Remove ads

Sunlit Sands - An Exalted Campaign (Discussion)

Reader mode
I was super flattered to see this pop up in my alerts today- like, similar response condition to omake or fanart! Thanks @uju32 !

The... density of detail is very inks-applicable, though Inks herself doesn't and won't have horns. I would actually consider this in some way more appropriate for @Aleph 's game and the Mercury Bride Oula. It wouldn't likely be a maturation of Bidaha, because my understanding is that she prefers her more boyish phyisique compared to the bodacity this gal displays here.

Now I think on principle Aleph would approve of any character with bitchin' claws and a handsome scarlet cobra as a pet or prop. The snake reminds me of what I try to do with Maji, where his fur and bronze skin have praise names and prayer-phrases written into his skin for the world to see and recite.
 
Remove ads
Session 92: Inexorable Righteousness of the Sun, RY 773 Descending Air
  • Threadmarks
  • Threadmarks
    • Called it.
    I thought Jinx was the perp from the start after the incident with the murderbird indicated it was well on the way to becoming a familiar, even though I did have some second thoughts. She's very thoroughly outed now though. I guess her daddy is going to be missing a mount.

    Didnt recognize the Charm Jinx attempted to use to vanish; Mental Invisibility Technique, perhaps.

    A Dynast shows up.
    That's unfortunate timing. Especially with Inks swinging a grand daiklave around, and the kid going full Night Caste.
    It looks like Inks penchant for flashiness is going to come back to bite her on the posterior.

    Some fancy footwork ahead to even begin to attempt to salvage this.
    Thanks for sharing, you two.
     
    Last edited:
    Well then.

    It'll be okay!

    Inks just has to chase down a sneaky Night caste who is unshakably convinced via Solar UMI defenses that she, like, can't possibly relate to other people in a constructive fashion.

    And then convince a Dynast that she totally is not an Anathema plz no Wild Hunt booli.

    ... and go see about those dams.

    ... ... and work on restoring El-Galabi.

    ... ... ... and train up some number of thaumaturges that she owes Saudari Etiyadi Fire-In-Earth, as I recall?

    ... ... ... ... and figure out what she wants to do re: Rankar, and maybe not completely destabilizing Gem when that powderkeg finally ignites.

    ... ... ... ... ... and maybe figure out what she wants to do about her, like, burgeoning cult? In her spare time I guess.

    Plus any other commitments she has, as a Court Sorceress, a member of House Iblan, as War-Sorceress of the Rangers, etc, etc, etc!

    Well.

    At least she's not likely to be bored anytime soon?
     
    I might just be missing something super obvious here, but when Inks is talking to Tinisra she makes a guess about her age and uses that as evidence that Tinisra is an adopted Lost Egg and wasn't born a Dynast, and I have no idea how the first data point is supposed to lead into the second. Could someone please explain this to me?
     
    Legionman said:
    I might just be missing something super obvious here, but when Inks is talking to Tinisra she makes a guess about her age and uses that as evidence that Tinisra is an adopted Lost Egg and wasn't born a Dynast, and I have no idea how the first data point is supposed to lead into the second. Could someone please explain this to me?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    V'neef- that is the woman named V'neef, born of the Scarlet Empress, is only about sixty years old. She's had [howevermany] children, and if we assume she had them at Reasonable Person Age (18-25+) instead of Ancient Hyborean Fantasy Age, then we can make some educated guesses about how old her children could be.

    So Tinisra is likely not V'neef's firstborn, (which would make her around 40). If she's any older, she's more likely an adopted Lost Egg.
     
