After your meeting with Grandfather Wyldclaw, you decide to head out into the forest alone to clear your head. You don't want to lose your grip on what made this place special to you; at the same time, you know you shouldn't be envying Jiro's hounds.
So out into the wilds you go, bringing along a heavy stack of bureaucratic papers. After all, you have to catch up on paperwork sometime, and there's almost nothing more human than bureaucracy.
The Stonebreaker Mountains are filled with all kinds of Demon Beasts and Wyld kami, but you feel prepared and ready to take them all on. So you camp out in a small tent in the middle of the wilderness, set traps for small game and larger threats, and confidently nap.
You wake up with another Hellboar squealing from the bottom of one of your pit traps. You stick it with a spear, and go back to sleep.
Before long, the days settle into a comfortable routine; check the traps, fish in the nearby stream, eat breakfast, do paperwork, eat lunch, go for a stroll along the riverbank, check the traps again, eat supper, do more paperwork, go to bed. Every day is a new adventure, except for the paperwork, which is always there. You go without eating at times, but it doesn't seem like much of a hardship.
It's a good life, and not one a dog could ever live.
You're very, very tired of this hunger in your belly and this fog on your thoughts. The Goldfur Robe helps a little, at least, but it's not enough. So, you begin to branch out from the potions and philtres described in the ancient texts.
The coat makes you less hungry, so its overflowing Life Atma must be at least partially correcting the imbalance. That suggests an excess of Death Atma. Where it's coming from, you're not sure, but that certainly seems to match the hypothesis. So she needs to either reduce or filter the Death Atma, or increase the amount of Life Atma she produces. The latter would seem to make the most sense, so…
If she takes a few threads from the golden coat, burns them, gathers up the ashes, and drinks that…
It works longer. Not permanently, but for two months rather than the grave ash's one. What if she uses wood ash instead of grave ash? It's somewhere in-between. What if she adds wood ash to thread from the coat? It's even longer, three months, but it makes her nauseous occasionally, probably from the excess of Wood Atma. So if she balances that with additional water and some silver shavings from the edge of a coin…
It takes her a dozen tries, but eventually she hits upon it. Three parts water one part sap from a willow tree one part ashes of the gold coat one part copper shavings. The alchemical concoction burns down her throat and in her stomach, but when it's done the hunger and haze are completely gone.
Adare Kaname, Bureaucrat of Grey Rat Style
Fisher King: You take on the properties of the Style you're responsible for reflexively. Your personality feeds the style, and vice versa.
Cultivator 2
Legendary 2
Lunar 1
Wyld 2
Hunter 2
Warrior 1
Artisan 1
Alchemist 1
Worldly 1
Prepared 5
Alert 2
Tranquil 1
Disreputable 3
Cowardly 2
Vicious 1
Ghoulish 1
Style: Grey Rat Cheats The Heavens
Rigorous 2
Style of Legend 2
Yin Style 1
Chi Style 2
Beast-Killing 2
Killing Intent 1
Artisanal 1
Alchemic 1
Strong Fundamentals 1
Survivalist 5
Rapid 2
Pacifist 1
Disreputable 3
Evasive 2
Dangerous 1
Taboo-Breaking 1
Techniques:
Consuming Cultivation Focus
Grey Rat Persists On Corruption
10,000 Grey Rats Gather In Moonlight
Grey Rat Is Kin To Thousands
Grey Rat Eats Behemoths' Corpses
Grey Rat Climbs Over Corpses
Grey Rat Flees The Hawk
Grey Rat Endures The Storm
Grey Rat Striking Method
Grey Rat Kicking Method
Hero: Asuka Veran
Grey Rat Cheats The Heavens 4
Good Seed: +20 to Cultivation rolls.
Protagonist: +20 to Cultivation rolls.
Dead Hand: +10 to Atma rolls.
Bone Whistle: +10 to Cultivation rolls.
Goldfur Robe: +20 to Atma rolls, -1 Voracious
[ ][Asuka] Continue to train in Grey Rat Cheats The Heavens and develop another Core. Cultivation Check against DC 60, failure = injury or death.
[ ][Asuka] Work on developing Grey Rat Style. Cultivation check at DC 60, success gains an additional technique for the Style. Failure = injury.
[ ][Asuka] Challenge another student to a duel and demonstrate your new style before the whole sect. Auto-success at a Combat check against DC30.
[ ][Asuka] Focus on making more Charms from the dead criminal's bones. Atma check at DC50.
[ ][Asuka] Try to overcome your Master's hatred for the style. DC?? Cultivation check. Failure = thrown out of the Sect
[-][Domain] You have no domain, so there's nothing to do with it.
[ ][Style] Grey Rat Huddles In Darkness
Develop the style towards having solid defenses against incoming attack. Build Path: Fundamentals
[ ][Style] Grey Rat Wields The Shadows
Develop an intuition of how to sense with your shadow and use darkness in combat. Build Path: Yin Specialist
[ ][Style] Nimble Grey Rat Dances In Moonlight
Develop the style's speed and diversity, making it difficult to counter or see coming. Build Path: Assassin
[ ][Style] Grey Rat Embraces Shady Drugs
Develop methods to artificially break cultivation blocks with chemical help. Makes the style more dangerous but increases its potential. Build Path: Alchemy
[ ][Personal] Try to renegotiate your deal with King Death for gentler terms.
[ ][Personal] Train to remove one of your personality faults and thereby improve the style you're responsible for. (Write in a fault.)
[ ][Personal] Spend some time crafting a Treasure for Asuka using materials hunted from Demon Beasts.
[ ][Personal] Use your influence over Grey Rat style to encourage its discovery by a larger group of practitioners.
[ ][Personal] Continue cultivating and attempt to form a second Core. Cultivation DC40.
