Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

[DragonParadox]

The White and the Green ​

25th of January 2007 A.D.

You regard the not-child for a moment, then smile, reaching back into your backpack for a water, the plastic oddly sticky under your fingers, drink. "You had my curiosity..." Note to self, bring a glass bottle next time. Not that you've ever drunk crude oil before, but this might be trying to become Texas Tea again from the nearness of the Mothers and you are not a fan. "Now you have my attention. Stakes?"

"A Tempering for Temperance," comes the answer, plainly spoken, or so at least it seems in this hour. To the Fair Folk of old, how old even you do not know, temperance is the Ring-Grace is the mechanism of being, the lines in which the soul and mind are colored, or as a wizard of the White Council might call it, a Name. One who knew that much but not more might then raise hue and cry about guest right being broken, but the she had said 'a' and not 'the', a wealth of meaning in a single sound. What has a Name but no need to communicate, no compassion to give, no valor to show, no will to express, a machine, made thing, an artifact.

"Such as will do no harm to my heart and soul," you elaborate. Not that you think she'd be so foolish as to ask for something directly harmful or repugnant to your morals, but it's good to lay these things on the table where the Fair Folk are concerned.

She nods... and the table before you becomes as three fields in miniature with an axis running through the middle: Palace Pillar and Pit one atop the other at the center, each field split into quadrants: Earth at the Center, Air to the North, Water to the West, Fire to the South and Wood to the East... and all around Moonsliver Ring.

Up to fifteen players can play at once, one per element per layer...

Armies of land, sea and air all are pieces, but so too are spies, diplomats, merchants, sorcerers and assassins, hinting at a world that could not be, obfuscated once by the the symbolic logic of the game itself and again by the whims of the ancient fey and yet for all of that the name of the place-and-time of which this board is a poor canvas comes to mind: Creation.

Opal steps to take command of the Center-East, the living world under the canopy of the great trees. Instinctively you reach for the command of the center before you realize that all the pieces there are willfully disordered, hard to disentangle without causing a cascade that will take out more than half of them. So instead you claim the north instead, tokens of strength of self-reliance, but also of stiffing tradition, isolation and melancholy. It is only once you had made the first move that you realize the game could be taken as an approximation of Winter versus Summer.

Probing attacks give way to traditional strategies, deep strikes to a doctrine of slow subversion, but she always proves too willy, or just a bit too quick, maybe just plain lucky. There are no dice, nor colored sticks not any other invocation of chance in Gateway, but unlike any game you have ever seen the sheer number of potential interactions brings forth emergent chaos. It's like this is real war, you marvel at the long dead mind that built this fey-remembered game. Even if you lose you'll have this... and you might well lose.

"What's going on," you hear Lydia ask worriedly only for Tiffany to shake her head.

"Do you really think whatever this is would have been considered cogent to the task of tempting Harry?"

"I don't know, maybe he' into competitive games," the girl counters defensively.

Still a little you see it, Opal is trying to orchestrate an entirely bloodless defeat, Blue Gambit and that leaves a Satrap open to corruption and another turned into the house of war, easily prodded into an excess of zeal in dealing with the traitor. The forest burns though not for long, cold winds blow, after them a glacial advance. Glacial in more ways that one way, granted. It is like playing against a swarm of wasps. more than once the fey girl manages to needle you into rash action —Rest in peace Elegant Fabric Merchant, sorry for putting you in the way of that landslide— but eventually you cross the Meridian of the Inevitable, the point in the game where playing more can only delay and not turn the tide.

You've never heard more giggling at losing in your life as she hands you your prize, the stone hollow in ways more than physical: "Good game! Would play again! thanks for calling on me Mother!"

It is only then that you realize Mother Summer is standing next to you with what might be the hundredth cup of water to pour on your head for all you've been keeping track of time. So you flush but bite back an apology. That's just guest right working as it should, no matter how grand the host.

Earned Dark Rider Essence-Attuned Artifact

"Well, I'm glad you are enjoying yourself dear," Years of familiarity with that tone almost has you flinch back from an anticipated attempt to pinch your cheeks, but no cheek pinching is forthcoming as she continues: "It was good for Bright Opal too, she hasn't been this springily in a long time."

When has she been anything but a bundle to mischief? you are tempted to ask, but she has already turned towards the door. "Come on now we have some brewing to do."

You had been expecting... well you are not sure what you were expecting, a cauldron over an open flame maybe? Instead she leads you to a polished stone bowl twenty five peaces across set between two stone pillars wrapped in moss and ivy. There's water already bubbling away inside by the heat of some underground flame. A far-cry from Helen's kitchen making Bane.

"Listen well now," Mother Summer begins, not really chiding, but with that certainty that only experience can bring. "There's five seasonings to this brew, best that you each stick to one, I'll handle the mixing."

Elements you realize, each of you three will have to align your contribution to one,m but which might that be?

[] Flame, that it be kindled bright and burn far

[] Air, that it would slip under any ward

[] Earth, as solid and unbreakable as the mountains

[] Wood, Virulent and ever-changing

[] Water, Eroding all certainties

OOC: Congratulations you are now the owner of a genuine Age of Legends artifact. It takes motes to attune, though how many she cannot tell at a touch.

 

[DragonParadox]

Brewing Hope ​

25th of January 2007 A.D.

The turn of the Mother's ladle sounds like summer rains, the calls of distant frogs echoing in the patter, it smells hot and humid like the shadow under the endless green of the tropical canopy. Water, wine-dark sea the sailors fear and yet adore, first residence of the Eternal Being, the underlying principle and foundation of this universe, of all the the elements it most readily sings the songs of Chaos in raging storms and whispered laments. To this spell there are no words, for what need has the current of heralds as it undermines even the deepest of foundations, digging at the roots of things. Ninety three times and half again she stirs the waters in the cauldron frothing, once for every days of summer.

