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865044 No. 865044 ID: d36af7

You all meet, at midnight, in the middle of a flying castle that's about to explode.

Which of you owns this place, or is it held jointly between two or more?
What sort of landscape is below it?
Who's trying to summon a demon, which one, and for what larger purpose?
Who's trying to interrupt that ritual?
Who's trying to patch the damage to prevent an explosion?
Who (or what) inflicted that damage in the first place?
Which of you snuck in to rob the vault while everybody else is distracted, and what were you surprised to find there?
Which mighty artifacts, if any, do the lot of you collectively have on hand?

Who are you people?
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4587981
Expand all images
>>
No. 865055 ID: 35089a

the answer to all of these is john the pizza delivery guy
AND HIS ARMY OF PIZZA DELIVERY CLONES
>>
No. 865095 ID: d36af7

One character per suggester, at least to start.

At the heart of it all is your PERSONAL QUEST, the driving goal which motivates your heroism. Do you want to forge an empire? Destroy an existing empire, liberating and/or exterminating it's subjects in the process? Become the greatest swordsman in the world? Catch and catalogue at least one specimen of every species of pokem demon? Build a weather-control machine and use it to destroy the autobots forever? Attain something more abstract, like occult wisdom, inner peace, or true love? If it's something small and personal, like building an ordinary house, fetching a trinket from the bottom of a nearby lake, marrying a princess, or rescuing a lost child, there will need to be sufficiently epic obstacles involved that the project could reasonably require months of work even with the skills and resources of a demigod.

WILLPOWER is your overall mental and emotional stability, and the pool of spiritual resources by which you'll overcome seemingly impossible obstacles. Progress on your PERSONAL QUEST is the best and fastest way to recharge, but, being the core of self-determination, it can then be used for almost anything, even sabotaging your own agenda. Rate it with an integer between five and ten. (WP values of 4 or below are the domain of meek peasants, not epic heroes. Zero would mean you're an automaton, utterly incapable of the slightest self-motivated action.)


Surrounding, protecting, and balancing your heart of hearts are the four VIRTUES:

COMPASSION is how broadly you care. Defending the innocent, subduing the guilty and bringing them to justice, preventing needless cruelty or death no matter who stands to benefit, pursuing romantic love, making the world a better place for everyone, even at personal expense. Too much makes you soft and conflicted.

CONVICTION is how deeply you care. Remembering who your real allies and enemies are, finishing what you started, making the hard decisions when there's no way for everybody to get what they want, imposing your dreams on the world by force. Too much makes you callous and corrupt.

TEMPERANCE is your sense of order. Resisting impulses and temptations, piercing illusions and mind control, making calm unbiased judgements, planning ahead, swearing an oath and sticking to it in both letter and spirit. Too much makes you bland and hesitant to the point of passivity.

VALOR is your sense of chaos. Adapting quickly to changing circumstances, seizing opportunities as they arise, defending your pride by violence, facing down terror and death with a smile. Too much makes you dangerously unpredictable.
Rate each from zero to six. The sum total must be at least four more than your WILLPOWER.


Last but not least, make an itemized list of stuff you care about (people, places, objects, gods, whatever), and emotional context for each. Can't have any fewer than your COMPASSION, nor more than the sum of that and your WILLPOWER... unless your CONVICTION is zero, in which case you don't really care about much of anything after it's out of your sight.

More generally, VIRTUES at zero correspond to a severely damaged soul, and even a rating of one is somehow notably deficient, while those at four or above correspond to unhealthy extremes of passion, six being superhumanly intense. Such overwhelming sincerity has uses, though...
>>
No. 865113 ID: d36af7

How do you naturally excel? Are you the fastest, the strongest, the wisest, the cleverest, the toughest, the prettiest? What are your corresponding weaknesses? Nobody's a perfect paragon in every aspect of body and mind, at least not when they're just starting out.

What fields of human endeavor have you mastered? Swordfighting, sailing the high seas, archery, blacksmithing, blackmail, medicine, a particular style of martial arts, espionage, philosophy, science, religion, sorcery, stealth, dance, pickpocketing, hiking barefoot across the frozen tundra, detective work, calligraphy?
Pick at least four, not limited to the above list, and prioritize among them. On a sufficiently long list of non-overlapping fields, those lower priorities will correspond to merely dabbling competence, but sometimes that's all you need.

Where do you get your superpowers from?
Family history with the raw power of air, earth, fire, water, or wood?
Personal pact with one of the celestial incarnae (sun, moon, or stars), or a demon prince? Or both, presumably intending to eventually betray one for greater favor from the other?
Drinking the blood of the living and hastening the end of days?
Or were you built by a team of half-mad super-scientists as some city-state's latest strategic asset, halfway between Robocop and Astro Boy?

More importantly, what are those powers good for? What do you routinely accomplish that ordinary people can only dream of?

Don't worry about point values so much for any of these, just spell out what you want in broad strokes of capability, then I'll figure out how to wrangle that into the system. If there's more than one way to make it work, I'll summarize the other implications of each option to help you choose between them.
>>
No. 865122 ID: d36af7

>>865055
If you want an army of clones of yourself, delivering pizza to airborne fortifications, possibly while also summoning demons within and/or laying siege to an airborne fortress, the first option which comes to mind is a pact with one of the sheridans of Adorjan, the Silent Wind (she's represented by that four-segmented hollow red circle in the OP image), in which case other implied powers would include the ability to run very fast, silently and without leaving tracks, through dangerous environments without being harmed by them, across walls and ceilings; eagerness for violence so supernaturally intense it can distort the flow of time, negating an attacker's advantage when John is ambushed, and allowing him to take several simultaneous actions (other than ranged attacks) with little or no multitasking penalty; and, as an alternative to conjuring clones out of thin air, the ability to induce parthenogenic pregnancy in himself.

Does all that seem consistent with your idea of John the Pizza Delivery Guy's core concept, or would you rather back up and work it out from a different angle? If the "pizza delivery clones" are meant to be duplicates of other people, rather than himself, that sounds more like a Lunar sort of power, or maybe Szoreny the Silver Forest. If each clone exists only for the duration of the delivery of a single pizza (or set of pizzas, beverages, breadsticks, etc. to a single site), self-destructing when it's mission is complete, there are some powers of Isidoros the Black Boar Which Twists The Sky that could be a better fit. If they're 'shadow duplicates,' mostly just combat decoys rather than being capable of significant independent action, that could be an elemental power, or part of a supernatural martial arts style, or an unusual artifact. Or is the imperiled flying castle itself an automated genetics lab, row after row of growth tanks popping out Pizza Delivery Agents like stormtroopers or Venture brothers?

What I'm saying is I need more information to narrow down the possibilities.
>>
No. 865130 ID: 008b25

The house is owned by Astius, Lich queen of the flooded kingdom, a largely ceremonial title as no one bloody well remembers you these days. Ingrates!

Below the castle currently lies the Fungus plains, a large fungal forest that is populated by a variety of peoples drawn by the rich mushroomy harvests.

Despite your rather.. ominous title you hold no ill will to the living, despite there fickle memories, you merely wish to spend some time alone practicing the rather tricky art of demonic command. You are currently summoning the succubus Silthriss for study, something that would be insanely dangerous for a living person, but since you lack the organs the succubi affect you are in the perfect position to interrogate her.

At least you where, but then someone put a smocking hole in the side of your castle leaving you VERY ANNOYED!

WILLPOWER 10
COMPASSION 3
CONVICTION 4
TEMPERANCE 4
VALOR 3

DEEDS!
Undead resilience. Sorcery. Dance (what... you have hobbies!)

Power comes from a life times research into the shadow realms and their magic. You where all ready well on the path to lichhood when the kingdom flooded, turned out building a great damn on a fault line is a really Stupid decision..

You can raise the dead as both mindless automatons and intelligent revenants, depending on whether the spirit wishes to come back. You could force them back into their corpses but frankly that strikes you as rude.

Your ultimate goal is to establish a kingdom of leisure and learning, where the living spend their time in relaxed thought while the dead do the labor.

You also have other shadow based abilities, teleportation, shadow form, illusion ect
>>
No. 865176 ID: d36af7

>>865130
Sounds like an Abyssal. Native to the realm of the dead, direct sunlight and the ambient essence of the living world are uncomfortable, but not injurious unless wielded as a deliberate attack. Refilling her magic fuel tank may be slow and/or tricky in downtime, but alarmingly quick and easy when in combat with the living.

So, questions:

Is Astius hideously shriveled, or a creature of unnatural flawless beauty? High-Essence Abyssals never look blandly 'normal' without a magical disguise.

Which caste? Daybreak seems like the best fit for a reclusive researcher, granting the anima power to refine perception of fine details and tear away illusion and misconception.
Midnight could also fit, emphasizing the undead resilience and leadership side of things, dance and dramatic (even deadly!) illusions within a well-rounded suite of Performance charms, as well as granting priestly status and an anima power to smite the living or reanimate the dead without the effort of casting actual spells.
Day caste would bring a ninja skillset and stealth-focused anima power, emphasizing subtler illusions, transforming briefly into shadow to slip through sealed windows or flow around enemy blades, and the "forgotten by the world" aspect.
Dusk and Moonshadow seem like poor fits, focused on front-line combat and wide-ranging diplomacy respectively, but the Moonshadow anima power to sanctify and enforce binding oaths bears mention as an option if you're dealing extensively with otherworldly forces, demons included.

>the house is owned by
Any co-owners, allowed to draw power from the site and possibly control some of it's functions when they're visiting? Any essence user (even ghosts) can potentially attune themselves, but only with the unanimous consent of those already attuned, and there's no way to break attunement short of catastrophic damage - meaning that list won't be directly relevant for much longer unless somebody gets the damage patched.

