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Mare Internum: An Exalted Quest

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Well I'd suspect knowing spooky occult stuff you might encounter is part of the job description for sorcerers attached to the legions.
 
Generally speaking, a Dragon-Blooded Exalt can only do sorcery or necromancy, not both. Given how he can bind demons and the rarity of DBs knowing necromancy in general, I'm inclined to think Kadj is just a well-informed sorcerer with high Sagacity.
 
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For A Better World 125
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    • Half Moon said:
    [X] Check the forearm interior.
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    "Check the forearm interior."

    Jades makes a lengthy incision down the radius. The leathery skin and muscle peels away like tearing fabric, revealing a tangle of twisted metal and split bone.

    JADES: "Well now, what happened here?"

    "Before I finished him with the cut, he tried to... I don't know, pull his ghost out. It was like he had four arms, the physical ones and the ghostly ones."

    THE BANE OF KADJ: "Then perhaps my theory about the iron being a cage was correct. The ghost tearing itself partially free damaged its prison."

    MEI: "Is there any way we could take advantage of this?"

    THE BANE OF KADJ: "Not using conventional weapons. The reinforced skeleton would have to be thoroughly dismembered to release the ghost by this method. I have some ideas, however."

    MEI: "Such as?"

    THE BANE OF KADJ: "Later, later. Let us continue the examination."

    [ ] Check the talons.
    [ ] Check the elbow wound.
    [ ] Let's look at the head instead.
     
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    • For A Better World 126
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    • Divider said:
    [X] Check the talons.
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    "Let's check the talons."

    JADES: "Odd bone structure. A bit like bird talons."

    SAGACITY: DIFFICULT
    1 5
    CHECK PASSED

    You reach out and touch one of the sharp black talons with your fingertips.

    "Not like bird talons. Normal talons are keratinous, like overgrown fingernails. These are cold."

    You tap the material twice with your wooden finger. It resonates faintly, like glass.

    MEI: "Meaning what?"

    "Keratin stays at room temperature, so does bone. These are mineralized. Enamel, I think."

    MEI: "He grew teeth out of his fingers?"

    "Sharp ones, too. Bet this could tear armor."

    THE BANE OF KADJ: "Powerful hungry ghosts can moleate their corporeal forms in a wide variety of ways as higher ghosts can do with the corpus. Changing a physical corpse is rare, but so is binding a hungry ghost inside one."

    "These finger joints were elongated by the change. Did the iron shapeshift as well?"

    Jades cuts an incision into a knuckle of the index finger.

    JADES: "No, the metal has displaced from the bone, here."

    "He did this after I beheaded him. Maybe it was a desperation tactic."

    THE BANE OF KADJ: "Along with the changes to the forearms, it seems the bindings were further damaged as the fight progressed, allowing changes to what was meant to be an enduring body. Perhaps losing the head impaired his control."

    [ ] Check the elbow wound.
    [ ] Let's look at the head instead.
     
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    • As a note "moliate/molitation" is used in Exalted as a term exclusively for ghosts' ability to change their spectral bodies. I suspect it is a holdover from World of Darkness, which influenced a lot of Exalted stuff, especially the underworld.

    Moliate is an Italian word related to molars, likely chosen for its similarity to malleate. OWoD had a load of strange word pilfering like this.
     
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    For A Better World 127
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    • EagerListener said:
    [X] Check the elbow wound.
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    "Check the elbow wound."

    Jades gets to work exposing the reinforced elbow joint.

    JADES: "Hit it in the elbow, too?"

    "Feinted an opening and thought I could sever the arm by cutting between the plates. Reinforcement was too thorough though."

    You examine the joint. Just as with the knee, the dark metal is notched where your blade cut into the cast-iron joint.

    "Nothing that we haven't seen already. Let's move on to the head."

    JADES: "As you wish."

    The corpse's eyeless head sits on its own, apart from the rest of the body. Leathery torn skin and tendon hang from its right side where it was still attached when you roughly tore the head free with a mason mallet. You can see a pale flash of bone where you pried apart his cervical vertebrae.

