the players are from Earth, and somehow wind up arriving in Creation only to Exalt. However, even if they know Exalted, they don't necessarily know Modern Exalted...
I came into Creation kicking and screaming.
That seems to me to be highly appropriate when you're thrown into an unfamiliar ocean in the middle of the night.
The moon was reflected on the water as I crashed into the waves without any chance to assume any sensible posture. Thankfully I avoided a belly-flop that would have driven the air from my lungs, but I plunged deep under the waves and into the blackness beneath them.
The cold clawed at me, water soaking into my clothes and weighing me down.
The glittering ceiling above me seemed very far away.
I clawed.
I kicked.
It would be hard to call it swimming.
My lungs burned, as water did everything in its power to consume me. The air in them fought to escape my lips and return to the surface, leaving me behind.
When my hand broke the surface, it felt colder still.
Then my head followed it and the moonlight almost blinded me as I coughed and choked, trying to expel old air, inhale fresh and keep more salty water out - neither succeeding nor failing entirely at any of them. My feet still kicked, keeping me upright.
I forced myself to slow my breathing. To hold what I had, then breathe it out. To paddle until I faced away from waves that could have forced more water between my lips.
When I allowed myself to inhale properly it was sweeter than anything I have ever tasted.
Now, at last, I was free to think.
Where the hell was I?!
In every direction but up, I could see nothing but water. And in the sky were only the stars and the moon, brilliantly bright though it was only half-full… maybe a little less than that.
*
I've never watched the film but when I saw the dorsal fin slicing through the water towards me, I swear I could hear the damned music. As if it was anticipating the lone swimmer dying to the predator of the waves.
The sun would take hours to warm the water. I doubted I'd last an entire day floating so once it started to rise I'd begun to swim. It was at least possible that I could make it to a shore or a ship before I was exhausted. If I just lay there… well, perhaps the odds of a ship were no better or worse. But a shore…
For lack of any other queue, I had started swimming with the sun behind me so that it would not blind me.
I don't think that I was bleeding, but perhaps I didn't need to be. Or perhaps my wet clothes were abrading my skin somehow. I couldn't tell.
The shark was ahead of me.
I swam right for it.
Suicidal? Maybe. I don't know much about sharks, but I was sure I couldn't outswim it. That didn't leave much in the way of options.
I could see its mouth, with rows of jagged teeth. Then I could see it roll slightly to it's left as it approached at tremendous speed. Was it trying to get its nose past me so it could bite?
If I'd had any sort of weapon I might have tried to get at its lower body, hopefully finding some sort of vulnerable belly (did they even have such a vulnerability?).
I didn't so I paddled to my right at the last minute, got past its blunt nose, scratched myself on its back and snagged onto its dorsal fin, which tore at my hands further.
The shark jerked, trying to shake me off I think, and then it dove.
I probably should have let it go, but if I did would it have turned around and come at me again? I clung on and for the second time tonight, I was dragged down below the waves.
I can't overstate how terrifying it was for the surface to recede behind me. The shark was diving deeper and deeper, swimming faster than I had imagined that it could.
Would it go up for air? No, it wasn't an air breather like a dolphin, I realized. It had gills.
Could I force it up? I heaved on the fin, tearing my fingers further. I managed to release one hand, only increasing the pain in the other, and reached forward. I could, barely, feel the rough skin pulsing and as I forced myself forwards, I was able to trace that until I found the gill.
I imagine it hurt the shark to have my hand jammed and it bucked wildly again, rolling. My one hand holding on broke away and I was loose. In surprise my lips parted and the air in my lungs escaped, bubbles streaming up.
Was I dangerously deep? I'd heard something about the bends?
In the dark water I couldn't tell. I couldn't even be sure if the shark was coming back at me…
I struck out upwards, lungs screaming…
And then with a tearing situation I felt something open in my neck. Air entered into my lungs and the pain faded.
Was I…?
I stopped kicking and felt gingerly at my neck.
Soft folds were fluttering. Were these gills?
How…?
Something rushed through the water, barely missing my head - perhaps only because I had stopped swimming upwards.
Well, that answered whether the shark was after me.
Right then… why I now had gills would have to wait.
I felt the water around me and mostly evaded its attempted bite again. This time one of the fins battered at my chest. I caught hold with my bloody hands and let it drag me once again.
Then I managed to brace my knees against its side and started looking for some weak-spot I could use against it.
*
I was in a daze when I reached the surface. The duel had been more nightmare than spectacle, my blood and that of the shark filling the water around us.
Somewhere along the way I had shed legs for a tail, arms for fins and my merely human teeth for those to rival those of the shark.
I had torn it apart, driven by a frenzy to survive that was perhaps neither more nor less than the predator's.
The moon was high again in the sky as I broke the surface, now clearly less than half-full. I could easily believe that I might have been under water throughout the entire day. I lay exhausted on the water, gills under the water, eyes above it.
It was a long moment before I realised that not all the lights were the moon and the stars.
Ahead of me in the distance were bright and constant lights, electric or similar. An entire city's worth.
Could I even get into it, as I was?
I wasn't sure. I twisted, trying to find my human form once more and with a spasm I had legs and arms once more. A human shape, with all the pros and cons… like needing to remember to breath through my nose and mouth. I was even clothed once more.
Which might have been more helpful if I was closer to the shore.
It took longer to work out how to resume the shape of the shark but once I did, I was able to swim slowly towards the shore. I could do with a meal. I was almost tempted to try to take a bite out of some of the fish I could smell around me, but I had little notion of what would be good to eat and I feared that yielding to that instinct would drive me into the mindset of the shark so deeply that I might not emerge again.
The city grew before me. It was further away than I had thought, for it was also larger. Lights I had taken for windows were entire buildings. In the darkness I could not make out any familiar landmarks, but it must be a major metropolis.
And a city so large and this near to the water would have docks, that was pretty much a given.
I was right about that. I steered clear of what was clearly a massive container port and oil terminal - the place was busy even at this hour and probably had security cameras, patrols and the like that might spot a shark in the water, or someone climbing up onto their docks. It would certainly be harder to leave the immediate area.
Instead I followed the coast up into a wide estuary and found what I had hoped for, older docks for a fishing port, a yacht mooring and… paydirt! ...dockside buildings that were clearly being repaired and gentrified. There was enough light spilling onto the water that I couldn't get very close without being spotted as a shark - the dorsal fin was just a bit too obvious. Fortunately I was able to reach an old breakwater that sheltered them from incoming tides, and shifted back to my human form.
I mistimed it and caught some water with my mouth as I got myself reorientated. Coughing, I paddled myself upright. Fatigue was catching up with me, or perhaps the shark's form simply had more endurance. The few metres to the breakwater felt like miles and when I reached it, I found I could barely cling to the stonework. Climbing it was beyond me.
Had I come this far, just to fail and drown now? Gods! What a joke that would be!
Leaning against the stone I slowly kicked my way through the water, looking for steps or something. What I found first though, was a cigarette butt bouncing off my head. "Wha?" I mumbled, brushing my hand over my head. Then I saw what had hit me, floating in the water. "Ugh."
"Huh?" someone said from up above me. I heard the slap of shoe-leather on stone. "W… what the hell are you doin' down there?"
Trying not to drown, I didn't say - mostly because my mouth was closed against a wave's backwash off the breakwater.
"Hang on," the man told me. "I'll help you up, there's some steps just a couple of yards to your left."
I splashed stubbornly in that direction and I don't think his definition of a couple of yards was the same as mine. But finally, my hand found not vertical stone, but a narrow horizontal ledge. Naturally I cracked my elbow painfully on it.
It was steps, wet and slick, but steps nonetheless. I managed, barely, to roll myself onto them and sprawled on them.
"Ms. Morrigan? Is that you?"
It was the man from a moment ago. I heard his footsteps as he descended the steps.
"Who?" He thought I was a woman? I looked down at myself and saw that my wet clothes were plastered tight over… 'flotation devices'. When had that happened? I resisted the urge to check down below with my hand. I didn't need to now that I consciously thought about that part of my body. What was going on?