How much geomantic power is focused here, on a scale from one to five? Anything above a three is rare, difficult to repair, and will result in a more rapid and severe explosion, but can also fuel greater capabilities, potentially including self-stabilization and even self-repair. Does it have a winch-and-bucket elevator for ground access, or a magical levitation platform, or a skyship dock? Can the entire structure descend safely to the ground? What is the structure's overall shape? Is the interior a luxurious palace, or starkly unfurnished like a tomb? Rugged and battle-hardened, or delicate as spun glass? Does it conceal itself from all outside detection within a cloak of illusions? That would require at least a level 4 manse, and perhaps explain the current crisis - someone could have unwittingly crashed a skyship into the wall, thinking it was open air. Are there any notable traps, secret passages, libraries, workshops, climate-control systems? Lightning cannons on turret mounts, skeleton warriors which reassemble themselves almost as fast as they can be smashed apart? Magical amenities such as self-lighting candles, or esoteric maintenance requirements such as a silent and unwounded priest laying out fresh flowers every few months, or a particular interior wall on which the coating of blood must never be allowed to completely dry? There's a whole other point-buy system for this, too many options and modifiers to list effectively, so spit out some ideas and I'll patch it together from there.

>succubus
One of the neomah, the weavers of flesh, demon courtesans? Some other type of sex-oriented first circle demon?
Or is Silthriss something of the second circle, one of the unique subsidiary souls of the demon princes themselves, a spirit of such power that she can only be called forth from the prison-realm of Malfeas during the dark of the moon in the gap between months?
Does she have mortal cultists among the despairing and depraved, like Deer-Footed Mara, the Soul-Eater, or a relatively stable and persistent secret society more like that of Sondok, She-Who-Stands-In-Doorways? Or has she been too busy with her own alien obsessions, the internal politics of Hell, or some previous sorcerer's bound tasks, to cultivate worship, as with Janequin, Fortune's Fool? Perhaps you misspoke and meant to summon Stanewald, She-who-Surmounted-the-Omphalos, whose skill at dancing is unsurpassed among demons (second only to the yozis themselves), to whom no music is sweeter than the sound of shattering stone, and who has lately been seeking a new purpose for her existence.

All four of those second circle demons I just listed most commonly take the form of beautiful women, in case that was unclear, and have at least some interest in sex and association with shadows, though neither issue is the exclusive area of concern for any of them. Mara's focus is corruptive knowledge, Sondok's is guardianship, and Janequin's is the defiance of probability.

Alveua, Keeper of the Forge of Night, and Berengiere, the Weaver of Voices, have more to do with crafting than sex (the only aspect of which not adequately implied by their titles being Alveua's affinity for insects), but since Berengiere is the progenitor of the neomah and Alveua is the expressive soul of That Which Calls to the Shadows (who rivals even Venus, Maiden of Serenity as an instructor in the arts of love), and both of them are beautiful women - Alveua more on the girlish side, though she wields an enormous hammer - whose interactions with mortals tend to involve spiritual theft, they deserve mention as relevant possibilities.

There's also Zsofika, the Kite Flute, but she's far too concerned with killing and eating to be mistaken for a succubus by anyone remotely sane. Her skin is hard as steel and, in combat, hot enough to cause third degree burns or ignite dry wood on contact. She can predict the future, and has access to various other bits of wisdom, so she might be useful as a source of information, but has no particular link to shadows.

The most lust-oriented second circle demon might actually be Gumela, the Jeweled Auditor, who is a barely-anthropomorphic mass of tangled threads and, incidentally, male. His sweet breath drives mortal passions mad, unraveling repressed desire along with the deepest secrets - which has some obvious research applications, when study has become snagged on an inextricable mystery.

I could invent a new one, but that's more work.

>lack the organs
By default, abyssal exalts are fully capable of reproduction, though it tends to have unpleasant consequences. Is Astius's anatomical lack the result of a sorcerous mishap, deliberate surgery (perhaps as a condition of taking the throne, due to some ancient political compromise), or postmortem Dark Fate backlash? In any case, lacking the capacity is not an absolute defense against the desire. Perhaps she's still perfectly capable of intercourse and pregnancy, but used shadowy powers to fortify her mind so that the very idea of sex for pleasure is unbearably hateful and repulsive?

>teleportation
Rapid long-distance travel is a big deal in Exalted. Even the mightiest must factor time, distance, and infrastructure into their plans, rather than effortlessly appearing in the blink of an eye wherever they wish to be. Fortunately, as an Abyssal, you've got great (if disturbing) strategic mobility options, surpassed only by the star-chosen and possibly the adamant circle of sorcery - and against those, the spell Black Faith (which, as Void Circle Necromancy, is more or less abyssal-exclusive) is an ultimate trump card, providing instant access to any point in any realm of existence, no matter how obscure or thoroughly warded. The costs, prerequisites, and risks of casting it are considerable, however.

For now, the lich-queen's teleportation capabilities are likely far more modest, limited to places she's seen before, and a maximum range of a few tens of miles. Is it a native power built on the foundation of her mundane ability to dodge and jump, or sorcery? A spell would work in the daytime, and can bring along any type of passengers, but only a few, and it's easy for somebody to interrupt it, which might literally blow up in your face. The native ability is faster, cheaper, and safer to use, but self-only, and can be upgraded for bringing along an undead army of potentially unlimited size. Could even take both, though that wouldn't leave much for non-teleportation-related powers.

Or, as a third option, it could be a device she built: a cloak, or belt, or flying-saucer-style vehicle, something which could potentially be gifted to someone else, who'd then be able to attune and use it as well as she can. Cheapest option in terms of points, with potential for a lot of nifty secondary functions, but likely more limited range than teleporting under her own power, and the crucial disadvantage that it can be lost, stolen, used against you, perhaps even destroyed. Most artifacts are very durable, but complex and limit-pushing devices often have maintenance requirements or other weak points.
>>
No. 865192 ID: af6e04

>Who (or what) inflicted that damage in the first place?
Malice, conscripted servant of a powerful demon prince!

>Which of you snuck in to rob the vault while everybody else is distracted, and what were you surprised to find there?
Also Malice, because why not at this point?? She was surprised to find the skeleton of a dragon and the four mythical hyper-rhomboid gems.

QUEST: Kill master
WILLPOWER: 5

COMPASSION: 2
CONVICTION: 1
TEMPERANCE: 3
VALOR:4

>How do you naturally excel?
The cleverist! She's still very young and lacks strength of body and wealth of experience. Looks disarmingly cute though.

>What fields of human endeavor have you mastered?
Stealth, Sabotage, Philosophy, Espionage, Tactics

>Where do you get your superpowers from?
Pact with demon prince.

>More importantly, what are those powers good for?
She can fly on leathery wings, utilize echolocation, and drink blood to gain some of the victim's strength
>>
No. 865253 ID: d36af7

>>865192
Animal-theme powers and long-term power gain from drinking blood makes me think Lunar, but deep disloyalty rules out an akuma. Could simply be working under relatively conventional duress, such as threats to a hostage, or implantation of a slave collar.

Could also be some entirely different sort of exalt who simply started as a bat-theme beastman and learned the necrotic paths of air and/or water from a suitable dragon king. Might even pick up all five, as long as you're taking the unusual background. Hm... necrotic path of water presents an alternative coercion option, too, one which makes active disloyalty and boss-murder a conveniently plausible personal challenge, along with some espionage-related abilities which could be accessible to humans.

Apart from the blood thing, those powers seem like stuff a heroic mortal with mutations would be capable of. Could be a starting exalt with mostly low key charms, but figuring out which type requires more information. What do you see Malice's powers developing into?

Radioactive green fire inside crusty brass armor, dancing before a crowd of screaming fans who kneel and sprout wings of their own in emulation of her glory?

Liquid silver under cold blue light, warping flesh and stone, plant and spirit, space and time, an all-purpose Monster From Outside which can be delayed or wounded but never stopped?

Red mist and silence punctuated by laughter, wisdom inextricably entangled with madness and harrowing tragedy from which the new crop of heroes must spring?

Gray bark around a core of vibrant color, swampy jungle of bottomless gnawing greed which appears innocent and elegant, until the time comes to pounce and assimilate all things into itself?

If none of those sound remotely right, there are other options, most notably Abyssal charmtech and the Ebon Dragon. Didn't really want to have the only two serious characters so far throwing shadows back and forth at each other, though. Seems like that'd get tedious. Isidoros might work, but doesn't cover stealth OR flight very well, while the four above all provide at least one of those factors natively and can support the other to some extent.

>She's still very young and lacks strength of body and wealth of experience. Looks disarmingly cute though.
Obvious way to literalize that, stealing weapons to be used against their original wielder using primarily cuteness, is Black Claw Style martial arts. If you go for that, though, consider very carefully exactly who you learned it from. That particular student/sifu relationship has long-lasting mechanical effects. It was invented by Deer-Footed Mara, and, among those who know the style's full implications, counted as one of her greatest vengeful schemes against the gods.

>mythical hyper-rhomboid gems
What makes those so valuable and famous? Are they a power source, a weapon, construction tool, defense screen projector, portal to a pocket dimension, repository of ancient secrets, intelligent automaton, two or more of the above, or just unusually large and shiny (and possibly enigmatic components of some larger puzzle)?
>>
No. 865264 ID: d36af7

>>/questdis/120364
It's okay to start out without any really obvious over-the-top powers, so long as there's sufficient breadth of mundane competence and a clear theme for further development.

Don't forget to define Intimacies, and social context in general! You're supposed to be god-kings, or at least closer to that than to basic murderhobos. Part of that is a mix of alliances, finances, public reputation, servants, soldiers, bureaucrats, and/or worshippers. Support NPCs don't need to be described in detail, approximate number and vague job description is enough for me to work with.
>>
No. 865450 ID: d36af7

>>865192
>Stealth, Sabotage, Philosophy, Espionage, Tactics
>fly on leathery wings, utilize echolocation,
The other straightforward way to take this is airbending. Air anima power is just super-jump and feather fall, not outright flight by itself, but wings could still be a mutation... or an artifact called Wings of the Raptor, which looks like a cloak when not in use. Air-aspect charms cover tactical communication, audio-only scrying, cryptography, science (including shooting energy blasts from your hands), sorcery, spirit-binding, thrown weapons, and stealth (including Feeling-The-Air Technique, which provides most of the benefits of echolocation without making noise).