    Ah, I completely forgot about how old V'neef and the house actually were, thanks for clearing that up.
     
    uju32 said:
    Called it.
    I thought Jinx was the perp from the start after the incident with the murderbird indicated it was well on the way to becoming a familiar, even though I did have some second thoughts. She's very thoroughly outed now though. I guess her daddy is going to be missing a mount.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Heh heh. So yes, Jinx. I've been waiting to drop this for a while, and have been marvellously entertained by the people thinking that she was too obvious, she's definitely a red herring. Her worldview is fun, too, because it's not something she just pays lip service to in order to annoy people. Jinx believes in luck as the closest thing to a religion her horrible little gremlin soul is capable of. It's not just talk; it's real to her. She has a view of the world that if she were more eloquent and educated she might (incorrectly) express as karma, where some people - like Inks - are born lucky and get riches and smarts and beauty and sunblessings showered down on them without needing to work for it, and others like her are born jinxed, and everything goes wrong for them and their failings aren't their fault, it's cause the game was rigged from the start.

    Jinx's constant refrain of "I'm bad luck!" is rooted in the belief that she is through a cruel unfairness of birth some kind of cosmic sinkhole of luck, a net producer of ill fortune, and that the only way to stop it affecting her is to bleed it off onto everyone else. She's not an atheist, of course - in fact, perhaps related to how she's not that smart, she's actually superstitious as hell. But that's the thing, gods can be lucky or unlucky too. Look at the Ragged: there's an unlucky goddess if you ever saw one. So Luck can't be a thing below the gods - it's something they're beholden to as well, and you bargain with gods to share some of their luck or get them to put in a good word for you with the Lady. Plentimon, he's got in good with karma, he can dole it out to anyone he likes (and is an asshole for never giving any to her). Luna, too - she doesn't really worship anyone, because worship implies respect and Jinx is constitutionally incapable of respecting anything. But she's very superstitious and sucks up to Luna as... well, basically as "Jinx, but a goddess with luck on her side". A trickster, a gambler and the luckiest god in the sky - the Maidens are Fate and how things are meant to be, but Luna is goddess of the night's sky and she's Luck. The stars are just single things in the sky, so Fate is subordinate to Luck.

    And yes, as a result of this worldview and having Occult 0, she doesn't even see her Exaltation as a distinct thing, really. She Exalted when she tried to steal from Inks, and she literally rationalises her new sun powers as having stolen some of Inks' unfair good fortune. And Inks is a net producer of good luck, so she just got her sunblessing right back. But Jinx produces bad luck, so she has to keep foisting it off onto other people otherwise they'll cancel out and she'll lose her powers. Which means that she's hilariously frustrating to Inks, because she just constantly, stubbornly repeats that everything Inks has, she has because she's lucky and blessed and it fell into her lap and she started with all the good advantages. An attitude of "everything is luck and chance, you didn't earn anything you have you were just born with a good hand" is the kind of axiom that drives Inks nuts, and because Jinx has Righteous Lioned the Principle she cannot be talked out of it. Congratulations, Inks, you have met someone as stubborn as you are in this argument [1]. And the funniest thing is that if you accept her (flawed) axioms she's not entirely wrong; Inks is Little Miss Intelligence 5 Perception 5 Appearance 5 apprenticed-to-an-Elemental-Dragon stumbled-into-a-godblooded-tiger-familiar-and-a-Dragonblooded-aide adopted-by-a-Great-House Iblan Inks. Jinx has just enough of a point about Inks being born a gorgeous rich genius who got a powerful spirit as her personal tutor and a grand daiklave and a magical tattoo and a bunch of allies that... like... you can't just entirely dismiss her arguments. They're still wrong, but they're close enough that you can see where she's coming from, especially when Jinx herself ruined her parent's marriage by being born and had enough bad things happen to people close to her even when she wasn't trying to spread bad luck around that she decided that at least by embracing it she could decide where it was going.

    As to how wrong Jinx is... well, on the one hand, "luck" genuinely is a thing that can be granted in Exalted. But on the other... probably not to the degree of power she gives it, where Luck and Chance are what rule the world and even the gods are subordinate to them. Jinx takes comfort in the idea that her lot in life isn't her fault and that everything is the result of the game being rigged against her, and so she wouldn't accept that it's a force subordinate to any single being, not even a powerful god like Plentimon - rather, he is favoured by Luck. To her it's the greatest power in the universe, and she can spin it to explain anything that happens with a just-so story about how Luck was on the side of the victors. It's a very reductive view that she is wrong about - or at least, is no more right about than people who believe in that sort of thing IRL, anthropomorphising the randomness and statistical troughs and swells of the universe.

