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The Last Daughter; Dragon-Blooded Sorcery School Quest

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[X] [Maia] Pretend nothing has changed

[X] [Storyline] Best Served Cold

In Ambraea's third year, her life and that of her friends' was put in danger by the actions of Peleps Nalri. While Ambraea wasn't the primary target, this is still not something that can be let stand. Ambraea and L'nessa find a way to get back at her before she graduates.

Availability: Year 4, year 5
Central character(s): Peleps Nalri, V'neef L'essa
Themes: Familial rivalry, House V'neef and House Peleps

[X] [Storyline] The Serpent Thief

An old annoyance has reemerged to trouble Diamond-Cut Perfection, slipping into their court to steal information and Essence. They would like to send a message that they are not to be trifled with in this way, asking Ambraea to kill or bind the thief. The thief's unique nature makes this no trivial task, however.

Availability: Year 4, year 5
Central character(s): ???, Diamond-Cut Perfection
Themes: Strange spirits, ruins
 
[ ] [Storyline] Flame and Frost

Amiti's early friendship with Ledaal Anay Idelle seems to have grown particularly strained this year. Amiti comes to Ambraea and her other friends with a problem that she's trying to conceal. Why is Idelle so suspicious and intent on discovering it?

Availability: Year 4
Central character(s): Ledaal Anay Idelle, Sesus Amiti
Themes: Ghosts, family ties

Amiti has a problem. Let's help her.(already voted in earlier post.)
 
[X] [Maia] Tell Maia what you know
[X] [Storyline] The Serpent Thief
[X] [Storyline] Names and Nightmares

Absolutely not doing the "keeping secrets from my loved ones" cliche. Also kinda leaning towards the mystery option.
 
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[X] [Storyline] Flame and Frost

Because Amiti is the best and anyone who says otherwise is a hater.

[X] [Storyline] Hard Lessons

Sometimes friendship is stopping a killing. Sometimes it's helping with hiding the body.

[X] [Storyline] Names and Nightmares

What is the point in living in MurderHogwarts if not in dangerous quests that should probably be best left to the adults?
 
[x] [Maia] Tell Maia what you know
[x] [Storyline] Flame and Frost
[X] [Storyline] The Serpent Thief
 
Gazetteer said:
I'm afraid I've got some bad news about S'thera, who is in fact a canon character:

Article:
The blind swordswoman V'neef S'thera lost her fiancé Tepet Kedus at the Valley of Shards. S'thera wants nothing more than to meet the Bull of the North in battle and kill him, but V'neef refuses permission each time she asks to raise a Wyld Hunt. To V'neef, S'thera's blood is better spent on daughters than on the snow, and she hopes to entice House Cathak into an alliance through her daughter's marriage, so far without success. Robbed of vengeance, S'thera now drowns her sorrows with drink and attractive young women.
Source: Dragon-Bloodes: What Fire Has Wrought PG. 72


Also some good news, if you think that blind bisexual swordsmaster women lost in grief and unrealised vengeance are cool, I suppose.
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Having had a closer look at Kedus's personality and found him particularly enjoyable company, I find this outcome vexing. I don't suppose we could conveniently rush to their aid during an interlude and affect a rescue from dragon back?
 
Randino Treviani said:
Having had a closer look at Kedus's personality and found him particularly enjoyable company, I find this outcome vexing. I don't suppose we could conveniently rush to their aid during an interlude and affect a rescue from dragon back?
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...He dies in the war against the Bull Of The North. Where the Tepet lose all five of the five thousand man legions that put together made them the militarily strongest of the Ten Great Houses. No, I really doubt Ambraea could actually effect a rescue of a single person during that.
 
Randino Treviani said:
Having had a closer look at Kedus's personality and found him particularly enjoyable company, I find this outcome vexing. I don't suppose we could conveniently rush to their aid during an interlude and affect a rescue from dragon back?
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An important part of the premise of this quest for me is that it's very much like... about Ambraea coming of age in this time period right before things get bad and complicated for the Realm, where a lot of things happen at once that no one could have reasonably predicted enough to prevent. The fall of House Tepet is a really major event from the recent backstory of all three editions of Exalted. It's pretty central to how the house is depicted in most Exalted material, and it is a lot of fun to have the opportunity to write about the Realm when there were still at the height of their power, and to have characters like Sola or Usala or Kedus show up, where they don't know what's going to happen, but we do. The major events should still occur -- The Empress will disappear, Futile Blood will happen, the Jade Prison will still be broken, Thorns will still be sacked. Some of these things are a lot more important to our narrative than others, but you get the point.

To use a Star Wars comparison here, this is not a quest where you find out about the fall of the Republic and make elaborate moves to prevent it from happening, this is a quest about putting a character into a specific historic moment on a fictional timeline and seeing how those events that are outside of their control or knowledge can still affect their life.
 
[X] [Maia] Pretend nothing has changed
No drama like avoidable drama. Ambraea is intelligent and wise and powerful but is also new to closer relationships. Let's make some mistakes.