Sabotage is more of a water-aspect thing, whether that's Naked Thief Style in the Larceny tree to pick locks and saw through iron bars without tools, or Thrashing Carp Serenade and Thoughtful Gift Technique in the Bureaucracy tree to clog up and subvert whole organizations. Water-aspect dragonblooded could still use Wings of the Raptor, but wouldn't have the air anima power to catch them in the event of a fall... though the water anima power could be an adequate substitute over a lake or ocean, and provides considerable advantages when swimming, including the ability to breathe water.

You could potentially also start with Ramparts of Obedient Earth, to reshape the landscape a few cubic yards at a time, but it'd be more cost-effective to just take the prerequisites, which are all about small-unit tactics, then unlock earthbending's rampart-and-trench capabilities in the course of play.

What are you looking for in terms of philosophy-based superpowers?
>>
No. 865452 ID: af6e04

>Lunar
>bat-theme beast man
I feel like I'm lacking a bit of context to make this call, but the second option seems good. From what the great sage Google has told me, the lunars seem to be more shapeshifters than beast men. And they've all gone feral I guess? And are all widows to an extinct race called the solars? This is a lot to take in. Normal beast man sounds good.

>What do you see Malice's powers developing into?
>Red mist and silence punctuated by laughter, wisdom inextricably entangled with madness and harrowing tragedy from which the new crop of heroes must spring?
Seems logical given the relatively high scores in temperance and valor.

>Black Claw Style martial arts
This sounds perfect, though I'd better hear these long-lasting mechanical effects before I make a decision.

>What makes [hyper-rhomboids] so valuable and famous?
They are in fact a portal into a pocket dimension contained within an intelligent automaton whose ancient mind contains a vast amount of secrets (many of which are vapid and insignificant, as it can't really differentiate the interesting from the mundane)

>Don't forget to define Intimacies, and social context in general!
As far as followers go I'd say Malice wouldn't have anything organized or established. I'm imagining she tries to stay within the realm of fairy tales, at least among mortals. Visits orphans, bereaved parents, social outcasts, and isolated hermits as a benevolent ghost and befriends them, thereby gaining many contacts from every population and walk of life that she can subtly influence and gain information from.

>>865450
Achk, the last thing I needed was MORE options!

>What are you looking for in terms of philosophy-based superpowers?
What kind of philosophy based superpowers are there?
>>
No. 865503 ID: d36af7

>>865452
>This sounds perfect, though I'd better hear these long-lasting mechanical effects before I make a decision.
You'll love your sifu. No way to stop feeling it without powerful magic, and even with that, the love will be rekindled time you practice the style. They won't necessarily love you back, and the style's more advanced techniques allow them to turn that emotional vulnerability into a physical one.

The other problem is a little more indirect. Black Claw Style lets you punch somebody in the reputation, routinely subverting society's mechanisms of praise and blame by which prosocial behavior is enforced. If you could walk up to a cop in broad daylight, beat him to death with his own stolen gun, and count on the hundred random strangers who saw it all happen to not just stand aside, but actually testify under oath in unanimous support of your nonsensical self-defense claim, to cheer for you and say "justice was done!" when you were found not guilty... if you could do that kind of thing, reliably, would you keep right on obeying the law, and paying all your taxes? Or would you carve out personal exceptions whenever that would be too expensive or inconvenient?

That is the question Deer-Footed Mara asked the world, by inventing Black Claw style. You can probably guess which answer she was hoping for.

>What kind of philosophy based superpowers are there?
If you're going to be a GSP, almost all the powers will be at least partly philosophical. Theft As Release, for example, doesn't exactly enhance your own ability to steal things, but rather persuades the victim that they're better off without whatever it was you took, or are now in the process of taking, on the grounds that the root cause of suffering is attachment to material things. Sometimes they'll even become convinced it was never theirs to begin with.

For dragon-blooded, the most philosophy-based stuff is the earth-aspected Integrity charm tree, which is mostly straightforward effects that convert moral certitude into physical durability and/or physical foundations into mental stability, like Unsleeping Earth Meditation which lets you function without sleep, or Chaos-Warding Prana which protects against the chaos beyond the edges of the world, or Unflagging Vengeance Meditation which... you get the idea. Air-aspected Lore charms let you draw on ambient elemental energy to recharge and even heal faster, Wood-aspected Performance can let you pray (or dance, or sing, or play guitar) hard enough to put a hole through a demon's skull from half a block away, Fire-aspected Presence can inflict mood whiplash among rage, lust, and terror as easy as flipping a coin because all burning passions share some essential commonalities. It goes on and on.

If you're starting as a dragon-blood with Black Claw Style, though, you probably won't have any native DB charms to start. Dragonblooded can only learn such a powerful style with special enlightenment and strict focus, excluding other studies until they've fully mastered it.

>she tries to stay within the realm of fairy tales, at least among mortals. Visits orphans, bereaved parents, social outcasts, and isolated hermits as a benevolent ghost and befriends them, thereby gaining many contacts from every population and walk of life that she can subtly influence and gain information from.

Could have Contacts and even a minor Cult that way, sure. In fact, that's nearly the strategy Anja Silverclaws, one of the example lunar characters from Scroll of Exalts, uses. She lurks on windowsills in animal form. How would Malice go about impersonating a helpful ghost?

Whispering to people from afar and hearing their whispered replies is possible with the air-aspected Linguistics charms, but easier with Adorjani (red wind, silence, laughter, etc.) charmtech... downside being that the first one, Hateful Wretched Noise, heightens hearing by making it hypersensitive. Any sound above a whisper causes pain and, lemme just quote from the book here, "Such loud noises also impose an unnatural Compulsion to impose corrective silence by any means necessary, starting with the loudest noise and working down from there. The character can’t take non-reflexive actions unrelated to imposing quiet until this goal is complete, but actions serving the Compulsion are not penalized." Fortunately, the Scourge-caste GSP anima power includes the ability to magically suppress nearby sounds, so you can "impose corrective silence" temporarily by non-destructive means, in case you run low on willpower to resist the compulsion.
The next charm along that tree is Eloquence In Unspoken Words, which is projective telepathy - at the expense of capacity for verbal utterances other than laughter. Unlike Hateful Wretched Noise, it can be switched off if you change your mind later, though there may be problems if you need to do so quickly without a sorcerer's help.
The third is Gift Of Silence, which lets you bestow that same telepathy power on others, with the same downside. After that it's mostly a series of upgrades to your telepathic broadcast range, from the base 100 yards up to a mile, then ten miles, and so on. There's also a trick for turning any influence based on deception back around, so the source starts to believe their own lie.
>>
No. 865560 ID: af6e04

>You'll love your sifu.
Sounds like a pretty terrible weakness. How would I stop my sifu from exploiting me endlessly, or even know they were doing so? Why wouldn't they exploit me endlessly if I had no way of stopping them? An interesting philosophical dilemma. But if I have to focus everything on the black claw style I think I'll pass regardless. 'Deadly cuteness' isn't the primary archetype I had in mind anyway.

>Theft As Release
This sounds hilarious, but I can't for the life of me figure out what GSP stands for...

>convert moral certitude into physical durability
Sounds like a poor choice for low conviction character

>Whispering to people from afar and hearing their whispered replies is possible with the air-aspected Linguistics charms, but easier with Adorjani (red wind, silence, laughter, etc.) charmtech... downside being that the first one, Hateful Wretched Noise, heightens hearing by making it hypersensitive.
I believe Adorjani was what I was looking to go with? Is that what gives me Hateful Wretched Noise, or is it the air-aspected Linguistic charms? Wording is kind of vague there.

I'm having trouble actually figuring out what my choices are here.
>>
No. 865679 ID: d36af7

>>865560
>what my options are here
"Pact with a Demon Prince" would normally mean being either a Green Sun Princess, with access to all the Reclamation Yozi charmsets, two of which are particularly favored (one according to the job they were hired for, the other a more personal preference), or a wretched Akuma with one Yozi charmset (whichever they sold their soul to) plus their original exalted powers. Akuma don't have enough free will to make resentment and revenge against their boss a driving goal in life, so GSP is the simple answer. The Reclamation yozis are, in alphabetical order:
*Adorjan, the Silent Wind
*Cecelyne, the Endless Desert
*Isidoros, the Black Boar Which Twists the Sky
*Kimbery, the Sea Which Marched Against The Flame
*Malfeas, the Demon Emperor
*Metagaos, the All-Hunger Blossom
*that one with white fire and crystal spheres whose real name is a cognitohazard
*Shadow of All Things, the Ebon Dragon
Scourge-caste means you'd have Adorjan as one, so if we're going with that, pick your other favorite among the remaining seven.

Alternatively, you could rethink the 'source of power' thing, say that servitude (or symbiosis) with a demon lord is just a situation Malice is stuck in for now, rather than one which will define her entire existence. Maybe her real power comes from Mela, the Immaculate Dragon of Air, in which case she'd be Dragon-Blooded, with elemental themed powers. Avatar: the Last Airbender and sentai shows like Power Rangers aren't a perfect summary of DBs, but do provide a solid conceptual starting point.
>Sounds like a poor choice for low conviction character
It's based on Integrity, which is training in meditation, catechisms, and other rhetorical defense/evasion tactics, rather than Conviction which is deep undercurrents of the soul. All DB charms are based on learned skills rather than innate attributes.

As a third power source option, there's Luna, who's the Unconquered Sun's backup for those all-too-common sticky situations which absolute invulnerability, supremacy, and perfection in all things somehow can't solve. A multifaceted genderfluid trickster-divinity, wielding chaos and darkness but never fully internalizing them, ultimately motivated by nurturing stewardship. Hard to summarize the powers available because so many of them are about blurring boundaries, breaking rules, sometimes operating by outright Looney Toons logic.
As one example, there's a lunar charm which can be used to see around corners by shining spotlights from your eyes, then having the beams bend at arbitrary angles in midair, a periscope built from moonbeams. An upgrade to that same charm lets you shine silver light on everything out to forty yards or more, leaving all scenery and creatures in that radius (those without rare and exotic protections, at least) frozen in time, due to observer-dependent quantum shenanigans, until you move away or turn your anti-time aoul-light back off. That's sort of a wacky edge case, though.
Lots of Lunar powers relate to shapeshifting and predator/prey relations, not just in the obvious ways: the charm Observed Predator Instinct lets you give observers "the unmistakable impression that the Lunar knows they are watching her, is watching them with equal care and is comfortable —if not pleased— with the arrangement," which might psych out an enemy spy badly enough that they'll do something foolish, so you can then notice them for real. Lunar charms are all based on attributes, founded in exploring or adjusting who you are rather than enhancing what you do.

