- Pronouns
- ImBuda
Reroll Air is not a roll, It sends you to the website
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
The people getting sick would be the doomed, the one to suffer would be Mikaboshi
Will fix, dangers of writing past midnight.
- Location
- Germany
Nergui, for all his mastery of Yin, is not actually heavily Yin-Imbalanced like all Shikome and most of Kakuri's Akuma.
That's why he isn't all corpse-like.
INFORMATION
The Scarlet Road
THE SCARLET PATH
The febrile and demon-infested spirit bridge linking Yomi and the Yang World is called the Scarlet Path. While easier to find than the Ebon Road, the Scarlet Path is considered by many to be notably more dangerous. In addition to sporting minor hells that mar its length like boils, the Scarlet Path is a breeding ground for spirits of plague and pestilence. An unwary traveler could brave the path, escape swarms of malevolent insects, defeat hideous demons and make it to the Yang World only to fall over dead of kuru or advanced syphilis. Such are the dangers of defiled Yang Chi.
The Scarlet Path is hard to miss from any point in Yomi. The amount of traffic passing along it between the Thousand Hells and the Western hell of Malfeas makes it one of the most noticeable landmarks in the corruption realm. It has "on ramps" in most of the Yang-aspected kingdoms of the Yomi World; these are marked by heavy traffic, wayposts and occasional defensive encampments. The Path itself stands out from its surroundings by its particular mixture of sickly, web-infested jungle trees and sticky red mud. The continuous procession of bakemono, Goblin Spiders, demons, akuma, emissaries, fugitives, slaves and others who traverse it make the difference more obvious yet. Scores of wagons, rikshaws and tanks travel at excruciatingly slow speeds in both directions through diseased and aggressive vegetation that constantly must be hacked or burned away.
Most of the length of the Path appears as thick jungle rising up out of rich red mud. The trees along the Path are gnarled and cankered, but when hacked down, they grow back at a rate fast enough to be witnessed by the naked eye. The vines strangling the trees are fibrous, sticky and thorned, and the flowers, while spectacularly beautiful, are poisonous to smell or touch. A reddish sun shines down on the path continuously, keeping the heat and humidity very high.
Luckily for the Kuei-jin, this sun is just a souvenir drawn from the fears of nuclear holocaust. It was much brighter in the '50s, almost insufferably so, but in the last decade it has begun to dim. It still casts more light than most of the denizens of the Path are comfortable with.
A traveler trying to get on the Path has to determine how best to navigate his way through the dangerous mass of thick trees and hostile insects without getting lost or eaten. While it may be tempting to try following one of the many "official" caravans of lost souls along the Path, such tactics are nearly impossible. The pitiless sun and extreme humidity generate mirages that can turn a traveler around entirely, even if it seems as though she's only feet behind her guide. Branches just hacked through drip caustic sap on anyone caught beneath them, and worst of all, the sap marks the poor individual it drips on as food or egg-host for the Path's enormous swarms of ants, hornets, mosquitoes, ticks and spiders.
Any traveler along the Scarlet Path who is not heavily imbalanced toward Yang seems dead in comparison to the rest of this realm, and the denizens of the Path respond accordingly. Enormous flies will seek lay eggs on a victim; once hatched, those eggs grow into boring maggots that tunnel throughout the traveler's flesh. Various lurid-colored fungi begin growing on the traveler's skin if not carefully watched for; left untended, such growths consume their victims within the space of a few days. If a traveler is imbalanced toward Yin, these horrors are intensified ten-fold. Few experiences could be more unpleasant or lethal for a follower of the Song of the Shadow Dharma than a trip along the Scarlet Path.
Any attempt to rest while on the Scarlet Path almost certainly ends unpleasantly. Hungry green shoots or tendrils, dripping with a sticky nectar that is both caustic and anesthetic, start groping toward bodies that remain at rest for more than a moment or two (Dexterity + Brawl, difficulty 5 to hit; Perception [difficulty 7] for a target to notice anything wrong while the sap erodes a health level per turn). The powerful anesthetic agent in the nectar prevents the victim from feeling anything as the vine slowly dissolves its target. Many fugitives, exhausted by their escape from Yomi, have rested a moment too long in the jungles of the Scarlet Path and never taken another step.
The creatures inhabiting the Path, both flora and fauna, tend to be spirits representing the worst nightmare images of the natural world. As a result, they are capable of completely unnatural behaviors; thus, a swarm of army ants, for example, deviate from their path in order to engage unwanted guests of the realm, roots pop up to trip careless travelers, and the gigantic phoenixes that swarm the skies above the Path take careful aim when they spit napalm on travelers below. In short, any way in which nature could have gone wrong has gone wrong — and all of the unpleasantness gets directed at any intruders.
The most common hazard encountered in the Goblin Jungle is the nation of goblins themselves. Goblins are nothing so much as a grab bag of human and animal features grafted onto a roughly humanoid frame; hideous mismatches are common occurrences. Worse yet, goblins possess a malevolent cunning that makes them terrible and persistent enemies. Goblins hunt for pleasure as much as for sustenance; they take great joy in terrifying, trapping and otherwise tormenting their prey before devouring it (preferably alive). It's all part of the sport for these twisted nature spirits.