When the last turn is almost done look to Tiffany, an Angel's shadow raised to light, expecting now's the time for air to say it's piece, instead she motions back to you. The elements aren't meant to turn smoothly within, but by their conflict spark great change. With words not prayer, not spell but dance and song of a place far off and infinitely close you pluck a spark from your roaring anima, made solid by the place and hour and cast into the swirling waters. At once they boil, rage in steam, a nacreous green that has no name in any living human tongue and yet which all the tribes of the Eastern Jungles know, the storms are here, the harvest close.

It is through those clouds that Tiffany now flies on silver wings that cut like knives. Is it raining mercury or ice, part of you wonders ever curious yet when you reach out to touch a drop you find in your hand a number, not scribbled on stone, drawn in smoke or inked in water, part of an Enochean formula these standing stones have never heard before.

The substance in the cauldron now bubbles fit to make its escape before Lydia starts adding ingredients: all kinds of things of animal vegetable and mineral that had appeared as if by magic, well of course it's magic, by her side. A few still catch your eye: there's a serpent's skin that shines like gold and emeralds yet makes not a sign passing through Lydia's hands, grave dust from the urns of one thousand and one doomed to the Wicked City, each one with a name upon it sought by industrious fey, computer chips you're shocked to see, all used and worn near to breaking, though still just working you intuit. It is at some point halfway though the divesting of a pair of vinyl records bearing songs nowhere else recalled now forever part of hope that you look down and see the potion had taken an almost tar-like substance, black and inky, but shimmering with countless colors across its skin.

Mother Summer snorts and starts to stir not around but in figure eight, or perhaps infinity from the tar now making clumps and lumps pieces of crumbling black: soil ready for planting. She spits a small green seed onto the circle of soil, a few moments later the rest of you watch as it wiggles itself into the ground now not he least liquid.

A moment passes in silence, two, then a small silver-white flower peeks its head though the loam, its head is as a star, silver white, its leaves dark green like a water lily and its smell like nothing on Earth like the unexpected joy of hearing your favorite song on the radio on a long drive, or school being out for the holidays.

"There you go dearie, the pollen inside that's the ticket, it will spread swift as you like, a plague among he doomed, on the head of their goaler be all the ills it brings," says the the fey brewer with a smile that reminds one: while winters might be cruel Summer's darker gifts last longest. That thought in mind you pick up the flower with a pinch of soil and carve it a quick stone bowl to take with you.

Gained Hope Plague. ​

"Uhm..." Lydia clearly has to resist an urge to raise a hand to which you can only sympathize. "Is there something else we have to do or...?"

"Ah," Mother Summer shakes her head with a smile. "Always easy to lose time brewing. You be careful out there youngsters..."

Lash does not roll her eyes, she would never be so gouache, but if you can read the shift of her shoulders offs are the Mother can here in the heart of her power. She repeats: "Youngsters."

Before things can get anymore heated you offer your arm to lead Mother Summer back inside and onto her seat, though Mother Winter does not need any help getting up.

Your guide again in child-guise, though even harder to mistake for one, the three of you bid courteous farewell to the Mothers and head off again. Intead of taking the path through the strange garden Opal leads you instead to an ivy-shrouded Way that opens under a misty arch, the road to Avalon. You are not sure if you are disappointed or relieved to be spared more sights of deep faerie but either way you are glad that you do not have to interact with the Court beyond a worried Lilly. She wants to make sure you made out of meeting the Mothers in Winter in one piece, even though she can't say so in so many words.

***​

28th of January 2007 A.D.

Speaking of things one can't say straight out you are gad to see Lilly looking a lot more anchored than when last you met, even firm enough to take over the task of guiding you back to Chicago.

Essence Restored to 15/15 (3 Days spent in the Nevernever Ritual-casting)

Though you are back in reality you can't stay long. How do you want to enter the Wicked City?

[] Take the Scarlet Path, from Faerie, the easiest to find and the most secure, but also an obvious point of attack into Yomi

[] Take the Ebon path from the underworld, Nergui knows it well

[] Translate directly from urban sprawl into the Wicked City, the most magically direct, but it will require you getting on a plane, Chicago does not have any connections

[] Write in

OOC: Managed it. Hope this works, it is pretty late so it might have some (more) errors.

 

[DragonParadox]

That Souls Might Skate and Wings Might Lie ​

28th of January 2007 A.D.

It Hell is a noun, the Absence of God, then the Ebon Road is a verb, the Act of Unclean Feasting. From malicious ghosts and dream eaters, to the Vampires of the Jade Court and the Black the world is filled with all manner of beings once living that now feed upon the dead. When Lydia clears her throat, likely to explain that the Black Court might be of Death they are not the souls of the Dead the old warrior shakes his head. It does not matter he insists, as Below so Above. "The Road is metal and bone and hunger..." a smile touches his bloodless lips. "The Road is a simple thing with no mind to guide it, easily circumvented."

Perfectly in time his 'equine' raises an elegant foot, allowing you to see the steel hoof sharp at the edge like a blade... like a skate. You don't even try to stop the surprised laugh at the sight.

"How does that work though?" Lydia frowns, "I mean horses aren't..."

In response the spirit practically blurs across the street outside the Chicago Synthetics warehouse, moving with speed and grace no equine of flesh and blood could match, while also slicing the concrete in the process, not that anyone beside the fourt of you were looking. Harry had told you of how most people don't want to believe in spirits and magic, but in the case of the spirit horse it is rather more direct meddling. People subconsciously expect souls to be inside bodies, so though long practice it had learned to encourage them to think that it is. The fact that over the last hundred years it had become even more uncommon to see horses on the streets of major cities had only haped.

"I can make the two of us wings," Tiffany cuts in eyeing up Lydia's shoulders as if considering of she's more bird, bat or buterfly. "Faster than learning how to skate and safer as well."

"It is as you say Lady Broken Mirror," the elder agrees with the precise formality of one who has met several Incarnate beings and survived to tell the tale. The name had sounded strange at first, but that is an artifact of being spoken in English you suspect. It feels balanced between truth and flattery in such a way that the speaker cannot be accused of a surfeit of either.

"My Hands will not have any trouble walking on the road," Lydia picks up the conversation, on much firmer ground now. "They have no mind, no self to feed upon and they can follow me by instinct as the needle knows North."