>How would I stop my sifu from exploiting me
By choosing one who's conveniently good-natured, or moe-blob incompetent, or by going full-bore yandere and locking them in your basement?

Any or all of those could be accomplished by the sifu being a member of first-circle demon type which suffers from crippling overspecialization in something other than combat, such as Stomach Bottle Bugs, which are Compassion 5 idiot-savant field medics with an obsessive-compulsive need to eat as much poison as they can find. Denying a sesseljae access to sufficient quantities of poison to accidentally kill itself seems like the kind of thing a loving attitude could thoroughly support as "for your own good," no matter how much they beg.

Summoning a first-circle demon into a diagram which stops it from wandering off is magic on a level even un-Exalted humans could manage, given training and the (expensive) materials. Dragon-blooded could start with the first five charms of Black Claw Style, plus the two enlightenment charms needed to start learning it, and still have more than enough character-creation resources left over for the equivalent of a bachelor's degree in demonology, including dozens or hundreds of specialized rituals and thaumaturgical tricks within that broad theme.

As for less drastic options, anyone can resist ordinary exploitative social influences by Parry (counterargument) or Dodge (ignore) Mental Defenses, or by spending willpower (agreeing that you should, but doing something else anyway, and then feeling vaguely like a terrible hypocrite until you recover the WP somehow). When some whole scene of social engagement seems to be headed nowhere good, you can cut it short by flipping the table, storming off in a huff, punching somebody, pulling a knife, or otherwise rolling Join Battle. Love won't prevent that. It's quite possible to love someone and still be angry about their behavior. The Adorjani charm Joy In Violence Approach lets you recover WP by starting such fights, among other benefits.

Or you could cut to the heart of the issue with repeated use of powerful mind-altering magic, such as the Adorjani charm "Freedom Lets Go" or the Kimberyan charm "All Things Betray," both of which are well within reach of starting GSPs.

See, in most games, 'you'd need powerful magic' is just a softer way of saying 'no.' Exalted doesn't work that way. Wanna do brain surgery, on yourself, while speeding down a busy freeway? Go for it! As Egon Spengler would say, "there's definitely a small chance we'll survive," and when you've got Valor 4, that's all you really need. It'll be a wild ride, at the very least.
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No. 865729 ID: 3abd97

I'm thinking about someone who's powers are broadly themed around mirrors and reflective surfaces. Stepping in and out of the looking glass, traveling between mirrors, physically or metaphysically altering people and things by interacting with their reflection. Possibly a sort of Fallen London style overlap of mirrors and dreams. Parabola.

If pushed into a straight up fight, she's never going to be stabbing you directly, she's be attacking you by attacking your reflection.

She's deeply motivated to bring out people's best selves. Which could mean anything from being the absolute best therapist possible for someone, or pulling a Jack Slash and talking someone into becoming a monster, and all kinds of thing in between. She doesn't actually really see the difference. It's all getting at the stuff hidden inside, the potential unrealized or suppressed or broken down, pulling it out into the open, and making it shine, bright and whole. She's helping people you see? Everyone should be their best selves, whoever that is. Pulls this off with a combination of social fu and getting into people via reflections.

Not sure on hard numbers, but probably high virtue ("facing down terror and death with a smile" and "unpredictable and dangerous" sure sounds right) low temperance (not good at resisting impulses). I'm not really sure how to map this kind of blue and orange morality onto compassion / conviction. She cares, and she's sincere about that, but her priorities don't really line up with conventional compassion, even if she believes she's fundamentally helping people. (Unhealthy passion to overwhelming sincerity for her cause sounds right).

Human endeavors? Social fu, indirect action, anything pertaining to glassworking... and I should probably be able to put a few more things in there but I'm blanking right now. The first two might be too broad and need to be broken down into more specific fields anyways.

Strong preference for tools, weapons or artifacts that are glass, transparent or crystalline in nature.

>Part of that is a mix of alliances, finances, public reputation, servants, soldiers, bureaucrats, and/or worshippers.
An entourage of servant-worshipers sounds right. People she's helped who loved her for it (not all of those do, after all) and ended up devoted and loyal. And stable enough to be used, at least. Not every star that burns bright does so for long, or can be harnessed. A mix of personalities and motivations there. For the most part, she's not setting out to turn people into devoted followers, it's just that the best selves of some people turn out to be.

Someone who remakes people habitually and sometime destructively, and get into places she shouldn't seems as if she should have had plenty of opportunities to accumulate of wealth but I don't have any specific ideas there.

Word salad name pending.

tl;dr- There's a crazy person in the mirror here to help.
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No. 865810 ID: af6e04

>>865679
>pick your other favorite among the remaining seven.
After a bit of skimming, Cecelyne seems pretty cool.

>My question about concerns of sifu exploitation getting thoroughly answered
Alright I do love the idea of having a demon beetle tied up in my own yandere dungeon. I forgot that a lot of things in Exalt aren't humans with human motivations.

>It'll be a wild ride, at the very least.
I'm sold!

>>865729
This is a really cool concept, I think.

>Word salad name pending.
Was it trite of me to take the obvious easy way out?
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No. 865823 ID: d36af7

>>865729
First thing that comes to mind for mirror-centric powers is Szoreny, the Silver Forest. I haven't found a good fan-made charmset for him, though, so I'll do some research and get back to you on that one.

A lunar could work, but the sort of brain-picking personal attention you imply isn't a great fit for their charmset.

I think what you're looking for is a Sidereal, chosen of Serenity or maybe Secrets, with Obsidian Shards of Infinity style for the really overt mirror weirdness. Maybe a few carefully selected shadowlands circle necromancy spells. Best pop-culture reference I can think of for what Sidereals tend to look like from the outside is the G-Man from Half-Life.

The core sidereal powerset is narrow and hard to customize, though, so lemme just pick through it for all the most theme-relevant overt effects. If that's seeming inadequate or off-base, I'll dig into other options.

Resistance: Discourage people from attacking you by momentarily impersonating whoever they care about most. As an upgrade to that effect, hide your heat in a pocket of emptiness that lets you ignore pain, fatigue, poison, disease, etc. until you put it back. As the capstone of that whole tree, entangle your fate with nearby enemies (or hostages) so that any harm you suffer is inflicted on them as well.
Sail: transfer a ship into a mostly-empty mirror realm, allowing it to bypass mundane obstacles, even to the point of taking a straight-line shortcut through a mountain range, or travel to other planes. Can also be used for personal travel, but requires a body of water (or at least a mud puddle), a handful of salt, and is equivalent to swimming rather than walking.
Thrown: Carry one real shuriken which never leaves your hand, strike and wound a dozen different targets with shadow duplicates of it.
Craft: Build things faster, and with an upgrade, restore things to their rightful condition, undoing damage from inauspicious sources or, eventually, anything that would be inconsistent with the subject's "best self," as defined in part by the destiny you've chosen for it. Equally applicable to living creatures.
Arrange for any item you own to be delivered to your hand by a string of convenient coincidences. With an upgrade, deliver items to other named people by the same method, even across realms of existence, or banish an item so it'll never be found again without your permission (or an epic quest, hindered by a series of contrived obstacles proportionate to your power).
As the capstone for that whole tree, start building something and then allow the project to continue without your direct involvement.
Dodge: teleport away, retconning memories and forensic evidence to show that you were never actually here to begin with, though the direct results of your actions remain. With an upgrade, bring your friends along too. Capstone lets you quasi-retroactively relocate miles-wide landscape features, such as cities.
Performance: Weddings, funerals, giving a name to a baby or a sailing ship, coming-of-age, whatever, any ceremony you officiate goes smoothly and inspires all participants with the inevitability of the beneficiary's good future.
Socialize: Create or destroy relationships between people by mystic meddling rather than conventional social engineering.
Melee: Hard to summarize without getting into the combat mechanics, but there's an effect which helps when defending or being defended by someone who's benefited from your instruction in the past, and one called "Orchestration of Mirrored Fates."
Investigation: Efficient Secretary Technique is basically an instant google/wikipedia lookup for any objective fact that's not actively hidden or inherently esoteric. In a world where most people are copying books by hand and sending messages by horse or pidgeon, that's a decent approximation of omniscience. The upgrade, Research Assistant Invocation, lets you turn a small plant into a tireless, hypercompetent grad student, though they'll panic and turn back into a plant if faced with combat or other danger.
Larceny: Convince someone that what you're saying is false, even if they'd normally be inclined to agree. Flawlessly disguise yourself as a ghost, demon, or other creature from beyond. Steal someone's train of thought, or wear their name as if it were your own.
Stealth: Cover up all perceptible evidence of your presence by stepping outside fate. With an upgrade, whisper to someone so they interpret your words as a product of their own thoughts.
Bureaucracy: Compel someone to do their official job, honestly and to the best of their ability. Make yourself anonymous and irrelevant to anyone who thinks they're better than you.
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No. 865874 ID: d36af7

>>865810
>I do love the idea of having a demon beetle tied up in my own yandere dungeon.
Next question: is the yandere dungeon in question a physical place, which other people could conceivably visit? Or is Malice's demonic sifu also her unwoven coadjutor, stuck in an inviolable 'headspace' dream-realm, always available for advice but never capable of interaction with the outside world? Every GSP has a demonic Unwoven Coadjutor, same as every Lunar has that first totemic form (usually an animal) which they can shapeshift into, but similarly, some make more use of it than others. A Coadjutor might be sullen and reticent, or constantly babbling nonsense, or otherwise useless beyond the basic necessities of metaphysical biology, and thereby a mere afterthought on the character concept... or it can justify mutations, strange urges, a pocket dimension with nigh-unlimited inventory space, eventually even a workshop for creating any item you need from the raw material of prayer, and generally provide an iconic focal theme. GSPs do tend to have other demon friends and minions, too, commanding some degree of loyalty just from their status as champions of Hell.
>>865810
>Cecelyne
Almost half her charmset is about interacting with demons, laying down the law, showing them who's boss, and forbidding them from acting directly against you. Might be enough to keep a demon sifu under control even without physical restraints.