The most malevolent and hated inhabitants of the Path, however, are the Kumo. The Goblin Jungle is used by the Hattar Goblin Spiders as breeding grounds. If the Kumo were to call any place a homeland, this would be it. Some Goblin Spiders have suggested, under extreme duress, that the Kumo make their lairs in the Goblin Jungle because it is there that they guard their queen until she can be freed from the stone in which she was imprisoned. That story, however, is only a rumor, and not a common one.
Kumo webs are so thick in some areas that passage through the miasma is extremely laborious and time-consuming, when it is possible at all. The Kumo seduce (or kidnap) appropriate breeding stock and bring their mates to the web-homes in the tallest trees along the Scarlet Path, commonly making deals as necessary with Yama Kings to allow free passage through Yomi or the Yang World. Most Yama Kings allow this passage, as the Kumo are some of their best soldiers; in exchange, the Kumo are responsible for hunting down unauthorized travelers along the Scarlet Path. This agreement works well for the spider demons, providing them with all the blood and Chi they might ever need.
While the nature of the Path assures that everything on it is defiled or at least imbalanced, it remains very much a living world, and living things, given time, can adapt to any environment. There are tiny enclaves along the Scarlet Path comprised of fugitives who have adapted to this malevolent environment. Called Crazy Monkeys, these lurkers in the shadows survive primarily by virtue of their hard-won knowledge of this liminal realm. They may occasionally attack small caravans (or other fugitives) to acquire needed goods like metal tools or cloth. Most official caravans, though, carry nothing more than the seem-
ingly endless reciprocal gifts of souls and innocent flesh exchanged between the Yama Kings and Maeljin Incarna.
Many of the Crazy Monkeys are originally from Southeast Asia, near the Golden Courts of the Penangallan, and more than a few have had experience with guerrilla warfare at some point in their existences. The Crazy Monkeys like to think that they are fighting a guerrilla war against the Yama Kings (or the demons of the West, or whoever they saw most recently before escaping to the Goblin Jungle) that may eventually weaken the demon lords enough to tip the balance against them. Mortals and shen of all types, especially hengeyokai and chi'n ta, as well as the occasional overzealous Shih, have been found in the ranks of the Crazy Monkeys, and they do their best to utilize their various arts and skills against demons without bringing down the full wrath of the Yama Kings.
Needless to say, most of the Crazy Monkeys are in fact crazy. Their hatred of the Yama Kings goes so far that they may remain in the Goblin Jungle even after they find a way back to the mortal world. While the Crazy Monkeys' idealism may be beyond question, their rationality is not. Any traveler seeking out the Crazy Monkeys had best be prepared to embark upon a nearly impossible quest in a thoroughly malevolent environment followed by an excruciating initiation— and that's if everything goes well. If things don't go well, the traveler had best be prepared to reach the end of his current incarnation in a spirit realm composed of the hatred,rage and pain of the ages. Paranoia, particularly as pertaining to spies of the Yama Kings, is one of the most common afflictions among the Crazy Monkeys.
The Scarlet Path has nearly unlimited surprises for the unwary traveler. From time to time, the thick red mud of the Path yields an intensely bright red or green gem. Yangstones, as these crystals are called, are common and have no value in Yomi or Malfeas, though they are highly coveted elsewhere. Lightning People, in particular, find them desirable for the mystic energies they contain. Carrying a yangstone gives its possessor a surge of self-confidence and a feeling of exhilaration. A single stone makes a traveler impatient and impetuous. More than one and she is rendered utterly manic. Those who bear multiple stones feel powerful, unstoppable and in extreme cases almost godlike, and don't hesitate to rush into ill-advised situations while under the stones' influence. Carrying three or more yangstones assures the traveler a fascinating series of visions, and the hallucinations caused by yangstones are always of a variety to push the carrier into unwise action at the worst possible moment.
Possession of a yangstone has led more than one Kuei-jin to commit Acts of Blindness. The Scarlet Path is home to many, many manic chih-mei wearing entire necklaces of yangstones, generally interspersed with finger bones, bits of scalp and teeth — all added for their aesthetic value.
Near its terminus in the Yang World, the Scarlet Path branches and twists like the roots of an enormous tree as it blends with the ten thousand realms of the Yang World. The primary trunk of the Path feeds directly into the gigantic Western hell called Malfeas. Myriad smaller branches feed into the Realm of Fighting Spirits, the Realm of Atrocities and the Realm of the Great Abyss. Many tiny alternative paths feed into other realms and zones of the Yang World. A very small minority of them are even said to wind up in such unpolluted realms as Shangri La and the Hollow Earth, but it is widely known that such hopeful tales are merely legend.
If the Scarlet Path were to connect to an unpolluted realm, however, that realm would surely have an immensely powerful guardian to keep demons from sweeping in like a storm surge and laying waste to all that stood in their way.
The febrile and demon-infested spirit bridge linking Yomi and the Yang World is called the Scarlet Path. While easier to find than the Ebon Road, the Scarlet Path is considered by many to be notably more dangerous. In addition to sporting minor hells that mar its length like boils, the Scarlet Path is a breeding ground for spirits of plague and pestilence. An unwary traveler could brave the path, escape swarms of malevolent insects, defeat hideous demons and make it to the Yang World only to fall over dead of kuru or advanced syphilis. Such are the dangers of defiled Yang Chi.