"Wings are going to be hard to hide once we make it to the City though," you muse aloud. "Can you make them look like something he would craft."

Lash makes a face, but nods, but Nergui isn't quite done. "Craft instead in the likeness of the demon shintai in which are woven those sworn to Kakuri-Wan. Let the False Star atop his tower of steel think that this is only the work of his rival even should we be spotted by the least of his servants."

"That is going to take Tiffany the rest of the day I think..." you glance at the Fallen Angel, not wanting to give away that her limitation is how much Faith she can gather and hold to herself. "How do we find the Road? Where does it start?"

"A place of hunger, consumption and death. The Way will be short..."

***​

29th of January 2007 A.D.

That is how you find yourselves standing outside the empty lakefront property that still you know hid ash under the snow, the place that had held the Velvet Room before Harry had burned it that fateful night, where history was made and before that who knows how many had sacrificed their blood their freedom and at last their lives for the ecstasy of a vampire's kiss. Lydia and Tiffany are both bundled up more than the weather alone would account for, the crumpled forms of false wings growing from their backs.

What do you take with you on the journey to the Wicked City?

[] Just Lydia's Hands

[] A bit of Sanctuary Tech would not hurt
-[] Write in

[] Write in

OOC: This is not something you are doing from one minute to the next here, more what you prepend in the last day. I placed the vote here to maintain momentum instead of having Molly putter around her palace. At the same time I wanted to give you guys a chance to use your resources since I know that was a concern. Hopefully the compromise works out.

 

[DragonParadox]

What Passes in the Dark ​

28th of January 2007 A.D.

As Nergui pulls you through the curtain torn in the air you find yourself not in the spectral fire, an echo of when the mansion and indeed Bianca's Velvet Room, met their end, but flooding. The waters of the lake, tainted grey with soot and ash flow among half ruined rooms open to an ever-darkening, never-pitch-black sky. The dead are silent here, silhouettes greyer still, Pompey on Lake Michigan save once in a while out of the corner of your eyes you can see one fleeing from a fire they can't escape.They aren't really here of course, just memories barely enough to leave a cold spot on the other side. It seems a poor place to look for an entrance into hell... at least until Nergui forces a door open to what must have been the staff quarters, the wood groaning like a man in pain, only to leave behind a portal of pitch darkness and the sound of labored breathing.

Of course the worst of the predation wouldn't have happened in the mistress' chambers or her office. No matter the true nature of the Red Court most of them still think of themselves as human, they have favorites kept around for their skills or even just for their company and then there's the rest...

What must initially have been cheap pine beds barely long and wide enough for an adult their sheets oft stained red in hurried feeding now pulse like fleshy sacks contained by the box of the bed frame in a grotesque caricature of living, human hearts pulled from their chests. Yet it is not these mementos of atrocity you are here to find, instead Nergui carefully lowers himself into the water and shimmies under one of the nearest bed.

To all the place you enter dark would be like calling Arctis Tor cold, the blackness is all encompassing, suffocating not with claustrophobia as the mind might is primed to expect, but sheer emptiness. The sound of breathing, which above had only been the backdrop to the horror done in that house now grows comforting. Lydia and Tiffany are both right behind you. Alas your guide has no breath. He makes do with slow rhythmic clapping that seamlessly transitions into the sound of hooves on hard-packed barren soil, the sound itself seeming to lend texture to the substrate.

No sooner had you gotten used to walking on it that the found starts sloaping sharply upwards only to open into pits at least as deep as you are tall though every time the sound of the horse hooves breaking off warn you of what's about to happen. At one point you do have to go all the way around the rim of the pit and find that it is circular, a crater.

"Ooh..." Lydia breaks the silence, voice faint even over the communicator. "What's...?" Anoyance shifts to pity. "Careful not to disturb them, it probably won't do anything, but you never know."

Before you can ask what 'they' are your own foot hits something rounded and smooth about as five or six inches. A skull you realize at once and a few moments that it is not just one or two of them, but thousands, tens of thousands. For the first time since the four of you entered the layer you clearly are not alone. Things scurry in the dark, the sound of bone grating on stone.

"Scavengers, leave them," Nergui's voice floats back between the hoof-beats.

So for a while you walk, one hand on the pummel of your sword. Then the sounds stop, not slowly fading as they might if you simply walked away from the group of necrophages, but cut off sharply, like a wall of lead had fallen between them and you.

"We have arrived," there is something all too portentous about that voice, though not near as much as the soft screech as equine skates make contact with something at least pretending to be metal. "Do not trust the Road. Do not discount the Road. Accept that it is but do not accept it within you."

As you take flight you hear the whisper of wings unfurling, feathered you think, crow's wings then. Shikome often take some part of the carrion bird within them, deluding themselves that they are not merely tormenting the damned, but in some way assuring the spiritual hygiene of the world. The illusion passes of course, but the marks upon the inner demon remain, mocking their previous naivete for eternity.

Lost 2 Essence -> Now at 13/15 (By Rage Recast and Hellscry Chakra)

Along the seemingly endless descent, whose sharp and unexpected turns do not seem to do more than add to the blur of the straight paths you consider what you had learned of the target of your raid. Perdition's Edge is clings to a spit of stone overlooking one of the Rifts like a enormous spider of iron and steel. Construction had begun when steam was still king and the telegraph the height of speedy communication. While the latter had been retrofired with broadband and communication lasers the power source had remained the same coal powered behemoth that swallowed vast amounts of Yin-touched rock into furnaces alight with the stolen passions of the damned, its oily smoke the perfect commingling of essence to mark the Wicked City and thus pumped throughout the Hell by the complex array of ducts and vents that had long ago replaced any semblance of natural wind.

It had seemed like Providence to find both Joe Magarac's prison and a perfect vector for the Hope Plague in the same place, and you are certainly not withdrawing your thanks to God over it, but it does make sense, the Rifts hold the most potent Essence in all of Yomi so any Yama King would want to dig their stamp as deeply as they can into them and then make sure that power flows far and wide. And if one is in the possession of a spirit of industry and productivity, what better place than that to make productive?

