Remove ads

Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

Reader mode
Yog said:
"Kemmler made an abyssal version of dragonblooded" is more and more plausible of a theory, if Lydia had nightmares about this - that's pretty much Whispers background:

We might want and need to discuss it with Lydia. Maybe do some DNA analysis against dragonblooded for signs of shared ancestry.

You are probably right, but this part worries me:

The Tomb in the context of something that's under Underworld, which itself is under Shadowlands is almost certainly a temple-tomb of a Neverborn. In fact, it's almost certainly the temple-tomb of [Perfected Principle of Consumption].

Still, you are probably right - this was a cult meant to breach the tomb of their Neverborn master, only they got to eager and killed themselves off too quickly.

Anyway, we need to decide what to do now. Based on how successful we were at taunting Bob, it's fair to say that he probably didn't intend to let us down. It is still almost certainly a trap, but one we might want to spring. I want to ask a question using the current scene, but I am unsure what best to ask. My two options are:
1) What are Evil Bob's current plans
2) Complete schematics of this place
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Just because we see labels in Primordial doesn't mean we're actually there, just that someone knew the language and wrote it down. This being something like a cult to the Neverborn that got close enough to potentially have reached the remains of the Underworld would make knowing the language less surprising.

A motivational poster for evil's office space doesn't imply success at their aspirations.
 
BronzeTongue said:
Just because we see labels in Primordial doesn't mean we're actually there, just that someone knew the language and wrote it down. This being something like a cult to the Neverborn that got close enough to potentially have reached the remains of the Underworld would make knowing the language less surprising.

A motivational poster for evil's office space doesn't imply success at their aspirations.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Oh, don't misunderstand me, I agree with your reasoning. We are almost certainly still in the shadowland. The lowest part of the temple complex likely touches upon the Underworld (probably Black Ocean that was mentioned in the previous update), and they were trying to metaphysically drill down to the temple tomb. The writing on the staircase is likely both metaphysical / religious, and possibly a part of a ritual to make someone descending the stairs transition into NeverNever.

@DragonParadox is the text Old Realm, or outright Primordial? Can we tell (occult roll probbaly) if the writing/staircase is magical / part of magical ritual?
 
The worrying thing for me is that we know there is a hand in between the first Blampires and whatever powers of darkness are ultimately behind them.

That hand being Drakul.

I'd rather not mess with that one yet.
 
DragonParadox said:
OOC: I hope Evil Bob's manner of speech is still readable. I'm experimenting with making it sound a bit more authentic that just replacing the wh with vs as I did at the start of the quest.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I think parts like: "Alvays sinkink zey are the heartz of sinks" are getting confusing, because so many letters are getting replaced at the same time, and I'm not even sure what the last word is supposed to be. If it's "the hearts of sins", then things like letter "s" used as both a replacement earlier and in normal manner now adds confusion.

Also, adding extra letters in the middle of words ("Sphadow", "sphow") makes it harder to read than just replacing some letters. Plus it just doesn't look good.

I recommend sticking with just "v" and "z". Trying to convey accents phonetically in written English and doing it well is a lost cause anyway, so IMO you should aim for style over authenticity.

Not trying to tell you how to write, but it looked like you wanted feedback on that, so.
 
Last edited:
Iron Roby said:
I think parts like: "Alvays sinkink zey are the heartz of sinks" are getting confusing, because so many letters are getting replaced at the same time, and I'm not even sure what the last word is supposed to be. If it's "the hearts of sins", then things like letter "s" used as both a replacement earlier and in normal manner now adds confusion.

Also, adding extra letters in the middle of words ("Sphadow", "sphow") makes it harder to read than just replacing some letters. Plus it just doesn't look good.

I recommend sticking with just "v" and "z". Trying to convey accents phonetically in written English and doing it well is a lost cause anyway, so IMO you should aim for style over authenticity.