The Scarlet Path is hard to miss from any point in Yomi. The amount of traffic passing along it between the Thousand Hells and the Western hell of Malfeas makes it one of the most noticeable landmarks in the corruption realm. It has "on ramps" in most of the Yang-aspected kingdoms of the Yomi World; these are marked by heavy traffic, wayposts and occasional defensive encampments. The Path itself stands out from its surroundings by its particular mixture of sickly, web-infested jungle trees and sticky red mud. The continuous procession of bakemono, Goblin Spiders, demons, akuma, emissaries, fugitives, slaves and others who traverse it make the difference more obvious yet. Scores of wagons, rikshaws and tanks travel at excruciatingly slow speeds in both directions through diseased and aggressive vegetation that constantly must be hacked or burned away.
Most of the length of the Path appears as thick jungle rising up out of rich red mud. The trees along the Path are gnarled and cankered, but when hacked down, they grow back at a rate fast enough to be witnessed by the naked eye. The vines strangling the trees are fibrous, sticky and thorned, and the flowers, while spectacularly beautiful, are poisonous to smell or touch. A reddish sun shines down on the path continuously, keeping the heat and humidity very high.
Luckily for the Kuei-jin, this sun is just a souvenir drawn from the fears of nuclear holocaust. It was much brighter in the '50s, almost insufferably so, but in the last decade it has begun to dim. It still casts more light than most of the denizens of the Path are comfortable with.
A traveler trying to get on the Path has to determine how best to navigate his way through the dangerous mass of thick trees and hostile insects without getting lost or eaten. While it may be tempting to try following one of the many "official" caravans of lost souls along the Path, such tactics are nearly impossible. The pitiless sun and extreme humidity generate mirages that can turn a traveler around entirely, even if it seems as though she's only feet behind her guide. Branches just hacked through drip caustic sap on anyone caught beneath them, and worst of all, the sap marks the poor individual it drips on as food or egg-host for the Path's enormous swarms of ants, hornets, mosquitoes, ticks and spiders.
Any traveler along the Scarlet Path who is not heavily imbalanced toward Yang seems dead in comparison to the rest of this realm, and the denizens of the Path respond accordingly. Enormous flies will seek lay eggs on a victim; once hatched, those eggs grow into boring maggots that tunnel throughout the traveler's flesh. Various lurid-colored fungi begin growing on the traveler's skin if not carefully watched for; left untended, such growths consume their victims within the space of a few days. If a traveler is imbalanced toward Yin, these horrors are intensified ten-fold. Few experiences could be more unpleasant or lethal for a follower of the Song of the Shadow Dharma than a trip along the Scarlet Path.
Any attempt to rest while on the Scarlet Path almost certainly ends unpleasantly. Hungry green shoots or tendrils, dripping with a sticky nectar that is both caustic and anesthetic, start groping toward bodies that remain at rest for more than a moment or two (Dexterity + Brawl, difficulty 5 to hit; Perception [difficulty 7] for a target to notice anything wrong while the sap erodes a health level per turn). The powerful anesthetic agent in the nectar prevents the victim from feeling anything as the vine slowly dissolves its target. Many fugitives, exhausted by their escape from Yomi, have rested a moment too long in the jungles of the Scarlet Path and never taken another step.
The creatures inhabiting the Path, both flora and fauna, tend to be spirits representing the worst nightmare images of the natural world. As a result, they are capable of completely unnatural behaviors; thus, a swarm of army ants, for example, deviate from their path in order to engage unwanted guests of the realm, roots pop up to trip careless travelers, and the gigantic phoenixes that swarm the skies above the Path take careful aim when they spit napalm on travelers below. In short, any way in which nature could have gone wrong has gone wrong — and all of the unpleasantness gets directed at any intruders.
The most common hazard encountered in the Goblin Jungle is the nation of goblins themselves. Goblins are nothing so much as a grab bag of human and animal features grafted onto a roughly humanoid frame; hideous mismatches are common occurrences. Worse yet, goblins possess a malevolent cunning that makes them terrible and persistent enemies. Goblins hunt for pleasure as much as for sustenance; they take great joy in terrifying, trapping and otherwise tormenting their prey before devouring it (preferably alive). It's all part of the sport for these twisted nature spirits.
The most malevolent and hated inhabitants of the Path, however, are the Kumo. The Goblin Jungle is used by the Hattar Goblin Spiders as breeding grounds. If the Kumo were to call any place a homeland, this would be it. Some Goblin Spiders have suggested, under extreme duress, that the Kumo make their lairs in the Goblin Jungle because it is there that they guard their queen until she can be freed from the stone in which she was imprisoned. That story, however, is only a rumor, and not a common one.
Kumo webs are so thick in some areas that passage through the miasma is extremely laborious and time-consuming, when it is possible at all. The Kumo seduce (or kidnap) appropriate breeding stock and bring their mates to the web-homes in the tallest trees along the Scarlet Path, commonly making deals as necessary with Yama Kings to allow free passage through Yomi or the Yang World. Most Yama Kings allow this passage, as the Kumo are some of their best soldiers; in exchange, the Kumo are responsible for hunting down unauthorized travelers along the Scarlet Path. This agreement works well for the spider demons, providing them with all the blood and Chi they might ever need.