Alas the eyes in your Crown do not linger upon faces enough to simply pluck the identities of researchers who work at Perdition's Edge out of the ether. But you do know the name of one who would fit your purposes: Hunger-Weighing-Harbinger who is in London for a symposium. He likes keep up on the latest mortal research in pediatric nutrition. Somehow even the life-sucking presence of the Road still beneath you is not as chilling as that remembered implication. Putting that aside far, far aside, there's a job to do, if you can pull his face out of one of the networks in the Wicked City without being detected it would give you unparalleled access.

Ahead you hear Nergui swerve though you do not feel the energies of the Road shift that way drawing your attention to a shape seemingly carved of the same black ice as the Road itself and thus you are able to make out his contours with some effort. He had apparently had the same idea with the skates as Nergui, but he had fallen, or more likely something had pushed him over.

Morbidly curious you reach out to touch the back of his head. Metal/Bone/Ice. You snatch back your hand before it can claim any of your Essence in the process touching the familiar fabric of a ballistic jacket. He's only been here years not decades or centuries. The cutting winds of the Deadlands eventually grind all those so lost to dust, less than memory. What had driven him to try to reach Yomi alone you wonder? A search for answers only the dead know? A loved one still suffering under the whip of the Yama Kings?

If you but ask it would be revealed.

Behind you Lydia too stops, her own question half whispered. "If I called you would you rise?"

"Only if you were to mighty as the move the Road entire to our will," you answer, the knowledge just now coming to you. "All whom it consumed are stretched out along it like piano wire, unresting, blind agony."

"No," she answers almost as if in a daze. "Not blind, there is something there whispering to itself in the dark, never quiet, never still, if I called something would answer, it knows me as I know it. Thief it is and I the guardian." The weight of those words is more than anger, it is essence, a dangerous truth.

Lydia loses 1 Essence -> Talisman now at 1/2 (Intelligence Excellency)

You Regain 2 Essence > Now at 15/15 (Urge of the Forbidden)

"Thief it may have been once," Tiffany corrects drawing close. "Here and now it is more harvester of the lost. You are not strong enough, all of us together are not strong enough!"

"To pull away one soul?" Lydia challenges sharply and in a way you are glad to hear it. The Road is not something to be communed with.

"If we are found we could fail, we could die, we could lose the package all so you could be said to have rescued one soul already twice damned."

That... that had been the wrong thing for Tiffany to say. You can hear Lydia's breathing quicken with anger and then settle in resolve. "It's not just about one soul, I want to know what this is, why does it sound like chalk on a blackboard, like ants under my skin. I need to know. If something... something bad happens you can just go ahead..."

"Sure, we'll just let you deal with the cosmic abomination that eats souls, which you just informed us is sentient," you say with the kind of casual peppiness one would use when dropping someone off at the mall. "Look if you want to figure out what this thing is and how it works I'm hardly one to argue against it, given some of the things I've pocked, but do you know one thing that constantly went through my head as I was flying by the seat of my pants: 'Man, I wish I had something other than my pants to hang on to right now!' "

"I..." you hear her deflate. "You're right, we can deal with this later, once our quest is..." She never gets to finish her sentence as a howl rends the air, mournful-cruel, then another and another.

You lose 1 Essence -> Now at 14/15 (Empathy Excellency)

"Unfaced!" Nergui cries wheeling in place to look back along the road.

What do you do?

[] Try to outrun them
Nergui's 'horse' is three times faster than any mortal equine and you can more than match it, pick up Lydia and Tiffany and go

[] Stand and fight
The last thing you need is to be caught between these things and the servants of the Yama kings
-[] Try to keep up the pretense of being Shikome
The last thing you need is news of your coming to preceded you into Yomi
-[] Destroy them as fast as you can
If you do not leave any witnesses there is no one to report

OOC: Welp that was a long one. Hope you guys enjoy.

 

[DragonParadox]

Swift Steel Hooves ​

28th of January 2007 A.D.

Hands in the darkness unseen you pick up Tiffany and Lydia and all of Lydia's puppets, essence wrapping around lacquered wooden frames, easy as breathing and you run. The chill breath of the underworld does not slow you but drives you on, your power in emptiness only growing. Below you can 'see' the old warrior a shadow-almost-bright against the deeper darkness of the Road, his head lowered until he almost seems to be whispering into the ear of his other self, swift as the night wind. But hunger drives them even faster, howling pain or laughter or both, Joy-in-Anguish, the word comes to you in that other tongue, the First Tongue as you see the first glimpse of light since you had passed out of the Velvet Room. It is a reflection, cold light that isn't there off a mask of tarnished silver. Once it had been a kitsune, but the ancient markings had long been worn down replaced with blacked tear streaks, a final mockery of the husk that wears it.

Lost 1 Essence -> Now at 13/15 (MHM)

More run beside it, like a wolf-pack running down prey, all wearing the ruined visages of the hengeyokai cast in silver, the worlds' guardians turned feral hunting beasts of Yomi. Some are running along the road itself, hunting Nergui, others flying high meaning to tear into the three of you or maybe dive and pin to its icy surface. Dead they are and yet the Road does not consume them.

A whicker ahead adds to the din, Nergui's Sülde-soul pushed at last beyond itself, eyes like marsh-lights glimmer and it becomes as wind through the grasses, as fast as you are on aloft and likely even faster without burning essence in flight. Swift are the hounds of hell, but not yet that swift or that many.

Spirit Horse spends 1 Willpower -> Now at 5/6 (Alacrity)

The pace slows again, from impossible to merely inhuman, the howls of the Unfaced to not return instead after an uncountable while you hear from up ahead a roaring of wind and the crash of orphan thunder for there is still no light. That you know is the Maelstrom, the ragged edge of hell that depending on one's philosophical bent is either a an immune response, like a blister in the fabric of the Spirit World or the racing edge of a wildfire that will consume all the Otherlands.

