Yawning Abyss, Soaring Shrike [Exalted]
- Thread starter VagueZ
- Start date
Breakfast with Anathema
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[] Meet up with Nine Leagues Strides and Soot Column Ascending.
Whatever important thing they had, better late than never. The Lunar is keenly insightful when she tries, and you know she's here for the Despot's yasal crystal.
...Who blunders in and complicates your plan?
[] Ari
Your Lunar mate has returned. The Changing Moon isn't trying to be difficult, but...
It's early in the morning when you drop by the address Nine Leagues Strides gave you.
It's the ifrit who opens the door, however. That's smart thinking, you realize. The ifrit is the one most likely to attract attention first, after all, as a powerful spirit being and one who can't easily hide his nature. The Anathema he has as a partner is both somewhat more subtle about what she is and would be a significantly greater problem to be discovered. Even in this dark time, Gem wouldn't dare openly host Anathema, not when Anira's queendom is its breadbasket.
He stands aside and gestures for you to come in. You comply, stepping into a little sitting room with a couple of doors in the back that seem to lead to individual bedrooms. It's not a simple room to let, not even a nice room to let. This is more like the Lunar maintaining a second home here in Gem.
Your background level of concern about Nine Leagues Strides and her sprawling nomadic people kicks up a couple of notches.
Soot Column Ascending raps on the wall with his knuckles. You can hear it echoing into the bedrooms, clearly a communication tool. "Our guest is here," he says in a carrying voice, before dropping to a more conversational level. "I am glad you were able to get here on time with so little warning," he says to you.
"Technically, I'm about eight hours late," you tell him. He looks at you with a sort of puzzlement.
Before you can explain 'on time', one of the bedroom doors opens to disgorge two Lunars. Nine Leagues Strides looks as commanding as always, smoothly in control as soon as she shows up and with her moonsilver spear still coiled around her upper arm in decorative-snake form. Behind her, looking a little beat, is Ari. He gives you a bedraggled grin and you can't quite suppress an urge to smile back.
Nine Leagues Strides heads for the front door with barely a gesture of acknowledgement. "We don't have anything for breakfast, so I'll be back with that in a few. Nice of you to show up eventually, Reddy."
Ari practically collapses into one of the chairs surrounding a low table, and you take another one of them. "You look like you've landed on your feet," he says, considering you and your newly white clothes and their slight funeral feeling. "Nice outfit."
"I rather have," you say, checking it over. "Thanks for the tip on these two." You gesture to Soot Column Ascending, who opened your mind to sorcery. "It's come in handy."
"There's more you'll be able to do once you learn more. Sorcery is a field where even an elder Celestial Exalt isn't going to know everything there is to know. This is just a taste of it. I--" He groans a bit, and leans back, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"You look tired," you put in.
"I was flying for most of the night," Ari was almost certainly in his hawk form, unless he has a swifter bird-shape he hasn't shown you. "Only got in a little while ago."
"Any particular reason for the rush?"
Ari grins as he pulls himself together, then sprawls over the chair's armrests, legs hanging off one side and his head lolling almost to the floor on the other. His spine is amazingly flexible. "Same reason you're here. But Nine Leagues Strides said she would bend my middle fingers back until they touched my elbows if I ruined her surprise."
"Ah, well, I'll try to live until she comes back." You pause, then arch an eyebrow at him. "'Teach'?"
Ari turns his head towards you. A silvery crescent moon appears on his forehead briefly. That is the mark of the Tricksters or Face Stealers, the Anathema who call themselves Changing Moon. It's a sub-category of Lunars, the social masters of that group. "Teach," he confirms the nickname. "Among other things, I'm big on education for a lot of our people out here in the desert. From helping would-be thaumaturges meet up so they can teach each other to helping mundane craftsmen work past challenges to just teaching children their basic education, it's a real calling of mine. Somewhere along the way, 'Teach' stuck." His smile is broad and genuine. "I like being a schoolteacher to kids, but it isn't something I can limit myself to."
You nod and ask the obvious follow-up question. "Any children of your own, then?"
He shrugs, and his hands sprawl down to the floor. "Not yet. I'd like them someday."