While the nature of the Path assures that everything on it is defiled or at least imbalanced, it remains very much a living world, and living things, given time, can adapt to any environment. There are tiny enclaves along the Scarlet Path comprised of fugitives who have adapted to this malevolent environment. Called Crazy Monkeys, these lurkers in the shadows survive primarily by virtue of their hard-won knowledge of this liminal realm. They may occasionally attack small caravans (or other fugitives) to acquire needed goods like metal tools or cloth. Most official caravans, though, carry nothing more than the seem-
ingly endless reciprocal gifts of souls and innocent flesh exchanged between the Yama Kings and Maeljin Incarna.
Many of the Crazy Monkeys are originally from Southeast Asia, near the Golden Courts of the Penangallan, and more than a few have had experience with guerrilla warfare at some point in their existences. The Crazy Monkeys like to think that they are fighting a guerrilla war against the Yama Kings (or the demons of the West, or whoever they saw most recently before escaping to the Goblin Jungle) that may eventually weaken the demon lords enough to tip the balance against them. Mortals and shen of all types, especially hengeyokai and chi'n ta, as well as the occasional overzealous Shih, have been found in the ranks of the Crazy Monkeys, and they do their best to utilize their various arts and skills against demons without bringing down the full wrath of the Yama Kings.
Needless to say, most of the Crazy Monkeys are in fact crazy. Their hatred of the Yama Kings goes so far that they may remain in the Goblin Jungle even after they find a way back to the mortal world. While the Crazy Monkeys' idealism may be beyond question, their rationality is not. Any traveler seeking out the Crazy Monkeys had best be prepared to embark upon a nearly impossible quest in a thoroughly malevolent environment followed by an excruciating initiation— and that's if everything goes well. If things don't go well, the traveler had best be prepared to reach the end of his current incarnation in a spirit realm composed of the hatred,rage and pain of the ages. Paranoia, particularly as pertaining to spies of the Yama Kings, is one of the most common afflictions among the Crazy Monkeys.
The Scarlet Path has nearly unlimited surprises for the unwary traveler. From time to time, the thick red mud of the Path yields an intensely bright red or green gem. Yangstones, as these crystals are called, are common and have no value in Yomi or Malfeas, though they are highly coveted elsewhere. Lightning People, in particular, find them desirable for the mystic energies they contain. Carrying a yangstone gives its possessor a surge of self-confidence and a feeling of exhilaration. A single stone makes a traveler impatient and impetuous. More than one and she is rendered utterly manic. Those who bear multiple stones feel powerful, unstoppable and in extreme cases almost godlike, and don't hesitate to rush into ill-advised situations while under the stones' influence. Carrying three or more yangstones assures the traveler a fascinating series of visions, and the hallucinations caused by yangstones are always of a variety to push the carrier into unwise action at the worst possible moment.
Possession of a yangstone has led more than one Kuei-jin to commit Acts of Blindness. The Scarlet Path is home to many, many manic chih-mei wearing entire necklaces of yangstones, generally interspersed with finger bones, bits of scalp and teeth — all added for their aesthetic value.
Near its terminus in the Yang World, the Scarlet Path branches and twists like the roots of an enormous tree as it blends with the ten thousand realms of the Yang World. The primary trunk of the Path feeds directly into the gigantic Western hell called Malfeas. Myriad smaller branches feed into the Realm of Fighting Spirits, the Realm of Atrocities and the Realm of the Great Abyss. Many tiny alternative paths feed into other realms and zones of the Yang World. A very small minority of them are even said to wind up in such unpolluted realms as Shangri La and the Hollow Earth, but it is widely known that such hopeful tales are merely legend.
If the Scarlet Path were to connect to an unpolluted realm, however, that realm would surely have an immensely powerful guardian to keep demons from sweeping in like a storm surge and laying waste to all that stood in their way.
Sidebar: The Yang(Crystal) Method said:
The Ebon Road
THE EBON ROAD
The Ebon Road connects Yomi to the Yin World like a smooth black shard of bone; it links the Yomi World to the Dark Kingdoms of the Dead and is the sole means of direct passage between the two. Were it within his power to do so, the Jade Emperor would have destroyed the Ebon Road moments after it was created, but he can no more annihilate the Road than he can calm the winds of the Tempest. He has, however, done what damage to it he could, and his efforts have caused it to flicker. Now the Road flickers in and out like a flame in a breeze, and by its uncertain nature it keeps traffic to a minimum. Few souls can find the Road, fewer still know the secrets of traveling it.
Whether approaching from Yomi or from the Underworld that it connects to, the Ebon Road is impossible to find, or nearly so, without a clear understanding of the auspicious times and places for its manifestation. The Road is always extant somewhere, but rarely is it predictable in its appearance, and it is permeated with "not-there-ness." No standard map is capable of leading to it, and even great feats of magic can miss it unless the seeker is very knowledgeable about the exact nature of the Road. It is notable for its blackness in dark places and for its silence in quiet places, and composed of the cold, metallic substance of corrupt Yin.
Even those souls fortunate enough to find the Ebon Path out of Yomi are forced to traverse the Pit of Salt and Iron, ruled by the Yama King Wu Hua, or the Hell of Ti-tsang Wang. Should any intrepid souls manage to pass through those dark places, it is only to find themselves in the deepest reaches of the Grand Caverns of the Yin World, with Spectres and shifting Labyrinth walls. Travelers know this intuitively; they realize that there is no point to their journey, and that they may as well give up. Continuing is only a greater trauma, and going back the way they came simply returns them to the agonies of Yomi.
