You are Ambraea, the youngest Dragon-Blooded daughter of the Scarlet Empress. You are attempting to prove your worth at the Heptagram, the most prestigious sorcery academy in the Realm. The course load is grueling, and sometimes deadly, and your position gives even simple friendships political dimensions that sometimes feel impossible to navigate. It will be a long seven years.
The Inland Sea
North of the Blessed Isle's Shadowed Coast
Descending Fire, Realm Year 758
Five years, four months before the disappearance of the Scarlet Empress.
The fog encloses your small ship like the jaws of a hungry beast. It presses in from all sides as though summoned by malignant forces that are being only grudgingly kept at bay by the thinnest of margins. The worst part is, you know that in every sense that matters, this is true.
You can't see them, but you can practically sense it on the air: there are things in the churning water, riding the bitterly cold autumn wind, in the unnatural fog that swirls around you. Spirits tasked with guarding your destination from all unauthorised access. If it weren't for the irritable, plain-faced instructor speaking incantations at the prow of the ship, this vessel and everyone on it would be swallowed up, never to be seen again.
You pull your fine cloak tighter around yourself, more against the thought of such a death than against the cold itself. You look around the ship's deck, at the tense but confident crew going efficiently about their business, and then at your fellow students:
You range in age from fifteen to twenty-three years, Chosen of the Dragons all. The eldest among you are feigning ostentatious boredom, talking and laughing a little too loud, leaning casually against the railing in a way that makes the crew have to skirt around them to carry out their work. Your fellow first years, however, are altogether less calm, mostly grouped up in twos or threes, or sticking close to older students from their own Houses, shoulders stiff and gazes nervous.
Something your mother said to you before you left comes to mind, during a rare meeting that has been replaying in your head off and on ever since: "There comes a time in every young Dragon-Blood's life when she realises that, Exalted or not, there are things in the world bigger than she is. Studying the sorcerous arts, you will learn this sooner than many." You suspect that some of your year mates are already beginning to get an inkling of this lesson. She was wrong in your case, of course. There's never been a moment in your life, before or after the Dragons Chose you, where you had any illusions about just how small you are.
There are a few first year students notably standing apart from the others even on the cramped confines of the deck. You find yourself taking note of each of them.
A wide-eyed girl with bone white hair sits cross-legged on the deck, back braced against a barrel, looking at the gloom around her and scribbling frantically in a notebook.
Near to her is a timid, mousey looking thing whose clothes are noticeably less fine than the rest of you, standing apart less by choice than by default. The water droplets from the fog and the waves have declined to settle on her at all, almost as though out of respect.
Most memorable of all, however, is the strange girl who is practically leaning her entire body over the ship's railing, ignoring the frigid spray and the furtive glares from the crew as she peers around at the wind and the water through an expensive looking hand mirror. Her clothes are both foreign and a little garishly decorative, the crystals gleaming in every strand of her hair only adding to the effect.
Then, of course, there's you. You're used to standing apart, however.
"She's watching the spirits," a voice tells you. You look over your shoulder to see a boy standing behind you. Tall, auburn-haired, marble-skinned.
"I know what she's doing," you tell him. You've seen that trick with a mirror done before, even been shown the creatures revealed in the glass by one of your tutors.
"I suppose you would," he says, pleasantly enough to set your teeth slightly on edge. "Mnemon Keric, by the way. I believe we've met?"
"Briefly, I think," you allow. It had been at least two years ago. "I am Ambraea."
"I know," Keric agrees. "I think most people here know who you are."
It's true — you've hardly failed to notice the stares when people think you're not looking, but you're distracted as well as being accustomed to them. "The Heptagram isn't large," you say. "We'll all get to know each other soon enough."
"Yes, I expect so," Keric agrees. "Especially once the chaff gets sifted out — we've got a few in this group I don't expect will last." He doesn't look at the girl with the mirror, or the mousey looking girl standing on her own, but you can tell that they're included in this estimation. "Do you know what the older students call us in our first year?"
"Yes," you say.
"Well, then you understand no one gets through seven years here without people to rely on," he says. His smile is genuine enough. "I'm just looking to introduce myself to someone who I can expect not to wash out."
"I don't think anyone plans to wash out," you say, looking out over the water. A violent swell strikes the ship, and you're forced to grip the railing to avoid stumbling.
"Well, of course, but some of us have more pressure on us than others," he says, giving you a meaningful look you don't particularly appreciate, for all that he's right.
You're still thinking about how to respond to this when you're distracted by something far more important: Out of the fog, a rocky edifice looms ahead of you. "We're here," you say.
"Oh, we are!" Keric says, trying hard not to sound as relieved as he clearly is.
The fog parts like a set of gates as the instructor works the wind that, so close to your destination, would ordinarily dash you all against the rocks. This reveals a tiny, cliffside jetty, the crew already working to bring you into dock with it. Soon enough, the journey will be over, and the work will begin.
Article:
In addition to your unique situation, part of the gossip surrounding you relates to your unconventional father — even with your mother's prolific reputation, he's not what anyone expects. Who is he, and what elemental Aspect have you inherited?
[ ] Air Aspect: Your father is of House Ferem, the largest of the Realm's many minor Cadet Houses, which in centuries past once fancied itself a rival to the Scarlet Realm.
[ ] Fire Aspect: Your father is a foreign outcaste who was briefly the talk of the Dynasty. Now, you sometimes think you're the only one who even remembers his name.
[ ] Earth Aspect: Your father is an emissary from the distant satrapy of Prasad, which has adopted heretical practices and styled itself an empire in its own right.
[ ] Water Aspect: Your father is a former general and war hero born to an ailing patrician class family, who mysteriously joined the Immaculate Order shortly before your birth.
[ ] Wood Aspect: Your father is a Lookshyan defector who arrived on the Blessed Isle with little but his honour.
Starting this thread while I have as many other things on the go as I do is a Bad Idea, but I'm doing my best to manage that. The way Last Daughter is structured, each of the seven years of Ambraea's academic career is intended to be covered in a relatively small number of updates, with each year end offering a natural stopping point for me to put it down and focus on other things.
The idea for this thread has also just been burning a hole in my back pocket for almost a year.
Scheduled vote count started by Gazetteer on Oct 30, 2021 at 9:46 PM, finished with 32 posts and 23 votes.
[x] Earth Aspect: Your father is an emissary from the distant satrapy of Prasad, which has adopted heretical practices and styled itself an empire in its own right.
[X] Water Aspect: Your father is a former general and war hero born to an ailing patrician class family, who mysteriously joined the Immaculate Order shortly before your birth.
[X] Air Aspect: Your father is of House Ferem, the largest of the Realm's many minor Cadet Houses, which in centuries past once fancied itself a rival to the Scarlet Empire.
[X] Fire Aspect: Your father is a foreign outcaste who was briefly the talk of the Dynasty. Now, you sometimes think you're the only one who even remembers his name.
Earth Aspect: Your father is an emissary from the distant satrapy of Prasad, which has adopted heretical practices and styled itself an empire in its own right: 7
Water Aspect: Your father is a former general and war hero born to an ailing patrician class family, who mysteriously joined the Immaculate Order shortly before your birth: 6
Air Aspect: Your father is of House Ferem, the largest of the Realm's many minor Cadet Houses, which in centuries past once fancied itself a rival to the Scarlet Empire: 5
Wood Aspect: Your father is a Lookshyan defector who arrived on the Blessed Isle with little but his honour: 3
Fire Aspect: Your father is a foreign outcaste who was briefly the talk of the Dynasty. Now, you sometimes think you're the only one who even remembers his name: 2
You're one of the first off the ship, by sheer happenstance. You let out a sigh of open relief as you feel rock underfoot, your first steps onto the Isle of Voices rooting you once again in your own element.
A narrow road curves its way up the cliff face, in places hewn into the stone itself. Its beginning is marked by a set of carved statues to either side, each in the likeness of a grinning man. It's a little startling. You've seen statues of people or animals before, but only ever in private rooms belonging to Dragon-Blooded — your own father owns a fist-sized elephant carved of white jade, brought all the way from his homeland. You've never seen someone flout the Immaculate proscription of iconic artwork so flagrantly and openly before, though.
One of the other girls seems to agree, although she takes more active offence than you do, glaring up at the nearest statue with a look that actually smoulders. This lasts until the statue looks around with a stony grinding sound, and glares right back at her. More than a few of the others leap back in startlement — the girl who'd glared in the first place only tilts her head, her look taking on a more assessing quality as she examines the construct.
"Stay on the path," the instructor says, sweeping past you all. "Do not stray from the group, do not chase the lights, do not harass the statues, do not reply to the voices. The spirits can always scent new students. I'd like to get to the school while there's still a bit of daylight." His name is Nellens Ovo, a Water Aspect of indeterminate years. You don't think you've seen him smile once during the entire trip.
"What daylight?" someone mutters. Glancing up at the gloom overhead and the fog clinging to the island, you can see his point. The instructor ignores the comment, expecting you all to fall in behind him as he sets out. The senior students do immediately — whatever nerves they'd displayed on the voyage over have been completely replaced by a sense of eager anticipation.
You can't entirely say you feel the same. As you begin the climb to the top of the cliffs, shapes move in the gloom — flickering lights and shadowy, ethereal forms, crawling on the ground and swimming through the air like schooling jellyfish, sometimes darting across the road ahead, too indistinct to make out. Odd cries echo in the distance, monstrous or inhuman or a horrible mix of both.
"... I didn't think it would be this awful," someone mutters.
"Oh, really? I think it's a little beautiful," a distracted voice says.
An older Sesus boy laughs. "Honestly, Amiti," he says, with familiarity that's casual, but not quite affectionate, "I think you were born for this place."
The pale girl with the white hair hunches her shoulders in embarrassment at the scattered snickering, clutching her notebook to her chest.
The path widens as you get higher up on the cliffs, scraggly trees lining the road to either side, some of them moving unnaturally. Perhaps a little disorientated by the strange surroundings, a first year boy at the edge of the group loses his footing, tripping onto the gravelly dirt at the edge of the road. Immediately, several strange shadows seem to converge over him, taking on a humanoid shape that beckons toward him.
Nellens Ovo mutters whirls, hand raised to do something, but someone else beats him to it — swift as the breeze, a shape darts in from nearer the front of the group, hair streaming behind her as she draws the sword she wears at her side. She cuts the figure in half, and it vanishes with an almost melodramatic scream, dissolving into component shadows that scurry away into the fog.
"Are you alright?" the girl with the sword asks the fallen boy. She holds a gallant hand out to him, the other still bearing her weapon. In that pose, she unconsciously looks a great deal like a younger version of the heroine from a romance novel, about to sweep an unassuming young man off his feet.
"I... fine!" he says, clearly mortified. He accepts her hand, but lets go of it just as fast, frantically beating the dust out of his clothes. His face and neck turn a brilliant shade of crimson at the general amusement this display has caused.
"Garan, what did I tell you about staying on the road?" Ovo demands.
"... Sorry, uncle," the Nellens boy mutters, looking as if he'd like to vanish on the spot.