At the moment you are more interested in what comes after, the passage into Hell. Most who walk the Ebon Road find themselves in either the Wo Hua's Hell of Salt and Iron simply because one expects that a ladder would be grounded in the most solid element, as much as the realms of Yomi could be said to have such things, but the Road is not a thing which singular in time and place, where there is deepest darkness it is, just as those who feast upon the lives of the living dwell away from the light of the sun. Hence why it is often used in raids by the Yama Kings one upon another.

In the sound of the storm, faint and far off can now be heard the roar of heavy machinery, even though the ribbon of blackness does not appear to have bent or split driving ever onward into the heart of night without hope of day.

"We will likely emerge somewhere in Undertown near the fortress, wherever the 'flood lights' have failed or they have never been set to begin with, the victims of graft greed and ill-management..."

"Even in Hell," you grumble into the coms followed by a knowing laugh from Lash.

"We must find sturdier shelter as soon as we are on the other side," Nergui continues, seemingly unshaken by encountering the horrors of the Road. How many times had he ridden this way before in his long centuries you wonder since he had first escaped from Yomi? "Given the young one's Hands it would be swiftest to compel one of the ragged ilk of the Undertwon to provide for us."

"I don't know... what's going to happen to them after?" Lydia asks guiltily even as the sound of trills carving into bone grows louder and louder.

"Agony is their fate now, their fate it shall remain no matter what we make of them. Such is Yomi." The Wan Kuei's answer could not even be called callous, from his lips it is a mere statement of fact.

"I might be able just hack into the network and get us some kind of pass. Wood is an odd aesthetic to be sure, but not unheard of," you muse. that will cost your Essence

As you emerge in the Wicked City how do you find shelter to operate from?

[] Nergui uses Obligation on the nearest denizens to grant you entrance

[] Clippy tries her hand at hacking without network support (Intelligence+Computers 8 Dice at DC 8)

[] Molly uses TTC to hack in herself so as not to risk Clippy (Costs 1 Essence; Roll Intelligence+Computers Base DC 8; TLF and BSM. Final roll 6 Dice DC 4)

[] Write in

OOC: You may note I did change what the Unfaced are, that is because there is no vast grey underworld in Dresdenverse which means that hordes of Specters are not something that can be just assumed to be around of which the Unfaced are simply one more strange and powerful breed. These are hengeyokai who must have come to a very unpleasant end and become... what you see. If you want to know more you'd have to catch one and pry off their mask.

 

[DragonParadox]

Turning the Screw ​

28th of January 2007 A.D.

The first thing you notice is the smell, a mix of acrid chemicals, human waste and under it all just the faintest whiff of charnel smell then the sound calling to mind the sound of a distant jet engine, but from the inside somehow, digging into the back of the skull like a dentist's drill. Instinctively you try to land, literally ground yourself only to end up in an awkward hop as the 'ground' proves to be a mess of tangled wires and contorted pipes sloping inwards into a crater with something unpleasant slopping at the bottom.

Boiling Sea Mastery -1 DC

Trying to blink away the smog makes the buzzing worse, covering your ears makes your tongue taste like something had drank bleach and died on it, breathing through your nose makes your eyes water. And yet somehow... breathing deep... you've never felt more alive. You can feel the bars of the cage all around, space bent, time broken trying to bind and to keep. 'Never' and 'forever' circle like carrion birds about the fate of the damned. Once upon a dream you had flown with them.

All Is Poison: All characters take +1 DC to all rolls
Hell is Forever...
Cracked Cell Circumvention -3 to All DCs to Escape
Hell is Lonely...
Transcendent Lord of Flies -3 to All DCs to Help Your Companions Escape

Gingerly setting the Tiffany and Lydia down you follow Nergui up past the lip of the crater to find yourself to find yourself between a long, low structure, what might once have been a villa of some kind, now long since stained by time and half-looted, hollow windows starting up at the noxious grey-green sky like gaping cavities and a pile, a mountain of poorly build shanty houses, each raised atop the other though not in any order, but slanted at an angle as though each one is attempting to devour each other, to be king of the refuse heap. Yet looking up further...

"Tensile strength and compresbility are more what you call guidelines than actual rules," Tiffany jokes tilting her head. Above the slumping hill of misery rises a skyscraper reselling a twisted stack of bolts literally being driven into a 'structure' that does not look like it should be able to support its own weight much less that behemoth. Alas simple incredulity does not last long The top of that building twists in an arch, reaching across to embrace another tower crowned with countless thin fingers of steel, lightning rods. Upon each one there is chained a figure, clearly human, just as clearly in agony as the bolts come down.

Spoiler: Semblance of Cities

The darkness that had allowed you passage fades as globular lights, blisters of plastic and glass flare into sudden incandescence a few dozen feet down the madly zigzagging street lighting up to the crater, but by then the four of you are already gone simply flinging yourselves upwards until you reach the tenth floor and slipping through a window opened with a touch. Tools cables like serpents retract from your fingers... sated. The buildings security algorithms barely put up a fight and why would they, you are clearly stronger and strength is the law of the Wicked City as much as the will of its master.

Lost 1 Willpower -> Now at 8/9 (TTC)

"May he come to regret it..." you murmur under your breath to which Lydia adds, words seemingly not made for English: "Rue the day and remember the Hour."

The office you find yourselves in is empty, abandoned to the mold that's growing freely over walls that might once have been a shade of corporate beige, but is now more like coffee-puke brown. The door for some reason angles upward, an enormous metal slide that reminds one uncomfortably of a trash compactor, but there's still a computer on the desk. Perfect, I can just get some more up to date information before we move on Perdition's Edge.

Lydia screams, not in pain or fear, a small scream of pure disgust and horror.... she points at the tangle of wires behind the monitor. The 'tower' is not all plastic and steel, replacing one corner of it is a human spine, with a skull still clinging to pieces of flesh wired in. An old fashioned telephone cable allows one to lift it if it is so desired and you know instinctively that is what strands of a web camera here and also likely the previous occupant of the office.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," your friend says, embarrassed at her reaction, even as she can't take her eyes off the horror that had been made of the soul. It's hard to say if it's better or worse than the road. Maybe it's just beyond the point where such words have meaning.