Not trying to tell you how to write, but it looked like you wanted feedback on that, so.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That's fine. I did look at some guides on how to render phonetics online but obviously those don't have feedback. 'Sinkink' is thinking for instance and sinks is things

Dialing down for later.
 
Just because we goaded b0b into making a mistake doesn't mean we should make one of our own by being hasty.

[X] Stay where you are, keep taunting the spirit
 
DragonParadox said:
I did look at some guides on how to render phonetics online but obviously those don't have feedback. 'Sinkink' is thinking for instance and sinks is things
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I think the trick is "does my brain immediately auto-correct this or not when reading?". It does, if you just replace a few single letters with very similar sounding single letters. But something like "sinks" is just too different from "things" for that mental auto-correction to work.
 
Last edited:
DragonParadox said:
Primordial, you saw Old Ream when you played Gateway with the fey and it was more derived then this.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Ok. Any hope it's Enochian instead of Primordial? Because there are only two language charms abyssals have native access to. The first is
Shroud Rendering Gesture (••••)
The Abyssal may tear open a brief rent in the skin of
reality, allowing her to pass through into the otherworlds.
System: Spend 1 Essence and roll Wits + Occult
against a difficulty of the local Shroud, Gauntlet, or
Banality rating. Success transports the character into
an otherworld of her choice: the Penumbra, the Shad-
owlands, or – if used at a Trod – the Near Dreaming.
By raising the difficulty by 1 (to a maximum of 9) and
spending 1 additional Essence per ally, the Abyssal can
also draw other willing characters into the otherworlds
with her. This Charm may also be used in reverse to
return to the material world.
The character also permanently gains the ability to
understand the language of spirits and to make herself
clearly understood by them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
And I don't think "language of spirits" is Primordial - we had this discussion earlier in the thread, if I recall correctly, and I think it was ruled to be a magical effect that flatly allowed spirits to understand us and us to understand them.

The second charm is Language Absorbing Method and has far, far worse implications:
Language Absorbing Method (•••)
As the Abyssal drinks someone's blood, so too she
gains their facility with language.
System: By drinking at least three health levels of
a person's blood, the Abyssal gains facility with one
language they knew for 24 hours. By drinking them to
death, she learns that language permanently.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Because in order to produce writing in Primordial an Abyssal would have had to drink the blood of a being that knew it. And "drank the blood of Fallen angels" is the best possibility here. Because the alternative is that they had access to a Neverborn enough to drink them. Or there was an Infernal with an SCCP analogue charm involved in this cult.
 
Yog said:
Oh, don't misunderstand me, I agree with your reasoning. We are almost certainly still in the shadowland. The lowest part of the temple complex likely touches upon the Underworld (probably Black Ocean that was mentioned in the previous update), and they were trying to metaphysically drill down to the temple tomb. The writing on the staircase is likely both metaphysical / religious, and possibly a part of a ritual to make someone descending the stairs transition into NeverNever.

@DragonParadox is the text Old Realm, or outright Primordial? Can we tell (occult roll probbaly) if the writing/staircase is magical / part of magical ritual?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
What I'm curious about here is how much of the old structure remains. The cosmology of the DF isn't really the same as that of exalted, and I don't think it's as simple as a copy paste.

We've been speculating that the Neverborn and the Outside are linked somehow and this place might be hint to the answer.
Yog said:
Ok. Any hope it's Enochian instead of Primordial? Because there are only two language charms abyssals have native access to. The first is

And I don't think "language of spirits" is Primordial - we had this discussion earlier in the thread, if I recall correctly, and I think it was ruled to be a magical effect that flatly allowed spirits to understand us and us to understand them.

The second charm is Language Absorbing Method and has far, far worse implications:

Because in order to produce writing in Primordial an Abyssal would have had to drink the blood of a being that knew it. And "drank the blood of Fallen angels" is the best possibility here. Because the alternative is that they had access to a Neverborn enough to drink them. Or there was an Infernal with an SCCP analogue charm involved in this cult.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Artemis1992 said:
My theory remains that Drakul is an ancient Abyssal who created the Blampires as a side-project.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's a language and we know that at least some big old factions have remains of older lore. It's just as possible that a very powerful Outsider led them to this place.