"And put the sword away, Tepet," Ovo adds. "If you encourage the spirits, they'll send something real at us."
The Tepet girl doesn't look particularly chagrined, but she still sheathes the sword as instructed. "Sorry, sir," she says. The power she drew on to carry her so fast still swirls around her in the form of a dust devil centred around her feet.
This proves to be the most exciting part of the trip. Once things have settled down again, a voice speaks beside you: "So, Keric bent your ear already, huh?" The girl to your left is speaking to you. Orange hair the colour of autumn leaves spills out from beneath a hood meant to ward off the chill, with eyes that match the shade precisely.
"We spoke," you say, levelly.
She giggles at that. "So serious! I'm V'neef L'nessa, by the way."
"Ambraea." Then before she can respond, you add: "Don't say 'I know'."
She laughs again — it might be nerves, given your surroundings. Or maybe she's just naturally cheerful. "Sorry, sorry!" she says. You refuse to be charmed — her approaching you so soon after a scion of a House bitterly opposed to her own isn't a coincidence, particularly given your own position.
"Did your mother ask you to get to know me?" you ask, not in any mood to be subtle.
L'nessa blinks. "Well, yes," she says. "But, the same with Keric too, I assume. You know how that is."
You do, admittedly. And you don't even have any particular ill will toward her mother. V'neef herself had been entirely pleasant to you, the one time you'd met her — she'd congratulated you on your Exaltation with all seeming sincerity, which is more than you usually expect from your half-siblings. But, perhaps naively, you'd thought the politicking would wait at least until you'd gotten to the school itself.
You remain stoic for an uncomfortable moment — you've found you can get away with that, as an Earth Aspect — when the school itself rescues you from having to immediately continue this conversation.
At the top of the cliffs, the fog parts just enough to reveal your destination above: seven towers loom high above the island, connected by walls that form the shape of the school's namesake. It hits you finally, that you're really here. You've imagined this day for two years, ever since Pasiap Chose you, when you first began to imagine yourself living up to your mother's high expectations.
Cresting the top of the cliffs, you find yourselves standing in front of the gates to the Heptagram.
An old man stands there, leaning on a staff, his eyes flinty, bundled up in layers of warm robes. Nellens Ovo pulls you all up to a stop, and silence falls. With a snap of the old man's fingers, even the strange sounds of the Isle of Voices itself seem to quiet. "I bid you welcome, young seekers of knowledge," he says, his voice still clear and strong. "Those of you returning to us, and to this year's fresh faces as well. May you all learn more than you care to know." You can't entirely suppress a shudder at this, but at least you're not alone in that. He carries on. "For those of you newly arrived, I am Ragara Bhagwei, and this is my school. Not all of you will graduate — the mysteries of Pure Essence are many and treacherous. Some will lack the aptitude, but more will lack the will."
There is silence then, for a long moment, as he spears each of you with his eyes in turn. You feel your shoulders straighten under his gaze, desiring powerfully to make something of a good impression. Are you just imagining it when he seems to look at you a half second longer than the others? He continues on: "But do not be too quick to despair, or to resort to desperate measures — few here unlock the secrets of the Emerald Circle in their first year. Each of you will progress at your own rate, or not at all. While you will need the support of your fellow students to excel here, you will ultimately fail or succeed by your own talent and perseverance." This, clearly, is what many among you are afraid of.
There's another moment of uncomfortable silence, before the dominie turns to the gates, waving them open with just a gesture. "But first, a proper meal, after your long journey."
The quiet continues as you follow instructor Ovo into the building's entranceway, through a narrow passage to the ground floor of one of the towers, which contains the kitchens and the dining hall. A relatively small space with room for one hundred, if you really crammed them in — there are far less people than that here, however. As you all find your places at one of the tables, you once again do a rough count. There are around forty students, give or take, and nearly half as many instructors, seemingly all clustered around their own table.
The space has a sort of scholarly humility about it, having little in the way of decoration or obvious comforts — simple, by Dynastic standards, without descending to what you'd expect at the secondary schools that truly embrace the character-building effects of hard living. Regardless, the scent from the kitchens is heavenly after the last leg of your long, multi-stage journey by two different ships.
Having grown up in the Imperial Palace, you think of yourself as inured to displays of supernatural power. Still, though, you can't help but jerk back in surprise as the food is borne out of the kitchen by invisible servants, which silently set bowls and cups in front of you all, before filling them both. You're aware that the older students are enjoying your and the other first years' shock. You have to admit that, come next year, you might be doing the same.
Once you get over your startlement, you dig in quite cheerfully. It's local food, of course. With the climate of the neighbouring prefectures of the Northern Blessed Isle, that means a hearty soup, some bread, and a glass of red wine. You expect you'll miss the Imperial chefs' cooking soon enough if everything is this heavy and... rustic day in, day out. For now, though, it's precisely what you need when you're tired and hungry and cold.
By the time you've eaten, washed up, and then are shown to your dormitory, you're so tired that you only dimly notice that your luggage has been brought up already, and just barely register the identities of your two roommates for the next seven years. You can deal with both of those things tomorrow.
As you drift off, though, part of Ragara Bhagwei's speech comes back into your head, the bit about it being normal not to achieve sorcerous initiation within your first year at the Heptagram. Your mother had mentioned this as well, in a light, consoling tone that had left you without a shadow of a doubt that she expects you to be better than merely average. But you'd always known that, didn't you? Most students might be able to afford to take several years to become a true sorcerer, but most students aren't the youngest Exalted daughter of the Scarlet Empress. You will have a busy year.
Article:
The identity of your roommates are an important element to this quest, and will be major characters for the next seven years. Allies and connections to others will be vital both to managing the Heptagram's brutal self-directed workload, as well as providing valuable contacts in Dynastic life after graduation.
Sorcerers are indispensable within the Scarlet Dynasty. At the same time, they are also held at arm's length, and viewed with a degree of fearful suspicion by society at large unless they're simply too politically powerful to do so, like your mother, or your eldest half-sister, Mnemon. There will never again be a time in your life when making connections with your peers will be as easy as it will be within the Heptagram's unique scholarly environment. This is particularly important to you, having no House to rely on, and no ties to any of the Great Houses through your father. You are currently wholly dependent on your mother for support and protection.
Your roommates will not utterly define your social circle, or completely preclude plotlines with other characters, but they will become major fixtures of this quest moving forward. It's not necessary to worry overly much about balancing out Aspects — I am perfectly confident in my ability to make two different Dragon-Blooded of the same Aspect feel distinct and different. Try to think about what group dynamic will be the most fun.
Pick one name from each list. These votes will be counted together as a set, so please format them accordingly without a line break between them.
For example:
[ ] Name A
[ ] Name B
List A
One of your roommates will be someone at a serious social disadvantage of some kind, who will likely come to rely on you to make up for this. This will present inconveniences for you at times, and complicate your relationships with certain other characters. However, she will also have unique skills and talents that may not be immediately apparent, but will be extremely useful to you going forward.
[ ] Erona Maia (Water Aspect)
You're not surprised that there is a patrician girl in your year, but you are surprised that she ended up as your roommate. The Realm's patrician class are above the peasantry but below Dynasts, made up primarily of mercantile and bureaucratic families, as well as peasant-born Dragon-Blooded who have completed their term of service in the Imperial Legions. Patrician families have few Exalted members, and lack both the connections and capacity to bear the sheer financial burden necessary to send a scion to a school as prestigious as the Heptagram.
Maia stands out among her Dynastic classmates. She knows absolutely none of them, is their social inferior on the outside world, and on top of this all, she's painfully shy. She would greatly benefit from having a more confident, better placed friend, but cannot immediately reciprocate the gesture in any meaningful way, for all that she would very much like to.
However, there is more to the Erona than an unassuming family of Thousand Scales bureaucrats, and Maia possesses skills and knowledge that would shock any of her classmates were their existence to be revealed. Should you grow close enough, she will not hesitate to quietly use them on your behalf... whether or not you ask her to.
[ ] Sesus Amiti (Air Aspect)
Dragon-Blooded, as the Chosen of the Elemental Dragons, are deeply in tune with the essence of Creation, and those with the talent find little difficulty wielding Emerald Circle sorcery. Another, darker form of magic, aligned to the essence of the Underworld, is primarily the province of powerful ghosts, the Anathema, and rarer Exalts that are still viewed with a strong degree of suspicion. Still, there are a small minority of Dragon-Blooded born with a different talent than their peers, presenting a rare and almost unique asset within Dynastic society, if one that would be viewed with even more fear and mistrust than sorcery already is.
Sesus Amiti was always a scatterbrained, distractible girl. Being Chosen as an Air Aspect less than a year ago has not helped with these tendencies. Amiti is both intelligent and deeply enthused about intellectual pursuits in general, but she's often found with her head in the clouds, losing track of where she is and what she's doing. Her interests also trend toward the offputting and morbid, and her guileless excitement when discussing these things is both powerfully off-putting and betrays the worrisome "moral flexibility" that her House is known for.
Amiti's personality problems and apparent lack of sorcerous aptitude will be a serious detriment to her early years at the Heptagram, despite coming from a respectable household within one of the three great military Houses of the realm. She has difficulty making friends, and as time goes on her talents and predilections will tend to alienate those with strong moral and religious leanings, but she nonetheless possesses a dogged loyalty toward those who treat her well. This could be to your benefit.
[ ] Simendor Deiza (Earth Aspect)
The Threshold is home to many lesser Dynastic Houses ruling land and people outright in the name of the Realm, including your father's own Clan Burano. House Simendor is a particularly old and infamous Cadet House from the Southern satrapy of Chalan, its roots stretching back at least to the early Shogunate , if not longer. The Simendor are renowned sorcerer princes of immoral disposition and shocking decadence, prizing sorcerous aptitude even above Exaltation. They typically train their own scions in their own strange sorcerous initiations, but their current matriarch is nothing if not extravagant, and has now sent her favourite niece to study at the Blessed Isle's most prestigious sorcery academy.
Deiza wastes no time in living up to every bit of her family's reputation, from their sorcerous skill to their dark and worrisome pursuits to their shocking disregard for certain Dynastic social and religious norms. She rubs people the wrong way almost as a point of pride, and seems to take pleasure in making enemies of those too inflexible or stiff-necked to tolerate her behaviour.
At the same time, Deiza is a rarity indeed — at fifteen years old, she has already arrived at the Heptagram initiated into Emerald Circle sorcery, having studied the subject intensely since age eleven. This is far younger than most families would ever consider safe, even taking into account her early Exaltation. Still, her help would be invaluable so early on to anyone who can earn her friendship and tolerate her eccentricities. Every year, she will return to the Heptagram with a little more of her family's rare and forbidden sorcerous practices.
List B
One of your roommates is a well-connected, well-liked Great House scion who will obviously be helpful to have around in most situations. However, as the years go on, unexpected complications will crop up that will affect both of you.
[ ] Ledaal Anay Idelle (Fire Aspect)
Alone of all the Great Houses, House Ledaal is known for its single mindedly pragmatic dedication to defending the Realm from the forces of darkness arrayed against it: rogue ghosts and demons, the fair folk, and in particular, the Anathema. Their "Shadow Crusade" is carried out as a grim duty, and they paint themselves as the Realm's first and last line of defence.