In truth, the Road's intended effect is to instill such a weariness in travelers that they give up and let the path drink the Chi from their souls. Thus does the Ebon Path insinuate itself into the minds of all but the strongest-willed who travel upon it. For this reason, the Ebon Path is sometimes called, "The Little Hell of Despair."
Being so difficult to find, the Path is not often used as a means of travel between Yomi and the Yin World. Only the Yama Kings and their greatest generals, who know the secrets of the dark road intimately, can travel with any regularity, and they're happy with the situation. While using the Scarlet Path as a trade route with the demons of the West is all well and good, making the carefully constructed Yomi World accessible to creatures obsessed with destruction and Oblivion is thought by even the most strongly Yin-aspected Yama Kings to be unwise.
No light shines along the Ebon Road. No sun, moon, stars or glowing fungi cast any sort of light, so any kind of illumination acts as a beacon to whatever travels along the Road — or scours it for prey.
The Ebon Road is made more difficult to traverse due to the fact that the road itself is as hard and slippery as black ice. Due to its extreme smoothness, only the most dexterous traveler can tread the Ebon Path without slipping. Wise travelers stay far from the edge; slipping off the edge of the Road and into the Tempest tends to be a final and fatal error. Should a traveler lose her balance and fall (a near certainty unless special measures are taken), the Road saps Chi from her; mere contact with the stuff of the road is enough to initiate the drain. The Road steals Yang Chi first, but inevitably draws forth all of its victims' vital energies. The amount of Chi a traveler loses in one fall depends on how hard she lands. Once a traveler has lost all her Chi, she can no longer move, and she stands, helpless yet horribly aware, as the centuries tick past. Freshly drained victims resemble statues skillfully carved from obsidian. The Road is littered with the eroding statues of those travelers who have suffered this fate. Eventually (as time is reckoned along the Road), Tempest winds and Spectral feet grind these remnants to dust which blows away into the Tempest. It is said that one or two of the Yama Kings enjoy decorating their hells with Ebon Road statuary, but no method has yet been devised whereby a traveler drained in this fashion can be restored to life.
The only creatures to travel the Ebon Road with any frequency are Spectres or the occasional Plasmic that somehow manages to wander onto the Road (or falls from the Tempest onto it). Spectres from the lower castes may find the Ebon Road an intriguing diversion from the Labyrinth's familiar terrors, and may not be in any rush to get back home.
There are a few creatures that exist on the Ebon Road and almost nowhere else. Perhaps the most frightening beings are the disturbing entities called the Unfaced Ones, though certain Yama Kings, notably Emma-o, have imported them to their own hells to use as watchdogs and packhounds. The Unfaced Ones are the rag-draped twisted wreckage of Spectres that have lingered too long on the Road.
Nothing shows beneath their tattered swaths, and they unfailingly wear masks that they've stolen, forged or snatched using dark powers of the Yin World. Despite their decrepit forms, the Unfaced Ones are incredibly fast and can pursue their prey for long distances at high speeds. It is not for their speed, however, and certainly not for their fighting prowess that such monsters are legendary. When the Unfaced Ones remove their masks, they expose the utter blackness of the Void that pulls their victim in like a strong riptide. When several Unfaced Ones unmask simultaneously, victims are ripped apart and sucked straight to Oblivion. Yin-aspected Yama Kings make frequent use of Unfaced Ones because their speed makes them good hunters, and the occasional direct sacrifice to Oblivion certainly doesn't hurt a Yama King's position in the Yin World. It is clear that the Unfaced Ones are Spectres of some ilk, but what brought them to the Ebon Road and what caused their unholy transformation is unknown. Certain scholars suspect that the answer can be found in their name, and that the Unfaced Ones are Spectres who have lost face through improper actions on behalf of the Yama Kings.
As a traveler gets closer to the world of ghosts, a great storm closes in around the Road. This is the Tempest of the Yellow Springs, and the intensity of the storm is one of the few ways in which a traveler can gauge his progress toward the Yin World.
Near its end, the Ebon Road divides into smaller twin paths. Should a traveler take the descending fork, she eventually finds herself in the Pit of Salt and Iron, which lies at the foot of the Road in the Yin World proper. The wails of the spirits and Kuei-jin impaled on the spires of Wu Hua's towers mix with the shifting Tempest winds to create a threnody that can be heard long before its source is visible.
Most wise travelers turn back at that point and attempt to take the other fork, only to discover that they seem to have lost their way. While it is possible to find the Ebon Road again by using whatever knowledge or technique got the traveler on the Path in the first place, doing so takes an intense search and a great deal of time — plenty of time for Wu Hua's servants to find stragglers. Once a traveler has been captured and aggressively interrogated by several echelons of Wu Hua's army, it is likely that her voice will be added to that of the other screaming souls impaled upon on the spires, and her travels will be at an end.
The other path slopes upward and deposits travelers on the slopes of the jagged mountain upon which Ti Yu, the Earth Prison of Ti-tsang Wang, is built. The path is heavily guarded by Yu Huang's servants and "demon jailers," and before long anyone taking this route stumbles into an impenetrable palisade of heavily armed guards. The travelers, having forfeited a "fair" trial, are sent on the long journey to Hell detailed on page 90 in Dark Kingdom of Jade.