It's a very strange thing to hear from Anathema. It almost feels like what the Immaculate Order offers to people, these Lunars do, too. You suppose it would have to at least pretend to be, or people wouldn't listen to them. Before you can pursue that thought any further, Nine Leagues Strides comes back with some breaded, fried meat that might be chicken. She practically dumps it over the table and takes a third chair. She and Ari grab for it, and you're not far behind. It might be rat, actually. It's still breakfast. Soot Column Ascending doesn't have any. Ifrits don't quite have a human metabolism.
It's an odd thing, you decide, as the three of you inelegantly eat street vendor food. Three Anathema Exalts and a powerful elemental sitting alone in a quiet house, unknown to almost the entire rest of the city. If you all put your minds to it, you could devastate the city. Fire and flood, supernatural martial arts and artifact weaponry of dreadful power, are under the command of the four of you. Nations have risen and fallen on less might than this group possesses.
As the pace of eating slows, Nine Leagues Strides belches, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and turns her attention to you. "So, Reddy," she says. "You're a little late, but this should work out. Here's the basic deal." Her eyes find yours. "You show discretion, we talk shop. There's something here that I think you'll want a slice of. I tell you what it is, it doesn't go further. What we do with it, that's separate."
After a moment's thought, you nod. Oni like Nine Leagues Strides have ways of enforcing their oaths, but information can't hurt. Probably. She leans back, ripping just a little more meat off a nearly-bare bone. "Unlike our friendly neighborhood Despot, I happen to know what he has in his yasal crystal, courtesy of some information I was able to trade from Raksi and getting a chance for visual confirmation." She pauses, clearly for dramatic effect while you wrestle with the fact that she's on speaking terms with the Queen of Fangs, one of the most infamous of all Anathema, an empress in her own right of a sorcerous dominion in the eastern Threshold. "Have you ever heard of a demon being a fetich soul?"
You frown, regretting your lack of a Heptagram education. You're forced to shake your head. "Is that something like a second-circle demon?" Second circle demons are unique and powerful demons, mighty lords of their realm, and all too often more than a match for individual Dragon-Blooded heroes. In all the Realm, only Mnemon and her mother were able to summon them relatively safely, though the truly mad and various Anathema have been known to find ways to conjure them up, unbound and free to work their demented designs more often than they are properly restrained.
Ari has to cover his mouth to avoid laughing. Nine Leagues Strides doesn't try. Once she's stopped, she explains the joke. "Oh, no, Reddy. It's more than that. There's a third circle of demons." Your blood runs cold, but she's not done. "Chief among them are the fetich souls. In the high First Age, certain fetich souls were summoned, sealed up in special yasal crystals, and hidden away to keep... oh, something even worse from happening." She waves her hand in a dismissive gesture. "Later found to be an unnecessary precaution. Then some idiot Despot dug this treasure up without knowing what he had found or why it was there. With Raksi's help, I was able to identify this crystal as being almost certainly the one containing Mretan, the Sanctity of Mind, fetich soul of the Black Boar That Twists the Heavens."
Most of that means nothing to you, but some things you can certainly grasp. First of all: this is a demonic catastrophe in a can. If this 'Mretan' is only as far beyond a second circle demon as a second circle demon is beyond a first circle, it's not so much an enemy to be confronted as an actively malevolent natural disaster. Nine Leagues Strides seems to think it could be worse. Secondly, it's extremely clear that Nine Leagues Strides isn't planning to just hold onto this. "And what," you say, carefully, "comes after you get it?"
Ari scoots his chair closer to yours, so the two of you are sitting on one side of the table while Nine Leagues Strides sits on the other, Soot Column Ascending standing behind her. It's a nice gesture, to sit on your side. "She was going to use it to attack the Lap. I encouraged her to talk to you, first. Since I know you're somehow still trying to be Immaculate." You try not to show that you're gritting your teeth. There's a frustrating level there, where Ari is talking down to you, without fully realizing he's doing it, treating the Immaculate Philosophy as a childish thing you just haven't quite discarded yet.
"Right," Nine Leagues Strides agrees, fairly casual about the fact that she's proposing the slaughter of people your House entrusted to your care, as well as individuals you worked with and grew alongside for months. "Hence why I thought you'd want to be a part of this, Reddy. The wrinkle is, things have changed. I was going to see if you could help me make decisions on this. I ain't a monster who will leave a trail of bodies if I can make a more precision execution." She shrugs. "Then, last night, I find I'm getting outbid. Nicklaus was offering some rather staggering concessions to the Despot. I think the Lion must know what this actually is, too."