Want to stick with the Scourge caste, or switch to Malefactor? The anima power of Cecelyne's chosen provides enhanced beauty, a silver tongue to beguile the weak, and a bonus to demon-related sorcery which makes dangerous mishaps far less likely. Also counts as a priest, regardless of who the prayer is being directed to. No silence aura or anima-flare suppression if you go for that, but she could keep the Hateful Wretched Noise compulsion under control by taking a really good pair of earplugs as a 1-dot artifact, noise-canceling headphones plus an extensive library of audiobooks (or maybe a comm system?) as a 2-dot, or an actual area-effect silence projector, possibly integrated with a whole custom suit of power armor, as a 3-dot or higher artifact.

Which specific charms is Malice starting with? Ten slots for sure, possible to buy more. Assuming she starts at Essence 2 (which is more XP-efficient, and should help keep decision paralysis under control), only the first three of Black Claw Style will be accessible: Open Palm Caress ("He started it!"), Torn Lotus Defense ("You missed, therefore you secretly admire me."), and Flexing the Emerald Claw which has the other two as prerequisites. There are a lot of options for Infernal Monster Style, but I don't think you're going for the 'incredible hulk' thing quite so much? Many other martial arts styles as well, but let's not get sidetracked.
Biggest decision is which Yozi Excellency you're going to take. Don't strictly have to take any, but then you'll have trouble keeping up with other exalts in any sort of contested rolls, combat included. Could take more than one, but that gets expensive. A major commitment to a particular yozi's themes, with lots of other general charms that build off of it, including thematic restrictions or distortions to sorcery, and the (Yozi) Mythos Exultant which is a bonus to stunting - meaning it'll probably be kicking in on every action in combat, which adds up fast. Can't get either of those 'till Essence 3, though. Each Yozi excellency costs two charm slots now, plus more as your Essence increases.
Outside the excellency, most yozi charmsets are split into two main trees with separate 'root' charms, though they interlock later on.
For Cecelyne, that's Hellscry Chakra, which leads into Demonic Primacy of Essence and the 'law' tree, and Transcendent Desert Creature which leads into the 'desolation' tree.
For Adorjan, Wind-Born Stride leads into the 'speed' tree, Sacred Kamilla's Inhalation into a more abstract 'breath' tree, including Freedom Lets Go, and Hateful Wreched Noise which has it's own very small tree which we already discussed most of.
As for the others, Isidoros has Indomitable Hedonism Drive leading into the 'desire' tree and Weight-Exaggerating Ego Density leading into the 'black hole' tree,
Kimbery has Mother Sea Mastery leading into the 'acid ocean' tree and Intolerable Burning Truths which is actually a cluster of related charms without many building off of them apart from basic defenses.
Malfeas has By Pain Reforged leading into the 'armored sollipsist' tree, and Insignificant Embers Intuition leading into Green Sun Nimbus Flare and the 'radioactive glory' tree, plus Hardened Devil Body which is a standalone charm for extra health levels.
Metagaos has Palate Without Limit leading into the 'hunger' tree, and Sprawling Marsh Indulgence leading into the 'plants' tree, which includes a nifty stealth charm. Hidden Predator Camouflage, which you might want to consider, particularly since it can be upgraded to function as a perfect defense.
That one with the crystal spheres full of white fire only really has one proper charm tree, starting from Factual Determination Analysis, though there's a second root charm, Chirality Prohibition Index, which is a potentially a fun trick for reshaping landscapes and societies but doesn't have much of anything building off it.
The Ebon Dragon's main tree starts with Witness To Darkness, which many players consider to have more disadvantages than benefits, Cracked Cell Circumvention which leads into the 'defiance' tree, and Loom-Snarling Deception which is more like a disguise charm with upgrades than a complete tree of it's own.

What practical effects are you looking for, or what themes are you interested in exploring?

If you want to maximize Malice's prospect of survival, the usual prescription is a 'Chungian paranoia combo' consisting of A) an excellency, along with any available efficiency boosts for it, B) protection from unexpected attacks, C) an applicabilty-trumping perfect dodge or parry, which is expensive but absolute, and D) 'step seven' defenses.
Every yozi brings their own style for A and C, and D can be covered by artifact armor without any charm purchases. The tricky part is usually B, since only three yozis have surprise-negators: Threat-Monitoring Excitement, which requires Joy In Violence Approach and Wind-Born Stride from Adorjan, All Things Betray which requires Intolerable Burning Truths from Kimbery, and Unbothered By Flies which requires Indomitable Hedonism Drive from Isidoros, which has the interesting quirk that it doesn't actually let you notice attacks, just coincidentally "be where the bullets aren't" like Mr. Magoo. It's also the cheapest, costing no motes to activate, even partially refunding the cost of other charms used for a successful defense.
The Adorjani option is probably fine for Malice, but - just for the sake of completeness - the Crane Style martial arts charm Fluttering Cry of Warning is another possibility, potentially protecting allies as well, but it only works if you haven't proactively attacked yet during the scene. (Counterattacks don't count, and Crane Style offers a lot of counterattack options.)
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No. 865897 ID: af6e04

>>865874
>always available for advice but never capable of interaction with the outside world?
Well that does sound like the most secure dungeon possible.

>provide an iconic focal theme
I think this makes the most sense given our relationship.

>Want to stick with the Scourge caste, or switch to Malefactor?
I think I would rather stick with Scourge caste.

>What practical effects are you looking for, or what themes are you interested in exploring?
Stealth, bypassing carefully constructed defenses, wearing foes down slowly and imperceptibly, efficiency over raw capability

If I'm going to be choosing specific charms that'll require a lot of reading and weighing of options, which I don't have time for today but can probably get around to within the next couple days.
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No. 865942 ID: a2c5e0

Actually, let me try to put it more elegantly. Anything that lets me be a sneaky little gremlin who, when caught, makes my confronter out to be the nad guy.
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No. 865949 ID: a2c5e0

>>865942
Badguy*
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No. 865968 ID: 3abd97

>>865823
Oh, interesting. I thought you might come back with Lunar or Green Sun, didn't really consider that a fate ninja might work. I think I've usually seen them come up they've been depicted as devoted to maintaining fate and order, the idea of one going around and using the same powerset to change people as her whims take her is amusing.

I don't know how much room there is to slap thematic fluff on top of existing charms or powers as, but a good deal of those effects seem consistent with what I'd like her to be able to do.

-Resistance sounds entirely consistent with with Jungian dream mirror world vision quest therapy-manipulation metaphysical conceptual bullshit.
-Sail might be a useful trick to move followers or allies around, but I'm really more interested in personal flitting in and out of reflections than a vehicle or practical strategic utility.
-Thrown sounds good if the shuriken fits her material preferences. Bonus points if the copies don't have to fly from her hand and can come from unexpected directions.
-Craft applied to people / hearts / minds sounds exactly like what I want her to be able to do. And ridiculous coincidence engineering seems appropriate considering the partial Worm inspiration. Bonus points for also being applicable to materials, fits with glasswork and inevitably having to deal with the problem of people trying to counter her by wrecking or removing reflective surfaces.
-Melee sure sounds like appropriate Jack Slash or Ziz bullshit
-Dodge, Stealth and Socialize all seem appropriate applications of her powers assuming she's pulling them off with mirror / reflection nonsense somehow. Socialize especially fits the core idea.
-Performance, Larceny, Bureaucracy and Investigation sound like consistent supporting skills that wouldn't need to be tied to mirror stuff to execute. (Although tapping into some kind of collective unconscious and/or mirror world to justify the information gathering function of Investigation makes sense).

>>865810
Thanks! I think the whole yandere sifu thing is an entertaining addition to the rest of your idea, and I'm glad you went with it. It's a nice juxtaposition of treachery and love.

>Was it trite of me to take the obvious easy way out?
Considering my other characters running around with a single name, and the unnamed family and goddess that are kind of centrally important to two of them, I'm not about to throw stones.
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No. 866119 ID: d36af7

>>865942
Alright, here's a short list of the non-Adorjani charms which seem appropriate.
Black Claw Style: Open Palm Caress, Torn Lotus Defense, Flexing the Emerald Claw
Victorious Concession Style: Hearing the Unspoken Word (emotion-based situational awareness, partial surprise negator), Spoken In Kindness (redirect attacks to yourself, thus protecting allies, and enabling counterattacks or wacky defense-charm side-effect shenanigans), Could take either of those separately.
Cecelyne: Transcendent Desert Creature, Dust Devil Feint, Crumbling Sand-Self Embodiment, Sands Through Fingers Defense (in no particular order, they're all defenses building off TDC directly), Sand-Slip Trick (movement speed boost), Swallowed In Eternity (upgrade to stop an enemy's movement toward you)
Ebon Dragon: All three root charms are relevant to being a sneaky bastard, but Cracked Cell Circumvention is by far the most helpful for covering Adorjan's vulnerability. If you go for Witness To Darkness, the obvious next step from there is Nemesis Self Imagined Anew, fitting her name.
Isidoros: Indomitable Hedonism Drive, Unbothered By Flies
Malfeas: Insignificant Embers Intuition (magic echolocation, sorta), Tarnish Flash Technique (pocket sand laser). On the off chance you go for Malfeas's Excellency, could also take Beauty Without Malice, which is for dancing.
Metagaos: Sprawling Marsh Indulgence, Hidden Predator Camouflage, Slinking Jungle Shelter (x2 makes it a perfect defense). Or for social rather than physical stealth, Flowering The Fairer Face and Innocent Petal Assumption also build directly on Sprawling Marsh Indulgence.
that one with the crystal spheres: Factual Determination Analysis, Unshattered Tongue Perfection (Adorjani telepathy only works in one specific language, this lets you teach people that language very quickly), Essence-Dissecting Stare (could be reskinned as echolocation), Mind-Hand Manipulation

There's also a Heretical charm, Fourth Soul Externalization, which requires Malfeas's charms By Pain Reforged and By Rage Recast, and the Ebon Dragon's Loom-Snarling Deception, allowing you to take on temporary mutations based on your Unwoven Coadjutor.