Leaping from the edge of the Ebon Road before the Road splits sends a character spinning off into the Tempest, in all likelihood never to be heard from again (unless the character knows the Argos Arcanos, or there is some form of intervention). Leaping from the edge of the Ebon Road after the bifurcation sends the character into the Tempest as well, but the winds are notably weaker by that point, and instead of drifting the traveler falls a great distance while being buffeted by winds and hit by stray objects. After an indeterminate time in free fall (more than a second but less than a lifetime; time moves oddly on the borders of Yomi), the traveler comes to rest somewhere in the bowels of the Labyrinth, and must deal with its perils and pitfalls, (see Doomslayers: Into the Labyrinth for more information.)
While the Ebon Road is by no means an easy means of travel between Yomi and the Yin World, there are rumors of a handful of skilled operatives in the Yellow Springs who have tried to create a sort of "underground railroad" to free the imprisoned souls of loved ones from the Yama Kings. It seems unlikely that the Jade Emperor would allow such a thing, but he is not necessarily aware of everything that goes on in his Empire.
The Ebon Road connects Yomi to the Yin World like a smooth black shard of bone; it links the Yomi World to the Dark Kingdoms of the Dead and is the sole means of direct passage between the two. Were it within his power to do so, the Jade Emperor would have destroyed the Ebon Road moments after it was created, but he can no more annihilate the Road than he can calm the winds of the Tempest. He has, however, done what damage to it he could, and his efforts have caused it to flicker. Now the Road flickers in and out like a flame in a breeze, and by its uncertain nature it keeps traffic to a minimum. Few souls can find the Road, fewer still know the secrets of traveling it.
Whether approaching from Yomi or from the Underworld that it connects to, the Ebon Road is impossible to find, or nearly so, without a clear understanding of the auspicious times and places for its manifestation. The Road is always extant somewhere, but rarely is it predictable in its appearance, and it is permeated with "not-there-ness." No standard map is capable of leading to it, and even great feats of magic can miss it unless the seeker is very knowledgeable about the exact nature of the Road. It is notable for its blackness in dark places and for its silence in quiet places, and composed of the cold, metallic substance of corrupt Yin.
Even those souls fortunate enough to find the Ebon Path out of Yomi are forced to traverse the Pit of Salt and Iron, ruled by the Yama King Wu Hua, or the Hell of Ti-tsang Wang. Should any intrepid souls manage to pass through those dark places, it is only to find themselves in the deepest reaches of the Grand Caverns of the Yin World, with Spectres and shifting Labyrinth walls. Travelers know this intuitively; they realize that there is no point to their journey, and that they may as well give up. Continuing is only a greater trauma, and going back the way they came simply returns them to the agonies of Yomi.
In truth, the Road's intended effect is to instill such a weariness in travelers that they give up and let the path drink the Chi from their souls. Thus does the Ebon Path insinuate itself into the minds of all but the strongest-willed who travel upon it. For this reason, the Ebon Path is sometimes called, "The Little Hell of Despair."
Being so difficult to find, the Path is not often used as a means of travel between Yomi and the Yin World. Only the Yama Kings and their greatest generals, who know the secrets of the dark road intimately, can travel with any regularity, and they're happy with the situation. While using the Scarlet Path as a trade route with the demons of the West is all well and good, making the carefully constructed Yomi World accessible to creatures obsessed with destruction and Oblivion is thought by even the most strongly Yin-aspected Yama Kings to be unwise.
No light shines along the Ebon Road. No sun, moon, stars or glowing fungi cast any sort of light, so any kind of illumination acts as a beacon to whatever travels along the Road — or scours it for prey.
The Ebon Road is made more difficult to traverse due to the fact that the road itself is as hard and slippery as black ice. Due to its extreme smoothness, only the most dexterous traveler can tread the Ebon Path without slipping. Wise travelers stay far from the edge; slipping off the edge of the Road and into the Tempest tends to be a final and fatal error. Should a traveler lose her balance and fall (a near certainty unless special measures are taken), the Road saps Chi from her; mere contact with the stuff of the road is enough to initiate the drain. The Road steals Yang Chi first, but inevitably draws forth all of its victims' vital energies. The amount of Chi a traveler loses in one fall depends on how hard she lands. Once a traveler has lost all her Chi, she can no longer move, and she stands, helpless yet horribly aware, as the centuries tick past. Freshly drained victims resemble statues skillfully carved from obsidian. The Road is littered with the eroding statues of those travelers who have suffered this fate. Eventually (as time is reckoned along the Road), Tempest winds and Spectral feet grind these remnants to dust which blows away into the Tempest. It is said that one or two of the Yama Kings enjoy decorating their hells with Ebon Road statuary, but no method has yet been devised whereby a traveler drained in this fashion can be restored to life.
The only creatures to travel the Ebon Road with any frequency are Spectres or the occasional Plasmic that somehow manages to wander onto the Road (or falls from the Tempest onto it). Spectres from the lower castes may find the Ebon Road an intriguing diversion from the Labyrinth's familiar terrors, and may not be in any rush to get back home.