[X] [Storyline] Flame and Frost
[X] [Storyline] The Serpent Thief
 
[X] [Maia] Tell Maia what you know

My instinct is that telling the secret ninja from the hidden family that you know about her false identity is deeply foolish, but on consideration, I can't see Ambrea successfully concealing the knowledge - at least not without distancing herself from Maia in a way that kills off the relationship in something of a disappointing whimper. Besides, suddenly distancing herself after an audience with the Empress would probably be easily seen through, anyway. I do enjoy a good story of trying to maintain a relationship based on a lie that the other person doesn't know you know, but I just don't think our girl has the chops for it, so honesty is the more viable and dramatically interesting option here.

[X] [Storyline] Flame and Frost

Amiti is moe, I'm curious to see more of the Ledaal student, and the story of the class inquisitor calling out the fact that she's, you know, doing atrocity stuff sounds like a lot of fun.

[X] [Storyline] Hard Lessons

It's secondary, but I think helping Sola out would be a good follow up to our sword training, on top of the fact that I like Sola and want to do good things for her.

[ ] [Storyline] Best Served Cold

The thing that concerns me here is not revenge against Nairi, but what might befall L'nessa if we ignore this. (I'm hoping this is just a matter of L'nessa taking action without our help, rather than her being targeted for more mischief. After all, we're hardly the only ones with reason to be miffed about the incident.)

The Deizil development managed to surprise me. Gazetteer had drawn attention to the gender roles aspect of his grievance, but I'd reasoned we were unlikely to have two trans girls in our year and somehow didn't make the leap to the obvious alternative. It's going to be interesting if he comes back to school with a big part of the chip on his shoulder removed (since he attributes part of his social abrasiveness to internal gender stress), but with a bunch of new prejudice against him for being a guy added on. It'll be hilarious if Ambraea ends up in the position of defending him from people being asses about the change while still unable to stand him as a person.

(It occurs to me that 3e has some detail on trans Dynasts using neomah to have biological children and this being fully improved by Imperial authorities, but none that I recall on the idea of using neomah or sorcery for transition itself. Does that let Deizil sidestep the issue, or has he effectively doubled down on the social obstacle of being a sorcerer by making it so sorcery will be a necessary part of any match he tries to make?)
 
kamikasei said:
The Deizil development managed to surprise me. Gazetteer had drawn attention to the gender roles aspect of his grievance, but I'd reasoned we were unlikely to have two trans girls in our year and somehow didn't make the leap to the obvious alternative. It's going to be interesting if he comes back to school with a big part of the chip on his shoulder removed (since he attributes part of his social abrasiveness to internal gender stress), but with a bunch of new prejudice against him for being a guy added on. It'll be hilarious if Ambraea ends up in the position of defending him from people being asses about the change while still unable to stand him as a person.
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Some of the abrasiveness is kind of just natural inclination, but things like him exploding at Ambraea out of nowhere were her hitting a raw nerve she had no way of knowing about. The funny thing is that his general vibe is a lot more socially acceptable under the Realm's model of masculinity. Women are held to a higher standard in terms of controlling outward emotionality and poise.

A thing which has definitely not done any long term damage to Ambraea's capacity to be honest about or expressive with her own emotions, obviously.

kamikasei said:
It occurs to me that 3e has some detail on trans Dynasts using neomah to have biological children and this being fully improved by Imperial authorities, but none that I recall on the idea of using neomah or sorcery for transition itself. Does that let Deizil sidestep the issue, or has he effectively doubled down on the social obstacle of being a sorcerer by making it so sorcery will be a necessary part of any match he tries to make?)
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I don't think there's a single approved way for the equivalent of medical transition in the Realm, but probably a sorcerous working using demons is a thing that would make a lot of people nervous if there were other options . He's a sorcerer and a Simendor, though, so it's probably not super shocking in his case if people did know about it. There's an Immaculate monk described in the setting material who transitioned through a combination of alchemic medication and meditation, which is more or less what Sola is doing. There's room for a lot of different ways this kind of thing can happen.
 
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Vote closed, Interlude 3 03
  • Voting
    • Scheduled vote count started by Gazetteer on Jan 28, 2023 at 1:31 PM, finished with 63 posts and 43 votes.
    [storyline] [maia]
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  • Voting
    • Gazetteer said:
    [X] [Maia] Tell Maia what you know
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    "Hey Maia, you know that terrible secret your family kept from everyone? Mother told me about it."
    "What? But I... Wait, does that mean she knew about everything a long time ago? Why didn't she do anything then?"
    "Who knows? She often does this. Personally, I think she just has fun in this way, giving her enemies false hope, so that she can crush it with her own hands."
     
    Gazetteer said:
    An important part of the premise of this quest for me is that it's very much like... about Ambraea coming of age in this time period right before things get bad and complicated for the Realm, where a lot of things happen at once that no one could have reasonably predicted enough to prevent.
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    SHOCKING | THE STUNNING DEFEAT of HOUSE TEPET at FUTILE BLOOD (AMBRAEA REACTS), 7:16:02, over a million views on DBTube, ultimately taken down under the terms of the Dragon Mandate of Correct Accreditation because one of the songs in the background is a hymn owned by the Immaculate Order.