    JADES: "Messier work on this one."

    "I improvised."

    You examine the head. Multiple score lines of your sword strikes cut across the dry flesh, revealing the glint of metal underneath, but also split bone.

    "Wonder how they armored the skull. It's not like there's a lot of meat to work around."

    Jades pulls back the shrivelled lips with the flat of his knife.

    JADES: "Mouth looks mostly intact."

    "Yeah, he could talk."

    MEI: "He could talk? What did he say?"

    INTEGRITY: Don't tell her. It will hurt.

    You don't look back at her. Best keep your focus.

    "He wasn't happy."

    JADES: "I wouldn't be either. What first?"

    [ ] Let's expose some of the skull.
    [ ] I want to look in the mouth.
    [ ] Let's check the neck.
     
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    • For A Better World 128
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    • EagerListener said:
    [X] I want to look in the mouth.
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    "I want to look in the mouth."

    Jades sets the head upright and props the mouth open. The dead tongue lols comically over the teeth.

    JADES: "I'll bring one of the lanterns over."

    MEI: "I have it."

    There is a hiss and the tent is illuminated.

    You glance at Mei, who has approached to stand behind you. Her hand is shrouded in fire. It is nothing like the guttering crimson fires that the corpse of White Coal used against you. It's pale yellow, blindingly radiant and perfectly unwavering. It warms you like the heat from an open forge.

    Mei frowns as she sees she has attracted your attention.

    MEI: "Do your work."

    You look back to the head, now well-illuminated. Jades looks in close as well.

    JADES: "Chipped right lower incisor. Molar capped in silver. Decent work. What are we looking for?"

    AWARENESS: DIFFICULT
    3 3
    CHECK PASSED

    "Back of the throat is casting a slight reflection."

    JADES: "That's normal."

    "Normal on a normal corpse. This one is dried out. What's doing the reflecting if not moisture?"

    The doctor shrugs and produces a long silver needle from his medical bag. He gingerly extends it to the back of the throat. He seems to be hesitant to put his fingers between the jaws of a formerly violent corpse. You can't really blame him.

    He withdraws the needle with a scraping of filmy white material.

    JADES: "Salt?"

    THE BANE OF KADJ: "Interesting. Salt is usually used in exorcisms, but I suppose it might have some function. Ritual purification before the binding process?"

    "You're overthinking it. This is the cause of death."

    MEI: "Explain."

    "He drowned. Seawater in his throat. Salt remained when they dried the corpse out."

    JADES: "Well, I guess that answers that. Almost finished, I would say. What should we focus on first?"

    [ ] Let's expose some of the skull.
    [ ] Let's check the neck.
     
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    • For A Better World 129
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    • Orbmorb said:
    [X] Let's expose some of the skull.
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    "Let's expose some of the skull."

    JADES: "As you like."

    Jades cuts away a square of flesh around where your blade scored the brow with your first attack. The opening reveals pale bone, split by your sword, with a glint of metal beneath.

    JADES: "Looks like they put an armored casing around the brain pan."

    He takes a small bonesaw and cuts away a few more sections of the skull, including one of the empty eye sockets, revealing only more dark expanses of iron. A full casing on the inside, bolted through the skull under the jaw.

    You tap it carefully with your wooden finger. It reverberates.

    "Hollow."

    JADES: "If you want to get a look inside I'll need to get some more tools. Could be that there's nothing in there and a solid cast iron ball in the head was just too heavy."

    MEI: "I'll crack it open when you're done with the rest."

    Varano said:
    [X] Let's check the neck.
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    "Let's check the neck."

    Jades gently sets the head on its side, exposing the ragged neck stump.

    "Articulated armor affixed to the spine, same as before. Cerebrospinal channel has been drained. Is it hollow?"

    The doctor pokes around in the finger-sized channel at the center of the neck.

    JADES: "Seems so. Hitting something further up. I think the atlas is filled in."

    You note more of the salt you spotted at the back of the throat in the interior of the trachea.

    "Nothing we haven't seen already. Let's wrap this up."

    MEI: "Alright. Cut away the top of the skull. I'll make a hole."