There are a few creatures that exist on the Ebon Road and almost nowhere else. Perhaps the most frightening beings are the disturbing entities called the Unfaced Ones, though certain Yama Kings, notably Emma-o, have imported them to their own hells to use as watchdogs and packhounds. The Unfaced Ones are the rag-draped twisted wreckage of Spectres that have lingered too long on the Road.
Nothing shows beneath their tattered swaths, and they unfailingly wear masks that they've stolen, forged or snatched using dark powers of the Yin World. Despite their decrepit forms, the Unfaced Ones are incredibly fast and can pursue their prey for long distances at high speeds. It is not for their speed, however, and certainly not for their fighting prowess that such monsters are legendary. When the Unfaced Ones remove their masks, they expose the utter blackness of the Void that pulls their victim in like a strong riptide. When several Unfaced Ones unmask simultaneously, victims are ripped apart and sucked straight to Oblivion. Yin-aspected Yama Kings make frequent use of Unfaced Ones because their speed makes them good hunters, and the occasional direct sacrifice to Oblivion certainly doesn't hurt a Yama King's position in the Yin World. It is clear that the Unfaced Ones are Spectres of some ilk, but what brought them to the Ebon Road and what caused their unholy transformation is unknown. Certain scholars suspect that the answer can be found in their name, and that the Unfaced Ones are Spectres who have lost face through improper actions on behalf of the Yama Kings.
As a traveler gets closer to the world of ghosts, a great storm closes in around the Road. This is the Tempest of the Yellow Springs, and the intensity of the storm is one of the few ways in which a traveler can gauge his progress toward the Yin World.
Near its end, the Ebon Road divides into smaller twin paths. Should a traveler take the descending fork, she eventually finds herself in the Pit of Salt and Iron, which lies at the foot of the Road in the Yin World proper. The wails of the spirits and Kuei-jin impaled on the spires of Wu Hua's towers mix with the shifting Tempest winds to create a threnody that can be heard long before its source is visible.
Most wise travelers turn back at that point and attempt to take the other fork, only to discover that they seem to have lost their way. While it is possible to find the Ebon Road again by using whatever knowledge or technique got the traveler on the Path in the first place, doing so takes an intense search and a great deal of time — plenty of time for Wu Hua's servants to find stragglers. Once a traveler has been captured and aggressively interrogated by several echelons of Wu Hua's army, it is likely that her voice will be added to that of the other screaming souls impaled upon on the spires, and her travels will be at an end.
The other path slopes upward and deposits travelers on the slopes of the jagged mountain upon which Ti Yu, the Earth Prison of Ti-tsang Wang, is built. The path is heavily guarded by Yu Huang's servants and "demon jailers," and before long anyone taking this route stumbles into an impenetrable palisade of heavily armed guards. The travelers, having forfeited a "fair" trial, are sent on the long journey to Hell detailed on page 90 in Dark Kingdom of Jade.
Leaping from the edge of the Ebon Road before the Road splits sends a character spinning off into the Tempest, in all likelihood never to be heard from again (unless the character knows the Argos Arcanos, or there is some form of intervention). Leaping from the edge of the Ebon Road after the bifurcation sends the character into the Tempest as well, but the winds are notably weaker by that point, and instead of drifting the traveler falls a great distance while being buffeted by winds and hit by stray objects. After an indeterminate time in free fall (more than a second but less than a lifetime; time moves oddly on the borders of Yomi), the traveler comes to rest somewhere in the bowels of the Labyrinth, and must deal with its perils and pitfalls, (see Doomslayers: Into the Labyrinth for more information.)
While the Ebon Road is by no means an easy means of travel between Yomi and the Yin World, there are rumors of a handful of skilled operatives in the Yellow Springs who have tried to create a sort of "underground railroad" to free the imprisoned souls of loved ones from the Yama Kings. It seems unlikely that the Jade Emperor would allow such a thing, but he is not necessarily aware of everything that goes on in his Empire.
Sidebar: The Slippery Slope said:
The Scarlet Path sees lots of traffic, of the sort that would make Molly want to out herself, and is actively monitored.
There's both environmental dangers and active hostiles on the road, to increase your chance of random encounters.
And its Yang-rich environment is explicitly called out as one of the worst environments for Bone Flower kuejin.
The Ebon Road has no light whatsoever, so you are travelling in pitch darkness.
If you put on a light, you make yourself a target. Its also pretty much impossible to walk; you need to fly, and if you stumble, the road itself will drain your chi/chi equivalent. If you fall off it, you fall into the abyss.
And there's sometimes Oblivion-wielding Spectres on it.
There's a significant chance of either calling attention to ourselves or burning Essence on a random encounter if we take either of these routes. I dont think its wise to increase the risk of giving Mikaboshi advance warning.
As for the infiltration? He's a Bone Flower.
He's sufficiently Yin-Aspected to count. Or people will just assume that he's a kuejin that owes Emma-O a debt he's paying off. Thats enough for the duration of an infiltration.
There's both environmental dangers and active hostiles on the road, to increase your chance of random encounters.
And its Yang-rich environment is explicitly called out as one of the worst environments for Bone Flower kuejin.
The Ebon Road has no light whatsoever, so you are travelling in pitch darkness.