Reading through the security briefs, management-eyes-only-of-course, you discover this part of the City is on Code OCHRE Readiness, which means that Wardens are authorized to summon Undertown resources into the upper levels as well as the 'usual' drone swarms and injector hounds. Included are instructions on how a trespasser should present one's self for termination to a Falcon Drone so as to avoid its more excruciating cousins.

Of more direct use is the picture of Hunger-Weighing-Harbinger of high enough fidelity that you can take up the Akuma's steel threaded suit and strangely locust eyes above an uncannily simple old-fashioned mustache, a reminder there used to be a person under there. HWH can be counted among the Greater Akuma, which is good because you do not think you could even pass for the lesser essence singing in your veins as it does. The trouble is you are not sure how long the others can hide out out here and...

"Careful you don't bite off more than you can chew," Tiffany guesses what you are about to propose. "Just because you feel like a million dollars doesn't mean there isn't a thousand stacks of a thousand in there and by that I mean demons and drones."

"There is a reason all of us came disguised after all," Lydia flutters her wings for emphases. "We are close enough thanks to the Ancient One that we can just fly to the fortress, look you can see it out this window..."

What do you do?

[] Try to infiltrate Perdition's Edge in the guise of an Akuma before starting the raid in earnest

[] You know where Joe Magarac is, where the plague should be triggered, fly in now and trust to the Shikome disguises to carry you
-[] Split up so that you can do both objectives at once
-[] Do the objectives sequentially, with the understanding that even with the worst possible reaction time from the Wardens you will have to deal with outside security

[] Write in

OOC: Congrats you are operating on a standing -6 to DC which means Molly has never been more at home anywhere... and it is hell.

 

[DragonParadox]

To Wager Against Perdition ​

28th of January 2007 A.D.

In the end, reluctantly, you tamp down on the sense of limitless potential in your veins. The reason for the raid is very much limited, a play in two acts and that is how you'll play it, one after the other. Tiffany works her magic, at least where she can, power over flesh and understanding of the human form.

Molly; Lydia and Tiffany gain DEX 10

East of the 'Screw', as you had come to think of the tower you find yourselves in is s web-work of cables that threads in the direction of Perdition's Edge, prone to unpredictable surges and haunted by half-feral automata that barely recognize any network override more than they do a bullet to the motherboard... so of course that is the direction you take, racing through patches of light and shadow as fast as inhumanly possible. Speed is your friend now, speed and surprise.

Along the way you see electric wraiths dancing at the edge of vision, drinking in the screams of those bound to the lightning rods, metal millipedes that seem to have been put together from discarded cans and loose vertebra crawling along the wires, cybernetic imps, like sea-monkeys wired into shells of steel and glass, but none of them see you. Like death and darkness silently you pass through the mid-levels, two miles, maybe three if distance means the same thing here as it does in more earthly spheres until the wires of this post industrial canopy give way to great pillars of stone, still bearing carvings predatory and cruel, now subjected into brutalist watch-powers that would not have been out of place putting light and bullets on people trying to flee over the iron curtain. Here and now it is the the outer perimeter of Perdition's Edge.

Timing for a gap in the sweep of the light you and Lydia both thread the needs, Nergui simply jumps the gap then... The hiss of a drone passing overhead along algorithmically determined patterns almost turns its guns on Lash. She only just manages to twist wing over wing ducking back in the cover of the wire canopy.

Come on, come on, you think, peering over the wall from the other side. A fight on the outer perimeter would meant the blast doors would come down inside and that you can't afford. The data you do have was vague on how many of those there are other than 'as many as it takes to isolate high energy experiments with Rift Essence'.

More drones are coming, their sirens mixing with din of the city to raise the stakes from hopelessness to terror.

Spoiler: Vulture Drone

The metal plate under your fingers is pliable as silly putty... and so indeed are the guardians of this place. Without a sound you rip it loose and hurl it like a Frisbee between drones three and four —not questioning how you know the designations of this particular swarm, you just do— the metal plate flies. For just a moment the drones re-calibrate into a defense formation leaving just a gap mesured in slivers of seconds for Tiffany to make the dash though the field of fire.

Cursing in a melange of French and some kind of ancient Mesopotamian tongue that no one else would think to use your friend arrives looking a good bit more avian than just the wings., having altered herself on the fly to be less detectable to their sensors. Obviously 'reducing sensor cross-section' isn't in line with the well-being of organic beings. She looks paler than Nergui.

The sound of rhythmic chanting echoes from the courtyard below, hurrahs as passed though a synthesizer until all the passion had been leached from them, leaving only empty decibels. Not as powerful as the demons of Iron and Violence you had faced in the Arctic, but they don't have to be, seeing as there are more than fifty of them just in the courtyard, not counting the sensor and repair drones crawling all over the place.

Spoiler: Sentinel

"At least they aren't specifically built to spot intruders," you sub-vocalive. The father in you can get without a fight the smoother this will go, though you have no illusions about being able to make it all the way through. Maybe if I had just gone alone...

"If you had come alone Majesty I trust that you would have been subtle as shadow in moonlight and yet should crude chance have somehow played you false it is better to have allies," Usum answers the unspoken thought.

Which Objective do you go for first?

[] Seed the Hope Plague up in the Stacks (Low chance of an aerial encounter, middling chance of an encounter in the corridors of the fortress; guaranteed lower level encounter)

[] Free Joe Magarac (Middling chance of a lower level encounter, low chance of an encounter in the corridors; high chance of an aerial encounter)

OOC: Sorry this took so long guys, I missed the part about increasing dex initially which means I had to redo some of the rolls. At least I caught it before I posted.

 

[DragonParadox]

Changing Winds ​

28th of January 2007 A.D.

How high the stacks go one cannot know, for in this realm built upon the aping of modernity, the laws of science do not hold. How high is Hell? As high as its master might wish it, but on this day and in this hour. In your right hand's a vial of honey-thick potion, like ginger and peppers, like mint with a hint of copper underneath, speed. Like an arrow from a bow you rise, on wings of essence screaming as you cut the air amid a million alarms. Turrets turn in place like the joints of some great mechanical beast, drones alter their path ready to swarm the presumptuous 'shikome' who had dared some here. Not fast enough, nowhere near.