The Heptagram was not Idelle's first choice. She wanted to attend the Cloister of Wisdom in order to train as an Immaculate monk like her two elder siblings before her. Her mother and House matriarch, however, worked together to prevail on her that the House's need is greater than the Order's, and her knack for detecting spirits and strange forms of magic will instead be honed to a lethal point as a trained sorcerer.
Idelle is intelligent, curious, and a steadfastly loyal ally who would walk into Hell itself for a friend. Her parents are both famed shikari, who were involved in the confirmed destruction of no less than three Lunar Anathema. Their legacy still leaves many curious and positively inclined toward her. Her religiosity and commitment to the Shadow Crusade can leave her a little inflexible on certain issues, however, in a way that would prove inconvenient for you in the future, at times.
[ ] Tepet Usala Sola (Air Aspect)
House Tepet stands ascendant at the height of its power, the greatest military House of the Realm by anyone's measure. Its varied warrior traditions are far older than the Dynasty, maintained through the years with the renowned Tepet dedication to excellence. All Tepet scions are expected to excel somehow, whether in soldiering or some other field.
Sola, daughter of the renowned war hero, Matriarch Tepet Usala herself, intends to join the Tepet House Legions and rise through the ranks to become a great sorcerer-general. She aspires to be as lethal with spells and tactics as she is with a blade. It was a surprise to many that she chose the Heptagram over the House of Bells, but she refuses to do anything in half measures — sorcery comes less naturally to her than more traditionally martial pursuits, and so it must be her primary focus until it can be truly mastered. Sola is friendly and sociable, and it would be hard to find anyone more skilled and valiant to have at your back in a fight, among all your classmates.
The one catch with the phrase "at the height of its power", however, is that things can only go downhill from there.
[ ] V'neef L'nessa (Wood Aspect)
House V'neef is the newest of the Realm's Great Houses, headed by its young and popular founder, V'neef herself. Energetic, dynamic, and gifted control over the Realm's vast Merchant Fleet by the Scarlet Empress, the House is wasting no time in expanding the Realm's holdings in the Western Threshold, arranging advantageous marriages to develop its fledgling bloodline, and putting down roots so as to be able to stand on its own without your mother's direct support in the future.
L'nessa is one of V'neef's few blood children, and reportedly her mother's favourite. She has inherited V'neef's famed social graces and air of easy likability, and finds it very easy to make friends wherever she goes. Her interest in getting to know you is genuine even if it was also at her mother's request, and she will make a loyal and dedicated friend both during your time at school and after.
The favour heaped on House V'neef by the Empress has drawn the ire of certain old and powerful Great Houses, however, in particular Houses Mnemon and Peleps. Growing too close to the daughter of its founder will unavoidably be taken as a sign of your own leanings, and may colour how certain other characters see you or limit your options when dealing with them. Despite being two months older than you, she is also literally your niece.
One of your most vivid childhood memories comes from when you were five or six. Still quite a few years away from beginning primary school, your education was nonetheless a great consideration in your childhood, featuring a rotating cast of tutors ready to prepare you for life as a respectable Imperial daughter.
As with most Dynastic children, you didn't see much of your parents day to day, and the mundane tasks of child-rearing were left to a team of nannies and other servants. When you did see one of them, it was usually your father. Being considerably less busy and less important, he simply had more time for you, telling you stories of his homeland and his travels. Not so much as to coddle you, of course. You spoke to him in any depths perhaps once a month, rather than anything truly excessive. What contact you had with your mother was, of course, quite different.
You remember kneeling in front of a low writing desk, clumsy child hand carefully guiding your brush to create High Realm characters as you'd been taught, trying not to be unnerved by the trailing red skirts you could see swishing past as your work was examined from multiple angles. Your calligraphy tutor knelt dutifully at the back of the room, an utter ball of nerves. And who could blame him? His work as a teacher was being evaluated by his employer, the most powerful woman in the world, based on the performance of a young child.
"Slow down." The voice was firm, melodic, always conveying utter confidence that it would be obeyed precisely. "You'll make mistakes." You understood the unspoken addition: Do not waste my time.
"Yes, mother," you said, trying to make yourself slow down. It was difficult to fight against your own anxiety. The weight of her assessing gaze was almost unbearably heavy, even then.
"You're nervous," she said. You nodded, not looking up at her. There was a rustle of rich fabric as she bent over you, fingers ending in red-lacquered nails tilting your face up until your eyes met hers. That was always difficult — like standing a little too close to a roaring bonfire, but not from any literal heat. The power of her presence was impossible for you to fully articulate at such a young age, but you'd held the almost overwhelming certainty whenever you were in the Imperial presence that you never, ever wanted to disappoint her. "Ambraea," she said, "listen carefully: Never show fear to anyone who can use it against you. Weakness is a luxury you won't have."
Which was a lot to take in, for a five-year-old, but it's remained perfectly etched into your memory, in part because of what happened next: A tentative knock came on the door to the chamber. Your mother released you and straightened, her eyes narrowing at the interruption. This being a private family audience, she wasn't quite wearing the full finery of her office — red silk, rather than cloth-of-jade. As always, though, she'd worn the mantle, and the heavy crown with its burning hearthstone centrepiece. "Enter," she said.
A messenger entered, bowing low.
"Speak," the Empress said.
The messenger had cast a nervous glance around the room, at you, and your tutor, and the other servants standing by. "For your ears only, my empress." So, she'd beckoned him closer with one hand, and he'd scurried over, whispering urgently in her ear. You saw something flicker through her — surprise, anger, you weren't sure. But she wasted no time after that.
"We will reschedule this for another time," she'd told your tutor, who hastily bowed. You saw her hands flash in a dozen unfamiliar gestures, a strange, hot charge coming into the air as red Essence gradually flared around her. It grew brighter and thicker until it finally consumed her form entirely. Then it was gone, and so was she, whisked off to whatever place needed such urgent attention.
That exit was, of course, the reason why this meeting had stuck with you in such stunning clarity. Of all the many direct or indirect exercises of power you'd seen from her, this one was the most impressive to you then, a child of walls and rules and schedules decided by others: The ability to simply come and go at will by your own strength, with nothing and no one to stop you.
That was the point in your life when you'd first felt that burning desire to possess that kind of power, even if you hadn't really let yourself acknowledge it fully before you knew whether you would Exalt. Once you finally did years later, your resolve had crystallised into something diamond hard and immovable as a mountain: Nothing would stop you from becoming a great sorcerer.
source: Heirs to the Shogunate pg. 27
Year 1: Sacrifice Goal: Initiate into sorcery by year's end
You wake up in a narrow bed in a tower room the size of one of the closets back in your chambers in the Imperial Palace. Weak sunlight filters in through a narrow window, as if sullen at having to work its way through the heavy layer of clouds that always seems to hang over the Isle of Voices.
Out of three girls sharing this space, you're the first to wake up and get a real chance to look around. In addition to three beds, the space has three small desks and three sturdy looking wardrobes, all of the same plain-carved wood. You cross to the one opposite your own bed, conveniently located between the others. You'd been instructed that you wouldn't need to bring much in the way of your own clothing, and sure enough, a set of identical uniforms tailored to your exact size hang inside the wardrobe.
You waste little time changing into one of these, examining yourself in the wardrobe's mirror afterward. A long, high-collared tunic in pale blue, worn over red pants, with a pair of sturdy boots that you appreciate, given the relatively cold climate. Much simpler fare than what was appropriate for the Imperial court, but this entire setup is doing a good job of quietly impressing upon you that these next seven years will be a place for work, more than for finery.
You find the comb you packed, and get to work on your long, glossy black hair. It's precisely the same shade as the chips of black quartz set into your skin. Interspaced by the occasional rose pink or smoky coloured piece, they march up your limbs in intricate patterns that continue onto your back and around your neck. A single row goes across the bridge of your nose like freckles. The end result combines strikingly with your father's medium brown complexion, even with most of it covered up by this uniform.
You're just finishing with your hair when you hear a small, groggy noise from one of the other beds. It's the patrician girl you noticed on the ship, looking more than just half asleep. "... what time is it?" she murmurs.
"Well, the sun's up," you supply.
She blinks at you, as if trying to place who you are, or why you're here. Then she seems to remember, and her eyes widen in startled recognition. She gives a sound very close to a squeak, shrinking back beneath the blankets, as if embarrassed for you to see her unkempt and in her bedclothes. Which is just not sustainable, considering the current arrangement.
"What's your name?" you ask her.
She stares for a second or two, before abruptly realising that she has to answer the question. "I'm... I'm Erona Maia, my lady."
"And I'm Ambraea," you tell her. "We can't exactly spend the next seven years with you flinching at me whenever you see me. We're all just first years here."
"... sorry," Maia murmurs, which wasn't quite your objective, but at least she's let the blankets fall a bit. She's very small, with subtle Aspect markings that don't affect her hair, eyes, or skin — short and brunette, very dark brown, and light olive, respectively. Straying near to her, though, you can still tell she's a Water Aspect. The air around her is cool and heavy: Maia's mere presence feels like the anticipation of torrential rain.
"Don't worry, we don't bite!" says V'neef L'nessa, who has apparently woken up at some point in this conversation. "Or, I don't, at least. I'm L'nessa." She glances at you, smiling tiredly. "Ambraea and I have already been introduced."
Maia nods. Hopefully she's just not a morning person, although you admit that being the only patrician in the year, and then promptly being put into a room with a daughter of the Empress and a daughter of a Great House Matriarch has to be a little nerve-wracking.
"I'm so jealous, by the way," L'nessa tells you. "Your hair stays so straight!" She's got a brush and is struggling with her mass of thick, orange hair. And losing, in the short-term. You note with quiet amusement as what looks like an autumnal leaf floats free of her hair without any clear point of origin.
"Mm," you say, not offering anything else for the compliment as you finish tying your hair back out of your eyes.
"Oh, dearest Aunt, I treasure our talks already," L'nessa says with mock-formality. You struggle against the tiny smile twitching at the corner of your mouth.
"Oh! She's your—" Maia blushes as you both look around at her. "I mean, I knew who you were, I just didn't..." she looks between you and L'nessa a little helplessly. Despite how paler than you L'nessa is, the family resemblance is still there, particularly in your height and bone structure. It would have been more obvious while you were mortal, back when your hair was still red.
L'nessa gives a small laugh, although it isn't cruel. "You'll get used to that kind of thing, spending time with Dynasts. It's just what happens with enough Exalted in the same family." Your mother is a bit of a special case even by those standards, but it's not uncommon for even Dragon-Blooded who live a merely average lifespan to continue having children into their second century.
"Right, sorry," Maia says, finally rising from bed with an air of unnecessary caution. You can't help but feel like you'll be hearing her apologise for nothing quite a lot, going forward.
"I'm sorry, am I boring you, Simendor?"