    On a more serious note, I do especially like how this quest is about Ambraea's journey and how she's changed by it. There's a lot of really rich material in the Exalted background material that's rife for great Dragon-Blooded stories and this quest is a fantastic example of that.

    That said, I'm still quietly rooting for a continuation or sequel where Ambraea and her eventual Fellowship land on the Civil War like a 1-ton safe dropped from low orbit.
     
    Eternal_0bserver said:
    "What? But I... Wait, does that mean she knew about everything a long time ago? Why didn't she do anything then?"
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    I'm pretty sure the entire house knows the empress is aware of their survival, and is also the individual who bares a majority of the responsibility for said survival? The surprise is that she informed Ambraea, not that she knows.
    Eternal_0bserver said:
    "Who knows? She often does this. Personally, I think she just has fun in this way, giving her enemies false hope, so that she can crush it with her own hands."
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    I more in favor of "I assume to harness against a given faction of dragon blood should they need arise. She's always come off as the sort of person who never throws anything usefull but scandalous away so much as hide it somewhere it won't draw attention and keep it in mind for later. She's a rather calculated person."
    Etranger said:
    On a more serious note, I do especially like how this quest is about Ambraea's journey and how she's changed by it. There's a lot of really rich material in the Exalted background material that's rife for great Dragon-Blooded stories and this quest is a fantastic example of that.
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    Same. Could do with a bit more Prasad personally and I'm really hoping to meet more of Burano Maharan Nazat's family before her mother disappears or the current salt-trap dies.
    Etranger said:
    That said, I'm still quietly rooting for a continuation or sequel where Ambraea and her eventual Fellowship land on the Civil War like a 1-ton safe dropped from low orbit.
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    Oh me too. Honestly, I'm not sure why we wouldn't continue for a few years after Ambraea's presumed graduation. I feel like the initial few years of settlement in the aftermath of a sorcerers graduation are just as critical as the education itself, and rounding things off to an even decade of Ambraea's life, making an even 13 not exalted and 13 exalted, has a certain poetic symbolism.
     
    Randino Treviani said:
    I'm pretty sure the entire house knows the empress is aware of their survival, and is also the individual who bares a majority of the responsibility for said survival? The surprise is that she informed Ambraea, not that she knows.

    I more in favor of "I assume to harness against a given faction of dragon blood should they need arise. She's always come off as the sort of person who never throws anything usefull but scandalous away so much as hide it somewhere it won't draw attention and keep it in mind for later. She's a rather calculated person."
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    Keep in mind that Ambraea (and the overwhelming majority of the Realm) are not aware that House Iselsi's downfall was falsified so that they could more effectively serve as spies and that the Empress eventually plans to return their House to power. All Ambraea (and quite possibly Maia as an extremely junior Dragon-Blood may not have been brought in on such a major secret) knows is that House Iselsi was a Great House that was slowly destroyed by the Empress over the span of decades as a sadistic punishment for their involvement in an attempt on her life. Ambraea and Maia have every reason to believe that their respective familial loyalties must stand in opposition to each other as the remnants of House Iselsi seek revenge or a return to power that can only come at the expense of the Empress.
     
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    Ct613hulu said:
    All Ambraea (and quite possibly Maia as an extremely junior Dragon-Blood may not have been brought in on such a major secret) knows is that House Iselsi was a Great House that was slowly destroyed by the Empress over the span of decades as a sadistic punishment for their involvement in an attempt on her life. Ambraea and Maia have every reason to believe that their respective familial loyalties must stand in opposition to each other as the remnants of House Iselsi seek revenge or a return to power that can only come at the expense of the Empress.
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    I would assume that part of their obsessive death cult thing is raising people like Maia to be loyal and grateful to the Empress in addition to steeping them in the Vendetta -- it wouldn't exactly suit her needs if they were taught about the latter from the time they were six years old, and then told "oh by the way, be loyal to the Empress" later in life.

    I also don't think there's an indication that the Empress ever intended Iselsi to come back into power. They exist in their current form to be her secret attack dogs, and as a group they're pursuing their Vendetta with an almost religious fervor rather than because they think it's in service to a glorious future where they're a Great House again.
     
    Gazetteer said:
    I would assume that part of their obsessive death cult thing is raising people like Maia to be loyal and grateful to the Empress in addition to steeping them in the Vendetta -- it wouldn't exactly suit her needs if they were taught about the latter from the time they were six years old, and then told "oh by the way, be loyal to the Empress" later in life.

    I also don't think there's an indication that the Empress ever intended Iselsi to come back into power. They exist in their current form to be her secret attack dogs, and as a group they're pursuing their Vendetta with an almost religious fervor rather than because they think it's in service to a glorious future where they're a Great House again.
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    The problem is that while I agree that Iselsi are told to be loyal to the Empress when they are told of the Vendetta, the primary targets are her children and their descendants. Ambraea falls in a weird spot Vendetta wise.

    I wouldn't be surprised if the Empress did intend for the Iselsi to become a Great House again but less to reward them and more to use as an example for future members of fallen houses.The fact that they are all likely to have been raised to be devoted servants is a plus.
     
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