Catching up.
The problem is the competition. It's the existence of the Jades and the other three courts that mean that it's not free for Emma-O to keep akuma fed. Either they're undercover in wider Jade society, or someone will probably notice that 'their' mortal herd is being eaten by someone else, and violently object.
Akuma can feed off chi at the whim of their Yama King.
Including environmental chi.
If any Yama King was stockpiling akuma, he or she would have little trouble keeping them fed, availability of mortals or not.
COMMENTARY
Just going to say that if we're voting for this?
We kinda have to make it a priority to buy the lie detection charm by January, in addition to Hellscry Chakra.
Denizens of the Thousand Hells will happily lie to you if it suits their purposes.
Interesting.
We see Lydia's Authority of the Psychopomp finally kicking in.
Smiling Jack is the spider dude, the fixer? Young fixer seeing a big score, Im guessing. Very Needs of the Many kinda person, afaict.
The big problem is that we're going to burn through our resources.
Just as an aside, Emma-O's timeline is totally screwed up. The authors of the various books couldn't be bothered to do even basic research.
As a result, we have the statement that Emma-O was originally an Ainu deity who became a Yama King after his people were conquered and assimilated by the Yamato people. Now, that's fair enough, but the little detail they missed is that this conquest happened in the fourteenth century CE, not way back in pre-history, and their forcibly assimilation happened in the early nineteenth.
This would make Emma-O one of the more recent Yama Kings, probably a later arrival than Mikaboshi.
Unfortunately, we're also told that he was one of the ringleaders of the overthrow of Yen Lo back in the 3rd Age; and the greater akuma of his that defected did so in the thirteenth century.
You essentially can't reconcile it.
I think the mention of the mystery of his origin in the Bone Flowers Dharma book might be a allusion to this.
Of course you can. This is not a difficult issue.
SOLUTION
The 14th century subjugation of most of the remaining Ainu in Japan by the Yamato-jin was just the very last event in a sequence that assimilated or annihilated the Ainu in other parts of Japan, and over in Sakhalin. Before the Yayoi, it would have been other tribes of the Jomon period, most of which assimilated into the Yayoi, that became the Yamato-jin.
The way I reconcile it is 'history over supernatural' so it was done in the 14th century and he is recent. It's more interesting to me that he is a fallen god than him being old.
Even if you chose this? You have options.
The dates could be wrong.
His involvement in the murder of Yen Lo could well have been done before he became a Yama King, and might have even been a significant milestone in his fall into a Yama King.
Or Yen Lo might have survived well into the first millenium AD, one of a few, and his murder happened around the same time as the Faerie Courts taking over at the Outer Gates; I cant find a canon date for when he was killed. That allows you to have older servants of Kakuri walking around, instead of the oldest shikome being barely a couple hundred years old if he was recent.
Whats clear is Emma-O predates Mikaboshi; a fundamental aspect of their rivalry is based on Mikaboshi being the upstart newcomer.
Remember that even lesser akuma can quite easily have inhuman skill levels. Even a single investment can give four cap breaking dots in an ability, and a second two in an attribute. As the average akuma should have about nine investments, as that's required for them to lose their soul, then it would be quite normal for them, as even lesser akuma are usually recruited from Wan Kuei with a century of unlife, for a completely normal akuma to have a dice pool of fourteen, and so will have that level of skill.
Lesser akuma are only lesser compared to greater ones, each one is a high order supernatural. Even one that has invested moderately in combat is more than a match for most inexperienced Exalted. They're not mooks.
Uh, no.
Investments costs varying amounts of points depending on their value, and the akuma's skill and luck at bargaining.
Soul Points are 10*(lower of Hun or Willpower)
Hun Ratings
1 Unstable
2 Normal
3 Sensible
4 Wise
5 Sagacious
6+ Enlightened
The average Infernalist has 40-60 Soul Points at the beginning according to 1000 Hells.
Subtract 10 points for Mask of Yomi, and you have 30-50 points to play with, and bad negotiations will still cost you more points on top of that.Oh, and the akuma never knows how many soul points he has left at any time.
I think you're unlikely to have a lesser akuma running around with more than 3 or 4 permanent Investments.
Sure, you could hypothetically spec a lesser akuma to be a Hun/Willpower 9 abomination
But thats....implausible, shall we say.
Nor is there a guarantee those are combag-relevant Investments either.
You are not, but you do have a Coke bottle full of water on you.
No need.
We are in a hotel with a fire sprinkler system and cyberdevils in the computer systems.
Having them set off the sprinklers in the lobby should be straight forward.
Compounding that, we don't know what Emma-O's own backstory is. Unlike in vanilla Kijdred of the East, where Emma-O's fall, while tragic, is basically all his own fault, in ExWoD and so here it may not be. It's suggested that part of the reason Yomi Wan and by extension the Yama Kings are so messed up is that they're built/live in top of the cosmic waste dump the Infernal Exaltations were stored in, and the corrupt energies they were leaking is what corrupted Yomi Wan.
The other way around.
For canon ExWoD's backstory?
The Infernal Exaltations were supposed to have been buried in the most blighted parts of the Spirit World, and Yomi Wan was situated on top of it so that the weight would keep them down and hopefully the suffering would keep them sated.
Yes that is my point, she cares more about the power than redemption and you are ignoring the costs to others of her running around. She isn't going to just sit in a lab researching things, she is a significant agent of Emma-O, she is going to be carrying out his will and that means engaging in acts of cruelty and corruption.
I think the argument being made is that there is a chance of changing the regime of a major Hell back towards its statedintent
Potentially improving the lives of millions in the medium to lomgterm.
And thus the risk is worth it.
In ExWoD, Yomi is the mess it is because the Infernal Exaltations are buried beneath it. And yes, the influence goes both ways, but the Exaltations were there first and are why Yomi is Yomi. The particular Hells them influenced the way the Exaltations express themselves back. It's quite possibly a feedback loop.
This is inaccurate, as previously addressed.
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