Every student in the lecture hall turns to look at the girl in question, who is resting her head on her hand, eyes closed, looking almost as if she's about to nod off. She cracks open one dark eye, looking down at the instructor from her vantage point. You've all been assigned a specific seat along the tiered benches encircling the space — there's only a single lecture hall in the Heptagram, located at the base of the central tower, and large enough for the entire school to be seated in. Currently, it's fairly empty — this is less an ordinary lecture that older students would get benefit from than it is an exercise in explaining just what you're all in for as first years.
"Sorry, sorry," says the girl in question. It's the same one who'd been looking at the spirits through the mirror. Her hair is pulled up into a loose bun now, showing off the multi-coloured iridescence of the metallic crystals embedded within each hair. "It's just early, and I know this part already."
"Do you?" The instructor covering this is a Fire Aspect approaching middle-age, standing confidently down at the bottom of the circular lecture hall. Her breezy introduction had identified her as Cynis Bashura. The name hadn't meant anything to you, but you'd seen a ripple go through some of the other students as it had been given. "Enlighten us, then." A small wisp of dark smoke escapes her mouth with every word.
If the Simendor girl is taken aback by being put on the spot, she doesn't show it. Still looking halfway bored in a way that's earning her unfriendly looks, she says: "Training one's body and spirit to channel the pure Essence of the world is long and difficult, and can take months or years of dedicated work ahead of a formal initiation — it's... mind-expanding in a way that is impossible to describe ahead of time, so a lot of people need to ease into it just to manage." She seems almost to be speaking from experience there, which would be a little bit absurd. "You plan to make us ready for this through focus training and intensive study, yes?"
Her answer is apparently correct enough to make up for her arrogance, in Bashura's opinion. "More or less," she says, turning to the rest of you. "There will be guided channelling sessions twice in the coming weeks. They are recommended. There will also be several sealing rituals which must be conducted weekly or monthly, which will be introduced in the coming week. In between this, there will be lectures from instructor Zadaki and instructor Nellens Ovo, on elemental geomancy and demonology respectively. Skipping lectures when they're available is a good way to fall behind."
As she continues, explaining exactly what your average week of studies is going to look like, you glance down at the syllabus you've been given, literally entitled Your First Year: The Ten-Thousand Labours, and your heart sinks a little as you take in just how much you're expected to retain in order to make the cut here. It's not quite a surprise, but there's a difference between having been told about this by Heptagram graduates and actually seeing its imposing bulk standing between you and all your goals.
There are reasons that at least half of students who wash out of the Heptagram do so in their first year.
Bashura seems to be taking an obscure sort of pleasure out of your collective dismay. "In the future, you will need to check when lectures, practical exercises, and testing occur — these are scheduled at the instructors' convenience, and will not be reliably at the same time. These will be posted outside the lecture hall a week in advance. You are expected to manage your own time, and if you do so poorly and fall behind... you fall behind. Refer to your syllabus in order to make sure this doesn't happen to you." In what is perhaps intended to be more heartening than it is, she adds: "I have a good feeling about this batch, though. I have good money down that we won't lose more than a third of you, this time so, try not to prove me wrong!"
Article:
As a 'sacrifice' — a first year student — you have a full year of guided study ahead of you, with goals you must hit and things you must learn. The manner in which you do so is left partially up to your discretion, however. Every sorcerer has their own idiosyncrasies, after all, and the Heptagram chooses to foster these tendencies rather than stifle them.
Your precise approach is up to you, however. What is it? Although you will be doing some of everything to complete your Ten Thousand Labours, this will define important nuances about Ambraea's personality and priorities.
[ ] Theory first
Intensive study and book learning. You prefer to truly understand something intellectually before you try to grasp it spirituality.
[ ] Hands on
Experimentation, ritual, and practice. You prefer to learn by doing, with everything else following naturally.
[ ] Mysticism
Meditation, intuition, communion with spirits. As a Dragon-Blooded and aspiring sorcerer, you are attuned to the supernatural world in a way few others can imagine. You can use this to internalise the insights you'll need to become a sorcerer.
The air in the cave is blessedly dry, bearing little of the inescapable cold clamminess that seems to increasingly dominate the Isle as Autumn progresses. You sit cross-legged on the stone floor, fingers moving in complex patterns you've struggled to learn, mind full of complicated equations. Beyond the strain of your concentration, you can just barely sense... something here. Essence cousin to your own, but subtly unfamiliar — solid, eternally patient, infinitely unyielding.
Your breathing slows, and so does your heart rate, matching the intangible rhythm of the Earth in this place. For the space of two heartbeats, you have it — your anima surges subtly with the strain, your Aspect Markings standing out particularly starkly as you gather a flickering, white glow into your hands. It wavers in the direction of becoming something more, but before you can truly grasp it, it's gone again. You're left doubled over with your hands braced on your knees, trying to get your breathing under control while feeling like you've just run up a mountain and back.
You feel your instructor's icy gaze on you, and prepare yourself to be corrected on something, to be told about what you're forgetting, or to be given something else to mentally juggle on top of everything. Instead, she does something worse — she gives you the shallowest nod of approval. As if you're doing everything right, and it's still this difficult and fruitless.
The cave you and your fellow students occupy is hard to spot from without. But instructor Zadaki had led you all briskly into a narrow crack in a cliff face, and into a large, domed space within. You'd all gasped as she'd summoned a small, magical light, revealing the brilliant crystals on all sides. The air here thrums with energy, and small, fleeting shapes move among the crystals at the edge of your sight. You wouldn't have needed the month and a half of formal geomantic study you've had to recognise this place as an Earth Aspected demesne, a nexus of untapped geomantic power.
Despite your frustration, as you take a moment to catch your breath, you're forced to admit that you are doing well at this, looking around at the others. While a Dragon-Blood is attuned to all five elements, the one of her Aspect will always come most naturally. Nearby, Sesus Amiti is particularly noticeable in her lack of progress. The Air Aspect is wearing a look of concentration so intense that it's almost incongruous with her soft features, performing the same exercise you had, but with nothing to show for it but a swirl of unseasonal, wintery chill coming off of her. As you watch, it intensifies to the point of a visible glow, Amiti's anima standing out a pale, sickly blue-white, wispy and insubstantial at the edges. Frost slowly creeps over the stone around her, already beginning to coat her uniform. It's a bit of an embarrassing loss of anima control, for an exercise as simple as this, and in a setting as public as this, so you look away.
Aspect isn't everything, of course. Ledaal Anay Idelle seems to be doing at least as well as you, and is evidently pacing herself better than you, the only sign of her own exertions the Essence gathered in her hands, and a slight intensifying of the glow from her red-orange eyes. She certainly seems to have the breath to spare to attempt to mutter advice to Amiti, as little good as that's doing.
"Ledaal, mind your own efforts," instructor Zadaki says.
Amiti hunches in on herself at the reprimand, but Idelle herself takes it stoically enough. "Yes, ma'am," she says, falling silent. It's impressive, on Idelle's part. Zadaki Twelve-Feathers is certainly one of the more imposing of the school's permanent instructors, as well as among the most whispered about.
She isn't the only outcaste among the faculty: Brother Lichen is a retired Immaculate spirit breaker who'd been a slave before the Dragons had Chosen him. First Light is a sixty year veteran of the Imperial Legions and an expert in battlefield magic, who first managed to initiate into the Emerald Circle during her grueling ten years of training at Pasiap's Stair. Zadaki, though, has the distinction of being the only foreign outcaste among them. A barbarian from the Northern Threshold, rumours abound as to how exactly she'd come to work at the Realm's finest school of sorcery, with few answers to be had beyond enigmatic hints.
Gossip about your instructors and fellow students, as it turns out, is your primary source of entertainment amid the constant exhaustion of your first year.
As Zadaki walks away to address another student's failings, you catch sight of something on the fire side of Idelle. A small creature peaks up from behind a crystal formation, almost impossible to spot — something like a large rat, its own coat somehow formed out of a similar mineral substance to the crystals around it. It stares back at you with disconcertingly intelligent eyes.
"Don't get distracted by the elementals, sacrifice," the third year boy on your far side says, speaking out of the corner of his mouth. His name is Cynis Irsin, and you have the annoyed suspicion that he's taking this course because he finds this exercise relaxing at this point. "They're pretty, but not very smart. Try not to follow their example."
Your status as an Imperial daughter has done little to earn you much in the way of respect from the upperclassmen. They almost universally seem to regard you first years as temporary fixtures until proven otherwise. You bite your tongue on a reply, and grudgingly follow his advice, focusing back on your work.
The crystalline rat is far from the only spirit you'll see up close that week.
The black pool in the centre of the chamber ripples ominously as you work, despite your best efforts not to disturb it. It's a good incentive to keep your hands steady.
"Sequence number three, now," L'nessa says. She's crouched beside you, the instructions open in her lap, carefully examining them as you work. You nod shallowly, and move on to etching the binding sequence in question into the soft clay on the outside of the circle. You're not precisely fluent in Old Realm yet, but you've memorised these sequences, at least.
The Heptagram is host to a great many binding chambers such as this, housing everything from rogue elementals to summoned demons, each using a deliberately different construction and style of binding. The one you're in now is particularly nerve wracking. The circular pool of water, located in the basement of one of the towers, is ringed by an elaborate binding circle carved into the floor. The circle's eight points, however, are formed of clay charged with Water Essence — binding inscriptions need to be carefully inscribed into each one in rapid succession, but the clay will become smooth again over the course of one month.
This is the second time you've had to do this, and while it's gotten easier, it's not a great deal less tedious for you and the other seven students in attendance. If any of you were more comfortable with your Old Realm, you might just all fill in a point on the circle and be done in half the time. As is, though, the surest way to go about it is to break up into pairs, lay down temporary paper seals, and then refresh the points four at a time.
"Maybe I should have paired up with Maia," L'nessa whispers, glancing across the circle. The pool shouldn't be large enough that your voices wouldn't carry to the far side — the black water seems to swallow the sound up disconcertingly.
You don't look up from your work as you respond. "Keric isn't so bad." A little pompous, perhaps.
"To you, maybe," L'nessa says. "He makes her nervous."
What doesn't? You don't say that, though, because it even feels a little mean to think — Maia's relaxed around you and L'nessa, somewhat, through forced exposure if nothing else. You haven't seen that much in the way of her being egregiously looked down on by your Dynastic classmates... but that might just be because of your habit of shooting them a protective glare over her head if they start in on it.
You put the issue out of your mind as you continue on to the seventh and final line of the binding. This binding has been going quickly enough that you'll have nearly an hour of study time before bed, which you very desperately need. Everytime you start to make progress, it feels as though you fall behind on something else. Even for an Exalt, it feels scarcely sustainable.
You've nearly finished your line when you hear a sharp gasp, somehow managing to make its way to your ears across the pool.
"The sequence ends with ro, not ko!" Keric says, voice sharp. "That's changed the meaning entirely!"
"I'm sorry, I'll fix it!" Maia says, staring at the clay she's been digging her own stylus into. There isn't quite an opportunity to repair the damage — the rippling in the pool intensifies, to the point that it actually starts slopping over the edges, causing you and the others to scramble backward.
