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Mare Internum: An Exalted Quest

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Now That You Are Pure 108
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    • JustGazzer said:
    "Why did you save them?"
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    REFLECTION: "Why did you save them?"

    "I didn't, did I? I tried, and I made everything worse."

    REFLECTION: "Well, you tried. Isn't that's what's important?"

    "No. Succeeding is what's important. I told them everything would be okay, and then... and..."

    You have no idea what you are talking about. The connective nodal routes of your memory are severed. You have crushingly intense feelings about people who you have otherwise forgotten in their entirety, Unfamiliar faces flash in your memory, insisting on their importance, but you can't connect them to the feelings. It's like trying to read a burned book, half-finished sentences crumbling to ash on the page.

    "I don't know. I can't remember."

    REFLECTION: "Well, you remembered before. I think you're doing better now that you have forgotten, don't you?"

    "How would I know?"

    REFLECTION: "Take my word for it."

    The reflection looks sad, wistful. You wonder what she's thinking about.

    [ ] (Offer a hug)
    [ ] What should I do now?
    [ ] Can you remember anything specific the Scarlet Empress did?
     
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    • I do really like that this is creation.

    Where we could absolutely actually be talking to our reflection because of exalted bullshit, gods, wizards, or all of the above.

    Or we could just be completely insane.

    Or probably some combination of all of these things.
     
    Now That You Are Pure 109
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    • Legionman said:
    [X] What should I do now?
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    "What should I do now?"

    REFLECTION: "I don't know, I'm just a reflection. What do you think I should do?"

    "Hmm." you give the woman's straggly dark hair a critical look. "I think you should cut your hair."

    REFLECTION: "Alright. Then I think you should cut your hair."

    OPTIONAL OBJECTIVE GAINED: GET A HAIRCUT

    "That makes sense. Anything else?"

    REFLECTION: "Yeah, actually, there was one more thing."

    "What's that?"

    REFLECTION: "You should kill the Scarlet Empress."

    OPTIONAL OBJECTIVE GAINED: KILL THE SCARLET EMPRESS

    "Right on. Why am I doing that again?"

    "Because she's directly or indirectly responsible for everything that has gone wrong in your life."

    "Right, right. Well, I guess I'll see you later."

    REFLECTION: "Yeah, probably."

    You wade into the pool. The surface is disrupted by ripples as your feet touch the water, and the woman vanishes. After wading through the chilly pool, you settle on the rocky mound where the waterfall cascades down from the cliff above, sending up a fine silver spray of fresh spring water. As with the wind, you register the chill, but feel no discomfort from it.

    Right, meditation.

    SAGACITY: Didn't you try to do this already, in the wagon?

    INTEGRITY: Yes, but the setting is better now.

    You set down your soap and flask and sit down cross-legged under the stream of water. The cold water hammers your body like an vindictive masseuse.

    It flows over you, violent and vital, as it flows over the rocks of the cliff above. It's a connection, a focal point through which you can see other times, other places. Your consciousness wavers and expands, unconstrained by your body. Disparate currents tug on your consciousness. From here you feel like you can reach out to things that have been near you, but are not you.

    Where do you look?

    [ ] Look for someone you have met.
    [ ] Look for something you have touched.
    [ ] Look for something that's looking for you.
     
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    • I know that this isn't the first nor will it be the last time that someone with authority from the Scarlet Empire attempting to murder the state's ruler, but I think this is the first one that will attempt to do so after a conversation with reflection.

    Probably, what I know about the setting tells me that such a series of events is not unheard of at least.
     
    Now That You Are Pure 110
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    • Pempelune said:
    [X] Look for someone you have met.
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    You breathe in, and the mist of clean mountain water fills you. The water flows over your body. You are a stone in the river. Physical sensation fades away. You hope it is some sort of spiritual thing and not trauma induced hypothesia.

    Your vision does not fade, but you no longer see. Your mind is focused somewhere other than your eyes.

    You are in another place, at another time. You see the reflection, from hundreds of angles, coursing experiences like an infinitely branching river.

    Try as you might, you cannot touch them, cannot grasp them. Like your own memories, they are indistinct and incomplete, impossible to follow. You need a different method.

    You pick a few of the stronger currents and resolve them into a recognizeable shape. Playing cards, that will do.

    You will have to decide which one to follow. Each is the experience of someone whose essence is distantly entangled with yours.

    [ ] Ace of Flowers
    [ ] 2 of Jewels
    [ ] Minister of Banners
    [ ] General of Lamps
    [ ] (0) The Stranger
    [ ] (15) The Anathema
     
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    • I recently caught up in the quest. I love it; I've cackled at parts. The characters are interesting and feel real, even the glimpses of Vesper we see. I've been a fan of your work since you decided to make a whole splat's worth of Dragonblooded Charms on your own. I'm excited to see why this place is so weird, what Vesper does to it and it to her.
     
    Interlude: Izumherat 1
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    • Corpusvoyeur said:
    [X] (15) The Anathema
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    Most people think being able to turn into a bird will let you go anywhere you want, but in reality, the life of the migratory bird on the wing is intolerably boring. You took the first two hundred miles of your journey as some sort of Northern seabird, a puffy little confused looking black-and-white thing you never bothered to learn the name of before swallowing it whole. It's just so dull, though! Drifting endlessly through the empty sky over empty sea, able to go for a week without food, three without landing. There's no challenge to it, no drama.

    And you do so love drama. That's why you're making this trip, after all.

    So, you became a shark instead. The lionfin is a sleek, elegant predator mostly found in southeastern inland sea, but it is perfectly well suited to the expanse of the great western ocean as well. Sharks are always hungry, always moving. The lionfin is swift and efficient, but you have plenty of opportunity to divert yourself in the hunting of new forms. Tropical fish that catch your eye, mostly, and one very unfortunate bull hornback that decided to try to make a meal of the smaller lionfin, to its brief and final surprise. A little blood to pass the time.

    You have never done much sailing in the great western ocean. You have always meant to, it's full of all sorts of fascinating fauna for you to meet and devour and transform into. But something about its size held you back. Even though you are well aware of what teems under the ocean, the vast, horizon-consuming blue of the sea and sky presses on the mind. Travelling here feels like stepping over a precipice, out into empty space.

    But that's not quite it, is it? You love emptiness, of a sort. After all, the falcon is your favourite form. It soars in the sky over everything else, looking down on them, occasionally shitting on them, and sometimes just swooping down to take. It's how you like to conduct yourself at all times, at varying removes of metaphor.

    In reality you probably find the great western intimidating because it's so damn hard to find anything. You never really got the hand of reading a map, and you generally don't have much use for them anyway when you are a fish. But that's not a problem this time. You know exactly where you are going.

    And there it is. Your tingling electrosensory receptors track the distant ships. Your dull shark eyes cannot determine the time of day even so close to the surface, but you know in your soul that the moon is high. You leap out of the water and become the falcon in midair. It's as quick as oil skipping across water, or the fading of a spark from flint. First you are one thing, then you are another.

    You rise into the air. The light of the gibbous moon is bright enough for you to see by, but not bright enough that you have to worry about an overzealous night watch distinguishing that your form is not that of a seabird. They are making good speed, but you are swifter on the wing than any mortal bird, and catch them easily. You fly parallel to the sailing ships, your avian eye scanning the moonlit characters of the Realm script written on the hull.

    Ah, there is is. Kazudaris.

    She'll be on board, but where? How best to locate her?

    [ ] Pull back and carefully check the exterior.
    [ ] Explore the ship as a cat. Ships have cats, right?
    [ ] Kill and replace one of the sailors in the rigging.
     
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