    Unfortunately, it's also one she's never going to be talked out of.

    [1] Inks: "That is not how this works! That is not how anything works! You're just being incessantly annoying to people for literally no reason! You won't lose your powers if you stop being a little brat!"
    Jinx: "Hah! You're just saying that 'cause you want me to lose 'em 'cause you know I won't get 'em back like you did!"​
    Inks: *tears hair out in frustration*​
    Inks: "Look, just test your hypothesis-"​
    Jinx: "Yeah, and what if I'm right, huh?"​
    Inks: "You aren't! This is not remotely how our powers work!"​
    Jinx: "Ain't your power anymore, I stole it fair and square!"​
    Hinna: "... oh come on, what the fuck. I tried so hard to steal the sun's power and this ragamuffin manages it just like that? "​
    Inks: "You stay out of this and stop encouraging her!"​
     
    Last edited:
    Sesssion 93: Pragmatism Forces All Hands - RY773 Descending Air
  • Threadmarks
    • And so we have Session 93 of Sunlit Sands- big props to @Aleph as usual! Today was shorter due to being taken on a different day and kind of an interstitial sequence as we figured out what was doing.

    Session 93: Pragmatism Forces All Hands - RY773 Descending Air

    Something Aleph likes to do, and is a reasonable storytelling technique, is give me 2+ choices of where to go. The problem is that most of my game play experience isn't bout 'X choices, pick one'; it's about 'X things to do, what order or method do you resolve them in. My impulse isn't to sacrifice, but to approach it as an optimization problem. Of course, over-emphasizing Exalted as an optimization problem leads to un-genre behaviors.

    So I'm sure eventually I'll get what she goes for intuitively, but that's partly why we fuddled about so much during this session.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Jinx seems to have been quite the shake-up, and I hope she survives long enough to become older and wiser (though perhaps still a shit)
     
    Huh.
    I didnt actually expect the Jinx subplot to interact with the volcano god subplot at all.
    I didnt even remember the missing drum.

    Oh Jinx. One would almost think you were right about being unlucky, except that you Exalted as a Night.
     
    uju32 said:
    Oh Jinx. One would almost think you were right about being unlucky, except that you Exalted as a Night.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    That weren't luck! She stole that sunblessing fair and square!

    And yes, I'm glad everyone is enjoying Jinx. She is, in no small part, Step One of my effort to get some peer rivals and antagonists to Inks in the area; people she can't just overpower with Solar arete because they've got it too. She's been pretty successful against godblooded and Dragonblooded rulers, and she's found common ground with despots and tyrants, but she does need a few recurring enemies and thorns in her side who aren't at the existential-threat level of a Wyld Hunt and don't absolutely need to be killed for her to be safe (because that then makes it a contest of her Conviction vs her morals as to whether she does try to kill them just to make things easier on herself).
     
    Here's hoping Gem doesnt blow up before you get back :)

    Honestly surprised Inks didnt go with the Res 5 Yacht for the speed; as is, even assuming Jinx only does 12 hours/day at 40mph, and the Trader is managing a full 24 hours/day at 20mph, you're not closing the distance at all. And I dont remember any charms or spells that do so..
    Barring weather and other hazards, of course.

    The Scar is a very atmospheric locale here. Nice work on portraying it.

    And here we see why Sorcery is such a big deal. Utility, logistical and diplomatic applications all in one tidy package.

    Yeah, the chocobo is a Familiar. Has to be; Inks would have recognized a spirit, and a Lunar would not have needed a dinghy.
    Guess we know where Jinx has been throwing her XP.
    Damn fucking brat didnt even think to disguise herself before antagonizing a whole society of people who could put trackers on her ass.