Ten charm slots, could buy maybe five more with bonus points. Don't forget to save some for Adorjani stuff and an Excellency.

>>865968
Sidereal charm-picking might be trickier, particularly since the concept there seems so ideally consistent with some sort of sidereal akuma, meaning EVERY trait could potentially be cashed in for XP and reallocated to improve something else. Biggest question is, what Essence do you want to be starting at? Default is 2, but entry-level sorcery and necromancy (lots of cool mirror-related spells there) needs 3, and those capstone 'prayer strip' charms require Essence 4, among other grand miraculous effects. Then we can start cutting it down to specific charms, spells, MA styles, etc.

As for which caste, big decision point is anima power, which can apply to all nearby allies. Each of them also has a Greater Sign, which requires Essence 4, applies to everyone within a radius of miles, and using it costs a dot of Essence and Willpower, permanently. One of those 'ultimate forbidden technique' deals. Journeys triples movement speed, Greater Sign is anywhere-to-anywhere teleportation for yourself and an unlimited number of allies. Serenity enhances Perfomancce, and the Greater Sign is basically an anti-magic field. Battles reduces damage to allies and the Greater Sign is more of the same. Secrets provides immunity to mind-reading and mental attacks, and the Greater Sign brings everything in range inside Fate, allowing sidereal charms to work on powerful entities of other worlds, or which are worlds in themselves. Endings increases damage done to enemies, and the Greater Sign is more of the same.

>Sail might be a useful trick to move followers or allies around, but I'm really more interested in personal flitting in and out of reflections than a vehicle or practical strategic utility.
Sidereal charmset is weird like that. Lot of the time, the main thing you end up using some charm for is a weird side effect of the 'intended' purpose. As I said, you don't need a ship, or even an ocean, you can just throw salt on a tiny puddle and jump in, then return anywhere after you swim across the intervening distance - at double your usual swimming speed, which other charms might enhance. Stepping out of a mirror on arrival would be a stunt, which could provide extra benefit through World-Shaping Artistic Vision (specialized in 'reflection' or something like that) in the Craft tree. Mirrors could also be important if you're navigating with help from a necromancy spell like White Shard Funeral as the 'scry' in scry-and-die tactics.

As for yozi patron options, if you're going akuma: She Who Lives In Her Name is the go-to for crystal spheres, including field control by conjuring walls of glass, and ranged attacks that function by hacking the laws of physics with no visible projectile, but her mind-magic is sorta limited to making cogs fit into a machine. Personal identity or volition are seen as correctable flaws. Szoreny I already mentioned, and the Ebon Dragon has a lot of 'dark mirror' thematics, but Kimbery might be the best option for reshaping other people into whatever you think their 'best self' ought to be, drawing out things they've repressed in the process, since that could tie into so many of the themes in her Excellency. Lot of options for messing around with mutations, and there's a remote-controlled tentacles effect at Essence 2 with only two prerequisite charms. Easy to stunt that as sticking your hand in a mirror, then grabbing somebody by reaching out of the cup of water they're about to drink from.

Black Tide Style (in Debris from the Fallen Races) isn't too powerful as supernatural martial arts go, but it's all about tactical use of reflections on the surface of the water, it mixes well with Kimbery charms, and you could teach it to anybody, even un-Exalted humans.

Infernal Monster Style isn't particularly relevant to reflections, but if Jungian dream-world powers are on the table, and you're willing to consider digging deep into the charm tree...
Retribution Will Follow => Raging Behemoth Charge => Bounding Beast Advance => Leaping Smash Technique => Nowhere To Hide => Blood Heralds Death => Armageddon Nightmare Duel => Sanity-Devouring Night Terror.
First you've got to tag somebody by inflicting actual damage on them with an unarmed attack, but with help from other MA styles that could be done at range, or with Avoidance Kata in the Dodge tree you could sucker-punch somebody, teleport away, and retcon all physical evidence and memories within Fate to fit the story that you were never there, they must've gotten that bruise by walking into a doorknob or something. The tag lasts a week, and whenever they're asleep during that time, you can use Armageddon Nightmare Duel to fight them in their dreams, with Sanity-Devouring Night Terror providing the option of attacking dream-images of anyone they care about to alter the emotional context of those feelings.
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No. 866232 ID: 3abd97

>>866119
>Essence do you want to be starting at? Default is 2, but entry-level sorcery and necromancy (lots of cool mirror-related spells there) needs 3, and those capstone 'prayer strip' charms require Essence 4, among other grand miraculous effects.
I for sure want lots of cool mirror stuff so 3 seems like a minimum. Going 4 for capstone powers from the get go probably isn't necessary, although I'm not sure if you're asking me how powerful I want to be or how much of a fixed xp pool I want to invest in essence.

>As for which caste, big decision point is anima power
I think we can discard Serenity and Endings.

Journeys to facilitate mirror moving/swimming/ports could work well, although I'm sort of not sure how well that's already covered by powers already discussed.
Secrets nicely lets dish out her style of bullshit but not have to take it. The capstone of being able to ply her craft on beings that she'd otherwise be unable to perfect is the tempting part though. Although I'm not sure how much that will come up and if it only applies to the sideral charms and not the yozi ones it might not matter so much.

Battles could obviously be useful with manipulated allies but it's sort of more practical and less entertaining than Journeys or Secrets.

>As I said, you don't need a ship
Oh whups, I guess I misread that. Guess I need a crystal vial of salt or few handy. And water. Maybe some crazy bottomless artifact. With a dreams association, tossing salt around could tie in as a sort of sandman thing.

>akuma
I'm sure there won't be any terrible consequences to having my will subsumed.

She Who Lives In Her Name does sound interesting powerwise, but yeah the philosophical perception on identity there seems a dealbreaker. Aren't cross-Yozi charms a thing, or is that just for GSPs? I don't know much about Szoreny.

Kimbery and Black Tide Style are sounding good.

That whole MIB tag that turns nightmare duel sounds fantastically awesome, but that's a heck of a big investment in a style that otherwise really isn't consistent with how I'd want her to operate. Infernal Monster Style is heavily focused on ridiculous overwhelming brutality, ain't it? Doesn't really mesh with someone who genuinely cares (even if it's sometimes twists), and that kind of uber-violence is a pretty direct approach.
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No. 866338 ID: af6e04

Alright, so after looking over things a bit I've picked out some charms but I also need some clarifications.

Can I pick and choose any charm from any charm set, provided I have the prerequisites (and they're essence 2)? What's special about my primary and favored charm sets? Can I only take an excellency in a primary or favored charm set?

So saving two charm slots for the excellency (looking at Cerelyne's) and taking all three available Black Claw Style abilities, I'm left with five slots.

For Adorjan, Wind-Born Stride seems like a no-brainer and Hateful Wretched Noise is important for the character concept. Looks like I could get Freedom Lets Go right out the gate but then I'll only be left with one charm slot. Might be better to take Joy In Violence Approach since it has no prerequisites (aside from what I've already decided to take) and builds toward Threat-Monitoring Excitement.

For Cecelyne, Transcendent Desert Creature seems really good. Would the protection against tracking attempts also cover clues left behind while sneaking into places? It doesn't specifically say the protection against tracking only applies in desolate areas in the source I'm reading from. Also, I'm kind of favoring the Sands Through Fingers Defense tree over any of Adorjan's defense charms (except maybe Threat-Monitoring Excitement).

Witness to Darkness kinda fits the bat theme and Nemesis Self Imagined Anew does seem awesome so that's a path I'll probably go down. Cracked Cell Circumvention and Loom-Snarling Deception fit the character perfectly.

>Beauty Without Malice
Amusing, but yeah Malfeas' excellency doesn't seem right.
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No. 866339 ID: af6e04

Also, I'm having trouble finding any charms for winged flight. Am I going to have to drop the beastman theme?
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No. 866341 ID: d36af7

In order to speed this process up, build a more shared setting, and make sure everybody's paying attention, please feel free to suggest ideas for other characters. A character's player can veto, at least during character creation, in which case the proposal turns out to have been nothing more than unsubstantiated in-setting rumor.

In particular, I don't want Azathoth claiming a monopoly on the in medias res manse's design, then failing to follow up. Memorable encounters seldom occur in featureless cubes.

>>866232
>discard Serenity
Really? They're the ones who favor Craft, Dodge, Performance, and Socialize, as well as Linguistics which I didn't mention for some reason. Very short tree, only four charms, but it has some relevance to relationship manipulation. Favorable Inflection Procedure lets you calm somebody down and make them like you just by saying their name, Blue Vervain Binding is a universal translator, Abandoned Words Curse induces highly selective aphasia ("A guard may prevent all from entering a secret meeting, because he cannot recognize the correct pass phrase; a spy who forgets his conspiracy’s secret code may find himself shunned or even assassinated."), and the capstone, Lover's Oath, creates a pair of magical wedding rings.

More importantly, the Serenity anima power can be very powerful in conjunction with the ability to treat combat actions as Performance-based, which is possible through Wood-aspect DB charms or a type of infernal relic armor known as a Hauberk of Bells, and to a more limited extent through the Sidereal Performance tree or Swaying Grass Dance Style martial arts, while the Greater Sign is a rare straightforward way to shut down an Invincible Sword Princess on a full-power rampage, since it deactivates all her artifacts and scene-long charms yet technically doesn't count as an attack. Get the timing and placement just right, which is definitely a job for someone with scry-and-teleport powers, and you could badly disrupt one side of a fight while leaving your allies unaffected, turning a precarious mirror-match or JRPG-style final boss battle into a pathetically one-aided beatdown as whoever you Greater Serenity'd scrambles to reassemble their defensive strategy despite equipment failure and depleted mote pools. http://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0048.html

>The capstone of being able to ply her craft on beings that she'd otherwise be unable to perfect is the tempting part though.
There are other ways, mostly Sidereal charms and powerful starmetal artifacts. That's just the most reliable and far-reaching.