He shook his head. "Sorry, you looked a bit like someone I know."
"You know a lot of drowned rats?"
The man chuckled. "I wouldn't call her that. Do you need help? How did you wind up in the harbour?"
"I suspect someone pulled a nasty prank on me." My main suspect right now is the entire cosmos. "I woke up right before I hit the water and had to swim here."
"...I wouldn't call that a prank," he told me, reaching down and offering me his hand. "More attempted murder."
I accepted and managed to get my feet under me. He was a fairly short man, with broad shoulders and pretty obviously fighting a losing battle against both a spreading gut and male-pattern baldness. Still, he was sturdy enough to help me get upright again and took much of my weight as we went up the steps.
"I just stepped out for a smoke," he told me. "Come inside and get dry - we have a phone so you can call the police. Dumping you in the water… whoever did that."
It would be kind of awkward to do that since I don't know where I am, much less…
I staggered at the realisation that I didn't even know what language the man was speaking. I understood it, but what was it? Was this something to do with how I'd ended up in the water?
"Careful." My companion helped me sit down at the top. "Take a deep breath. It's not far to the office, I'm sure we have a blanket or something there."
My stomach took that moment to rumble.
"...hungry?" he asked me.
"Famished," I admitted. "What day is it?"
The man gave me a speculative look. "Venusday."
"...I haven't eaten anything today then." 'Venusday'? That was no day of the week in my recollection, but it did ring a bell distantly.
He gave me a sceptical look. "What, are you working at a black company or something?"
"I kept getting distracted." By a shark, but that would be a bit implausible."
"I'll see what I can do," he offered. "But really, we need to get you inside before you catch your death of cold."
*
The office had a sign with T3U as a logo and Transportation Worker's Union in smaller letters underneath. It took me a moment to figure out how they got T3U from that, which should say something about how tired I was. The office section seemed to be more of an afterthought, connecting a pair of larger buildings I'd guessed at workshops. Perhaps they'd been converted.
"We have shower rooms in the locker rooms," my saviour explained pointing me at two doors I'd assumed were just washrooms. "Hang on a minute." He went into the men's and emerged a moment later with a towel. "The towel racks are on, so you can dry your clothes. Sorry if it offends you to use a man's towel but it's the only one I have."
Using someone else's towel probably wasn't the most hygienic thing to do, but beggars can't be choosers. "Don't be silly. Thank you."
"I'll see if we have some soup or something. Think about calling the cops, okay?"
The ladies showers were pretty functional. I sluiced myself off, took off my outer clothes and hung them on the tower rail he'd mentioned. A slight bulge in one was a card-wallet. No money or bank-cards, but a driver's license and a national insurance card. When I checked in the mirror, the face that looked back at me was the one on the license… except for the tattoos.
I shivered, went back to the showers and the water was now running warm enough to clean myself as properly as I could without soap.
"Hello?" came a call from the door. I thought I might feel vulnerable at being nude but something told me that I could handle myself if he tried anything. Not that I thought it likely. He hadn't exactly been creeping on me. What was his name? I hadn't asked, since reciprocating would have been hard. At least I had one I could offer now, the one on my IDs.
"Just warming up," I called back from behind the partition that screened the showers from the rest of the room.
"Okay. I'll, uh, put the soup by the sink. Look, I was waiting for someone and I can't really cancel the meeting. Just get yourself sorted out and I'll give you a lift once I've talked to her, okay."
"Thanks." Now how to cover for the fact I didn't have anywhere to go? The driver's license didn't have a home address on it. Perhaps that was stored in a database and one of the alphanumeric codes on it would refer back to that if anyone checked the license.
That would be a fun conversation with the police. 'Hello officer, could you check my license and tell me where I live?'
I heard him put something down. "My name's Ed Herbert, by the way. Local rep for the union."
"Michaela Drake."
"Pleased to meet you, Michaela." I heard the door
The soup was in a mug and a bit watery. Hot though, which helped. I hung up the underclothes to dry, dried off and stared at myself in the mirror. Blonde, sufficiently curvy that even wearing a suit hadn't hidden it (the towel wrapped around me certainly didn't). And tattoos up and down her - my - body.
Long whorls of silvery ink ran up and down my limbs. Intricate knotwork decorated my feet and lines of what was recognisably text interlaced with sharks on my arms. Perhaps the encounter in the ocean hadn't been as random as it seemed. The tattoos even extended up my neck, three lines curving upwards and ending on my cheeks and forehead.
"Well, how the hell am I going to hide these?" I mused. About the tattoos, not the… curves.
The answer, apparently, was quite easily. Even as I watched, the mark on my forehead flared briefly with silvery light, forming a crescent moon shape. And then the light faded from view, as did the tattoos.
I reached up and traced the line of the moon shape that I'd borne. A waxing… no, wait. I was looking in a mirror. It was the crescent of a waning moon.
Either I was Sailor Moon and no one had told me… or I'd been exalted by Luna.
No, not the cat. That would fall under the Sailor Moon theory. The Celestial Incarna of the Moon, the Changing Maiden, the Fickle Lady. Bride and groom of Gaia, patron of the Lunar Exalted. It made as much sense as the other theory, honestly. Exalted was a world of fantasy and high adventure. Even in the Era of Dreams, Creation had looked nothing like this.
Nothing had made sense so far, and I guess that wasn't going to change quickly.
I took another sip of the soup. Let's count my blessings. I'm alive, which I wouldn't have counted on at least twice since I last slept. I'm clean and… well, quite healthy. If I wind up in jail, that's three warm meals and a bed… I feel like I don't have to worry too much about violence…
When winding up in prison is one of your better options, it's a good time to consider your life.
This wasn't a dream, since I'd hurt myself already in it. And since I was transformed in body - and possibly in mind given I'd learned an entirely new language - there was probably no going back to my previous life. Even if I found my way home, who would recognise me.
So all that was left was to go forwards.
It hurt. Of course it hurt. I sat on the showeroom's bench and wept for that life, for all that I was leaving behind.
And then I went to the sink, washed my face and finished the soup.
*
My underclothes and shirt, being the lightest of my clothes, were more or less dry well before the rest of them. I was wearing them and using the still damp towel as a skirt when I heard what could have been a car backfiring. Or… it could have been something else.
I went to the door and heard the clip-clop of hard-heeled shoes on the floor of the corridor outside. They walked to the door and then past it without pause. I opened the door, careful to avoid any noise. Fortunately it was well-maintained and didn't creak.
What I saw was the back of a woman, with blonde hair pinned up behind her. She was about my height and wore a pant-suit… I wondered if she was the person that Ed had mistaken me for. It was, it occurred to me, a very odd time for a meeting. Nothing he had said suggested that it was personal, but it was very late - or very early, depending on your point of view. There was a clock in the shower room and it wasn't 6 AM yet.
I watched as the woman went out the doors - she didn't look back, and then turned in the direction she'd come from. There was a whiff of something in the air, something I didn't claim to recognise.
I looked back in the direction and then padded down the cold floor in the other direction. "Ed?"
There was no reply. It was easy to guess which room he was in though, only one door had light leaking out from under it.
I pushed the door open. "Ed…? Oh. Oh shit."
There was a pool of crimson on the floor. The source was in an office chair, one hand clutching a small automatic pistol in it. It was easy enough to guess what the sound earlier had been: the back of Ed's head was sprayed across the wall to one side of the room.
I tore my eyes away. Looked for anything else. On the desk lay an envelope, open. Papers inside. I stepped gingerly around the blood and looked at them. IOUs.
"...I smell a rat." Ed's manner earlier had not suggested desperation. And why have a meeting with someone and then blow your own brains out? One more thing that made no sense. Or rather, it made more sense to me - because I was probably the only person other than his visitor to know she was there. I wasn't the intended audience.
I was tempted to meddle directly, tamper with the evidence but caution won out. All that that would do was advertise my own presence, automatically making me the logical suspect at setting up this apparent suicide.