Up out of the water rising a hulking, translucent figure, scarcely humanoid, with a single, staring eye suspended in what would be its torso. A watery tendril lashes out at Maia and Keric. He throws himself flat to the floor, but Maia launches adroitly clear, flipping up from a crouching position to land, cat-like a short distance away. She's forced to repeat the trick a little less gracefully as the spirit brings the next furious tendril down on where she'd landed.
You burst into action before any of the others, dashing around the circle to where Maia has just evaded yet another lashing tendril. Unfortunately, the creature is cannier than you might have hoped — while it was using one of its many arms to attack her, another had reached out and seized a heavy, wooden table behind it, sending instruments crashing to the floor as it hurls it bodily at Maia. She's just come up out of a roll, and doesn't have time to get out of the way.
You manage to put yourself between her and the table, both your arms coming up to brace against the attack, willing your skin and bone to be as hard and unyielding as stone. The antique wood hits you with the force of a battering ram, driving you back a step, but breaking against your hardened stance as though it were made of bamboo, splitting down the middle and clattering loudly to the floor. Before it can react to your presence, you pull Earth Essence from deep within yourself. Using the understanding of its flow and structure you've gained so far, you will it to form around your hand, allowing you physically hurl it directly into the thing's eye. It solidifies into a spiky chunk of dark quartz crystal, hitting the spirit's most obvious weak point like a hammer blow.
The spirit reels back, letting out a deafening bellow of pain and outrage, quickly followed by another: A lithe figure darts around its lashing arms on the far side of the pool from you, a sword in her hand. More than a few people have made fun of Sola's insistence on wearing the weapon with her uniform, but you're certainly not going to complain now. Every time it tries to swat at her, she cuts it, water spilling like blood from its near-invisible wounds.
The others aren't wasting time either. L'nessa is hurriedly finishing up the last of your inscription, and Keric, having lost the stylus Maia had been using, is simply willing the clay to remould itself into the correct shape. Two other students are occupied with this process, while Nellens Garan scurries around the perimeter of the circle, trying to shore up the binding with as many temporary seals as he can.
Faster than you can react, a watery arm seizes you around the chest, pinning your arms in place and trying very hard to pick you up, seeking to hurl you into the nearest wall before you throw another elemental bolt at it. It has a lot of trouble with this last — you will yourself to remain rooted in place, just as though you were a piece of masonry stuck fast to the floor. It's still exceedingly uncomfortable, however, the spirit's crushing grip making it hard for you to breathe, even if the same trick that helped you withstand the table earlier saves you from a set of broken ribs.
The pain stops, and you gasp in a grateful breath — the tendril has been cut clean through. Maia is standing beside you with a dagger in her hand — you weren't previously aware that she even had a weapon like that, let alone where she'd produced it from so quickly.
Then Keric finishes the inscription, and just like that, it's over. The spirit's bellows grow quieter, and its attacks cease as it slowly, gradually retreats back into the pool. For a moment, everything is quiet. Most of you are a little battered, and all of you are at least partially drenched — including Maia, for once, although you think in her case it's just her anima.
Keric straightens, and fixes Maia with a glare, looking as though he's about to say something distinctly unkind to her, when you're all distracted by the doors to the chamber bursting open, admitting Nellens Ovo, looking as irritable as any time you've seen him. He looks around at you all, noting your variously elevated animas, the water on the floor and the smashed furniture in silence for a moment. "No one's hurt?" he asks, brusquely.
"No sir," Sola says, still standing with her sword pointed at the pool of water, as though it might try something funny. It's true — none of you are worse than bruised. First year students or not, there are few things on Creation that would actually enjoy taking on eight Dragon-Blooded single-handedly.
"Good," instructor Ovo says. "Then put the sword away, Tepet. What happened?" This last is a general question, but he sends a suspicious glance at Garan in particular — you've noticed that he's harder on his kin than he is on other students, rather than the reverse. Garan shrinks back under the gaze, despite having done quite well in the minor crisis.
"A slight error in the binding ritual, sir," Keric says coolly, carefully not looking at Maia, who is now attempting to hide behind you. "Hard to say what went wrong, exactly."
Ovo holds his gaze for a moment longer, then sighs. "Very well. Be more cautious in the future, Mnemon — all of you, get the offerings over with so the servant-spirits can get this mess cleaned up." With that, he very nearly storms out, leaving you all to it.
With a relieved sort of sigh, Garan moves a strand of wet hair out of his face, and goes to carry out the last part of the ritual — offerings to help placate the beast you'd all just fought for another four weeks. You all follow suit.
"Well, that could have been worse," L'nessa says, still wringing water out of her tunic.
Maia hunches in on herself. "How?"
"We could have been forced to kill it," you say. There are many varieties of spirit for which 'it' would be inappropriate at best, but you're fairly confident that that monster you'd fought was one of the more bestial varieties. Probably another elemental, if not something stranger than that.
Maia grimaces a little. "Right. Yeah," she admits. That would have been significantly harder to explain — especially if it is an elemental. Those usually stay dead after they've been killed the first time.
The three of you are climbing your way out of the basement, making your way through the adjoining passageways to the central housing tower. The one you're in now is a confusing mishmash of workrooms, ritual chambers like the one you've just come from, and assorted store rooms. "Are you both going straight back to the dormitory?" you ask, idly rubbing at a bruise you picked up from taking that table head on.
"I'm not going anywhere else while I'm this soaked," L'nessa says, philosophically. Maia only gives a small nod. She, at least, is perfectly dry now.
"Good," you say, "We should have time to quiz each other on casting mudras before bed, then."
L'nessa groans. "Do you remember what relaxation feels like?" she asks.
"No," you say, half-truthfully. "We have that lecture first thing tomorrow, don't we?" You step up off the stairs, and onto a landing you've only briefly passed before, mostly filled with doors to sealed chambers beyond your skill level. You're a little surprised to see one of the doors left ajar — that's certainly not normal.
"Oh, I forgot," L'nessa says. "That one's from the dominie, too, isn't it? So we'll understand about one word in five." Ragara Bhagwei, for all his famed brilliance, does not appear to know how to render complex topics easier for younger students to follow.
"So... you're... not mad?" Maia asks, looking up at the two of you timidly.
"No," you say.
L'nessa waits long enough to realise that you're not going to elaborate, before she sighs, and says: "Mistakes happen, Maia. We're all working ourselves to the bone, here. That slip-up could have been anyone."
Maia nods, looking doubtful. Then she freezes, letting out a small sound almost like a squeak.
A moment later, you realise why. There's a group coming back this way, from the passage to the central tower. Based on the voices that drift in ahead of them, it's several boys, and one of them is unmistakably Mnemon Keric. You have no idea what he's doing coming back the way he came so quickly. "He can't be that angry," you start to say to Maia. After all, he'd covered for her with Ovo. But when you look to where she'd been standing a moment ago, she isn't anymore.
L'nessa catches on faster than you — she's making a beeline for the open door, evidently following Maia. This is, to put it lightly, a bad idea. Rooms like that are sealed for a reason, and usually require a specific ritual to open, to prevent unprepared students from simply blundering into something potentially dangerous. The punishment for not closing a door behind yourself is generally severe.
You don't give it more than a split second's thought before following, if only to keep the two of them out of trouble. As you set foot across the threshold, Maia's already closing the door behind you both with a relieved sort of sigh. "Thanks," she whispers. "I just... didn't want to talk to him so soon after that."
"Well, I can understand not wanting to talk to Keric," L'nessa says, "but this might be a little excessive."
You cast a wary eye around the space. It's a storage room, as far as you can tell, housing a shelf or two of very old looking texts, and what look to be several odd artifacts. What looks like a spyglass of blue jade-steel rests on a small table to one side of the room. On another is a large hourglass — in place of sand, tiny beads of black jade stone trickle down, one by one. The most eye-catching item here, however, is what looks like a large, golden birdcage. A miniature raiton perches there, its feathers a strangely lurid shade of red, like drying blood.
"I know," Maia admits. She follows your gaze, although she seems more interested in the hourglass than the bird. "I didn't think."
"We shouldn't be in here," you say. You don't like the way that bird seems to be following your conversation so keenly, cocking its feathered head from side to side to better see each speaker.
"Probably not," L'nessa agrees, venturing a step closer. "Why is this bird here, do you think?"
"Placed here for safe keeping," the bird says in perfectly clear High Realm. L'nessa and Maia both give a start at this. "Are you really going so soon? You've only just got here."
"What are you?" you demand, frowning at it. Or perhaps, at him — the raiton's cultured tones are unmistakably masculine.
"Well, that's a very rude question," he says, shuffling a little closer on his perch, just as golden as the rest of the cage. With a sinking feeling, you realise that it's not actually gold. The entire thing, from the rounded cage to the pedestal, is made of solid orichalcum, its surfaces shining brightly even in the dim lighting of the windowless room. "Why don't you at least introduce yourselves first?"
You hesitate for a moment, your curiosity warring with your caution. Whatever it is that you're talking to, he's contained within some kind of warded artifact made of a magical material famed for its raw sorcerous power. That doesn't imply a minor entity. "Ambraea," you say.
L'nessa casts you a doubtful look, but adds: "V'neef L'nessa."
"... Erona Maia," Maia says after a moment, voice quiet, as though she'd prefer to be ignored.
The raiton seems, of all things, overjoyed by these introductions. "Oh, my," he says, "there's so much here! I've always loved a good mononym — so much room for it to grow, and so much left to implication by its brevity." He looks to L'nessa. "And one of the first scions of an unfolding legacy. Excellent. Delicious. I haven't been freely fed true names this good in a long time." Last, he casts an oddly searching look at Maia. "Well, two out of three is good enough, I suppose." Which seems a little unnecessarily rude, but you suppose not even strange spirits are above petty elitism.
Maia flinches, taking a wary step toward the door. Still, she's too fascinated to leave just yet.
The raiton draws himself up a little further, preening some of his red feathers. Like all raitons, his features are a mix of the avian and the reptilian — a toothy snout emerging from a feathered head, and visible claws at the end of his wings. "And as for me, you may call me Yoxien, the Directory Bound in Crimson, Defining Soul of the Bottomless Library."
With that, all three of you take a very healthy step back in the direction of the door, none of you willing to take your eyes off of the raiton. You may not have heard of Yoxien specifically, but you recognise that general nomenclature well enough — instructor Ovo had delivered a brisk lecture on demonic classifications just last week. It's Maia who gives voice to what you're all thinking: "You're a demon of the Second Circle!"
"Correct," Yoxien says, freely admitting to being, somehow, a lord of hell. Demons of the second circle are beings of great power and bespoke, alien nature, far beyond the capacity of all but the greatest Dragon-Blooded sorcerers to bind. The only reason you've seen a demon this powerful before is that one of those greatest sorcerers is your own mother. "There's no need to be so skittish — you're out there, and I, as ever, am in here. I couldn't hurt you even if I wanted to. The works of the Solar Exalted are hardly as infallible as they liked to believe, but they still do not fail lightly." As if to prove this, he leans out and raps on one of the orichalcum bars of his cage with his snout. This produces an oddly pure, ringing note.