> Maybe some crazy bottomless artifact.
An Infinite Resplendence Amulet incorporating starmetal (the magical material which Sidereal Exalts favor) includes hammerspace pockets with a total capacity of two thousand pounds, in addition to the basic power of transforming into any sort of clothing at will. Combined with Sidereal Astrology, that would make switching disguises in combat time remarkably easy, even without Loom-Snarling Deception (which the Ebon Dragon makes available to all akuma). Salt is worth more than it's weight in silver in some places, though, so if you're going to have truly prodigious quantities routinely available, you should explain where all that money comes from.

Ronin sidereals, that is, those which were never formally recruited and trained by the Bureau of Destiny, get 7 dots in Backgrounds (plus any bought with bonus points). If you're going with that, and want the sort of lifestyle where you can eat meat every night or buy whatever basic adventuring equipment you need without the budget being an adventure in itself, put three of those dots into the Resources background. Easy enough to justify; with Craft (Air) 3 (Glassblowing +1) you've simply got a 'day job.' A further 2-dot Artifact background could make the workshop necessary for practicing that trade highly portable. Several different options for that, actually. You could get a mundane kiln, tools, and materials that add up to no more than 500 pounds and load it all on a Windslave Disk, more or less a pocket-sized forklift.
Could stick 'em in a Cache Egg, perfectly concealed in Elsewhere but less convenient to retrieve. Volume is the limiting factor there, rather than weight: a 1-dot cache egg is no more than a cubic foot, 2-dot up to a cubic yard, 3-dot is three cubic yards, 4-dot is ten. Can't buy four-dot or higher backgrounds without spending bonus points, though.
Could have the tools themselves be the artifact, meaning they're supernaturally durable and precise, while the kiln needs no fuel and can be easily disassembled into sections small enough to fit into the Infinite Resplendence Amulet's pockets - though in that case, for it to be fully portable, you'd need to buy the IRA as a separate 3-dot artifact, or higher if you want other MM features.
Could take a Chancel, a self-contained pocket of the Wyld. Little bit like Howl's Moving Castle, except doors are more concealed, can't be quite as far apart, the main one can be tucked in an ordinary pocket instead of being a freestanding fantastical vehicle, and the interior is hundreds or thousands of square miles of mutagenic madness. Just middlemarches intensity, though, shifting things around on a scale of weeks rather than hours. You could avoid mutating yourself (and select allies) with Sidereal Dodge or Integrity charms, and reverse mutations already in place with Sidereal Craft or Kimbery charms. In both cases the former option is more expensive and less reliable, but also far more broadly applicable.
Or you could go with something more like Thrice-Radiant Misho's slightly-bigger-on-the-inside wagon, cargo capacity comparable to a two-bedroom house but can't move without a draft animal or a separate 2-dot artifact engine. That could be a magitech perpetual motion machine which also functions as a heat source (not quite enough to melt glass by itself, but it'd definitely reduce fuel costs and startup time, and keep the wagon's interior pleasantly warm all winter long) or a helltech Omen Weather Engine, which exploits the interactions between Malfean and Gaian Essence to power a turbine with a never-ending stream of some specific type of unnatural precipitation, such as blood, or poisonous tropical frogs... or salt, which might justify some Resources all by itself, or simply provide the material you need without any outside supply chain.

If you're working for the Bureau of Destiny (or they still think you are), you start with 15 background dots, and can spend them on a Celestial Salary, with a single dot bringing the terrestrial purchasing power of Resources 3 - but that's an expense account, with an audit trail and official consequences for misuse, not just a heap of treasure you can do with as you will. It also corresponds to a full-time job debugging the Loom of Fate, with only four weeks of vacation per 60-week year. Could be a lot of this mirror stuff is part of the job, since the Maidens move in mysterious ways... but conspiring with demons definitely isn't. If the boss finds out you sold your soul, or even seriously suspects? Well, let's put it this way: the official story is that there has never been a Sidereal Akuma. Not once, in all of history. The inventors of certain reality-altering martial arts styles are very proud of their ability to maintain, or occasionally repair, that perfect record. It's not possible to actually go back and change the past in Exalted, but even lowly mortal bandits know how to make an inconvenient person almost completely disappear; the works of certain gods or heroes differ only in scope and thoroughness.

> Infernal Monster Style is heavily focused on ridiculous overwhelming brutality, ain't it?
Overall, yes. The first charm lets you respond to being injured by flying into a berserk rage, but activating it is entirely voluntary. The rest of that particular sequence is more about pursuit than brutality: Raging Behemoth Charge increases movement speed when moving toward an enemy, Bounding Beast Advance extends that benefit to jumping, Leaping Smash Technique lets you reflexively jump toward a target before attacking, Nowhere To Hide upgrades that by letting you jump toward anyone you've taken a swing at within the last hour, even if you otherwise have no idea where they are. You might faceplant into a wall (or crash through it, if you've got some other powers), but then you can be sure they're in that direction, on the other side of that wall. Blood Heralds Death develops that into longer-term tracking. There's another upgrade, Eternal Monstrous Hunt, which makes the tracking effect permanent, even (at Essence 6+) passing it on to children or siblings when the target dies. Harder to remove, too, though still not impossible.
Most of the brutal ultraviolence stuff starts with Infernal Monster Form, which is the actual incredible-hulk transformation. Might want that later on, and the sidereal-akuma-specific upgrade Fallen Star Fury for stepping in and out of Fate at will and tricky combo/stacking with other MA styles, but that's not a prerequisite for the nightmare duel trick.

You don't need to start with every charm you're ever going to have. I plan to stick with the training time rules fairly strictly (lots of ways to have adventuring or downtime activities count as training in addition to other useful results, but no way to get a month's worth of practice in less than 28 days without appropriate magic), and simply assume everyone has earned at least as many XP as their number of meaningful posts in this quest's thread(s).
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No. 866350 ID: d36af7

>>866338
>Can I pick and choose any charm from any charm set, provided I have the prerequisites (and they're essence 2)?
Yes.
>What's special about my primary and favored charm sets?
During character creation they're the same, but in play, learning un-favored charms requires slightly more XP and a lot more training time. Accordingly, it makes a certain sort of sense to grab up front whatever reasonably accessible tricks you want that are outside the character's main theme, then grow into the favored and caste yozi charmsets over the course of play. That's why I was recommending Hidden Predator Camouflage: when I think of a bat who's also a ninja, "hanging upside-down in a tree, unseen" seems like a key part of the implied skills, but Transcendent Desert Creature doesn't usually aid stealth when there are trees present. Unbothered By Flies could also have some fun synergy with Black Claw Style once you get an overdrive pool, particularly with the addition of an Unconquerable Silence Gemstone.

>Would the protection against tracking attempts also cover clues left behind while sneaking into places?
To some extent, yeah. It's more related to the always-on metabolic changes than the terrain attunement. No sweat means no skin oil, which usually means no fingerprints, assuming there's nothing else sticky all over your hands. Shadowlands always count as places of desolation, though, so raiding an Abyssal's fortress will usually provide the full TDC benefits.
>Adorjan's defense charms
I'm actually using modified/expanded versions of these, done by Eric Minton after the last round of official 2.5 errata.
Kalmanka's Grace Cost: 3m; Mins: Essence 2; Type: Reflexive (Step 2) Keywords: Combo-OK, Velocity Duration: Instant Prerequisite Charms: Wind-Born Stride Replace the text of this Charm with the following: The Infernal waltzes and pirouettes through sky-darkening tempests of arrows, untouched and seemingly oblivious to their passage. Kalmanka's Grace adds two to the Infernal's Dodge DV against an attack. Against ranged attacks made from outside the Infernal's engagement range, this bonus rises to her (Essence). These bonuses do not count towards the maximum DV limit. This Charm cannot be activated at speeds less than dashing at maximum rate. Successfully defending against a ranged attack with this Charm allows the warlock to reflexively move up to her full dashing speed towards the attacking character as a counterattack in Step 9. Firefly Arrowhead Grip Cost: – (+2m) Replace the text of the Charm with the following: When one is fast enough to sidestep arrows, catching them is easy as plucking insects from the air. The warlock can pay an additional two motes when activating Kalmanka's Grace to apply its bonus to both her Dodge and Parry DVs. Such activations allow her to parry lethal ranged attacks unarmed, and successfully doing so allows her to catch the projectile and reflexively ready it as a weapon. At Essence 4+, parried projectiles may be caught and “carried” in eddies of wind spinning around the Exalt. Such items may be knocked from their irregular orbit with a successful disarm attack and may be grabbed and wielded by the warlock as if they were stored on her person. More importantly, the warlock can reflexively hurl all captured projectiles into an enemy to enhance a close combat attack, with each item adding one die to the attack roll (up to the normal limits for Charm bonuses) and two to the attack’s raw damage. Projectiles exceeding this limit still fly at the target, but to no additional effect. Hurled missiles then drop to the ground, no longer held by Firefly Arrowhead Grip. Beauteous Carnage Incentive Replace the text of the Charm with the following: With experience of the world, Adorjan's appetite to share enlightenment only grows. This Charm grants the Infernal an additional 10-mote pool of Peripheral Essence. Whenever a scene of combat ends, the warlock may transfer any offensive motes in her Overdrive pool into the pool granted by Beauteous Carnage Incentive, converting them into regular motes. Fond Remembrance of Adrián The counterattack granted by this Charm ignores both soak and Hardness from armor. It has a minimum damage of 2. Wayward Wind Evasion Cost: 2m; Mins: Essence 2; Type: Reflexive (Step 7) Keywords: Combo-OK Duration: Instant Prerequisite Charms: Wind-Born Stride A reflex of Essence sends the warlock recoiling from an attack even before it hits, turning deadly threats into glancing blows. An attack opposed by Wayward Wind Evasion has its post-soak damage reduced by one die for each purchase of Wind-Born Stride the Infernal possesses, to a minimum of zero dice. Attacks that have already been reduced to their minimum damage by the warlock's soak instead lose only a single die of post-soak damage. Blood-Stained Sky Assault Cost: 4m; Mins: Essence 2; Type: Reflexive (Step 1) Keywords: Combo-OK Duration: One tick Prerequisite Charms: Joy in Violence Approach No one kills faster than the Silent Wind. All attacks the warlock makes on this tick add a single die of post-soak damage. Against mortals and animals, this is converted into an automatic level of damage in Step 10. With Essence 3+, the warlock can pay an additional three motes to convert the bonus damage of this Charm to automatic levels against Essence users as well as mortals. Heart-Seeking Wind Caress Cost: 1m; Mins: Essence 2; Type: Supplemental Keywords: None Duration: Instant Prerequisite Charms: Tragic Love Amusement Nothing can keep the Silent Wind from the objects of her affection. As the warlock strikes, her blades dissolves into a blur of motion, slipping through armor to strike the heart. An attack supplemented by this Charm subtracts the Infernal's (Compassion) from any soak or Hardness from armor that is applied against it. If the Infernal channels her Compassion to enhance the attack, she instead halves soak from armor if that would afford a higher reduction.