    Nice fight scene. I would have expected that Inks would have prioritized wiping this swarm out instead of simply scaring them off. Even in the absence of solicitude for less martially-gifted travellers, she's going to return this way on her way home. Possibly tired, possibly injured. Possibly heavy laden.
    Getting rid of hazards when fresh seemed like a no-brainer. Flight of the Brilliant Raptor seemed more situationally appropriate.

    Ah well.
    Those antlions have to be very fast to catch up to a vehicle capable of doing 20mph.
    Loling at the antlion splatter though. Inks is suddenly incentivized to get a replacement Collar of Dawns Light.

    QUESTION
    Didnt Inks acquire Survival Charms during her expedition up into the mountains?
    Do they not apply here?
    I mean, I dont know what her char sheet looks like atm.
     
    Okay... replying @uju32

    - Aleph and I generally don't like the 'thousand dooms' living world model of Creation when taken too far. Like, yes, Sunlit Sands has a living world, but it's not rendered out infinitely in all directions/dimensions.
    - I eyed the Coastal Trader mostly because of Inks's utilitarian mindset- she can take her time on the trip back loading upon cargo and treasure. It seemed to be the best balance of Cargo to Comfort. Though as Aleph describes it later, a 13-meter long vessel is still Pretty Small.
    - I admit I didn't do the math at the time of session, so I didn't realize how fast the Racing Dinghy was compared to the trader or the yacht- and note that I was in some way leaning on learning Calling the Wind's Kiss, which will effectively double my sailing speed, and can force Jinx to go straight into the doldrums if I get into range. I however haven't had time to learn it yet, as It'd take 1 week.
    - The Scar was really well done as well, and Aleph has been pumped to show off more of the homebrew setting she'd built up out to the north and east of Gem.
    - Bitch Hen totally became a Familiar yes, but remember that Jinx has been Exalted for maybe 8-12 weeks; she exalted during Calibration, stealing Gloria's shrine. She has had a comparitively high-adventure time justifying her fairly quick rise to power (She has to be Stealth 5 to know Vanishing From Mind's Eye Method, which itself is 3 charms deep). So Inks by comparison has broader competency, with some comparitively lower spikes, but Jinx is narrow and tall in very few areas.

    - Aleph might already be commenting on Jinx's psychology and Modus Operandi, but there's two major factors that I was privy to at the time of the session: Jinx is a teenage shitheel by her own action, and she's terrified of Gem reprisal. Because in Gem, 'staked out and left to die of exposure' is a common form of capital punishment. She's running scared, but also dealing with that innate teenager-sense of immortality and audacious risk taking.

    - I was really proud of the sorcery stunt, yeah, I just realized I could do all of those things within a matter of hours, which would've been about the same amount of time it took to get oriented on the next part of the trip. I had considered building or repairing their bridges, but it wouldn've have gotten me across the canyon much faster.

    - As for the Antlions, I had considered just blasting them with Brilliant Raptor, but I wanted to use Spears of Piercing Sun, since I hadn't ever used it before and it was just sitting there on my sheet, mocking me with the 5xp I spent on it not doing anything. Due to the switch from 'single roll resolution' to a more involved procedural engagement, Aleph was caught off guard without a lot of prep. She however really liked the change in direction, so she went with it and was trying to meet me halfway.

    - As for 'getting rid of hazards when fresh', I do think you have a good point, but something to remember is that unlike most Exalted PC groups, Inks is extremely well suited to party maintenance. She can fix everything that could go wrong on this trip, short of death.

    - Lastly- Inks has Trackless Region Navigation, which unfortunately only covers 'wilderness' travel, not Sailing or similar. I don't know if @Aleph has an opinion on the rest of it. Survival is Unfavored for Inks, so I would need a bit more XP and more time to learn another Charm, most of which wouldn't be super useful right now either.
     
    Shyft said:
    Okay... replying @uju32
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    I was kidding about Gem. Its fandom rep for being prone to explode is kinda hilarious though.
    Forgot about Calling the Winds Kiss.
    Alternatively, she could call and bargain with an Air Elemental for service; if the villagers can manage it, a sorceress can.