No, if I wanted justice for this, I would need to leverage the fact that no one knew I was here or that there was a witness. And my only real angle was to follow the woman I'd seen, the murderer.
Backing away, I closed the door gently, leaving Ed alone in his final rest. I barely knew him, but he'd treated me decently. If that was the minimum bar to seek justice for him then it was a low one… but I was alright with that. Perhaps it should be.
Driven by that decision I yanked off the towel and ran for the shower room, feet slapping against the floor as I yanked my pants off the rail and pulled them on hastily. They stuck to me, still wet inside where the heat hadn't reached deep enough yet, but I shoved my feet into my shoes and ran out again, carrying jacket, waistcoat and the towel as well. Finding Ed's towel in the lady's showers would be an anomaly, but I had a suspicion that any forensic check of it would point at me.
I wanted justice for him, but I was just as interested in self-preservation. Not very paladin-like, but I don't recall swearing any oaths to a higher power. If this was some twisted version of Exalted and Luna had capital-c Chosen me, then she/he would have to deal with me making my own decisions about what to do with that power.
If the woman had driven away, I doubt I would have been able to follow her. But fortunately, she must have come on foot and when I reached the door I could still see her in the distance, blonde hair pale under a streetlamp.
Getting too close would be too obvious, but I didn't want to fall too far behind either. I jogged after her, about a block away when she turned to the right. I did the same at the road I was passing, slowing to a walk that was probably closer to her pace and taking the more sedate movement as an opportunity to wrestle my way into the waistcoat and then the jacket.
I had a nasty moment where I thought I'd lost my cards, but then I found the little wallet in one of the hip pockets.
The towel I considered how to dispose of. If I was wearing something more sporty I could have justified carrying a towel around my neck but in a suit it was out of place. A garbage truck went past and I took the opportunity, throwing the bunched towel into the back of it. Probably the last anyone would ever see of it.
Fortunately, when I reached the end of the block, a casual glance spotted my target still moving along, crossing the road just ahead of me. One hurdle down, out of who knew how many.
In the end I lost her twice, re-acquiring her only after sprinting that probably would have drawn more attention if it wasn't still so early that there weren't many people around. We left the docks behind and moved into streets marked by older apartment blocks clustered along them, frequently with shops on the ground floor. Brownstones, I would have called them - I have no idea how accurate that is architecturally.
The second time I lost track of her was on a side-street between blocks of these. A circuit of both blocks either way didn't turn her up.
Downfallen, I picked up a damp newspaper from where it had rolled up in a corner between some steps and a wall, returning to where I had last seen her. There was a bench nearby and I parked myself on it, under the slightly orange glare of the streetlamp, and opened it up. Perhaps, if I was lucky, she would be back. I had nothing else to try.
The paper - I assume the previous day's - told me the date. The year was apparently 2075, with no particular context given for what it was. That certainly wasn't a year that rang any bells for me. The news items were similarly lacking in context, with cities and names that meant nothing to me at first glance until I reached the weather section where a simple outline map showed a familiarly shaped island-continent.
The Blessed Isle, or if I was reading this correctly, Meruvia in local parlance. In Exalted it was essentially foothills and plains around the gigantic mountain of Meru - sometimes the Imperial Mountain - that formed the elemental pole of Earth. In the time before the Primordial War, it had been the home to the Gods. After the war, with the Gods moving into the heavenly city that had once been their masters' home, the isle was colonised by mankind as they spread out from their original strongholds in the south-east and eventually became the hub of their Realm. It was a status that had lasted, even as the government of successive Realms had degenerated.
Here… well, I doubt anything like it had happened. I didn't even have enough information yet to guess where I was on the map. Well, with the sun just beginning to creep above the horizon I could at least conclude that I was somewhere on the eastern coast. It was a start.
Combing through the paper a second time I came up with only a few tenuous clues. Somewhat grainy pictures didn't tell me much about the faces, but I noted two cases of someone with the syllables Da and Bo (each a distinct letter in the lengthy alphabet of this language) bracketed after them. It was reaching, but if those were intended to mean 'Dragon-Blooded' then this might indicate that they were Terrestrial Exalted. In the game, they had been the ruling caste of the Blessed Isle in the era the game was commonly played.
Yes, I really was that ignorant of what was going on. Feel free to laugh: would you have done better with so little to work with? If so, good for you.
Fortune - or persistence - smiled on me. While I was finishing my second read through the paper, I saw blonde hair again. I'd only seen the woman I was following from behind or from a distance, but I was sure it was her even though she'd changed her clothes. She'd come out of a doorway in the side-street and was headed my way.
I kept reading the paper as she walked past me, and prepared to discard it and follow her again. However, she only went as far as bus stop. I kept pretending to read the paper as a bus pulled up and she boarded it.
Without money, I couldn't board the bus and trying to chase it on foot would be hard. Perhaps possible if it stopped a lot, but it would also be by no means discreet.
So I had lost her… but I did have the building she'd been inside of. It was something. I folded the paper and dropped it into a bin at the bus-stop, then crossed the road and explored the street. The door that my target had come out of seemed to be the access for apartments above. Two young women were coming out as I reached the door, talking to each other. I caught hold of it as they opened it but stepped aside and let them past, trying not to draw their attention. Engrossed in their conversation they didn't give me a second look.
Inside there was a door to what I guessed were utilities, a stairwell… and several rows of mailboxes. Each bore a number and a name. My eye caught on one name: K. Morrigan, who presumably lived in apartment 408. There was no second name, suggesting she was the only occupant.
Nothing stopped me going up the stairs to the fourth floor but the locked door to 408 was an obstacle. Naturally I had no key, and while I might be able to kick the door down it would be hard to hide that I'd done so. And I couldn't just haunt the corridors until Morrigan came back. Someone would wonder why I was here - a quick in and out could be a delivery, but staying here for hours could not.
I went back down to the main door and noted that it was a magnetic lock - from inside it could be opened via knob, but from outside you had to either enter the code or have someone buzz you remotely. I'd seen it several times before.
Again, why was this Exalted world so like my own?
Rather than draw suspicion I exited and walked away. Perhaps if I came back in the evening…
Glancing back over my shoulder, I tried to work out which windows were for Apartment 408. It wasn't hard to work out and my eyes narrowed. One of those windows was open. Not much, but somewhat.
Was I willing to risk it?
I looked around. This was a residential back-street with no shops and the apartments didn't seem large enough for families. The chances were good that it would be deserted by mid-morning…
*
Fortunately the apartment building was only four storeys tall. It was still a long way down if I fell.
Getting up had been easier than I thought - there was a fire escape on one of the adjacent buildings and the alley separating the two apartment blocks was close enough that I could make a running jump to get across.
No, the risky part was climbing down onto the window-sill, getting the window open wide enough and then climbing through. Without falling off or getting spotted. There wasn't really any legitimate reason for me to be doing this.
Getting spotted might be the worst part. Lunar Exalted were shape-shifters, but the only other shape I'd ever taken was a shark. That's not really going to serve for getting through a window, sharks not really being known for their building-climbing abilities. I couldn't even adopt another face so that I could walk away unidentified.
Or… could I?
I sat on the roof and thought. The sun was coming up and the warmth was welcome as a counter to my cold and still damp clothes.
Waning Moons… the different Exalted types are divided into various specialities, usually called castes. For Lunars they are based on phases of the moon. Full Moons were warriors while at the far end of the spectrum were the sages, the No Moons. Between them were three other castes: the Waxing Moons, Half Moons and Waning Moons. However…
I looked at my sleeve, covering the tattoos. Lunar tattoos had a specific purpose: protecting them against the mutating effects of the Wyld. Raw chaos, the sea of which Creation floated upon, could transform mortals and even Exalted weren't entirely immune. Lunar Exalted could adapt to it, given their naturally fluid nature, but in turn those adaptations could become a trap. The tattoos were invented to lock certain forms, anchoring the Lunars so that they would not change beyond their ability to recover… but that development was done during a period when the Lunars had been driven into exile in the bordermarches between Creation and the Wyld, leaving them exposed to the latter's influence for far longer than previously.