The revelation that the demon you're talking to is being kept from doing harm by a piece of Anathema artifice is of dubious comfort to you. Seeing this, the tiny raiton actually sighs, ruffling his feathers in annoyance. "I don't want to. We've only just met, and you seem like polite enough children. Terrestrials have always been my favourites — your names tend to have so much history behind them, either explicit or omitted."
"Thank you," L'nessa says, offering a brittle sort of smile. Evidently, she's decided to treat this like an unwanted conversation with someone too important to offend with rudeness. "I'm sorry to say, we really must get back to our dormitory. It's not long until curfew, and we have our studies to see to."
"Ah, of course," Yoxien says, sounding, of all things, disappointed. "It was delightful to meet you, of course." Then he eyes you in particular, a distinctly uncomfortable moment. Like he's looking into you, and seeing something there beneath your skin. Long training prevents you from shivering. "If you're ever... stuck, I may be of some assistance. Try to remember that."
You all give courteous goodbyes almost robotically — there's something about the demon, you decide, that makes you want to match his urbane tone. The thought of him affecting you that way even so caged is enough to make you all the more grateful to be leaving.
When you step back out onto the landing, Keric and the other boys are long gone. You shut the door behind you firmly, satisfied to hear the click of the sealed lock resetting behind you. You won't be able to get back in even if you tried now, without asking an instructor to show you the specific opening ritual. "Maia?" you say, quietly.
"... Yes?" she asks, fidgeting as she avoids looking up at you.
"Do not do something like this again." She flinches, but you plough ahead, undeterred. "If Keric was a pain, I would have told him off for it. You don't have to go scurrying around, hiding in a room that shouldn't have even been open in the first place. It's not as though you don't have friends here."
Maia blinks at this last part, as if that thought hadn't occurred to her. "... right," she murmurs. "Of course. Sorry."
In the end, you still manage to get in a good half hour's worth of study.
Article:
Ambraea spends her early months at the Heptagram incredibly busy, going through her tasks in a state of outwardly-suppressed anxiety and exhaustion. The day to day grind in between her lessons begins to blur together. Still, there are moments that stand out from the rest, and connections she makes with other students.
Who stands out, apart from your roommates? For this vote, I'll be selecting the top two names, so feel free to vote for anywhere from one option to all of them, although the latter would be a little self-defeating.
This information is presented to reflect Ambraea's understanding of the setting and the people in it who she meets. It is current as of year 7, update 03, Realm Year 765. You may note, this quest began ten years earlier than the standard beginning date for official Exalted content, and I have adjusted canon character ages and events accordingly.
Characters
Students of the Heptagram
Ambraea — Earth Aspect Dragon-Blood. The protagonist. A young daughter of the Scarlet Empress. Twenty-two years old.
Erona Maia — Water Aspect Dragon-Blood. Ambraea's Hearthmate and lover. A patrician from a family well-connected in the Thousand Scales, but without much status beyond this. Shy in most social situations. Twenty-two years old.
V'neef L'nessa — Wood Aspect Dragon-Blood. Ambraea's roommate. The daughter of V'neef, the youngest matriarch in the Realm. Friendly and socially adept. Twenty-two years old.
Cathak Garel Hylo — Fire Aspect Dragon-Blood. A boy in his fifth year at the Heptagram. Studious and self important. Twenty years old.
Ledaal Anay Idelle — Fire Aspect Dragon-Blood. A girl in Ambraea's year. The daughter of two famous Wyld Hunt shikari, who wanted to be a monk before coming to the Heptagram instead. Serious about her studies and a very devout Immaculate. Twenty-two years old.
Mnemon Keric — Earth Aspect Dragon-Blood. A boy in Ambraea's year. The son of a well-regarded architect and geomancer. Friendly to those he likes. Can be elitist, but not to the point of cruelty. Twenty-twoyears old.
Nellens Garan — Water Aspect Dragon-Blood. A boy in Ambraea's year. The only Exalted child of two mortals. Intelligent but often awkward, particularly around girls.
Peleps Nalri — Water Aspect Dragon-Blood. A girl two years ahead of Ambraea at the Heptagram. Bears a grudge against House V'neef. Deceased, twenty-two years old.
Sesus Amiti — Air Aspect Dragon-Blood. A girl in Ambraea's year. The daughter of a respected officer in the Sesus House Legions. Intelligent and extremely hardworking at academic pursuits, but lacking any visible talent at applied sorcery. Socially awkward with morbid tendencies. Twenty-two years old.
Simendor Deizil — Earth Aspect Dragon-Blood. A boy in Ambraea's year. The nephew of the matriarch of House Simendor, an ancient Cadet House from the Southern Threshold. Extremely advanced in his studies compared to the other students in his year. Overly proud, and offends others easily. Twenty-two years old.
Tepet Usala Sola — Air Aspect Dragon-Blood. Ambraea's friend and Hearthmate. The youngest daughter of Matriarch Tepet Usala, a famed general and war hero. Brave and loyal, with an interest in martial pursuits. Twenty-twoyears old.
V'neef Darting Fish — Water Aspect Dragon-Blood. A boy who was three years ahead of Ambraea at the Heptagram, now a recent graduate. The son of one of V'neef's adoptive daughters, a former patrician. Twenty-five years old.
Instructors of the Heptagram
Ragara Bhagwei — Wood Aspect Dragon-Blood. The founder and dominie of the Heptagram. Brilliant and stubbornly apolitical, but a difficult teacher.
Brother Lichen — Wood Aspect Dragon-Blood. A sorcerer-monk, and retired Immaculate spirit breaker. An outcaste and a former slave.
Cynis Bashura — Fire Aspect Dragon-Blood. A famed traveller and adventurer in her youth.
First Light — Water Aspect Dragon-Blood. An outcaste veteran of the Imperial Legions. An expert on war sorcery.
Nellens Ovo — Wood Aspect Dragon-Blood. An expert on demonology. Irritable and particularly hard on students of his own House. Deceased.
Instructor Sai — There's always an ending.
Zadaki Twelve-Feathers — Air Aspect Dragon-Blood. A foreign-born outcaste from the Northern Threshold.
The Empress, her living consorts and surviving children
The Scarlet Empress — Fire Aspect Dragon-Blood. Ambraea's mother, the founder and ruler of the Scarlet Realm, and the mother of the Scarlet Dynasty. Seemingly ageless and immortal, the greatest Dragon-Blooded sorcerer alive. Disappeared.
Burano Maharan Nazat — Earth Aspect Dragon-Blood. Ambraea's father. A native of Prasad and an Imperial consort.
Berit — Water Aspect Dragon-Blood. Ambraea's elder half-sister. A former general and war hero in self-imposed exile after a falling out with the Empress.
Mnemon — Earth Aspect Dragon-Blood. Ambraea's eldest living half-sister, founder and matriarch of House Mnemon. A great sorcerer. Nearly 400 years old through the use of life-extending magic.
Mnemon Rulinsei — Water Aspect Dragon-Blood. An aged daughter of the Scarlet Empress who was adopted into Mnemon's household centuries ago to gain protection from Ragara's assassination attempts.
Oban — Fire Aspect Dragon-Blood. Ambraea's elder half-brother. Married to Matirach Sesus Raenyah.
Ragara — Earth Aspect Dragon-Blood. Ambraea's eldest living half-brother, founder and former matriarch of House Ragara. Living in retirement in the Northern Threshold. Over 600 years old through the use of life-extending magic.
V'neef — Wood Aspect Dragon-Blood. Ambraea's elder half-sister, founder and matriarch of House V'neef. The youngest Great House matriarch. Fifty-five years old.
Other human characters
Beacon of Truth — Zenith Caste Solar. An Anathema and former prisoner in the Imperial Manse, killed by Ambraea and Maia as part of a Wyld Hunt in 764. Wounded Hound's lover.
Briar — Wood Aspect Dragon-Blood. An outcaste itinerant monk of the Immaculate Order who travels a circuit. Caring and humorous, but decisive at need.
Demure Peony/Singular Grace— Love is hard.
Erona Vermillion Shore — Water Aspect Dragon-Blood. Officially a former foreign outcaste who married into the young matriarch of an ailing patrician family. In reality, she was born Iselsi Velera, a former officer in the Imperial Legions believed to have died on campaign many decades ago. Maia's grandmother.
Hope For Rain — No Moon Caste Lunar. An Anathema necromancer and sorcerer sent by the dread Face-Stealer, Amatha Kinslayer, to rescue Wounded Hound from the Blessed Isle. Killed by the combined forces of a Wyld Hunt in 764.
Lohna Prince's Scribe — Mortal. A slave of the Imperial household, was Ambraea's wet nurse, later one of her nannies. Peony's mother. Practical but caring.
Ophris Maharan Teran — Fire Aspect Dragon-Blood. A distant cousin of Ambraea's from Prasad, daring and cheerful, but confused by the Realm's culture.
Ophris Maharan Yavis — Mortal. A distant cousin of Ambraea's from Prasad, Teran's Sage Caste personal attendant.
Sesus Cerec — Fire Aspect Dragon-Blood. Mother to Amiti and Kasi. A dragonlord, later quartermaster, with the Sesus House Legions. More than she appears.
Sesus Kasi — Fire Aspect Dragon-Blood. Amiti's twin sister, who Exalted years before her. Currently attending the Spiral Academy.
Sesus Vahelo Mortal. Cousin to Amiti, a young legionary officer. Shared a memorable evening with Ambraea.
Stinging Nettle — I cannot help who drives me.
V'neef S'thera — Wood Aspect Dragon-Blood. One of V'neef's daughters, a blind swordmaster.
Teng Evening Garnet — Mortal. A freedwoman and former Dynastic slave, originally from the satrapy of Zhaojun. Ambraea's handmaiden.
Tepet Igan — Air Aspect Dragon-Blood. V'neef's husband, the father of L'nessa and S'thera.
Tepet Kedas — Fire Aspect Dragon-Blood. Engaged to V'neef S'thera.
Tepet Usala — Air Aspect Dragon-Blood. Matriarch of House Tepet, Sola's mother.
Tepet Usala Numara — Air Aspect Dragon-Blood. Sola's eldest sister, a general commanding one of the Tepet House Legions.
Tranquil Depths Drown Deceit — Water Aspect Dragon-Blood. An Immaculate monk originally of House Erona. Maia's elder brother.
Wounded Hound — Full Moon Caste Lunar. An Anathema and former prisoner in the Imperial Manse killed by Singular Grace and Stinging Nettle as part of a Wyld Hunt in 764. Beacon of Truth's lover.
Yula Cerenye — Love endures.
Spirits
Diamond-Cut Perfection — Lesser elemental dragon of Earth. A newly-fledged dragon and powerful elemental, Ambraea's unorthodox tutor. Friendly, but erratic and greedy.
Yoxien, the Directory Bound in Crimson, Defining Soul of the Bottomless Library — Demon of the Second Circle. A powerful demon in the shape of a miniature raiton, bound by ancient and powerful magics. Seemingly friendly.