    Thanks for sharing the transcript.
    And to Aleph for running.
     
    I assume Pesala is back at Inks mansion since Ajjim's here.

    Good fucking lord Jinx.
    You're running away from being caught for Grand Theft Larceny, you have a damaged ship, and you try to pull the same fucking shit again?
    You're a baby Solar. Solar yes, but still a baby.

    At this rate you're not going to live long enough to be an adult Solar.
    Jinx's ship being damaged presumably drops her maximum speed of travel, which should make it easier to catch up. Should.

    The little god is a nice piece of color. Interesting First Age relic that pillar is though; I suspect that it can still be used to anchor some lesser version of the original enchantment sometime in the future if Inks leans that way. And I suspect it has some bearing on the legend of the allegedly lost goddess who vanished into the desert, the one with the cult; Aleph doesnt seem to forget plot hooks.

    Dragonship? Dragonship! Not-quite Artifact-level Essence-imbued construction speaks to a skill base and considerable knowledge base that would count as remarkable in the Second Age. And the fact that they can use at least one Enlightened mortal as guards is as suggestive as to the resources available to the operators as is the resources poured into the ship itself.

    Doesnt seem like the sort of thing (most) Raksha would do. And this place got scoured by the Sword of Creation, which limits what salvage would have been available.

    This smacks of either significant divine backing, a consistent lineage of Dragonblood artisans, or there's a Celestial lurking in their background somewhere. Probably a Lunar, since neither Sidereals nor Solars were exactly thick on the ground. Either way, Estrai is likely to be reporting this encounter to someone of Importance, especially given as Inks outright told her she was a sorceress.

    Which is another plot hook to keep in mind.
    Thanks for sharing, Shyft. And thanks to Aleph for running in the first place.
     
    Last edited:
    Session 96: She Who Grieves Beneath Black Pool - RY 773 Descending Water
  • Threadmarks
    • Slamu said:
    Looks like you a word out. Just as an FYI.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Thanks! I'll look into it when I can- in the meantine: Today we held-

    Session 96 - She Who Grieves Beneath Black Pool - RY 773 Descending Air

    Big props to @Aleph as usual for running- Due to some misundersatndings on my part, I had expected a much more action-pacted session. Stuff certainly happened, but tonally it came out to be far more introspective than I actually expected. Still really fun though! Aleph is also clearly having a ton of fun showing off her good work on the Anam Way!
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • Slamu said:
    Looks like you a word out. Just as an FYI.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Oops. Thanks.
    Shyft said:
    Thanks! I'll look into it when I can- in the meantine: Today we held-

    Session 96 - She Who Grieves Beneath Black Pool - RY 773 Descending Water

    Big props to @Aleph as usual for running- Due to some misundersatndings on my part, I had expected a much more action-pacted session. Stuff certainly happened, but tonally it came out to be far more introspective than I actually expected. Still really fun though! Aleph is also clearly having a ton of fun showing off her good work on the Anam Way!
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    :reads:
    Jinx is gonna die, isnt she? If she's lucky, that is. There are fates much worse than death in Creation.
    And there is a very strong argument against leaving someone wandering with profound cosmic power spreading suffering and misery in their wake. Especially given some of the people who would use her power in this setting. Teenager or not.

    Especially as you can see her spiraling downwards.
    She went from stealing the trinkets of the apparently rich and well off to tormenting workaday traders and destroying the property of farmers to hooking up with religious arsonists and setting up people to fight and kill each other over misunderstandings.

    She wasnt rich; she knows from lived experience how much investment this sort of shit costs. Too young to be a sociopath, but these are troubling signs. Either there's something making her worse, or she's seriously fucked in the head.
    Worse than I already assumed.


    Interesting place to find a lesser elemental dragon of water.
    Wonder if she grew up here, in the vicinity of the Pillar. I suspect the person she's mourning died back when the Sword of Creation fried the area.
     
    Last edited:
    Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Remove ads
    Back
    Top