The No Moons who developed the tattoos managed to lock their own caste and the Full Moons, but the transitory nature of the other three Castes had defeated them. All they could do was fuse them into a single Changing Moon caste, a permanent loss of part of the Lunar Exalted's flexibility.
The crescent moon on my brow could reflect that Changing Moon caste rather than a Waning Moon. And yet, something told me that it was the latter. Even though it should not be possible for anyone to be tattooed as one of the Waning Moon caste.
Of the three lost castes, I thought that the Waning Moons had lost least though: in particular, the Changing Moon castes had possessed them natural ability to shroud themselves in an illusion to mask their identity or even mimic that of another. It was something that had once been the Waning Moon trademark so I suppose on a practical level, I should be able to do it whatever my caste was.
Still… it was a puzzle. Perhaps just as this world was not as I would expect a world of the Exalted to be, it might be that the Exalted were not as I would expect.
Either way, it would not get me down to the window, nor mask myself. I had no watch to tell the time but I thought the sun was high enough to mark late morning, and I was hungry. How had I become a shark and then a human again? I had wanted it.
So perhaps if I wanted it enough?
I closed my eyes and imagined myself shrouded in faint light and shadows, hiding details of my appearance. At first I felt nothing, but eventually something seemed to flow into place. Had it worked…?
Honestly, I wasn't sure.
But I had no other ideas, and the time was right. I leaned over the side of the building and saw no one along the street, nor anyone visible at the windows of the building across the way. 408 was at the end of this building, but the window that was open was second from the end. I would need to scramble down at the corner, using the drainpipe, then climb along the windowsills.
When I thought about it, the insanity of it seemed too much. I had never tried anything like this before.
So I stopped thinking and swung myself down over the edge of the roof.
After all my worry, it was startlingly anti-climactic. I clung to the drainpipe until my feet found the windowsill, but from there it was astonishingly easy. The windowsill was narrower than the width of my shoes but nonetheless I balanced easily upon it as I walked along it to reach the open window. I felt that I could have even not held onto the window frames and been fine.
Perhaps I was light-headed with hunger? I wondered at the time, not realising that I was unconsciously tapping into my essence already. To balance upon something so narrow is trivial to one of the Chosen of Luna.
The window was slightly harder to work with. It was a painted wooden frame, with two sections, each with four panes. The lowest moved up and down and was a few inches from being closed. If something had been locking it in place, then I might have been stuck, but fortunately it was simply wedged by the very limited width of the frame around it. That still made it tricky to get leverage to force it up and widen the opening.
I heard voices below - one child's chatter, one woman who was clearly trying to hide fatigue. All it would take was one look up.
"Mommy, mommy, there's a lady up there."
"That's nice dear," the mother said. "Give her a wave." She sounded like she was on autopilot.
I gave the window a heave, frightened that my feet would slip but just as worried that she'd look up and realise that I was out of place.
It gave at last and I swung my feet in, sitting on the sill, legs inside. I twisted around as I entered, looking down and saw the little boy (I assume) waving upwards. I waved back and he grinned up at me. His mother never looked up.
Slithering the rest of the way inside, I considered the window and then left it open. If I needed to escape suddenly…
Okay, so first I needed to find out whose apartment I was in, and why she might have killed Ed Herbert.
My stomach rumbled. One mug of soup hadn't gone far.
I would start my research in her kitchen!
It took me less than five minutes to have a couple of pre-packaged dinners in the oven, a pot of stewed steak beginning to simmer on the stove and half a baguette on a plate in front of me. I cut the end off and chewed on it as I sawed the rest into chunks for dunking into the stewed meat once it was done. A couple of mouthfuls of bread didn't do much to sate my hunger, but all it had to stave that off until I had the stew, and that in turn was just a stop-gap for the two meals.
My eye feel on the washing machine next to the fridge.
"Someone's been eating my porridge," I muttered. "And sitting in my chair. And what the hell, maybe even sleeping in my bed."
Then I looked for something to wear while I washed my clothes properly.
*
The sound of the apartment door woke me from where I was curled up under the bedcovers. The clock in front of my eyes proclaimed it was almost six in the evening.
Shit! I'd overslept!
Despite the best of intentions, once I was fed it had been all I could do to stay awake long enough to get my clothes out of the washing machine and hang them up to finish drying. I'd had enough time to work out that the apartment belonged to a 'Kate Morrigan', that she lived alone, and from the handful of photos on the wall, get a good grip on what she looked like.
I slid out of the bed on silent feet and went to the door. There wasn't time to get into my clothes. If she'd brought anyone home with her then this could be messy. But my fatigue had caught up with me and now I was paying the price.
The apartment door closed before I reached the bedroom door, and I heard the lock snap shut. It didn't sound as if anyone was with Morrigan. That was good.
Listening I heard footsteps up to the door and then she stopped just short of my door - near the door into the kitchen.
I hadn't washed the dishes! She must have seen them by the sink.
"Did…"
She sounded more puzzled than alarmed. I twisted the door knob and yanked the door open. It was the same blonde hair I'd seen yesterday, although she was wearing it down.
Before she had time to fully turn, far less call out, I grabbed her shoulder and yanked her towards the wall behind her. There was a crunch as her head hit the wall and she went down like a ton of bricks.
For a moment I stood over her, breathing deeply. Listening for any cries of alarm. Her breath rattled in her throat, but she didn't rise or move, just lying there. Had I knocked her out entirely?
Without taking my eyes off her I reached around to the back of her bedroom door and found a bathrobe to pull on. It just felt weird to be running around naked.
Morrigan remained flat on the floor, eyes not moving. Had she been knocked unconscious with her eye still partly open? I've never knocked someone out before, hell, I've never seen anyone knocked out for real - just on television.
She'd left her bag by the door, I pulled her up, wrestled her out of her coat and then hauled her to the kitchen, putting her on one of the wooden chairs. Was there something here I could tie her up with? I really hadn't thought this through.
The woman fell out of the chair. Her breath was slowing erratically, less and less regular. I hauled her up again and used the belt of the bathrobe to lash her upright. It wouldn't hold her if she fought, but the way her head lolled… I didn't think she was going to and it just needed to hold her until I found something better.
I checked the closet but no rope or anything, not even a clothesline. It was damned inconvenient of her not to lay in supplies. What was I going to do, use the power cord from her laptop or something?
Back in the kitchen, she hadn't moved. Not making a sound.
I was part-way out of the room again when that sank in.
Not a sound.
She wasn't breathing!
Fuck! I checked her pulse.
Nothing.
Oh gods.
Ripping the belt away I laid her out in the recovery position. Tried CPR, or as close as I could recall.
Five minutes, but the kitchen clock.
Ten minutes. I'd cycled from pumping on her breastbone and breathing air into her lungs but it wasn't making a lick of difference.
Oh fuck.
I hadn't….
I didn't mean to…
All I wanted was to capture her! Interrogate her! Find out what was going on!
Instead…
I crawled over to the kitchen bin and threw up what was left of the dinner I'd eaten in here.
I'd killed someone. Just like that. Without thinking about it, without even trying really.
What was I going to do now?!
That seems to me to be highly appropriate when you're thrown into an unfamiliar ocean in the middle of the night.
The moon was reflected on the water as I crashed into the waves without any chance to assume any sensible posture. Thankfully I avoided a belly-flop that would have driven the air from my lungs, but I plunged deep under the waves and into the blackness beneath them.
The cold clawed at me, water soaking into my clothes and weighing me down.
The glittering ceiling above me seemed very far away.
I clawed.
I kicked.
It would be hard to call it swimming.
My lungs burned, as water did everything in its power to consume me. The air in them fought to escape my lips and return to the surface, leaving me behind.
When my hand broke the surface, it felt colder still.
Then my head followed it and the moonlight almost blinded me as I coughed and choked, trying to expel old air, inhale fresh and keep more salty water out - neither succeeding nor failing entirely at any of them. My feet still kicked, keeping me upright.
I forced myself to slow my breathing. To hold what I had, then breathe it out. To paddle until I faced away from waves that could have forced more water between my lips.
