Aoinfinity
Unlimited Blue Works
- Location
- a blue Infinity
[X] Focus on the texts that the Empress provided, conduct small experiments and rituals in your suite
The Last Daughter; Dragon-Blooded Sorcery School Quest
- Thread starter Gazetteer
- Start date
- Fantasy
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
[X] Throw yourself into your swordswomanship, seek out new opponents for practice duels
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[x] Throw yourself into your swordswomanship, seek out new opponents for practice duels
Maia gave Ambraea permission to do as she wishes so long as she remains special but I'm uncomfortable diving into something like that as a response to things getting rocky. Sword friends on the other hand seems a great way to stay sociable and work out pent up frustration
Maia gave Ambraea permission to do as she wishes so long as she remains special but I'm uncomfortable diving into something like that as a response to things getting rocky. Sword friends on the other hand seems a great way to stay sociable and work out pent up frustration
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Deiza is from Chalan, a Realm satrapy in the Near-South, where Deiza's family has been in power as Dragon-Blooded sorcerer princes since the Shogunate, and possibly as far back as the First Age. The Simendor are weird and insular and care more about the capacity for sorcery than they do about Exaltation alone, and are generally everything that makes the Realm nervous about sorcerers rolled up into one neat package. As you can imagine, this causes considerable friction when they interact with the rest of the Realm, but the family retains the Empress's favour as one of the first Dragon-Blooded Threshold lineages to recognise her authority and swear fealty.
Cadet House Dynasts are, legally speaking, Dynasts, with all the rights a Dynast has in the Realm, above that of patrician houses like Maia's family. On paper, the law treats them the same as the scions of the Great Houses. In practice, their families do not have anywhere near the power or authority on the Blessed Isle, and so there are a lot of ways that its institutions and society will not treat them as favourably.
Ambraea as an Imperial daughter has higher social standing than Deiza, but has the same legal class standing. It's unlikely Deiza, as a Dragon-Blooded Dynast, is going to be outright beaten for being rude to Ambraea through any official channels. It would be much rougher for Deiza outside of the Heptagram's isolated academic atmosphere, however.
A particular note about House Simendor and their divergent internal culture is that they view Dragon-Blooded sorcerers as superior to other Dragon-Blooded, and within Chalan tend not to fully recognise non-sorcerer Dynasts as proper peers. At the point in year two when Deiza was attempting to get Ambraea's attention in the library and understandably ended up pissing her off instead, Ambraea was still the first person in their year other than Deiza to have become a fully fledged sorcerer.
So you have mainstream Realm culture, which views Deiza as a social inferior to Ambraea but a legal peer, and then Chalan's internal social hierarchy, which would have viewed Ambraea as Deiza's only real peer among their year-mates. Ambraea was willing to drop formality with, say, Maia from very early on, but Maia understood their relative positions very well and appreciated that there is a considerable condescension on Ambraea and L'nessa's part in just treating her like a friend and a classmate while they're at school. She doesn't just treat it as her due, and so Ambraea liked her and they could get close.
Deiza is shockingly abrasive by the standards of Ambraea's social sensibilities. When dealing with Ambraea, Deiza also treats their status as social peers as somewhat self evident. These two things acutely get under Ambraea's skin in combination, and she's way more haughty aristocrat in their interactions than she otherwise is.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
Well that makes the whole relationship much sadder. Damnit.
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
What does that mean? Doing human experimentations and creating armies of unholy abominations to conquer everything?
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Creepy/unethical experiments, excessive reliance on demons and other spirits, loose religious values, unsavoury habits... They're decadent Conan villain esque sorcerers lounging around, being fed grapes by invisible servants and one upping each other with acts of magic, decked out in orichalcum artifacts from the orichalcum mine they control.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Damnit if I'd known that I would have pushed for more interaction. Love that staple aesthetic.
Apologies if I mistakenly broke a statue of limitations on thread subtopics.
I'd missed the point on the timing of their sorcerous initiations; my guess would actually have been that Deiza saw Ambraea as a fellow "outsider", hence the emphasis on her foreign father, and she wanted to bond over that since it seemed from her friend circles that Ambraea was an open-minded sort... but she kept miscalibrating her gambits, trying to create familiarity by assuming it, and then doubling down instead of reconsidering her approach when the clear feedback was that it was counterproductive. Like a comedian whose jokes are bombing, who blames the audience for not having a sense of humour.
That makes perfect sense. I think my issue is just that I see Deiza's behaviour as rude and annoying enough by itself, towards a peer, by our own standards, that I don't put much weight on the status difference angle. It seems like to others Ambraea comes off as an easily offended stickler for stodgy politesse, and that feels unfair to me.
I'd missed the point on the timing of their sorcerous initiations; my guess would actually have been that Deiza saw Ambraea as a fellow "outsider", hence the emphasis on her foreign father, and she wanted to bond over that since it seemed from her friend circles that Ambraea was an open-minded sort... but she kept miscalibrating her gambits, trying to create familiarity by assuming it, and then doubling down instead of reconsidering her approach when the clear feedback was that it was counterproductive. Like a comedian whose jokes are bombing, who blames the audience for not having a sense of humour.