"Nicklaus is working for the First and Forsaken Lion?" You latch onto that.
"Well, yeah. He's the main Deathlord in this section of the Underworld right now, though I've heard unsubstantiated reports of some strife in that area. Why?" For the first time since you've met her, this actually seems to throw Nine Leagues Strides off her game for a moment.
Ari answers for you, grimacing. "It's not the right Deathlord."
"Not the right Deathlord?"
"Vessel is hunting down the Lonely Waif of Cooling Embers, with the intent to destroy her."
"Ah." Nine Leagues Strides looks at you with a little more respect on hearing that. "Rough game you're playing there, Reddy. Anyway, the Despot and I reached an agreement because he doesn't want the great powers of the Underworld to come knocking on his door, feeling snubbed, but also doesn't want to hand this over to them and risk them using it to generate a huge shadowland or something. Not knowing the details makes him actually less willing to risk it. The Lion was supposed to send a token representative, not go this hard."
'And what," you ask, knowing you're about to hate the answer, "Does that entail that I can help with?"
The No Moon grins. "Why, among several other things amounting to a rather staggering fortune, it means that I get to wink-wink 'steal' it as long as the Despot has a plausible cover that I defied him and he is upset with me, so the Lion hopefully won't wreak a terrible vengeance on him."
You turn that over in your head. "You're trying to recruit me for a half-officially-approved heist." You fall heavily against the chair back.
"Sure am." She leans forward, counting off items on her fingers. "Here's what I get out of it. There's going to be a guard, of course, since this has to look good, and you're a good hand in a fight. You probably also got to see the sorcerous wards protecting the vault, so you'll be able to help me undo that. You're another pair of hands to carry it out. That's the sort of thing that makes this go smoothly. Here's what you get out of it: you do this, and you get a stake in the claim. We don't pop Mretan out and say 'go kill everything in that direction' unless all of us with a stake agree to it." She stops looking at her fingers to stare hard at you. "I still get to threaten it, and you don't get to tell Anira's people that this is a paper tiger. I want this bad, Reddy. It's the best deal you're going to get today."
"I've been thinking about this," Ari interjects at your side, before you can respond. Both you and Nine Leagues Strides look at him. "There may be a way to get everyone what they want. Nine Leagues Strides, you're looking to cow the Realm with a display of might that shows they can't possibly contend with you, right?" She nods, but wobbles her hands in an 'eh' expression. She'd be just as happy wiping out their representatives. Ari ignores the details to turn his attention to you. "And you, Vessel, are looking for tools to kill the Waif, right?" In a flash, you realize what he's going to suggest, but you also nod to let him have the moment to say it. "Well, all we have to do is steal the yasal crystal, get it to a place where the Laplanders can see it, lure the Waif out, and then set Mretan on her. No matter how it turns out, both purposes should be served. Even a Deathlord won't be able to defeat a demon like this easily."
Nine Leagues Strides shrugs and studies one of her breakfast bones in case there's more meat she's missed. "Not that big a deal to me how we deploy it if it suits my purposes."
You arch an eyebrow at Ari. His idea does make signing on more appealing, but... "How are we supposed to lure the Waif out?"
"I don't know," he replies, bluntly, as he shifts in his seat to pull hands and feet together under him like a crouching cat, rather ruining how the chair was intended to be used. "That would be up to you to figure out. Sorry, but I don't have an answer for that."
"You can figure it out on your own time," Nine Leagues Strides says. "Either way, this goes down tonight. Are you in or out?"
[] "Out.
- [] ...but you are going to stay silent about this; it won't hurt you
- [] ...but you are going to turn this in and stymy this; you can't go against the Realm
[] "In."
Top line goes first, as normal.
Whatever important thing they had, better late than never. The Lunar is keenly insightful when she tries, and you know she's here for the Despot's yasal crystal.
...Who blunders in and complicates your plan?
[] Ari
Your Lunar mate has returned. The Changing Moon isn't trying to be difficult, but...
It's early in the morning when you drop by the address Nine Leagues Strides gave you.
It's the ifrit who opens the door, however. That's smart thinking, you realize. The ifrit is the one most likely to attract attention first, after all, as a powerful spirit being and one who can't easily hide his nature. The Anathema he has as a partner is both somewhat more subtle about what she is and would be a significantly greater problem to be discovered. Even in this dark time, Gem wouldn't dare openly host Anathema, not when Anira's queendom is its breadbasket.