When I allowed myself to inhale properly it was sweeter than anything I have ever tasted.
Now, at last, I was free to think.
Where the hell was I?!
In every direction but up, I could see nothing but water. And in the sky were only the stars and the moon, brilliantly bright though it was only half-full… maybe a little less than that.
*
I've never watched the film but when I saw the dorsal fin slicing through the water towards me, I swear I could hear the damned music. As if it was anticipating the lone swimmer dying to the predator of the waves.
The sun would take hours to warm the water. I doubted I'd last an entire day floating so once it started to rise I'd begun to swim. It was at least possible that I could make it to a shore or a ship before I was exhausted. If I just lay there… well, perhaps the odds of a ship were no better or worse. But a shore…
For lack of any other queue, I had started swimming with the sun behind me so that it would not blind me.
I don't think that I was bleeding, but perhaps I didn't need to be. Or perhaps my wet clothes were abrading my skin somehow. I couldn't tell.
The shark was ahead of me.
I swam right for it.
Suicidal? Maybe. I don't know much about sharks, but I was sure I couldn't outswim it. That didn't leave much in the way of options.
I could see its mouth, with rows of jagged teeth. Then I could see it roll slightly to it's left as it approached at tremendous speed. Was it trying to get its nose past me so it could bite?
If I'd had any sort of weapon I might have tried to get at its lower body, hopefully finding some sort of vulnerable belly (did they even have such a vulnerability?).
I didn't so I paddled to my right at the last minute, got past its blunt nose, scratched myself on its back and snagged onto its dorsal fin, which tore at my hands further.
The shark jerked, trying to shake me off I think, and then it dove.
I probably should have let it go, but if I did would it have turned around and come at me again? I clung on and for the second time tonight, I was dragged down below the waves.
I can't overstate how terrifying it was for the surface to recede behind me. The shark was diving deeper and deeper, swimming faster than I had imagined that it could.
Would it go up for air? No, it wasn't an air breather like a dolphin, I realized. It had gills.
Could I force it up? I heaved on the fin, tearing my fingers further. I managed to release one hand, only increasing the pain in the other, and reached forward. I could, barely, feel the rough skin pulsing and as I forced myself forwards, I was able to trace that until I found the gill.
I imagine it hurt the shark to have my hand jammed and it bucked wildly again, rolling. My one hand holding on broke away and I was loose. In surprise my lips parted and the air in my lungs escaped, bubbles streaming up.
Was I dangerously deep? I'd heard something about the bends?
In the dark water I couldn't tell. I couldn't even be sure if the shark was coming back at me…
I struck out upwards, lungs screaming…
And then with a tearing situation I felt something open in my neck. Air entered into my lungs and the pain faded.
Was I…?
I stopped kicking and felt gingerly at my neck.
Soft folds were fluttering. Were these gills?
How…?
Something rushed through the water, barely missing my head - perhaps only because I had stopped swimming upwards.
Well, that answered whether the shark was after me.
Right then… why I now had gills would have to wait.
I felt the water around me and mostly evaded its attempted bite again. This time one of the fins battered at my chest. I caught hold with my bloody hands and let it drag me once again.
Then I managed to brace my knees against its side and started looking for some weak-spot I could use against it.
*
I was in a daze when I reached the surface. The duel had been more nightmare than spectacle, my blood and that of the shark filling the water around us.
Somewhere along the way I had shed legs for a tail, arms for fins and my merely human teeth for those to rival those of the shark.
I had torn it apart, driven by a frenzy to survive that was perhaps neither more nor less than the predator's.
The moon was high again in the sky as I broke the surface, now clearly less than half-full. I could easily believe that I might have been under water throughout the entire day. I lay exhausted on the water, gills under the water, eyes above it.
It was a long moment before I realised that not all the lights were the moon and the stars.
Ahead of me in the distance were bright and constant lights, electric or similar. An entire city's worth.
Could I even get into it, as I was?
I wasn't sure. I twisted, trying to find my human form once more and with a spasm I had legs and arms once more. A human shape, with all the pros and cons… like needing to remember to breath through my nose and mouth. I was even clothed once more.
Which might have been more helpful if I was closer to the shore.
It took longer to work out how to resume the shape of the shark but once I did, I was able to swim slowly towards the shore. I could do with a meal. I was almost tempted to try to take a bite out of some of the fish I could smell around me, but I had little notion of what would be good to eat and I feared that yielding to that instinct would drive me into the mindset of the shark so deeply that I might not emerge again.
The city grew before me. It was further away than I had thought, for it was also larger. Lights I had taken for windows were entire buildings. In the darkness I could not make out any familiar landmarks, but it must be a major metropolis.
And a city so large and this near to the water would have docks, that was pretty much a given.
I was right about that. I steered clear of what was clearly a massive container port and oil terminal - the place was busy even at this hour and probably had security cameras, patrols and the like that might spot a shark in the water, or someone climbing up onto their docks. It would certainly be harder to leave the immediate area.
Instead I followed the coast up into a wide estuary and found what I had hoped for, older docks for a fishing port, a yacht mooring and… paydirt! ...dockside buildings that were clearly being repaired and gentrified. There was enough light spilling onto the water that I couldn't get very close without being spotted as a shark - the dorsal fin was just a bit too obvious. Fortunately I was able to reach an old breakwater that sheltered them from incoming tides, and shifted back to my human form.
I mistimed it and caught some water with my mouth as I got myself reorientated. Coughing, I paddled myself upright. Fatigue was catching up with me, or perhaps the shark's form simply had more endurance. The few metres to the breakwater felt like miles and when I reached it, I found I could barely cling to the stonework. Climbing it was beyond me.
Had I come this far, just to fail and drown now? Gods! What a joke that would be!
Leaning against the stone I slowly kicked my way through the water, looking for steps or something. What I found first though, was a cigarette butt bouncing off my head. "Wha?" I mumbled, brushing my hand over my head. Then I saw what had hit me, floating in the water. "Ugh."
"Huh?" someone said from up above me. I heard the slap of shoe-leather on stone. "W… what the hell are you doin' down there?"
Trying not to drown, I didn't say - mostly because my mouth was closed against a wave's backwash off the breakwater.
"Hang on," the man told me. "I'll help you up, there's some steps just a couple of yards to your left."
I splashed stubbornly in that direction and I don't think his definition of a couple of yards was the same as mine. But finally, my hand found not vertical stone, but a narrow horizontal ledge. Naturally I cracked my elbow painfully on it.
It was steps, wet and slick, but steps nonetheless. I managed, barely, to roll myself onto them and sprawled on them.
"Ms. Morrigan? Is that you?"
It was the man from a moment ago. I heard his footsteps as he descended the steps.
"Who?" He thought I was a woman? I looked down at myself and saw that my wet clothes were plastered tight over… 'flotation devices'. When had that happened? I resisted the urge to check down below with my hand. I didn't need to now that I consciously thought about that part of my body. What was going on?
He shook his head. "Sorry, you looked a bit like someone I know."
"You know a lot of drowned rats?"
The man chuckled. "I wouldn't call her that. Do you need help? How did you wind up in the harbour?"
"I suspect someone pulled a nasty prank on me." My main suspect right now is the entire cosmos. "I woke up right before I hit the water and had to swim here."
"...I wouldn't call that a prank," he told me, reaching down and offering me his hand. "More attempted murder."
I accepted and managed to get my feet under me. He was a fairly short man, with broad shoulders and pretty obviously fighting a losing battle against both a spreading gut and male-pattern baldness. Still, he was sturdy enough to help me get upright again and took much of my weight as we went up the steps.
"I just stepped out for a smoke," he told me. "Come inside and get dry - we have a phone so you can call the police. Dumping you in the water… whoever did that."
It would be kind of awkward to do that since I don't know where I am, much less…
I staggered at the realisation that I didn't even know what language the man was speaking. I understood it, but what was it? Was this something to do with how I'd ended up in the water?
"Careful." My companion helped me sit down at the top. "Take a deep breath. It's not far to the office, I'm sure we have a blanket or something there."