- Location
- Florida
[X] Throw yourself into your swordswomanship, seek out new opponents for practice duels
[X] Throw yourself into your swordswomanship, seek out new opponents for practice duels
- Location
- The North
[X] Meet new people, engage in a series of shallow flirtations and entanglements
[X] Focus on the texts that the Empress provided, conduct small experiments and rituals in your suite
[X] Throw yourself into your swordswomanship, seek out new opponents for practice duels
I love all of the options and I couldn't pick just one.
[X] Focus on the texts that the Empress provided, conduct small experiments and rituals in your suite
[X] Throw yourself into your swordswomanship, seek out new opponents for practice duels
I love all of the options and I couldn't pick just one.
Filing this away in 'favorite lines from any quest ever.'
Seriously, I dont think you could have made them look more like the dragon-blooded caricature of first age solar decadence outside of having a Sidereal or Solar Exalted think of a way to make them more so!
Which is probably half the reason it creeps everyone else: They seriously give off vibes of being Solars in how they act and only dont get hit for it because a combintion of being useful enough and having proven they are actually dragon-blooded.
Vote closed, Interlude 3 02
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Fayhem
Definitely not an escaped SCP
- Location
- At large
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I was going to respond to a bunch of the pre-Gaz infopost Deiza stuff, but I think she covered everything I'd have said but much better. So I'll skip to this and say that I think a salient point here is that per Gaz's post, Ambraea isn't inherently insistent on formality, but she expects it to be regarded as a special favor she's doing to a social inferior. Most people agree that she's their superior and therefore she's being specifically nice if she isn't formal with them, but Deiza's House culture doesn't quite see it exactly that way.
By their standards, Deiza's sorcerous achievements already make her worthy of respect and acknowledgement even from high society types. I don't think Deiza's so much assuming familiarity per se as assuming she has a right to be respected and acknowledged as a peer by Ambraea (with all that entails as a second-order consequence), and being cross when Ambraea doubles down on being a haughty aristo who implicitly expects Deiza to do the social equivalent of kneeling to her in order to be acknowledged. It's not difficult for me to see how receiving that kind of response from somebody that your culture tells you ought to respect you would rub somebody the wrong way.
I definitely think there's a major element here of both Ambraea and Deiza having the stereotypical Earth aspect dead stubbornness going on. Neither of them seems to be at all interested in self-reflection on whether, possibly, they should try understanding where the other person is coming from or adapting their expectations. You can certainly make an argument that this would/should be more expected of Deiza as she's the stranger in a strange land here, but I can't hate someone for being stubborn about sticking to their own culture, kind of especially in a context where they would feel alone and isolated and want to hang onto anything related to home.
- Location
- Gainful Employment
- Pronouns
- He/They
I cannot understand these arguments, because looking at her interactions as between peers doesn't change the fact that Deiza is an asshole.
Somewhat, although they are in The Heptagram, where they kind of have heavy leanings towards sorcerous power being the marker of respect and parentage being something that only matters off of the island. Deiza may be under the impression that this is a place that works the same way as her home does, and may not be entirely incorrect in that.
My arguement was she wasnt merely an asshole. She was by the Realm's standard a turbo-asshole.
Fayhem
Definitely not an escaped SCP
- Location
- At large
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Strong disagree! To me Deiza mostly looks like a cool person who I'd probably be happy to be friends with IRL.
Like, I get that Deiza is and will likely remain a YMMV character, but by kind of the same token it does annoy me when people talk about their subjective negative impressions of Deiza as if they were objective facts about her character.
- Pronouns
- Reader
Yet she is still confrontational with her teacher, a woman of superior sorcerous power and experience, who even in the face of her attempts to challenge her assessment, which is as much for the rest of the class's sake as it is for Deiza, attempts to remain cordial, only for Deiza to continue challenging her and pressing her luck.
Deiza is not a misunderstood foreigner failing or refusing to conform to dynast standards. She is a self centered and confrontational antagonizer who enjoys getting a rise out of people, regardless of whether or not she respects them. I have an uncle who is exactly the same.
Exactly this. I don't see it as a matter of formality at all (except insofar as Ambraea is icily, correctly formal as a result of disliking Deiza and not wanting to give her any more than she's obliged to). The problem is not that Deiza is too casual. The problem is that she's obnoxious (and then there are several other problems that compound this, some of which are on Ambraea's side, I'll grant). It's not an error of formality to assign someone a nickname of your choice and then insist on it against their explicit wish that you stop using it. That's just being a jerk. The "shockingly abrasive" part of Gaz's post was separate (IMO) from the "treats them like peers when they're not" part.
L'nessa is much more nearly Ambraea's social peer than Deiza, and if she acted like Deiza, I'd think she was a jerk too, and I expect Ambraea wouldn't like her much either. Amiti makes lots of social faux pas, and the reason Ambraea's okay with it isn't (to my eyes) because Amiti is appropriately apologetic and deferential about them, but because she's nice, and being her friend is pleasant.