If you put on a light, you make yourself a target. Its also pretty much impossible to walk; you need to fly, and if you stumble, the road itself will drain your chi/chi equivalent. If you fall off it, you fall into the abyss.
And there's sometimes Oblivion-wielding Spectres on it.
There's a significant chance of either calling attention to ourselves or burning Essence on a random encounter if we take either of these routes. I dont think its wise to increase the risk of giving Mikaboshi advance warning.
Or it could be that he used a yangstone to fix that. He's an elder, he has the resources.
As for the infiltration? He's a Bone Flower.
He's sufficiently Yin-Aspected to count. Or people will just assume that he's a kuejin that owes Emma-O a debt he's paying off. Thats enough for the duration of an infiltration.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So, that's… 54 successes all together. 57 if Lydia's rolling a Favored Attribute that lets her ignore 1s like we do on that roll.
Yeah, this is how you establish that you aren't someone to mess with. Time to re-teach the world why people used to be terrified of the Exalted.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
It's actually very exact wording. Just about impossible to walk. You can run, skip, fly or even skate. We likely will fly, but there are other options if you have good Yomi lore. It's actually in the lore you posted.
However with how Exalted can ignore 1s unlike just about anything else in WoD it's possible that Molly actually could simply walk the Ebony road. She certainly can if she activates her shaping defense. Which is a super flex. I don't think anyone has managed that.
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The fun part is that people can do the math.
And they'll note that it was three days between the events of Boston and this response. So they'll have to assume either
1)Molly or Summer had this on the shelf for...eventualities OR
2)This was a rush order
I dont know which is worse.
Like I said, no light source.
You dont want to run, skip or skate on something where stumbling costs you Chi and HLs, and tipping off the edge is Final Death.
Molly could fly and carry her teammates, but flying defeats the purpose of being in disguise as shikome and draws attention from any and everyone else on the Road.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
With how Exalted can ignore 1s unlike just about anything else in WoD it's possible that Molly actually could simply walk the Ebony road. She certainly can if she activates her shaping defense. Which is a super flex. I don't think anyone has managed that.
Edit: Forgot the first idea. It takes a real stretch to get any of her key skills to match walking checks. Maybe if she Sneaks along the road?
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We have a Subterfuge Excellency, so what's stopping us from like flying 1mm above the ground and pretending to walk or pratfall?
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Or just activating our shaping defense or environmental defense and walking normally because Exalted only interact with environmental dangers when they feel like it.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
@DragonParadox think that there is a missing bit here.
Fixed, thanks.
Dmol8
The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web
- Location
- Belgrade,Serbia
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Your argument would be a lot more compelling if it didn't come bundled with Kylo Ren's Protestant Scream Metal Rap Emo Track.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Still pretty sure that a plane is going to be shoot down.
[X] Take the Ebon path from the underworld, Nergui knows it well
This has the most plothooks:
1) The statues of the chi-tapped prisoners
2) The road itself
3) The Yin chi and underworld connection for Lydia to experience
Both Molly and Nergul can fly. Molly can disguise herself as Nergul's brother or something similar, and can carry Lydia and/or Lash if she insists on coming.
It's also less noticeable than other options.
This has the most plothooks:
1) The statues of the chi-tapped prisoners
2) The road itself
3) The Yin chi and underworld connection for Lydia to experience
Both Molly and Nergul can fly. Molly can disguise herself as Nergul's brother or something similar, and can carry Lydia and/or Lash if she insists on coming.
It's also less noticeable than other options.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Also Molly has never gotten a chance to use TLoF immunity to environmental effects yet. And the Ebon path is a
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- Location
- Brazil
I was convinced by uju's arguments and I want to end this arc soon, so I don't want to waste any more time on possible encounters and this option is the most direct for Wicked City and with the least possibility of wasting time on something else, unlike the other two.
[X] Take the Ebon path from the underworld, Nergui knows it well
I found it hilarious and the imagery interesting
And I couldnt find the other references of free dives off cargo aircraft that I'd thought of
We'd be burning Essence we're likely to need, even if we activated it only once. We'd be doing so blind as well, while most other denizens arent. We're running the risk of random encounters burning even more Essence before reaching the Wicked City, and the risk of random encounters there.
Get jumped here and tackled to the surface of the road, and we might enter a spiral that endangers the whole mission.
Molly isnt alone.
We have an elder Bone Flower along, and he has no intrinsic defence against the perils of the Ebon Road.
There is also a benefit to minimizing his exposure to this place, for his sake and the sake of others.
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Well, why do you think cargo aircraft will have less encounters than the other paths?
Can't exactly borrow the Congress Library's secret paths, because I doubt their stuff is proof against cyberdemons?
Because you can literally rent a private plane and jump out of the door over a city at night.
Open a Way and drop in.
No advance warning. No trek across a long supernatural pathway with random killers lurking.
The only energy spent is what it costs Nergui or Lydia to open a Way to the Wicked City.
If the city with the portal is in Asia, you take the additional step of having Nergui take you to the city in question using Tapestry; he's local, so he knows the lay of the land.
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Didn't we ambush Mikaboshi's goons following a similar strategy - what's different now that makes that unlikely to happen?
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
I feel like our plane getting shoot down counts as a encounter. The dark path is well dark. We might very well meet no one and any we do meet will be glad to avoid us. It is not a place for chitchat.
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