My stomach took that moment to rumble.
"...hungry?" he asked me.
"Famished," I admitted. "What day is it?"
The man gave me a speculative look. "Venusday."
"...I haven't eaten anything today then." 'Venusday'? That was no day of the week in my recollection, but it did ring a bell distantly.
He gave me a sceptical look. "What, are you working at a black company or something?"
"I kept getting distracted." By a shark, but that would be a bit implausible."
"I'll see what I can do," he offered. "But really, we need to get you inside before you catch your death of cold."
*
The office had a sign with T3U as a logo and Transportation Worker's Union in smaller letters underneath. It took me a moment to figure out how they got T3U from that, which should say something about how tired I was. The office section seemed to be more of an afterthought, connecting a pair of larger buildings I'd guessed at workshops. Perhaps they'd been converted.
"We have shower rooms in the locker rooms," my saviour explained pointing me at two doors I'd assumed were just washrooms. "Hang on a minute." He went into the men's and emerged a moment later with a towel. "The towel racks are on, so you can dry your clothes. Sorry if it offends you to use a man's towel but it's the only one I have."
Using someone else's towel probably wasn't the most hygienic thing to do, but beggars can't be choosers. "Don't be silly. Thank you."
"I'll see if we have some soup or something. Think about calling the cops, okay?"
The ladies showers were pretty functional. I sluiced myself off, took off my outer clothes and hung them on the tower rail he'd mentioned. A slight bulge in one was a card-wallet. No money or bank-cards, but a driver's license and a national insurance card. When I checked in the mirror, the face that looked back at me was the one on the license… except for the tattoos.
I shivered, went back to the showers and the water was now running warm enough to clean myself as properly as I could without soap.
"Hello?" came a call from the door. I thought I might feel vulnerable at being nude but something told me that I could handle myself if he tried anything. Not that I thought it likely. He hadn't exactly been creeping on me. What was his name? I hadn't asked, since reciprocating would have been hard. At least I had one I could offer now, the one on my IDs.
"Just warming up," I called back from behind the partition that screened the showers from the rest of the room.
"Okay. I'll, uh, put the soup by the sink. Look, I was waiting for someone and I can't really cancel the meeting. Just get yourself sorted out and I'll give you a lift once I've talked to her, okay."
"Thanks." Now how to cover for the fact I didn't have anywhere to go? The driver's license didn't have a home address on it. Perhaps that was stored in a database and one of the alphanumeric codes on it would refer back to that if anyone checked the license.
That would be a fun conversation with the police. 'Hello officer, could you check my license and tell me where I live?'
I heard him put something down. "My name's Ed Herbert, by the way. Local rep for the union."
"Michaela Drake."
"Pleased to meet you, Michaela." I heard the door
The soup was in a mug and a bit watery. Hot though, which helped. I hung up the underclothes to dry, dried off and stared at myself in the mirror. Blonde, sufficiently curvy that even wearing a suit hadn't hidden it (the towel wrapped around me certainly didn't). And tattoos up and down her - my - body.
Long whorls of silvery ink ran up and down my limbs. Intricate knotwork decorated my feet and lines of what was recognisably text interlaced with sharks on my arms. Perhaps the encounter in the ocean hadn't been as random as it seemed. The tattoos even extended up my neck, three lines curving upwards and ending on my cheeks and forehead.
"Well, how the hell am I going to hide these?" I mused. About the tattoos, not the… curves.
The answer, apparently, was quite easily. Even as I watched, the mark on my forehead flared briefly with silvery light, forming a crescent moon shape. And then the light faded from view, as did the tattoos.
I reached up and traced the line of the moon shape that I'd borne. A waxing… no, wait. I was looking in a mirror. It was the crescent of a waning moon.
Either I was Sailor Moon and no one had told me… or I'd been exalted by Luna.
No, not the cat. That would fall under the Sailor Moon theory. The Celestial Incarna of the Moon, the Changing Maiden, the Fickle Lady. Bride and groom of Gaia, patron of the Lunar Exalted. It made as much sense as the other theory, honestly. Exalted was a world of fantasy and high adventure. Even in the Era of Dreams, Creation had looked nothing like this.
Nothing had made sense so far, and I guess that wasn't going to change quickly.
I took another sip of the soup. Let's count my blessings. I'm alive, which I wouldn't have counted on at least twice since I last slept. I'm clean and… well, quite healthy. If I wind up in jail, that's three warm meals and a bed… I feel like I don't have to worry too much about violence…
When winding up in prison is one of your better options, it's a good time to consider your life.
This wasn't a dream, since I'd hurt myself already in it. And since I was transformed in body - and possibly in mind given I'd learned an entirely new language - there was probably no going back to my previous life. Even if I found my way home, who would recognise me.
So all that was left was to go forwards.
It hurt. Of course it hurt. I sat on the showeroom's bench and wept for that life, for all that I was leaving behind.
And then I went to the sink, washed my face and finished the soup.
*
My underclothes and shirt, being the lightest of my clothes, were more or less dry well before the rest of them. I was wearing them and using the still damp towel as a skirt when I heard what could have been a car backfiring. Or… it could have been something else.
I went to the door and heard the clip-clop of hard-heeled shoes on the floor of the corridor outside. They walked to the door and then past it without pause. I opened the door, careful to avoid any noise. Fortunately it was well-maintained and didn't creak.
What I saw was the back of a woman, with blonde hair pinned up behind her. She was about my height and wore a pant-suit… I wondered if she was the person that Ed had mistaken me for. It was, it occurred to me, a very odd time for a meeting. Nothing he had said suggested that it was personal, but it was very late - or very early, depending on your point of view. There was a clock in the shower room and it wasn't 6 AM yet.
I watched as the woman went out the doors - she didn't look back, and then turned in the direction she'd come from. There was a whiff of something in the air, something I didn't claim to recognise.
I looked back in the direction and then padded down the cold floor in the other direction. "Ed?"
There was no reply. It was easy to guess which room he was in though, only one door had light leaking out from under it.
I pushed the door open. "Ed…? Oh. Oh shit."
There was a pool of crimson on the floor. The source was in an office chair, one hand clutching a small automatic pistol in it. It was easy enough to guess what the sound earlier had been: the back of Ed's head was sprayed across the wall to one side of the room.
I tore my eyes away. Looked for anything else. On the desk lay an envelope, open. Papers inside. I stepped gingerly around the blood and looked at them. IOUs.
"...I smell a rat." Ed's manner earlier had not suggested desperation. And why have a meeting with someone and then blow your own brains out? One more thing that made no sense. Or rather, it made more sense to me - because I was probably the only person other than his visitor to know she was there. I wasn't the intended audience.
I was tempted to meddle directly, tamper with the evidence but caution won out. All that that would do was advertise my own presence, automatically making me the logical suspect at setting up this apparent suicide.
No, if I wanted justice for this, I would need to leverage the fact that no one knew I was here or that there was a witness. And my only real angle was to follow the woman I'd seen, the murderer.
Backing away, I closed the door gently, leaving Ed alone in his final rest. I barely knew him, but he'd treated me decently. If that was the minimum bar to seek justice for him then it was a low one… but I was alright with that. Perhaps it should be.
Driven by that decision I yanked off the towel and ran for the shower room, feet slapping against the floor as I yanked my pants off the rail and pulled them on hastily. They stuck to me, still wet inside where the heat hadn't reached deep enough yet, but I shoved my feet into my shoes and ran out again, carrying jacket, waistcoat and the towel as well. Finding Ed's towel in the lady's showers would be an anomaly, but I had a suspicion that any forensic check of it would point at me.
I wanted justice for him, but I was just as interested in self-preservation. Not very paladin-like, but I don't recall swearing any oaths to a higher power. If this was some twisted version of Exalted and Luna had capital-c Chosen me, then she/he would have to deal with me making my own decisions about what to do with that power.
If the woman had driven away, I doubt I would have been able to follow her. But fortunately, she must have come on foot and when I reached the door I could still see her in the distance, blonde hair pale under a streetlamp.