He stands aside and gestures for you to come in. You comply, stepping into a little sitting room with a couple of doors in the back that seem to lead to individual bedrooms. It's not a simple room to let, not even a nice room to let. This is more like the Lunar maintaining a second home here in Gem.
Your background level of concern about Nine Leagues Strides and her sprawling nomadic people kicks up a couple of notches.
Soot Column Ascending raps on the wall with his knuckles. You can hear it echoing into the bedrooms, clearly a communication tool. "Our guest is here," he says in a carrying voice, before dropping to a more conversational level. "I am glad you were able to get here on time with so little warning," he says to you.
"Technically, I'm about eight hours late," you tell him. He looks at you with a sort of puzzlement.
Before you can explain 'on time', one of the bedroom doors opens to disgorge two Lunars. Nine Leagues Strides looks as commanding as always, smoothly in control as soon as she shows up and with her moonsilver spear still coiled around her upper arm in decorative-snake form. Behind her, looking a little beat, is Ari. He gives you a bedraggled grin and you can't quite suppress an urge to smile back.
Nine Leagues Strides heads for the front door with barely a gesture of acknowledgement. "We don't have anything for breakfast, so I'll be back with that in a few. Nice of you to show up eventually, Reddy."
Ari practically collapses into one of the chairs surrounding a low table, and you take another one of them. "You look like you've landed on your feet," he says, considering you and your newly white clothes and their slight funeral feeling. "Nice outfit."
"I rather have," you say, checking it over. "Thanks for the tip on these two." You gesture to Soot Column Ascending, who opened your mind to sorcery. "It's come in handy."
"There's more you'll be able to do once you learn more. Sorcery is a field where even an elder Celestial Exalt isn't going to know everything there is to know. This is just a taste of it. I--" He groans a bit, and leans back, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"You look tired," you put in.
"I was flying for most of the night," Ari was almost certainly in his hawk form, unless he has a swifter bird-shape he hasn't shown you. "Only got in a little while ago."
"Any particular reason for the rush?"
Ari grins as he pulls himself together, then sprawls over the chair's armrests, legs hanging off one side and his head lolling almost to the floor on the other. His spine is amazingly flexible. "Same reason you're here. But Nine Leagues Strides said she would bend my middle fingers back until they touched my elbows if I ruined her surprise."
"Ah, well, I'll try to live until she comes back." You pause, then arch an eyebrow at him. "'Teach'?"
Ari turns his head towards you. A silvery crescent moon appears on his forehead briefly. That is the mark of the Tricksters or Face Stealers, the Anathema who call themselves Changing Moon. It's a sub-category of Lunars, the social masters of that group. "Teach," he confirms the nickname. "Among other things, I'm big on education for a lot of our people out here in the desert. From helping would-be thaumaturges meet up so they can teach each other to helping mundane craftsmen work past challenges to just teaching children their basic education, it's a real calling of mine. Somewhere along the way, 'Teach' stuck." His smile is broad and genuine. "I like being a schoolteacher to kids, but it isn't something I can limit myself to."
You nod and ask the obvious follow-up question. "Any children of your own, then?"
He shrugs, and his hands sprawl down to the floor. "Not yet. I'd like them someday."
It's a very strange thing to hear from Anathema. It almost feels like what the Immaculate Order offers to people, these Lunars do, too. You suppose it would have to at least pretend to be, or people wouldn't listen to them. Before you can pursue that thought any further, Nine Leagues Strides comes back with some breaded, fried meat that might be chicken. She practically dumps it over the table and takes a third chair. She and Ari grab for it, and you're not far behind. It might be rat, actually. It's still breakfast. Soot Column Ascending doesn't have any. Ifrits don't quite have a human metabolism.
It's an odd thing, you decide, as the three of you inelegantly eat street vendor food. Three Anathema Exalts and a powerful elemental sitting alone in a quiet house, unknown to almost the entire rest of the city. If you all put your minds to it, you could devastate the city. Fire and flood, supernatural martial arts and artifact weaponry of dreadful power, are under the command of the four of you. Nations have risen and fallen on less might than this group possesses.