Also worth remembering that the Black Court wasn't a deliberate project of Drakul's. He had some way of making super minions that his kid watered down and made an organization from. Drakul lets them hang around, but doesn't seem to actually do anything with them in terms of executing a grand plan or even defending the greater power of the court beyond his immediate retainers.

That doesn't speak of a Celestial exalt with millennia to do whatever he wanted to me.


My crackpot theory is that Drakul was the output of this ritual and at the time of his creation he was something new, or at least a novel variation on an old idea:
DragonParadox said:
"I cannot think of any hand that could draw with ink so foul and not wither," your friend says. "But if it was withered already, not the replacement of the self, but slow infusion to color in the lines, teaching the dark how to pretend to be human."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

These guys were drilling into the Underworld, and I think they found something that was never human. Perhaps a fragment of a Neverborn sheared off as the ages changed, pieces of an unshaped Rakasha corrupted by them, or something even stranger.

Then these mad geniuses did something less like the opposite of an exaltation and more like the inverse of one.

Remember how the black feast worked and what Kemmler imitated to free Arawn?
DragonParadox said:
I mean think about how the mechanics work. You made the Black Feast, an obscure necromantic ritual that imitates whatever horror animates the Black Court go from 5 successes to 15, you made it twice again as effective than Arawn could using the remains of Katrina's prep. Freaking out is warranted... as is the notion that this is valuable and important
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
DragonParadox said:
"A god..." she trails off. "Not a death god, bound to one specific culture, empowered by the faith of his worshipers, but a god of death, drawing his power from all from all expressions of death which are not claimed, sorrow and lamentation, anger and acceptance. It's... well it's probably not very efficient or he would be far past the power of the likes of Capricorpus or Katrina to harm even though the Black Feast uses that very shared understanding of mortality." She pauses for a moment just absorbing it all. "Wait if he is not hunting necromancers at Mab's behest then why is he hunting the heirs of Kemmler."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I don't think this is literally an opening into one of their tombs, at least not a large one, or the white god would have done something already.

But I think they found something alien to humanity in all ways save having died a mortal death and used that to teach it to be more human.

Blampires then are a different application of the same process. The dark knows what a human is like, so you invite it into a person and it takes their shape. Which fits the religious goals of the cult and why they'd die early.
DragonParadox said:
"Priests lived here and embalmers though the language doesn't make a distinction between the words," Tiffany runs her hand just above the carved symbols curved like sickle blade. "If I were to hazard a guess, this was a society which believed that the truth of life was to die. That only in death could they be realized."

"Free from hunger and want," you say half to yourself, remembering the story Lydia had told before, but she can only shrug. What she told you is what she knows, the people of the Old Kingdom did not remember the builders of this complex as anything that a fading remnant withering among the sands.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The goal of whatever led them here was presumably to get the Neverborn fully free. The goal of the cultists was to ascend through death.

So they spend generations down here in the dark committing atrocities, and one way they make a breakthrough. The dark finally understands enough to take on a form as the thing we call Drakul.

At which point the cult had everything it wanted in hand, but not everything its masters wanted accomplished, and started to self destruct.

A key part of this is that Drakul isn't human and never was, since it's one of the few things we know about him form canon, nor was he aligned fully with the forces that set this in motion. Otherwise he wouldn't have taken a proper name and fucked off to Eastern Europe to have a biological child in exact opposition to the curses of an Abyssal and seeming goals of the entities at play here.
 
Anyway, need to vote, I guess.