Getting too close would be too obvious, but I didn't want to fall too far behind either. I jogged after her, about a block away when she turned to the right. I did the same at the road I was passing, slowing to a walk that was probably closer to her pace and taking the more sedate movement as an opportunity to wrestle my way into the waistcoat and then the jacket.
I had a nasty moment where I thought I'd lost my cards, but then I found the little wallet in one of the hip pockets.
The towel I considered how to dispose of. If I was wearing something more sporty I could have justified carrying a towel around my neck but in a suit it was out of place. A garbage truck went past and I took the opportunity, throwing the bunched towel into the back of it. Probably the last anyone would ever see of it.
Fortunately, when I reached the end of the block, a casual glance spotted my target still moving along, crossing the road just ahead of me. One hurdle down, out of who knew how many.
In the end I lost her twice, re-acquiring her only after sprinting that probably would have drawn more attention if it wasn't still so early that there weren't many people around. We left the docks behind and moved into streets marked by older apartment blocks clustered along them, frequently with shops on the ground floor. Brownstones, I would have called them - I have no idea how accurate that is architecturally.
The second time I lost track of her was on a side-street between blocks of these. A circuit of both blocks either way didn't turn her up.
Downfallen, I picked up a damp newspaper from where it had rolled up in a corner between some steps and a wall, returning to where I had last seen her. There was a bench nearby and I parked myself on it, under the slightly orange glare of the streetlamp, and opened it up. Perhaps, if I was lucky, she would be back. I had nothing else to try.
The paper - I assume the previous day's - told me the date. The year was apparently 2075, with no particular context given for what it was. That certainly wasn't a year that rang any bells for me. The news items were similarly lacking in context, with cities and names that meant nothing to me at first glance until I reached the weather section where a simple outline map showed a familiarly shaped island-continent.
The Blessed Isle, or if I was reading this correctly, Meruvia in local parlance. In Exalted it was essentially foothills and plains around the gigantic mountain of Meru - sometimes the Imperial Mountain - that formed the elemental pole of Earth. In the time before the Primordial War, it had been the home to the Gods. After the war, with the Gods moving into the heavenly city that had once been their masters' home, the isle was colonised by mankind as they spread out from their original strongholds in the south-east and eventually became the hub of their Realm. It was a status that had lasted, even as the government of successive Realms had degenerated.
Here… well, I doubt anything like it had happened. I didn't even have enough information yet to guess where I was on the map. Well, with the sun just beginning to creep above the horizon I could at least conclude that I was somewhere on the eastern coast. It was a start.
Combing through the paper a second time I came up with only a few tenuous clues. Somewhat grainy pictures didn't tell me much about the faces, but I noted two cases of someone with the syllables Da and Bo (each a distinct letter in the lengthy alphabet of this language) bracketed after them. It was reaching, but if those were intended to mean 'Dragon-Blooded' then this might indicate that they were Terrestrial Exalted. In the game, they had been the ruling caste of the Blessed Isle in the era the game was commonly played.
Yes, I really was that ignorant of what was going on. Feel free to laugh: would you have done better with so little to work with? If so, good for you.
Fortune - or persistence - smiled on me. While I was finishing my second read through the paper, I saw blonde hair again. I'd only seen the woman I was following from behind or from a distance, but I was sure it was her even though she'd changed her clothes. She'd come out of a doorway in the side-street and was headed my way.
I kept reading the paper as she walked past me, and prepared to discard it and follow her again. However, she only went as far as bus stop. I kept pretending to read the paper as a bus pulled up and she boarded it.
Without money, I couldn't board the bus and trying to chase it on foot would be hard. Perhaps possible if it stopped a lot, but it would also be by no means discreet.
So I had lost her… but I did have the building she'd been inside of. It was something. I folded the paper and dropped it into a bin at the bus-stop, then crossed the road and explored the street. The door that my target had come out of seemed to be the access for apartments above. Two young women were coming out as I reached the door, talking to each other. I caught hold of it as they opened it but stepped aside and let them past, trying not to draw their attention. Engrossed in their conversation they didn't give me a second look.
Inside there was a door to what I guessed were utilities, a stairwell… and several rows of mailboxes. Each bore a number and a name. My eye caught on one name: K. Morrigan, who presumably lived in apartment 408. There was no second name, suggesting she was the only occupant.
Nothing stopped me going up the stairs to the fourth floor but the locked door to 408 was an obstacle. Naturally I had no key, and while I might be able to kick the door down it would be hard to hide that I'd done so. And I couldn't just haunt the corridors until Morrigan came back. Someone would wonder why I was here - a quick in and out could be a delivery, but staying here for hours could not.
I went back down to the main door and noted that it was a magnetic lock - from inside it could be opened via knob, but from outside you had to either enter the code or have someone buzz you remotely. I'd seen it several times before.
Again, why was this Exalted world so like my own?
Rather than draw suspicion I exited and walked away. Perhaps if I came back in the evening…
Glancing back over my shoulder, I tried to work out which windows were for Apartment 408. It wasn't hard to work out and my eyes narrowed. One of those windows was open. Not much, but somewhat.
Was I willing to risk it?
I looked around. This was a residential back-street with no shops and the apartments didn't seem large enough for families. The chances were good that it would be deserted by mid-morning…
*
Fortunately the apartment building was only four storeys tall. It was still a long way down if I fell.
Getting up had been easier than I thought - there was a fire escape on one of the adjacent buildings and the alley separating the two apartment blocks was close enough that I could make a running jump to get across.
No, the risky part was climbing down onto the window-sill, getting the window open wide enough and then climbing through. Without falling off or getting spotted. There wasn't really any legitimate reason for me to be doing this.
Getting spotted might be the worst part. Lunar Exalted were shape-shifters, but the only other shape I'd ever taken was a shark. That's not really going to serve for getting through a window, sharks not really being known for their building-climbing abilities. I couldn't even adopt another face so that I could walk away unidentified.
Or… could I?
I sat on the roof and thought. The sun was coming up and the warmth was welcome as a counter to my cold and still damp clothes.
Waning Moons… the different Exalted types are divided into various specialities, usually called castes. For Lunars they are based on phases of the moon. Full Moons were warriors while at the far end of the spectrum were the sages, the No Moons. Between them were three other castes: the Waxing Moons, Half Moons and Waning Moons. However…
I looked at my sleeve, covering the tattoos. Lunar tattoos had a specific purpose: protecting them against the mutating effects of the Wyld. Raw chaos, the sea of which Creation floated upon, could transform mortals and even Exalted weren't entirely immune. Lunar Exalted could adapt to it, given their naturally fluid nature, but in turn those adaptations could become a trap. The tattoos were invented to lock certain forms, anchoring the Lunars so that they would not change beyond their ability to recover… but that development was done during a period when the Lunars had been driven into exile in the bordermarches between Creation and the Wyld, leaving them exposed to the latter's influence for far longer than previously.
The No Moons who developed the tattoos managed to lock their own caste and the Full Moons, but the transitory nature of the other three Castes had defeated them. All they could do was fuse them into a single Changing Moon caste, a permanent loss of part of the Lunar Exalted's flexibility.
The crescent moon on my brow could reflect that Changing Moon caste rather than a Waning Moon. And yet, something told me that it was the latter. Even though it should not be possible for anyone to be tattooed as one of the Waning Moon caste.
Of the three lost castes, I thought that the Waning Moons had lost least though: in particular, the Changing Moon castes had possessed them natural ability to shroud themselves in an illusion to mask their identity or even mimic that of another. It was something that had once been the Waning Moon trademark so I suppose on a practical level, I should be able to do it whatever my caste was.
Still… it was a puzzle. Perhaps just as this world was not as I would expect a world of the Exalted to be, it might be that the Exalted were not as I would expect.
Either way, it would not get me down to the window, nor mask myself. I had no watch to tell the time but I thought the sun was high enough to mark late morning, and I was hungry. How had I become a shark and then a human again? I had wanted it.
So perhaps if I wanted it enough?