As the pace of eating slows, Nine Leagues Strides belches, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and turns her attention to you. "So, Reddy," she says. "You're a little late, but this should work out. Here's the basic deal." Her eyes find yours. "You show discretion, we talk shop. There's something here that I think you'll want a slice of. I tell you what it is, it doesn't go further. What we do with it, that's separate."
After a moment's thought, you nod. Oni like Nine Leagues Strides have ways of enforcing their oaths, but information can't hurt. Probably. She leans back, ripping just a little more meat off a nearly-bare bone. "Unlike our friendly neighborhood Despot, I happen to know what he has in his yasal crystal, courtesy of some information I was able to trade from Raksi and getting a chance for visual confirmation." She pauses, clearly for dramatic effect while you wrestle with the fact that she's on speaking terms with the Queen of Fangs, one of the most infamous of all Anathema, an empress in her own right of a sorcerous dominion in the eastern Threshold. "Have you ever heard of a demon being a fetich soul?"
You frown, regretting your lack of a Heptagram education. You're forced to shake your head. "Is that something like a second-circle demon?" Second circle demons are unique and powerful demons, mighty lords of their realm, and all too often more than a match for individual Dragon-Blooded heroes. In all the Realm, only Mnemon and her mother were able to summon them relatively safely, though the truly mad and various Anathema have been known to find ways to conjure them up, unbound and free to work their demented designs more often than they are properly restrained.
Ari has to cover his mouth to avoid laughing. Nine Leagues Strides doesn't try. Once she's stopped, she explains the joke. "Oh, no, Reddy. It's more than that. There's a third circle of demons." Your blood runs cold, but she's not done. "Chief among them are the fetich souls. In the high First Age, certain fetich souls were summoned, sealed up in special yasal crystals, and hidden away to keep... oh, something even worse from happening." She waves her hand in a dismissive gesture. "Later found to be an unnecessary precaution. Then some idiot Despot dug this treasure up without knowing what he had found or why it was there. With Raksi's help, I was able to identify this crystal as being almost certainly the one containing Mretan, the Sanctity of Mind, fetich soul of the Black Boar That Twists the Heavens."
Most of that means nothing to you, but some things you can certainly grasp. First of all: this is a demonic catastrophe in a can. If this 'Mretan' is only as far beyond a second circle demon as a second circle demon is beyond a first circle, it's not so much an enemy to be confronted as an actively malevolent natural disaster. Nine Leagues Strides seems to think it could be worse. Secondly, it's extremely clear that Nine Leagues Strides isn't planning to just hold onto this. "And what," you say, carefully, "comes after you get it?"
Ari scoots his chair closer to yours, so the two of you are sitting on one side of the table while Nine Leagues Strides sits on the other, Soot Column Ascending standing behind her. It's a nice gesture, to sit on your side. "She was going to use it to attack the Lap. I encouraged her to talk to you, first. Since I know you're somehow still trying to be Immaculate." You try not to show that you're gritting your teeth. There's a frustrating level there, where Ari is talking down to you, without fully realizing he's doing it, treating the Immaculate Philosophy as a childish thing you just haven't quite discarded yet.
"Right," Nine Leagues Strides agrees, fairly casual about the fact that she's proposing the slaughter of people your House entrusted to your care, as well as individuals you worked with and grew alongside for months. "Hence why I thought you'd want to be a part of this, Reddy. The wrinkle is, things have changed. I was going to see if you could help me make decisions on this. I ain't a monster who will leave a trail of bodies if I can make a more precision execution." She shrugs. "Then, last night, I find I'm getting outbid. Nicklaus was offering some rather staggering concessions to the Despot. I think the Lion must know what this actually is, too."
"Nicklaus is working for the First and Forsaken Lion?" You latch onto that.
"Well, yeah. He's the main Deathlord in this section of the Underworld right now, though I've heard unsubstantiated reports of some strife in that area. Why?" For the first time since you've met her, this actually seems to throw Nine Leagues Strides off her game for a moment.
Ari answers for you, grimacing. "It's not the right Deathlord."
"Not the right Deathlord?"
"Vessel is hunting down the Lonely Waif of Cooling Embers, with the intent to destroy her."