[X] Use the current scene as a focus to learn the detailed structure of this place
-[X] If the stairs do not lead into a prepared trap, go down them
-[X] Else continue to engage Evil Bob
 
[X] Use the current scene as a focus to learn the detailed structure of this place
-[X] If the stairs do not lead into a prepared trap, go down them
-[X] Else continue to engage Evil Bob
 
Yog said:
Even adjusting for protagonist XP gaining rate, a 1000 year old Abyssal would be an elder monster who is likely plotting how to eat God with at least a 50% chance of succeeding.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yeah, the idea is more specifically an ancient Abyssal who doesn't give a fuck.

Who doesn't care to do the will of the Neverborn and end all life. Why would he, they have no hold over him other than minor inconvenience in the form of a greatly lessened Resonance.

Why would he want to be active, with great plans?
He could have tried ruling a culture or eating gods thousands of years ago and gotten bored of it.
You assume a certain level of ambition in the average Exalt, but that could have burned itself out millenia ago, and now he's just doing what he feels like and only hyperkills people getting in his way.

It's a bit like the Fey-Moms, semi-retirement but not even God himself can save the fool disturbing that retirement.
 
Artemis1992 said:
Yeah, the idea is more specifically an ancient Abyssal who doesn't give a fuck.

Who doesn't care to do the will of the Neverborn and end all life. Why would he, they have no hold over him other than minor inconvenience in the form of a greatly lessened Resonance.

Why would he want to be active, with great plans?
He could have tried ruling a culture or eating gods thousands of years ago and gotten bored of it.
You assume a certain level of ambition in the average Exalt, but that could have burned itself out millenia ago, and now he's just doing what he feels like and only hyperkills people getting in his way.

It's a bit like the Fey-Moms, semi-retirement but not even God himself can save the fool disturbing that retirement.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Things still loosely fit to canon outside of what we have evidence is different. Drakul was never anything human.

It's possible that's just been changed outright, but if it was then Drakul would be drowning in backlash right now. He has a real name instead of a title and a biological son by a mortal woman.

If he's anything exalted he'd fit more as a really high grade Liminal. The sequence of events here is alarmingly well aligned with how they work.

A faceless darkness from the Underworld that may or may not be a neverborn, mad attempts to subvert and invert the nature of death, a creation without a soul but filled to the brim with necrotic power, the works.

Blampires as a whole aren't, and I still think he's probably something less straightforward, but it given the situation some cursed variant of the patchwork people fits way better.
 
BronzeTongue said:
It's possible that's just been changed outright, but if it was then Drakul would be drowning in backlash right now. He has a real name instead of a title and a biological son by a mortal woman.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Have you actually read what backlash Abyssals get?

Shadows of Death are just some minor spookiness that an Abyssal would barely be bothered by if it had to exist in modern society, which Drakul doesn't.
And even the Nameless curse is small stuff.
Unable to banish your fangs, get some nightmares, be moderately weakened by light, have to make an easy willsave against holy stuff or vampire-repellents? All those are nothing.
Spectres becoming hostile because the Neverborn are angry at you? Even the maddest spectre can learn to fear any old Exalted more than distant masters. Nevermind one that had endless time to learn Necromancy.

I'd say for most of these Molly could easily find a solution, as a solid mid-level Exalt.
An ancient monster would laugh at such feeble attempts to dictate his actions, as certainly as Uriel would smile at an apprentice Wizard trying a Binding Circle on him.
 
Before going to sleep, the argument for going down the stairs is entirely "we rattled Evil Bob, we need to capitalize on that success he gave us". Does anyone have any better idea? If we are engaging him, then what's our angle? Are we trying to get his plans out of him? Trying to get him to come to us?
 
[X] Use the current scene as a focus to learn the detailed structure of this place
-[X] If the stairs do not lead into a prepared trap, go down them
-[X] Else continue to engage Evil Bob
 
[X] Use the current scene as a focus to learn the detailed structure of this place
-[X] If the stairs do not lead into a prepared trap, go down them
-[X] Else continue to engage Evil Bob

Works well enough.
 