Lost 1 Essence -> Now at 13/15 (Windborn Stride)

All around space twists to the whims of Mikaboshi, here is then the pinnacle of his foul work, essence in disharmony woven, the cavernous steel maw of the stacks breathes out smoke enough to poison the whole world if it is but allowed to. In your left hand 's a a vial of silvery pollen born of a flower new-bloomed to hope, warm as the touch of another's hand. "God speed," you say as you throw the vial in. They'll need all the help they can get.

For a moment the sliver of glass hangs in mid air, as though the warp and weft of the tainted chi recoils from it, but hope is an infectious thing, it bursts.

For the first time in all the time since the it had been stitched screaming from the fabric of Yomi by a madman's ambitions the wind in the Wicked City changes, like ozone and water lilies, like fresh turned earth, like all the things the damned remember only that they should hate themselves.

You fall back towards the mid-levels, fist first though the pair of drones grabbing the latter by the wing and flinging it into the nearest watch tower. It must have hit something important since the whole thing starts spurting liquid flame, as though that particular corner of hell had temporarily forgotten how plasma is meant to work.

"[Kindle-Flame-Rebelion-in-Being]"

Had any of the Greater Akuma been about to look upon the halls of their master in that moment they might have been surprised to hear the word in Enochian uttered by another of the attacking shikome, but all the lesser watchers can do us rub their eyes in agony and re-calibrate their sensors as two arrows of burning Yang strike the side door Clippy and the others had marked as the best point of entrance.

Nergui uses 2 Yang Chi from Jade Talisman -> Talisman at 1/3

Dark corridors streaked with rust that forms strangely angular shapes open up into a tangle of alien design meant to prevent any intruder from piercing it while refining the taint in the air as a still draws spirits from wine. Yet to you it is as though the creaking of the panels, the wail of alarms whispers secrets, left, right... pry open the cap to the feeder tube...

All is Poison increases to +2 DC

"Corrosive puddles!" you call back to Nergui, the only one who might pass through them, Lydia and Tiffany are both staying well clear of the walls.

"Movement ahead!" Lydia says, almost at the same moment.

They certainly aren't hard to spot in the darkness of the corridor, humanoid though certainly not human, with chalky skin and mouths perpetually open in a silent scream, their eyes pits weeping tar, the 'citizens' ahead aren't soldiers though that does not mean they are not armed. Each of them has had their right hand replaced with a ghoulish mix of drill and saw that oozes the same viscous substance. Part of you expected some kind of perfunctory warning like you'd read in the mid-levels. Instead they hurl themselves at you eerily silent... or at least seven of the eight figures do so.

Spoiler: Ruin Smith

You decapitate two in a single sweeping gesture, while Nergui tramples one and almost contemptuously backhands another into the wall, denting the wall with the weight of the blow, though Lydia struggles to choke a third and Tiffany slips, almost falling in one of the puddles, the twisted chi doing its work.

"Leave them to my hands! That's why I brought them!" Lydia shouts and so you might have done but for one thing that none of you had anticipated.

Another blade whirs... and sinks into the back of one of the pair trying to swarm Tiffany. He says something in a language that's definitely not English, Japanese or Korean maybe, but you can recognize the tone... hope.

"He wants us to take him with us," Tiffany translates automatically as you kill off the remaining three who want no such thing. Guessing your thoughts once-Fallen continues: "There's no way he can keep up."

What do you do?

[] Take the Bakemono with you

[] You cannot afford to slow down. Tell him if she wants to fight the sentinels that are coming up behind you

[] Write in

OOC: That is a regular DEX 3 fomori with no movement powers for the record.

 

[DragonParadox]

Into the Forge ​

28th of January 2007 A.D.

"Stay out of trouble. Sheathe that," you motion at the demon arm as Tiffany translates. At the flash of worry passing over the bone white face once she's done you add: "As a best you can."

Breathe in air, polluted-poisoned, breathe out essence will-manifest. No sooner had your newest ally withdrawn the worst of the cutting surfaces for tools only moderately alarming, that you deftly pick him up in an unseen grip from among his fallen fellows and press on. He does not prove too heavy, not at all, the act of lifting helping you respite. From darkness he was stolen, in darkness yet he dwells, but darkness need not be his... the thought passes you by in the rush of corridors straight and oblique.

Lost 2 Essence (MHM and Excelency) -> Now at 10/15
Regain 2 Essence (Urge of the Forbidden) -> Now at 12/15
Lost 1 Willpower -> Now at 7/9 (ATB)

Alas neither surprise nor luck can carry you forever. On sub-level nineteen of the fortress amid a maintenance gallery tall enough to fit the whole of Notre Dame inside of is that you hear the screech of twisting metal not behind you but above.

"Intruders, know that your lives and souls are forfeit under the All-Revealing Light of the Dread Star" The sound booms from every corner of the structure, loud enough to rupture unenhanced humans eardrums. "Surrender.... Surrender... Surr....ender!"

The command comes in Doppler-warped waves as diving out of the blackness above on anti gravity platforms a trio of Wardens arrive, each garbed in sleek black armor, not a mote of dust on it. Sleek too are the drones flying on wings like knives at their side each looking for a target, under-slung guns pivoting on joints of blackened bone.

Spoiler: Wardens

Chained to the corners of each platform are three gobs of polished grey stone, hematite some corner of your mind notes, having once had a bracelet made out of them when you were little. But these were not inert pieces of metal, each animate and screaming at frequencies almost too low to hear. They're living elemental shields for the Akuma raising their weapons in eerie synchronicity, far faster than any human could react to, maybe even faster than you, not that it matters.

You're already moving.

Spoiler: Elemental Shields

"More of them!" Tiffany calls out, no hint of panic, or even fear in her voice as she points to one of the many high access ports into the chamber spitting out a stream of lesser drones, bright and crackling with Yin-lightning. Slave-catchers, they are throwing out anything close enough to intercept, the thought bleeds through from Usum laced with contempt, but also worry. Just as you are he is aware of the great weakness all of your company shares, there are only so many of you, so many hands and minds and powers abroad.