Verdigris — Minor elemental. A bronze serpent permanently summoned at Ambraea's side. Ambraea's familiar, highly attuned to her emotional state.
The Great Houses
House Cathak — Fire That Marches Against the Tide. One of the three Great Military Houses of the Realm. Famed for its Legions' iron discipline.
House Cynis — Wood Nourished on the Tears of the Fallen. A mercantile House with a monopoly on importing slaves and narcotics into the Blessed Isle.
House Ledaal — Air that Raised the Bones of Giants. Famed for its deep stores of arcane knowledge and single-minded dedication to safeguarding the Realm from dark forces.
House Mnemon — Earth Carved in the Image of One. Renowned architects, builders and geomancers. Responsible for much of the Blessed Isle's roads and other great works of infrastructure.
House Nellens — Dragons of the Blood Ressurgent. A mercantile House with diverse investments. The youngest House, besides V'neef.
House Peleps — Water That Wreaths the Crown of Centuries. A particularly old House that controls the Imperial Navy.
House Ragara — Earth Slaked on the Blood of Dragons. Controls most of the banking interests for the Dynasty.
House Sesus — Fire that Makes the Shadows Strong. One of the three Great Military Houses of the Realm. Has an unsavoury reputation, and is known to rely on underhanded tactics in both military and political matters.
House Tepet — Air Stained by the Blood of Legions. One of the three Great Military Houses of the Realm. A very old House famed for heroism, brilliance in command, and martial excellence.
House V'neef — Wood That Tenders the Garden's Grace. The youngest Great House by far, only elevated in RY 754. Apart from V'neef's own household, still predominantly made up of former outcaste households formally adopted by V'neef. Controls the Realm's merchant fleet.
Other Houses of the Realm
Clan Burano — Stone That Towers Toward the Sky. One of the two ruling Dragon Clans of Prasad. Officially a Realm cadet house. Based in Prasad, in the South-Eastern Threshold.
Erona — A patrician family, predominantly made up of bureaucrats working in the Thousand Scales.
House Ferem — Air Cradled in the Jaws of the Sea. The former rulers of Grand Cherak, now the largest Realm cadet house. Based in Cherak, in the Northern Threshold.
Clan Ophris — Fire That Renews the Forest. One of the two ruling Dragon Clans of Prasad. Officially a Realm cadet house. Based in Prasad, in the South-Eastern Threshold.
House Simendor — Dark Wings Enfolding the Agate Throne. An ancient bloodline of sorcerer princes. Now a Realm cadet house, named for the Shogunate daimyo, Simendor the Hellblade. Based in Chalan, in the Southern Threshold.
Former Great Houses
House Akiyo — A fallen Great House.
House Burano — A former Great House. Struck from the rolls for co-founding the Empire of Prasad.
House Chanos — A fallen Great House.
House Iselsi — Water That Hides the Deepest Dark. A fallen Great House. Struck from the rolls thirty years ago, after nearly a century of humiliation and slow dismantlement by the other Houses for a failed assassination attempt against the Empress.
House Jerah — A fallen Great House.
House Jurul — A fallen Great House. Destroyed for consorting with Lunar Anathema and plotting against the Empress.
House Manosque — A fallen Great House. Anihilated down to the last scion after a failed coup.
House Ophris — A former Great House. Struck from the rolls for co-founding the Empire of Prasad.
"This was the worst Calibration of my life," Maia moans, before stifling a yawn. To her credit, she's waited until the lecture is already over to really wilt to this degree.
You give a bare sound of acknowledgement, still bent over the notes you're trying to finish. It's hard to disagree with the sentiment. For a Dynast, Calibration — the five days between one year's end and the next year's beginning — is usually spent in lavish feasting and festivities. This year, you were certainly thinking wistfully about the celebration that would have been taking place back in the Imperial Palace. Whatever Maia had at home would have been similar in nature, if a great deal less lavish.
Unfortunately, Calibration is also the time when the veils between worlds are thin, when the rules that govern the supernatural forces of Creation relax. There are countless rituals and sorcerous undertakings that become easier during Calibration, and a rare few that are only possible then. You all spent the past five days in sleepless nights, observing magical phenomena on the Isle, assisting with elaborate rituals, and taking detailed notes on special demonstrations from various instructors. The older students mostly took this with the grimly determined air of hardened veterans plunging back into the breach. Many of your yearmates, however, still have yet to recover days later.
You glance down at the floor of the lecture hall — the instructor has already left, along with a number of the students. You still have a concept that you need to work through on paper in order to make sure it won't vanish from your head, however. That deceptively bookish looking woman had explained to you all some of the finer, bloodier points of shadowland formation with an air of almost ghoulish good cheer. The metaphysical processes at play between Creation and the Underworld are hardly your primary point of study, but you're hardly going to pass up the opportunity for such a rare, firsthand account.
"I'll never get the observations for that summoning formalised in time," Maia says, sounding nearly at the point of despair.
L'nessa has been in conversation with a second year boy. Whatever she said makes him laugh as he rises from his seat. Now, she turns back to the two of you. "Well, I suppose I could let you look off of mine, if that would help," she tells Maia, the picture of benevolent grace. It's a look she always adopts when she wants to feel good about the grand favour she's doing someone. It would be less endearing if she didn't have reason to employ it so often.
"Oh, really?" Maia sags with relief, even as she continues to shove materials into her bag. "Thank you!"
"None of us would make it if we didn't help each other," L'nessa says. She glances at you, still hunched over your notes. "Are you coming, Ambraea?"
"I'll catch up," you say. After five months together, they understand well enough when you want to be left to focus on something.
"Alright," L'nessa says, things gathered up in her arms. She's bounced back from the Calibration ordeal faster than most of your peers, which is incredibly annoying — she doesn't show a hint of fatigue as she and Maia leave, along with most of the students. The two of them have their assigned lecture hall seating near to yours, a typical setup with roommates, especially before the year's drop outs begin in earnest. Which should be any month now, from what the older students have been implying.
You're almost alone in the circular chamber when you finally finish. As soon as you carefully stow your notes away, you hear a cry of alarm.
Looking around, you see Sesus Amiti kneeling in the stairwell, books and scrolls strewn everywhere around her, the bag she'd been carrying them in split along one seam. You take a moment to just stare — had she been walking around with half a library? At this point, pity stirs in your heart enough to walk over to her, and efficiently begin piling up the tomes that had fallen out of her reach.
"Why did you have so many?" you ask her.
She jumps in startlement, peering up at you from her place on a lower stair. Amiti isn't quite as short as Maia, but the differences in your heights is dramatic at the best of times. This vantage point only makes it more so. "Well, I... have a hard time choosing, sometimes," Amiti admits, attempting to rise with half of the mess piled in her arms. You'd worry about her falling backwards down the stairs, if she weren't an Air Aspect.
"A hard time choosing." You pick up your own half of the mess a lot more carefully, rising to a standing position.
Amiti flushes bright red, the only sign of colour in her unnaturally pallid face, nearly the same shade as her hair. Her Aspect markings are particularly striking — even her eyes have been drained of all colour, leaving them an eerie, washed out grey. "Yes! There's just... so many interesting things to go through in the library tower," Amiti says, breaking eye contact to look down at her feet. Or maybe at the reading materials cradled in her arms. "I might have overdone it, this time."
"I can help you bring what you don't need back to the library tower," you tell her, already turning toward the nearest exit to the lecture hall.
"You... really?" Amiti scurries to catch up with you, looking more than a little surprised.
"Don't look so shocked," you tell her. "None of us would make it if we didn't help each other." L'nessa is rubbing off on you.
Amiti nods, clutching her books tighter to her chest as she works at keeping up with your longer stride. She's quiet all the way out of the lecture hall, up until you get to the first stairwell.
"That lecture was fascinating, wasn't it?" she asks. She doesn't actually wait for you to answer before going on: "I didn't realise that there were so many different circumstances that could make a shadowland!"
"Isn't it mostly just the same circumstance?" you ask. Namely, a great number of people dying in the same spot, most likely in pain and fear.
"Well, yes," Amiti allows, "but, it's like instructor Sai was saying! It's not always about sheer quantity. There are so many more things that factor into it than just the number of deaths! And you can manipulate those things to make sure that it happens!"
"Do you mean 'to make sure it doesn't happen?" you ask, casting her a deeply dubious look.
Amiti blinks, caught up short by the question. "Well... well, aren't those the same thing?" she asks. "If you know how to do one, you can figure out how to do the other. And it's so interesting just academically, specifics aside! It's taking a piece of Creation and forcing it to merge with the Underworld!"
"It... certainly is." Amiti doesn't seem to have entirely parsed the discomfort in your tone, or your incredulous look. She's far too lost in recollection of the many finer points of a lecture that, for you, had been more of a grim warning than a source of delight.
You're sent reeling, a little when she changes the subject: "And weren't instructor Sai's eyes a little amazing? I couldn't help but notice while she was talking."
"Her eyes?" You try to recall the guest instructor in question. She'd been tall, powerfully built, but still bearing such an undeniably scholarly air around her that the details of her appearance barely stand out in your memory. You have no idea what's so special about her eyes. "What about them?"
This time, it's Amiti's turn to give you a look, staring up at you with a puzzled frown on her face. "They were purple," she says, as if spelling out that the sky is blue.
Well. Maybe that should have been more memorable than it apparently was. You chalk it up to fatigue, and only offer her a shallow sort of shrug. The two of you fall into silence again.
As you approach the library tower, you find yourself glancing down at the library materials you're holding. What you all call the library tower is, in fact, a vast collection of reading rooms, specialised collections, and archives on a variety of subjects, more on every floor, many difficult to find or access for a first year student. The texts Amiti is reading seem surprisingly advanced, considering all that. Especially when she's made such an abysmal showing in her practical training.
It's at this point that you notice something entirely incongruous amid the rest of your stack of books. "What's this?" you ask her.
"What's wha—" Amiti follows your gaze, her eyes locking on the thin, cheaply-bound volume near the top of your pile, and she briefly goes pink. Somehow, she manages to snatch it out of your pile without losing hold of any of her books, or sending yours spilling onto the floor. "That's nothing! That one's just... mine!"
You unavoidably catch sight of the cover as she tries to obscure it from view, the title prominent in cloyingly ornate calligraphy. "My Heart Goes with You?" you ask.
"It's a romance," Amiti admits, hunching in on herself a little. It's with a slightly defensive tone that she offers more of an explanation, as though she can't help herself: "It's all about a young Water Aspect and her handmaiden, who secretly love each other, and they dance around it for ages, but then they admit their feelings! But when the handmaiden admits her devotion, it's so true and so pure that it moves even Sextes Jylis, and so the handmaiden Exalts! But then they'll be separated for ten years while she's at Pasiap's Stair, and then fifty while she's in the Legions, but they swear an oath to always..." she trails off, looking even more mortified than before. "Well, it's a very sweet book! I've read it five times this year."
Your first reaction, rather than condemning her taste in trashy novels, is simply surprise. "How do you find the time to do anything other than your studies?"