Vote closed.
Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Jan 27, 2025 at 9:02 AM, finished with 36 posts and 5 votes.
  • [X] Use the current scene as a focus to learn the detailed structure of this place
    -[X] If the stairs do not lead into a prepared trap, go down them
    -[X] Else continue to engage Evil Bob
    [X] Stay where you are, keep taunting the spirit
Click to expand...
 
Remove ads
Arc 15 Post 48: In Dark Duat New
  • Threadmarks
    • In Dark Duat ​

    13th of March 2007 A.D.

    Is this a trap? you ask of the flowing ether and hear the answer screaming back

    A trap this be but not for thee, for all that walks and crawls and swims, for all that lives enforcing order from the soothing uniformity of entropy, the Heat Death of all things. A promise to still the clock's hands for thee so long as it runs out for others swifter. A shard of Hunger without end the glutton's soul to soothe.

    Am I not alive somehow?     you worry in reflex as the portals flows almost completely shut. Lydia and Tiffany are close enough, to step through and you're definitely fast enough to catch up Alas your Crown doesn't take follow up questions, but there is one who does, a voice within that's been here from the start.

    "You are no more a part of Shaped Creation than you choose to be Majesty Most Holy. The trap is set for those perish with the cruel caress of time which you do not."

    "Go!" In the flash of an instant you made your choice, grabbing onto Tiffany with your left hand and Lydia with your right you cross the first step and feel the frothing unreality of the Nevernever upon your skin even as the spirit shouts after you:

    "Embrace ze grave!"

    No sooner had that first fateful step been taken that you realize the path is far longer than it had seemed from above, a pageant of horrible dreams meander though the dark apertures of a ruined city, low and sand choked as though they feared raising their heads too far even before the shallow sunless sky above. Statues there were standing vigil upon the lost crossroads, but without face, roads lost to nightmare tempests of antiquity leaving but a narrow path that leads down and down and down. The slabs of black stone underfoot are not worn, fresh as if they had been laid yesterday in silent mockery of decrepitude all around.

    Below the ruined city was something that at first took on the guise of a natural cavern, though too vast to have ever existed on the earth filled with strange rounded edges and unnatural contortions of the stone.

    "I'd say don't look up, but it might hold some insight and if not it will at least spare you the startling," Tiffany squeezes your hand for attention

    So of course you look and learn the true shape of the 'cave' the three of you in a vast oval void in the stone crawling upon the knee of a mummified figure lying in a fetal position, a withered face set in an expression of mingled shame and terror looking down upon the traveler. He wears a crown, though in this gloom gold does not shine and his eyes... God his eyes. How a withered corpse can convey the fact that they had been torn out still living with a sharp implement you cannot say, but they do and only hollow blackness stares back at you.

    Down at the base of the giant's knee some macabre architect had carved steps into the dedicated flesh and a perfectly round hole such as worm or weevil might burrow into flesh.

    Weevils, Tiffany insists, do not burrow into living flesh.

    Maybe they don't on Earth, but Earth is far behind and only strange and deathly dreams ahead.

    "I could try to talk to him," Lydia offers. "I think he's still... well of course he's still here. I mean I think there's still a mind to know and a will to converse."

    "The path forward is literally though the corpus of the spirit petrified in place, I do not think it's wise to risk it shifting," Tiffany counters. "It's... nothing... shit, it's like I have no associations with this thing, I have to force myself to even make guesses and all of them sound as likely as any other. Whatever that is She really didn't want me or Harry knowing about it, though whether it's because it would be dangerous to her plans broadly or simply to Harry directly I can't say?"

    Lydia Essence 5/7
    Molly Essence 13/18

    What do you do?

    [] Lydia attempts to communicate with the mummified giant

    [] Ask another question (-1 Essence; The Urge does not refresh your essence here because you are not comparable with the Necrotic Essence)

    [] Keep going

    OOC: Enjoy.
     
  • New
  • Threadmarks
    • Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Remove ads
    Back
    Top