"Ah." Nine Leagues Strides looks at you with a little more respect on hearing that. "Rough game you're playing there, Reddy. Anyway, the Despot and I reached an agreement because he doesn't want the great powers of the Underworld to come knocking on his door, feeling snubbed, but also doesn't want to hand this over to them and risk them using it to generate a huge shadowland or something. Not knowing the details makes him actually less willing to risk it. The Lion was supposed to send a token representative, not go this hard."
'And what," you ask, knowing you're about to hate the answer, "Does that entail that I can help with?"
The No Moon grins. "Why, among several other things amounting to a rather staggering fortune, it means that I get to wink-wink 'steal' it as long as the Despot has a plausible cover that I defied him and he is upset with me, so the Lion hopefully won't wreak a terrible vengeance on him."
You turn that over in your head. "You're trying to recruit me for a half-officially-approved heist." You fall heavily against the chair back.
"Sure am." She leans forward, counting off items on her fingers. "Here's what I get out of it. There's going to be a guard, of course, since this has to look good, and you're a good hand in a fight. You probably also got to see the sorcerous wards protecting the vault, so you'll be able to help me undo that. You're another pair of hands to carry it out. That's the sort of thing that makes this go smoothly. Here's what you get out of it: you do this, and you get a stake in the claim. We don't pop Mretan out and say 'go kill everything in that direction' unless all of us with a stake agree to it." She stops looking at her fingers to stare hard at you. "I still get to threaten it, and you don't get to tell Anira's people that this is a paper tiger. I want this bad, Reddy. It's the best deal you're going to get today."
"I've been thinking about this," Ari interjects at your side, before you can respond. Both you and Nine Leagues Strides look at him. "There may be a way to get everyone what they want. Nine Leagues Strides, you're looking to cow the Realm with a display of might that shows they can't possibly contend with you, right?" She nods, but wobbles her hands in an 'eh' expression. She'd be just as happy wiping out their representatives. Ari ignores the details to turn his attention to you. "And you, Vessel, are looking for tools to kill the Waif, right?" In a flash, you realize what he's going to suggest, but you also nod to let him have the moment to say it. "Well, all we have to do is steal the yasal crystal, get it to a place where the Laplanders can see it, lure the Waif out, and then set Mretan on her. No matter how it turns out, both purposes should be served. Even a Deathlord won't be able to defeat a demon like this easily."
Nine Leagues Strides shrugs and studies one of her breakfast bones in case there's more meat she's missed. "Not that big a deal to me how we deploy it if it suits my purposes."
You arch an eyebrow at Ari. His idea does make signing on more appealing, but... "How are we supposed to lure the Waif out?"
"I don't know," he replies, bluntly, as he shifts in his seat to pull hands and feet together under him like a crouching cat, rather ruining how the chair was intended to be used. "That would be up to you to figure out. Sorry, but I don't have an answer for that."
"You can figure it out on your own time," Nine Leagues Strides says. "Either way, this goes down tonight. Are you in or out?"
[] "Out.
- [] ...but you are going to stay silent about this; it won't hurt you
- [] ...but you are going to turn this in and stymy this; you can't go against the Realm
[] "In."
Top line goes first, as normal.
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- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Vessel is in a weird emotional state where what he would do is subject to ongoing change as he decides what, exactly, his current circumstances mean for him.
[X] "In."
- Location
- Austria
Is this rat KFC?
Also, hey let's weaponize Feitch Soul, what could go wrong?
I mean, Nine is a sorcerer so she can bind it with Oaths I think? So it's okay.
Well, they do it anyway, might as well ensure we have some input on the process.
[X] "In."
[X] "In."
It's all fun and games until the Waif kills the fetich soul, Isidoros reforms and Malfeas gets a new Yozi. But that's more a Malfeas problem.
It's all fun and games until the Waif kills the fetich soul, Isidoros reforms and Malfeas gets a new Yozi. But that's more a Malfeas problem.
- Location
- Bed
[X] "In."
Why why why why why why are we so goddamn in over our heads I swear-
My blood ran cold when I read the words "fetich soul", but fuck it, right? At this point we know this is all going to end in a disaster, every new factor we throw in is just another pretty color to add to the explosion.
As for Vessel's motivations in all this, I actually think it's perfectly reasonable for him to go along with this, simply on the grounds that not doing so would give him nothing whereas doing socould easily get him killed means he might stand to gain a fair bit, if things go well.
...Also fine yes I really want a heist arc too.