To me, an error of formality here would be something like calling Ambraea "Ambraea" when she insists on "Lady Ambraea", or "Amby" when she insists on "Ambraea" (either of which would be rude, though how much of a prickly pear Ambraea looks about them would vary). Deiza's actual behaviour is closer to strolling up to a girl you want to get to know and calling her "Sweetcheeks"; and when she says "my name is Anne", responding "whatever, Sweetcheeks".
...At the point where she's very tempted to reject a barely adequate apology that it looks like Deiza might have had to be implicitly threatened at daiklave-point to issue, sure. Before that, her haughtiness amounted to "please call me by my actual name" and "please stop trying to childishly provoke me".
I can absolutely buy that your arguments are how things look to Deiza, I just think she's very wrong, and the way she's wrong is part of what makes her a jerk. It's not just that she's the one out of context and should be trying to fit in, it's also that she's the one who wants something from Ambraea while Ambraea never wanted anything from her, but she sabotaged her own attempts to get it in very predictable ways and seemingly blames others for the failure. Ambraea could make an effort to smooth this over and there are reasonable arguments for why that's a good idea (such as trying to be on good terms with fellow sorcerers since it's harder to build a more conventional power base and peer support is valuable), but I can't even think of blaming her for looking at Deiza and concluding "nah, I'm good", without relative status entering the calculation at all.
I want to be clear that I, subjectively, don't actually dislike Deiza. I think she's entertaining. I just think she's also an asshole, based on the things she's explicitly said and done in the text of the story. I don't even think she's necessarily a bad person, just a teen with a combined superiority and inferiority complex tripping over her own feet because she's trying to ballet dance in hiking boots but thinks you're a snob if you suggest she take them off.
Fayhem
Definitely not an escaped SCP
- Location
- At large
- Pronouns
- He/Him
For perhaps the first time I don't actually have the energy to get into more Deiza Discourse, but to be clear the bit you're replying to there was meant as a direct reference to the QM's post on the topic:
Emphasis added. So I think characterizing my description of Ambraea as being way more of a haughty aristo in her interactions with Deiza than normal as just "my arguments" is a little misleading when that bit is essentially a direct quote from the QM.
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'm not entirely sure that's what it is. Contemporary Realm society views Solars like... They still happen sometimes, and once a DB generation or so one of them is a problem, but there are low double digits of them in the world at any given time. The Immaculate Philosophy talks about them more in terms of allegorical figures used to demonstrate immoral traits or contrast Immaculate virtues. Like, they don't super matter. The Simendor live up to Realm anxiety over sorcerers on their own terms.
The orichalcum thing is a little unwholesome, but preferentially using primarily-demon gold artifacts or artifacts made of one of the other magical materials (as opposed to say, a jade artifact that also uses of orichalcum in it) is something Dynasts are more likely to treat as a low key indicator of your family's pedigree and social status than anything. Oh, well, one supposes that not everyone was fortunate enough to inherit jade 😌 (Sola's sword is sort of borderline there, but she is of a sufficiently elevated bloodline within the Dynasty that that's much more likely to just be the Tepet matriarch's weird sorcerer daughter with her weird sorcerer sword). Simendor likes orichalcum both because they very conveniently have that orichalcum mine as one of the family's major sources of wealth, but also because orichalcum has a lot of themes of like... very straightforward power, and is very good for general purpose sorcery artifacts as a result. Any magical material can produce an artifact that helps with sorcery, but the others are going to have more of an angle on it.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
… I had this deranged idea about Ambraea and her friends being a Magical Girl/Sentai team, but then I remembered that's basically what a Circle is.
Sola actually feels like a Fire Aspect, you know, but she isn't, sadface, like, this is obviously stereotyping and we see the clear dangers of it when you internalize them right in this chapter, but it messes with the color theme and makes my brain ooze upset brain juices about how Ambraea's life is not some friend collection quest and she's not obligated to be friends with exactly one Exalted of different castes each instead of happy brain juices, so, in a display of unparalleled wisdom and maturity I'm blaming it on the author in general and Sola in particular for not being a Fire Aspect.
Bottom line
Amiti's defining trait can be that she's a necromancer and not an Air Aspect, so she can be Mahou Shoujo Pretty Zombica or whatever, but to satisfy my OCD we still need to meet and befriend a Fire Aspect.
Sola actually feels like a Fire Aspect, you know, but she isn't, sadface, like, this is obviously stereotyping and we see the clear dangers of it when you internalize them right in this chapter, but it messes with the color theme and makes my brain ooze upset brain juices about how Ambraea's life is not some friend collection quest and she's not obligated to be friends with exactly one Exalted of different castes each instead of happy brain juices, so, in a display of unparalleled wisdom and maturity I'm blaming it on the author in general and Sola in particular for not being a Fire Aspect.
Bottom line
Amiti's defining trait can be that she's a necromancer and not an Air Aspect, so she can be Mahou Shoujo Pretty Zombica or whatever, but to satisfy my OCD we still need to meet and befriend a Fire Aspect.