    Jades hesitates only for a second.

    JADES: "As you wish, dragonlord."

    Jades uses his instruments to peel away a larger area of the leathery scalp and with a few taps with a surgical chisel he neatly taps a fist-sized hole in the parietal bone at the back of the skull. A disk of rough black iron blocks further progress.

    JADES: "What now?"

    Mei steps up to the corpse and raises her hand towards it.

    MEI: "Now you should look away."

    Instinctively you do so. The hiss from before returns and grows louder, becoming a buzzing, then a whining, then a shriek. Light floods the tent. The smell of hot-shorn metal and burning dust rolls over you along with a wave of intense heat.

    Then the sound ebbs away, along with the light and heat, though the smell lingers. It takes your eyes a moment to adjust to the renewed gloom of the candelit tent.

    MEI: "It's open."

    Mei is holding a neatly circular disc of cast iron, glowing cherry-red around its newly shorn edges.

    You rub your eyes with your working hand and look down at the head. The hole to the interior of the hollow brain-pan is filled with ruddy light from the still-cooling edges of the metal.

    "Hope you didn't burn whatever was in there."

    MEI: "I can control it. See for yourself."

    The brain has been removed. The only thing inside the skull is a triangular prism of dark metal the size of your thumb, affixed vertically to the base of the skull where it meets the spine.

    "Well, we're going to want a closer look at that. Mei, uh, dragonlord, can you pull that thing free?"

    MEI: "Why me?"

    "Well, if you're willing to wait until the metal cools..."

    MEI: "Right, fine."

    Mei reaches into the red-hot hole in the skull and makes a few efforts to tug the miniature obelisk clear. Finally, with a wrenching of metal, she tears it loose and drops it next to the now-empty skull.

    MEI: "Can I get a cloth? That felt unsanitary."

    The Pasiapan monk brings her a tray with lemon-scented water and a white cloth.

    You examine the obelisk. It's black metal, intricately etched with runes you don't recognize. The metal is the same matte-black as the cast iron that sheathes the rest of the skeleton, but it's different, somehow. It's smoother, for one, lacking cast iron's rough texture. It looks more like a blackened piece of forged steel.

    As you are pondering this, you see movement in its surface, like a reflection, too ephemeral to make out, even though nothing in the room moved.

    THE BANE OF KADJ: "Ah, that explains it."

    MEI: "Don't keep us in suspense."

    THE BANE OF KADJ: "Binding a higher and lower ghost together is the objective of many failed attempts at resurrection. This one is different. The lower ghost seemed to be in full control, but had access to the memories and reasoning of the higher ghost. Here we see the lower ghost bound by the iron sheathing of the skeleton, now departed, while the higher ghost remains trapped in this phylactery."

    MEI: "His ghost is still in there?"

    THE BANE OF KADJ: "In a sense this is his ghost. This is soulsteel, a material formed of black magic and annealed ghosts. The phylactery is bound to the body in such a way that the hungry ghost can access the advantages of its former self while being unrestrained in its most vicious impulses. It is an exquisite piece of work."

    MONK: "It is an abomination. An abomination against the cycle, and against natural law."

    THE BANE OF KADJ: "Exquisite pieces of work are often deemed so."

    MEI: "So, not a regular zombie."

    THE BANE OF KADJ: "A zombie is a mere corpse animated by magic that stimulates the vestigial instincts of the body and compels obedience. This is something altogether rarer. Few necromancers even among the Exalted possess the skill to create such a revenant and bind it to serve."

    The sorcerer looks down at the phylactery with something like avarice in his eyes. It glitters and shifts unnaturally, reflecting a place lit with alien stars.

    MEI: "Can we release him?"

    THE BANE OF KADJ: "Perhaps, if you destroyed the soulsteel. But from my readings I know it to be as durable as high-grade jade alloy."

    MEI: "I'll manage. I'll see Rooster about making a crucible for the task. In the meantime we should discuss what we've learned."

    "Alright."

    [ ] Findings summary.
    [ ] Tactical recommendations.
    [ ] Strategic implications.
     
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