Why why why why why why are we so goddamn in over our heads I swear-
My blood ran cold when I read the words "fetich soul", but fuck it, right? At this point we know this is all going to end in a disaster, every new factor we throw in is just another pretty color to add to the explosion.
As for Vessel's motivations in all this, I actually think it's perfectly reasonable for him to go along with this, simply on the grounds that not doing so would give him nothing whereas doing so
...Also fine yes I really want a heist arc too.
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Gem can't catch a break.
Unrelatedly, I really enjoy how confidently skewed Vessel's views on various setting elements are. Second circle demons are dread demon lords of great power -- anything above that is far enough outside the realm of what Terrestrial sorcery interacts with as to be esoteric and theoretical. So it makes sense, but it's like... He regrets his lack of Heptogram education, but he sure is completely certain that all his basic knowledge on this subject is authoratively correct going into this discussion, here in the company of two Lunar sorcerers and a powerful elemental.
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Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
A small typo.
Lol, a fetish soul. A fucking magical nuke with arms and legs and claws and teeth and tentacles, and they want to unleash it on their enemies. This is going to end terribly for everyone involved.
I'm in. Obviously.
[X] "In."
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
[X] "In."
At this point, we're just here to set the world on fire.
More seriously, this is a terrible idea, but in a way that Celestial Exalted could actually get away with, hypothetically. Either this solves our problems by wrecking a Deathlord with an entire Fetich Soul's worth of murder, or the Fetich Soul dies and the world gets so many new problems from the new Yozi and everything that our personal issues will just kind of fade into the background.
(What would we even call that result? Malfean Procrastination?)
At this point, we're just here to set the world on fire.
More seriously, this is a terrible idea, but in a way that Celestial Exalted could actually get away with, hypothetically. Either this solves our problems by wrecking a Deathlord with an entire Fetich Soul's worth of murder, or the Fetich Soul dies and the world gets so many new problems from the new Yozi and everything that our personal issues will just kind of fade into the background.
(What would we even call that result? Malfean Procrastination?)
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The new Yozi is still stuck in Malfeas and couldn't do anything to directly affect stuff outside of it, so that's less of an issue for Creation and more throwing a big disruptive curveball into hell. Isidoros isn't so bad, he only periodically ploughs through the streets of the demon city, destroying all in his wake. It's a known issue. His next incarnation may be less considerate.[X] "In."
At this point, we're just here to set the world on fire.
More seriously, this is a terrible idea, but in a way that Celestial Exalted could actually get away with, hypothetically. Either this solves our problems by wrecking a Deathlord with an entire Fetich Soul's worth of murder, or the Fetich Soul dies and the world gets so many new problems from the new Yozi and everything that our personal issues will just kind of fade into the background.
(What would we even call that result? Malfean Procrastination?)
Yeah, after years of playing Exalted, being popped into the perspective of a character that didn't even know that demons had third circles, let alone fetich souls, was a shift. And it sounds like even his companions may not know about the Yozi reincarnation element.
What a lovely surprise for everyone!
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
It's the sheer magical wonder of amazing discoveries like this what had caused basically ninety percent of Creation to violently perish in one cataclysm after another.
Well, if we continue to solve all our problems with gratuitous murder, sooner or later things will become better, right? Right?
- Location
- St. Petersburg
That is what the Shrike is for!
There might be some truth in it considering the Waif hates fire more than anything.At this point, we're just here to set the world on fire.
Sometimes I wonder if Vessel would set the world alight just to spite her.
[x] "In."
- Location
- Bed
Depending on how things go, I could totally see Vessel coming to this conclusion. Right now, though, he's still mostly in "I have people around me to use so I'm relatively safe" mode (despite, like, that being incredibly wrong), so we'd need to hit a few more phases of everything collapsing around him for that to happen.
That is to say, it's not really a matter of "if", but "when".
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I'm not sure that the sun counts as "Fire" to Creation, really! It's often described in terms meant to evoke flames, but fire is elemental in a way that I'm not sure the sun counts, so it's holy nature as much as maybe being fire.
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
historyofcreation.mp4
A tried and true method that's worked out for us up until now, right
- Location
- Elsewhere
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Just ask the Whispers. They'd agree with plan keep murdering.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
I always wondered what opinion Neverborn have on murdering them.
I mean, they ostensibly want to destroy the Creation so that they could finally die...
Also, whatever did happen to their fetich souls?