Spoiler: Slaver Drones

"Surrender and your Excru...ciations... will be... shorter!"

The steel armed technician is either sobbing or praying you are not sure which. Yet the Bane-arm twists and contorts into cylindrical shape, some kind of gun. Order or no, terror or no he had found hope and he wasn't about to give it up without a fight, no matter the contentions of power all around.

Enemy Forces

• 3x Wardens (3x Elemental Shields Each)
• 3x Bonded Drones
• 5x Slaver Drones

Order of Initiative:
Molly -> Tiffany -> Lydia -> Warden 1 (Bonded Drone 1) -> Nergui -> Warden 2 (Bonded Drone 2) -> Warden 3 (Bonded Drone 3) -> Bakemono Technician -> Slaver Drones

Nergui Disciplines:
Equilibrium 4, Feng Shui 4+, Tapestry 5, Yang Prana 2, Yin Prana 6, Black Wind 2, Demon Shintai ??? (He does not want to use Demon Shintai in Hell), Iron Mountain 3, Blood Shintai 1, Bone Shintai 4, Jade Shintai 2, Flesh Shintai 3, Storm Shintai 5, Chi'Ju Muh 5+, Internalize 5, Obligation 4

What do you do?

[] Write in Battle Plan

OOC: Welp this is a little short, but such is the nature of winning initiative, not lets see if you can win more than initiative.

 

[DragonParadox]

When Time Breaks ​

28th of January 2007 A.D.

Thought becomes action in the span of an instant, thought becomes force, pushing against pressing against the presence, the twisted, violated authority of the bound elementals. —We were honored once, we were strong. We are strong for master. Please don't break us!— to feel the servos in that demon forged armor whine and buckle. Limbs snap like withered branches, chest caves over an un-beating heart.

Warden 1 Takes 20 Damage -> Shields broken, now at 2/7 Maimed -2 Dice

To your right light blooms, a flower of fractals that reveals the visage of an angel, no more upon wings of black but crystal bright, her right hand raised in rebellion to the cloying darkness of this place and to the blinking metal eyes unafraid, an avatar of rebellion., recalling things for which you have no words and then, almost unbidden they come:

[Servants-of-the-Tyrant Rejoice for thou are free. If thee know it and Blades-Turn-Purpose-Twist or know not and in ignorance/uncertainty perish Freedom envelops/is contained by thee!] It feels right, somehow more familiar than the armor of stolen idols upon your shoulders.

Lost 2 Essence -> Now at 10/15 (Occult Excellency+ VLE)

Beneath your gaze slaver drones sputter and fail, paper thin insulators suddenly alight, joints poorly soldered opening like the sutures of of some failed surgery to spill out their contents onto the ground below. They scream, the servants of the would-be Demon Emperor, worshipers of an idol with feet of silicon and glass. They do not, will not hope, for to hope is to see their own damnation reflected in your shield. Even as one of their drones falls from the sky and Lydia raises a hand to smite the second Warden nothing but rage is writ upon his features. As one of the elemental shields flies to guard him, one plate breaking under the blow, another breaking.

All Slaver Drones Destroyed
Regained 2 Essence (MiM) -> Now at 12/15
Bonded Drone 1 Destroyed
Bonded Drones 2 and 3 at 2/7, Still at 0

Lydia loses 2 Essence -> Talisman at 0/3
Warden 2 takes 8 Damage -> Elemental Shields at 7/15

As Lydia draws back a hand of marble spun Nergui whistles, a sound half-man half-horse, the whistle becomes wind and the wind comes alive in rage. Those of your foes still able to control their platforms try to stay in the air, but in this the elder will not be defied. One crashes into th far wall striking a pipe that spews dirty yellow steam reeking of ammonia, one gouges a path though the floor and just barely manages to pull the platform airborne again, but the one you are already pinning well he is rather occupied to control his conveyance, as you let go he flips over and is driven into the ground like a nail into soft wood.

Warden 1 is Immobilized in the wreck of his platform (Strentgh DC 8 to Escape)
Wardens 2 and 3 take +2 DC to all firearms rolls due to being Shaken

Alas he had not paid as much attention to the drones as he should. Still your brace for them to shoot, they both have guns. What you had not expected them to dive right at you wings folded inwards a space... no time seemed to stre.. tch. Essence within flexes, about to cast off the shakles of tainted Yin that threatened to freeze you like a bug in tainted Yin when a stony hand grabs onto your shoulder and pulls you clear.

Remaining Drones Self Destruct -> Yin Bomb
Lydia Loses 1 Willpower (+1 Success to Warding of the Divine Ancestry) > Now at 9/10 Willpower

A time trap... that had been a time trap. A part of you, the larger and more sensible part to the sure, shuddered at the thought of something like that in the hands of Mikaboshi's jailers. Another part is sad they had blown up in the process. Only then as you turn your head do you realize the old warrior had been frozen, the other bomb had caught him. How long...?

Nergui Time-Frozen by Yin Bomb

Before you can do more than glance his way the akuma Lydia had struck takes aim at her again and fires, three bursts at once, each one of them a curse on flesh and bone... though thankfully not on stone. Between Nergui's mastery —please let him me alright— and your own proclamation he seems to be shooting more in rage than any kind of focus. You make sure that's the last thing he does too, arcing though the air, sowrd at the ready. Through metal and magic, amour and dead flesh..

Warden 2 takes 26 Damage -> Destroyed

As one three airs of chains snap, but the elementals do not flee. "[There in the smoke, see-see, there he hides/craven flees]" thus speaks iron once enslaved, in the Tongue before all tongues.

Three Iron Elementals Freed

What do you do?

[] Chase after the fleeing Warden

[] Try to figure out what the time freeze bomb did to Nergui (Wits Occult; Excellency still active)

[] Write in

OOC: Yes, that is in fact a bomb that congeals time. In the Wicked City Mikaboshi gets to break out the good toys, though even so this patroll was not ready for you to break out titan-speech to deal with the drones. No rolls for this one, there are just way too many.