"Well, if I didn't, I'd probably go crazy! And the readings and writing assignments aren't that hard, so far. I'm a fast reader." Then she continues blithely onward, as if this isn't a particularly remarkable thing to say.
You feel a stab of irrational jealousy at the fact that, when she says that, you actually believe her. The jealousy doesn't last long of course — even if your own progress is much slower than you'd like, it's at least been faster than Amiti's, no matter how smart she seems to be.
You find yourself hoping she manages to turn it around, somehow.
Resplendent Air, Realm Year 759
Despite the Heptagram's arcane focus and extensive academic facilities, the Dragon-Blooded of the Dynasty are, at the end of the day, a martial aristocracy. Sorcerers still need to be able to defend themselves through conventional means as much as anyone, and more than that, there needs to be a space to practice the more destructive or combat-orientated forms of sorcery.
Still, you're not entirely sure how you were talked into this.
Your opponent's blunt practice sword strikes at you again and again with hurricane force, and you strain with the effort of blocking each blow against the shield you've been handed. Tepet Usala Sola handles the weapon with a single-minded intensity, moving dancer-like through an elaborate set of sword forms. Her feet barely seem to touch the ground as each elegant strike leaves your arm a little more numb.
When it's over, she's left grinning and exuberant, eyes alight and long, brown hair blowing in a breeze that simply isn't there for anyone else. Up close, you realise she's actually slightly taller than you, which isn't common for another girl. "You're better at that than my usual partner," she tells you. "He flinches."
"How have you convinced more than one person to do this with you?" you ask, passing the training equipment to her in order to rub at a wrist. The two of you are nearly alone in the training room — there's a fifth year student going through a martial arts kata at the far end of the long, curving room, and a fourth year who seems to have fallen asleep against the wall a ways away, no matter how much noise you and Sola were making.
"Oh, the trick is to ask forcefully enough," Sola says, hanging up the training sword on a nearby rack, and the shield beside it. Her tone is joking, but you also believe it's the truth. She glances over her shoulder, looking at you curiously as you take a long gulp of water. You've done your best not to let the recent experience disturb your composure, to mixed success, you think. "That's an odd stance you were using," she says. "Who taught you?"
Despite your goals in life not necessarily being as martial as Sola's, it was always vital that you be able to defend yourself in a pinch. "My father," you say. It's been your most frequent source of contact with him in recent years, in fact. He hadn't taught you specifically to fight with a shield, though.
Article:
What style of combat did your father, Burano Maharan Nazat, instruct you in? Vote for as many options as you like, the top answer wins.
[ ] [Fighting Style] Brutal and pragmatic hand-to-hand fighting, taught to him in secret by a mere Caravaner Caste soldier. Your Essence-hardened body is the only weapon you need to rely on.
[ ] [Fighting Style] Spear fighting, such as he picked up during his stint fighting in wars of conquest in the Burano Legions. Speed and reach balance out your defensive magic.
[ ] [Fighting Style] Prasadi saber fighting, taught to him by his own father. Distinct in style from that common to the Blessed Isle, but both practical and elegant.
"Oh, the ambassador," Sola says, real curiosity in her voice.
Your father is not, of course, actually an ambassador. He is officially nothing more than an Imperial consort and the scion of a Cadet House located in a faraway satrapy — the polite fictions between the Realm and Prasad don't allow it to be officially acknowledged as anything else, an arrangement few are actually eager to change. Still, your father has made himself available as a point of contact between the Realm and his family, or other notables back in Prasad. He's also never shied away from quietly advocating for the interests of his homeland in matters of tribute and regional trade. You sometimes suspect this was why your mother chose him... but it's always impossible to tell where the brutal political pragmatism ends and the human whims begin, with her.
Instead of satisfying Sola's implied question, you only nod, and change the subject. "Do you train like this every day?"
"I alternate between different exercises," Sola says. "But, yes, I train every day. If the body is a blade, then the mind is its edge. Neglecting one weakens the other." She says this with the utter surety of someone who has had this lesson drilled into her skull, and still believes in it with her whole heart.
"I don't think I would be able to find the time," you say, skeptically. You're already going over what your next task should be in your head.
"We're all busy," Sola says. "We don't get anywhere if we run ourselves into the ground. Most students don't initiate in their first year."
You think back to that trip to the library tower with Amiti last month. It is like an Air Aspect to lose sight of practical realities in favour of ideas about how things should be. "Before I left, my mother also made sure to stress that 'most students' don't initiate in their first year," you say.
Sola pauses, taking a lingering moment to mentally process that you're referring to a private audience with the Empress, before arriving at the implications of the words. That you would be falling below expectations if you progressed at the pace of most of your peers. Just for an instant, she looks mildly horrified, which if nothing else, feels vindicating. "My mother was against my coming here at all," Sola admits, in the spirit of sudden solidarity.
This catches your curiosity. "How much against?"
Sola grimaces at the memory. "She wanted me to go to the House of Bells, like my sisters. I could learn battlefield sorcery there, if I still wanted to. We had a fight about it." She kneels down, rooting around in her bag as if looking for something. "A shouting match, really."
You have, in fact, met Matriarch Tepet Usala before, if only briefly. Even that much experience made you absolutely certain that she isn't a woman you'd want to cross or anger. "Why the Heptagram?"
Sola has produced the kind of ornate box one might purchase from a high end apothecary. You catch sight of the mon of Daana'd burnt into the lid, before she cracks it open and pulls out a small, rounded pill that she swallows without fanfare, washing it down with a long drink of water from a flask. You've seen her take these before, around the middle of the day, if usually at more of a distance. "I don't want to just be a great general and an adequate sorcerer," she says, as if the former is a foregone conclusion. "I want to be great at both. This way will be much harder, of course, but sometimes, we do what we have to to achieve what we want from life."
You nod, thinking you understand. There's a reason you've been going as flat out as you have, after all, and it hasn't just been to please your mother.
As Sola straightens, though, she cocks her head to the side, looking at something from out a nearby window. The training room is along the outer wall of the lowest levels of one of the seven towers — set up outside of it is what could be considered a testing range, of sorts, for the kind of spells you don't want to throw around in an enclosed space. You immediately catch sight of three figures there:
One of them is Simendor Deiza, her Aspect markings instantly identifiable. She's listening to, of all people, Mnemon Keric, who is attempting to regard her with a sort of haughty disdain. Whatever he says to her, it makes her throw back her head and laugh, much to Keric's displeasure.
Looking on with her arms crossed is the imposing, scarred visage of instructor First Light. Even in the perpetual gloom of the Isle of Voices, the light the sun casts on her shimmers as though it's passing through water. As ever, she's as easily read as the depths of a calm ocean.
All three of them are standing a dozen paces in front of the gnarled bulk of an upright boulder, blackened and pitted, an obvious victim of countless years of target practice by enterprising young sorcerers, now whittled down to a narrow, vertical pillar. At First Light's stoic insistence, Deiza casts one last smirk at Keric before she turns to face it. You're too distant to hear what she's saying, but you've seen her work sorcery before — she chants in a bastard mixture of Old Realm and archaic Flametongue, her fingers flashing through a series of mudras to sketch out a strange sign in the air.
"Is that the Messenger?" Sola asks, her eyes clearly following the motion as well as yours are.
"No," you say, frowning, "... the Hooded Headsman, I think." Which was an obscure and worrisome thing to conjure with even when it wasn't Deiza doing it.
A breeze stirs the metallic shimmer of Deiza's hair, against the wind, and the hauntingly inhuman laughter that it carries with it is piercing enough that you hear it plainly, carrying with it the sense of a hot, Southern summer. Silvery light leaps from her outstretched hand, solidifying into a fine metal chain as it whirls through the air. It wraps itself neatly around the very shattered peak of the target stone, and passes through it, the chunk of stone tumbling heavily to the blackened earth, cut cleanly as though by an impossibly sharp blade.
Sola lets out a low whistle. "The Hooded Headsman, huh?" You grimace, acknowledging her point. Clearly, that spell was not intended primarily for stone cutting.
Through the window, First Light seems grudgingly impressed, based on her bearing. She gives a jerk of her head in Deiza's direction, clearly asking her to follow. Grinning, Deiza actually reaches out and gives Keric a pat on the cheek as she passes. He flushes bright red, looking furious.
"Is there something going on between those two?" Sola asks, more as a joke than a serious suggestion.
"Deiza and Keric?" You can't suppress a short laugh at that. Much more likely, he was present at the impromptu demonstration for a less friendly reason. Still, it was funny to imagine.
"I've never heard you laugh before," Sola tells you, smiling.
You shrug. "I laugh when something is funny."
It was a companionable enough diversion, in the end. But seeing Deiza like that, working sorcery so easily, only serves to stoke the frustrations burning in your chest even if she is using a strange, foreign tradition. You are making progress, and good progress at that, if your instructors are to be believed. But it's not enough.
You're going to need to take more serious action.
Article:
Nearing the halfway point of the year, you are starting to hit your limits, but you refuse to allow that to stop you, against more even-headed advice.
What drastic measures do you take to overcome these limits? There is no right or good answer here. All of these are probably a bad idea, as they involve progressing very fast and often with less supervision than the Heptagram would prefer for first year students. You're a young Exalt under immense pressure in the throes of Essence fever, making a desperate decision.
This is a character defining choice, and one that will affect the storylines you get in the future.
You may vote for as many options as you like. The top answer will win.
[ ] [Initiation] Names Plucked Like Blossoms
You seek out the wisdom of the demon Yoxien, the Directory Bound in Crimson, as he invited you to. Yoxien's great powers are severely restricted by his millenia old binding, rendering him all but harmless. But he has his voice, and his vast stores of knowledge, and if he's adequately intrigued by a young Exalt, he will share secrets with her that he hasn't gifted another in many centuries.
Pick this choice if you're interested in:
A unique sorcerous initiation for Ambraea with strange parameters
A focus on demons, demon-summoning, and hell
Subplots involving Yoxien, his history, and figures from his past
[ ] [Initiation] A Tribute of Gems
In her desperation, Ambraea catches the eye of a greater elemental, who assists her with revelations of sorcery, but not for free. Her patron will be a powerful, unbound entity with their own agenda and motivations, which she will not have an opportunity to understand beforehand. Their presence will not be a surprise to the Heptagram's staff, but their taking an interest in a first year student will.
Pick this choice if you're interested in:
A rare sorcerous initiation for Ambraea, involving offerings of mineral wealth
A focus on elementals and spirit courts
A powerful and active patron who will choose to meddle in Ambraea's life
[ ] [Initiation] Geomantic Mandala
Ambraea throws herself into the Heptagram's famed geomancy techniques, seeking to access material far above her beginner level, intent on breaking through to true understanding even if it kills her. She succeeds on the one hand... but also nearly succeeds on the other.
Pick this choice if you're interested in:
A sorcerous initiation for Ambraea that taps into the raw elemental power of Creation's dragon lines
A focus on geomancy, artifice, and the structure of Creation
Subplots involving crafting projects large and small, affecting Ambraea's future plans — this will draw the attention of certain parties earlier than she'd prefer