I closed my eyes and imagined myself shrouded in faint light and shadows, hiding details of my appearance. At first I felt nothing, but eventually something seemed to flow into place. Had it worked…?
Honestly, I wasn't sure.
But I had no other ideas, and the time was right. I leaned over the side of the building and saw no one along the street, nor anyone visible at the windows of the building across the way. 408 was at the end of this building, but the window that was open was second from the end. I would need to scramble down at the corner, using the drainpipe, then climb along the windowsills.
When I thought about it, the insanity of it seemed too much. I had never tried anything like this before.
So I stopped thinking and swung myself down over the edge of the roof.
After all my worry, it was startlingly anti-climactic. I clung to the drainpipe until my feet found the windowsill, but from there it was astonishingly easy. The windowsill was narrower than the width of my shoes but nonetheless I balanced easily upon it as I walked along it to reach the open window. I felt that I could have even not held onto the window frames and been fine.
Perhaps I was light-headed with hunger? I wondered at the time, not realising that I was unconsciously tapping into my essence already. To balance upon something so narrow is trivial to one of the Chosen of Luna.
The window was slightly harder to work with. It was a painted wooden frame, with two sections, each with four panes. The lowest moved up and down and was a few inches from being closed. If something had been locking it in place, then I might have been stuck, but fortunately it was simply wedged by the very limited width of the frame around it. That still made it tricky to get leverage to force it up and widen the opening.
I heard voices below - one child's chatter, one woman who was clearly trying to hide fatigue. All it would take was one look up.
"Mommy, mommy, there's a lady up there."
"That's nice dear," the mother said. "Give her a wave." She sounded like she was on autopilot.
I gave the window a heave, frightened that my feet would slip but just as worried that she'd look up and realise that I was out of place.
It gave at last and I swung my feet in, sitting on the sill, legs inside. I twisted around as I entered, looking down and saw the little boy (I assume) waving upwards. I waved back and he grinned up at me. His mother never looked up.
Slithering the rest of the way inside, I considered the window and then left it open. If I needed to escape suddenly…
Okay, so first I needed to find out whose apartment I was in, and why she might have killed Ed Herbert.
My stomach rumbled. One mug of soup hadn't gone far.
I would start my research in her kitchen!
It took me less than five minutes to have a couple of pre-packaged dinners in the oven, a pot of stewed steak beginning to simmer on the stove and half a baguette on a plate in front of me. I cut the end off and chewed on it as I sawed the rest into chunks for dunking into the stewed meat once it was done. A couple of mouthfuls of bread didn't do much to sate my hunger, but all it had to stave that off until I had the stew, and that in turn was just a stop-gap for the two meals.
My eye feel on the washing machine next to the fridge.
"Someone's been eating my porridge," I muttered. "And sitting in my chair. And what the hell, maybe even sleeping in my bed."
Then I looked for something to wear while I washed my clothes properly.
*
The sound of the apartment door woke me from where I was curled up under the bedcovers. The clock in front of my eyes proclaimed it was almost six in the evening.
Shit! I'd overslept!
Despite the best of intentions, once I was fed it had been all I could do to stay awake long enough to get my clothes out of the washing machine and hang them up to finish drying. I'd had enough time to work out that the apartment belonged to a 'Kate Morrigan', that she lived alone, and from the handful of photos on the wall, get a good grip on what she looked like.
I slid out of the bed on silent feet and went to the door. There wasn't time to get into my clothes. If she'd brought anyone home with her then this could be messy. But my fatigue had caught up with me and now I was paying the price.
The apartment door closed before I reached the bedroom door, and I heard the lock snap shut. It didn't sound as if anyone was with Morrigan. That was good.
Listening I heard footsteps up to the door and then she stopped just short of my door - near the door into the kitchen.
I hadn't washed the dishes! She must have seen them by the sink.
"Did…"
She sounded more puzzled than alarmed. I twisted the door knob and yanked the door open. It was the same blonde hair I'd seen yesterday, although she was wearing it down.
Before she had time to fully turn, far less call out, I grabbed her shoulder and yanked her towards the wall behind her. There was a crunch as her head hit the wall and she went down like a ton of bricks.
For a moment I stood over her, breathing deeply. Listening for any cries of alarm. Her breath rattled in her throat, but she didn't rise or move, just lying there. Had I knocked her out entirely?
Without taking my eyes off her I reached around to the back of her bedroom door and found a bathrobe to pull on. It just felt weird to be running around naked.
Morrigan remained flat on the floor, eyes not moving. Had she been knocked unconscious with her eye still partly open? I've never knocked someone out before, hell, I've never seen anyone knocked out for real - just on television.
She'd left her bag by the door, I pulled her up, wrestled her out of her coat and then hauled her to the kitchen, putting her on one of the wooden chairs. Was there something here I could tie her up with? I really hadn't thought this through.
The woman fell out of the chair. Her breath was slowing erratically, less and less regular. I hauled her up again and used the belt of the bathrobe to lash her upright. It wouldn't hold her if she fought, but the way her head lolled… I didn't think she was going to and it just needed to hold her until I found something better.
I checked the closet but no rope or anything, not even a clothesline. It was damned inconvenient of her not to lay in supplies. What was I going to do, use the power cord from her laptop or something?
Back in the kitchen, she hadn't moved. Not making a sound.
I was part-way out of the room again when that sank in.
Not a sound.
She wasn't breathing!
Fuck! I checked her pulse.
Nothing.
Oh gods.
Ripping the belt away I laid her out in the recovery position. Tried CPR, or as close as I could recall.
Five minutes, but the kitchen clock.
Ten minutes. I'd cycled from pumping on her breastbone and breathing air into her lungs but it wasn't making a lick of difference.
Oh fuck.
I hadn't….
I didn't mean to…
All I wanted was to capture her! Interrogate her! Find out what was going on!
Instead…
I crawled over to the kitchen bin and threw up what was left of the dinner I'd eaten in here.
I'd killed someone. Just like that. Without thinking about it, without even trying really.
What was I going to do now?!
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah, it's genuinely annoying. There are even scraps of a genuinely good system in Craft, except it's like, cookie clicker instead. For example, some of the way craft points worked could be genuinely reworked into a cool system for projects! To make your daiklave of red jade you could open mines, refineries, etc etc. except the system is deliberately made so every single craft project has to be its own thing. Better get working on those spoons baby.
This is not a good-faith summary of people's genuine problems with Craft or 3e. It is little more than a dismissal and frankly absurd given the many, many, many hours that have been spent on the Exalted Discord - on which both of us are present - effectively repeating many of the critiques repeated here. Craft is bad, Sail is terrible, 3e has genuine problems that could have been fixed if the developers hadn't kept it hostage for four fucking years and all but choked the community with their disastrous policy and it's not a praise of 2e to acknowledge those flaws and problems. Summarizing every single person in the SV Exalted general thread - which I'd like to note is over 2,000 pages and spans about 6-7 years - as simply influential die-hard 2e fans unwilling to look at 3e is a take so fundamentally disconnected from the reality of the thread that had it been given by someone else I would believe it to be deliberately in bad faith.
- Pronouns
- They/them
At the same time, you kind of have to admit that a lot of very influential die-hard 2e fans are vastly overstating the extent to which 3e is unplayable or badly designed.
(Admittedly, this is a very funny statement coming from me, whose most recent campaign runs on a barely recognizable patchwork of house rules, half of which are lifted from the Discord wholesale, the other half cobbled together from ideas I stole from Scion and ExEss spoilers.)
(Admittedly, this is a very funny statement coming from me, whose most recent campaign runs on a barely recognizable patchwork of house rules, half of which are lifted from the Discord wholesale, the other half cobbled together from ideas I stole from Scion and ExEss spoilers.)
MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
- Location
- DOOR STUCK DOOR STUCK PLEASE I BEG U
Did 2e ever mention that someone ran a tourism industry for hell during the first age? Like guiding around rich people to see the sights. I swear up and down that I read that somewhere.
Last edited:
- Location
- italy bologna
Uh i remember just the comic part was like that? But as a history tour!