>>866339
You can spend bonus points on mutations, and even get more BP by taking disadvantageous mutations. The example chiropteran beastman package from CoCD: Wyld is Claws, Enhanced
Hearing, Fur, and Night Vision for 1 point each, Ugly for -1, and Wings for 6 points. Vampire bats get another -2 for dietary restriction (blood of mammals and birds). Enhanced Hearing isn't quite as powerful as Hateful Wreched Noise, but lacks the downside. Not everything is charms.

That being said, if you want to have a whole library of temporary mutations to show off, for that stylish "one-winged angel" power-up effect, the charm you're looking for is By Rage Recast, from the Ink Monkeys. Builds off of Malfeas's By Pain Reforged, upgrades further to Devil-Tyrant Avatar Shintai - or that heretical charm I already mentioned, Fourth Soul Externalization, which creates a separate mutation library based on your Unwoven Coadjutor - which could just as easily be a bat-like demon rather than a sesselja.
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No. 866358 ID: af6e04

>>866350
>in play, learning un-favored charms requires slightly more XP and a lot more training time
Ahh, okay. Switching focus here then. Here's what I'm favoring now: Cecelyne excellency, the first two Black Claw Style charms, Sprawling Marsh Indulgence + Hidden Predator Camoflauge, Cracked Cell Circumvention, Wind-Born Stride, Witness to Darkness + Nemesis Self Imagined Anew.

Actually, I might change the favored charm set to Metagaos if I can. It has some cool charms, though in that case I might switch Sprawling Marsh Indulgence + Hidden Predator Camoflauge with Unbothered By Flies and its prerequisite.

>Enhanced Hearing, Fur, and Night Vision for 1 point each, Ugly for -1, and Wings for 6 points. Vampire bats get another -2 for dietary restriction (blood of mammals and birds)
Do I have enough for all that? Night Vision seems redundant with Witness to Darkness.
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No. 866361 ID: af6e04

>mutation-themed charms
Tempting, but I've already got a character in a different campaign who's heavily based on mutations, and I think I'd like to spend the slots on something else.

Also, the way I conceived it is the wings actually being built in to the arms instead of separate limbs. I thought it was an important distinction to mention.
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No. 866398 ID: d36af7

>>866358
>Do I have enough for all that?
Sure. Solaroids get 18 bonus points, plus up to ten more from disadvantages - I tweaked a lot of stuff from Scroll of Heroes with houserules, and to discourage self-destructive munchkinry I'd prefer to dole that info out in response to specific requests rather than present a whole list to be combed over for exploits - and you only spent one of those so far on Virtues & WP.
>Night Vision seems redundant with Witness to Darkness.
No need to stick with that package exactly, particularly if it's at least partly from the Chrysalis Grotesque rather than an established chiropteran beastman lineage. Could drop darkvision entirely, or swap it for Enhanced Sense (Vision) which will stack with WtD.
Maybe represent the vision thing as multiple eyes, throw in a prehensile tongue for 1 or 2 more points, and be Kyreli https://tgchan.org/wiki/Forsaken or someone of the same species? Kyreli's relatively poor maneuverability could be represented by the 4-point Glider mutation rather than full 6-point Wings. The whole setting there fits reasonably well: some First Age province abandoned by it's creators, perhaps in the Usurpation, or later on in the Shogunate when (former) slaves initiated themselves into sorcery and damaged the reality engines protecting some key trade route. Now it's an isolated island of stability, surrounded on all sides by the Wyld. Blind Librarian could be a Lesser Elemental Dragon.
A man walks down the street
He says why am I short of attention
Got a short little span of attention
And wo my nights are so long
Where's my wife and family
What if I die here
Who'll be my role-model
Now that my role-model is
Gone Gone
He ducked back down the alley
With some roly-poly little bat-faced girl

Four eyes and an unusually dextrous mouth might also be consistent with a chiroperan beastman who gained mutations from a roughly arachnoid coadjutor, such as a sesselja or anhules.
>>866361
>Also, the way I conceived it is the wings actually being built in to the arms instead of separate limbs. I thought it was an important distinction to mention.
Difficulties with belt-based clothing and lack of single-purpose hands could easily be worth another two or three BP as negative mutations. Can't wear conventional armor, or wield weapons the normal way while using your best movement. Might have relatively fragile bones, too.
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No. 866426 ID: 3abd97

>>866341
>please feel free to suggest ideas for other characters. A character's player can veto, at least during character creation
An idea for Astius' player to consider: go hideously shriveled Abyssal, but have her act like / be unable to recognize that she's not a creature of unnatural flawless beauty.

>Serenity Really? [...] which I didn't mention for some reason
>Chosen of Serenity: Who oversee life, and matters related to joy and pleasure.
Well yes you sold it as enhancing Performance which I was rating as a useful secondary power but hardly core to the concept. That other stuff you brought up and that line from an exalted wiki does make it sound more consistent with her core motivations than the others. Journey might also work, but all that mirror travel stuff is the means, and not the end.

>Infinite Resplendence Amulet
That sounds cool and like a very good fit.

>you should explain where all that money comes from
The day job sounds good, and making resources portable makes sense as I was thinking she was kinda nomadic.

Possible other sources of incomes: mirror walking and retconning away evidence you (or the goods) were ever there would make robbing secure locations pretty easy. Remaking lives must leave behind broken and discarded pieces, some of which would be valuable to scoop up. The entourage probably contributes to the cause to some degree. Plus social-fu is a great way to get resources sometimes.

>Chancel, a self-contained pocket of the Wyld. Little bit like Howl's Moving Castle
>the interior is hundreds or thousands of square miles of mutagenic madness. Just middlemarches intensity
Oooh, oooh, that kind of personal realm is a really good fit for some of the Fallen London inspiration. There's even mirror-marches. http://thefifthcity.wikia.com/wiki/Parabola (Lore Spoiler warning, since FL is largely a game of exploration and discovery).

Can you put structures in there? A personal memory-palace / workshop inside a twisting impossible landscape of dreams and nightmares would be fantastic.

>the official story is that there has never been a Sidereal Akuma. Not once, in all of history
Well of course not there's never been a sidereal exalted so how could any go akuma. :v

>Bureau of Destiny, Ronin and/or Akuma
The idea that a madgirl going around following her whims actually serving the priorities of Fate is amusing, and a vast conspiracy tolerating an arguable monster they can point in a useful direction does fit some of the themes.

That said it sorta looks like she couldn't really do everything I'd like her to be able to do without yozi charms. Plus her central quest seems very thematically consistent with the yozi- taking a positive and making it something that's doubled edged, both wonderful and terrible.

I'm not really seeing her as being good for maintaining an extensive long-term undercover con against the Bureau, so ronin akuma is probably the way to go. (I imagine they'd want her dead and covered up anyways, but I think pretty much near every variety of exalt has people gunning for them).

>Infernal Monster Style
Hmmm. Pursuit might be more in-theme, crashing through walls face first less so. I guess it comes down to how many points I have left to throw around once we're done sketching other things out.
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No. 866495 ID: af6e04

>Kyreli
Haven't read Forsaken but the design looks cool. Though I feel like the huge ears and the weird nose are requirements for a batgirl.

>Can't wear conventional armor, or wield weapons the normal way while using your best movement. Might have relatively fragile bones, too.
Indeed, should be fun weaknesses to work around.

All those mutations sound fine to me. So with that and the charms chosen, is there anything else I need to decide on to finally wrap up the character generation?
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No. 866502 ID: 3abd97

>>866495
Foresaken's not a long read, but it's got some nifty re-interpretations of classic races, and great atmosphere. I'd recommend it.
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No. 866553 ID: d36af7

>>866426
>Can you put structures in there?
Absolutely. The 2-dot model provides six waypoints, 3-dot provides ten, arranged and linked up however you'd like. Average waypoint is thirty miles wide, but they can be as small as a single room, or almost arbitrarily large so long as it's still a conceptually cohesive location. For best results, though, you'd want to have a raksha noble living in there full time, keeping things relatively stable and consistent for you. If you're Howl, that'd be Calcifer. Note also that raksha and primordials have been enemies since before Exaltation was invented, so you'd still be 'playing both sides' in some sort of supernatural cold-war intrigue.
>>866495
>anything else I need to decide on to finally wrap up the character generation?
Conversion scale I worked out for attributes is that a 2 in Exalted is equivalent to a 10 in D&D or GURPS, and then a one-point difference in the former is a 3-point in the latter. so an Exalted attribute at 5 is the equivalent of a D&D ability score at 18 or 20. For Malice I'm thinking Strength 1, Dex 5, Stamina 3, Charisma 1, Manipulation 5, Appearance 0 (which could be a significant impairment to some later Black Claw Style techniques), Intelligence 1, Wits 5, Perception 5. Does that sound about right?
For skills, you've got 25 points to throw around freely, and XP-optimization math suggests you should be mostly carving out a character niche by buying at least two or three straight up to 5 dots. Caste abilities (Athletics, Awareness, Dodge, Larceny, and Stealth for a Scourge) and five Favored abilities - which should probably include Martial Arts and Occult - can be bought up later with reduced XP cost and zero training time. Favored abilities have to start with at least one dot. Torn Lotus Defense implies at least Martial Arts 3, and two more among Larceny, Socialize, and Performance. Caste abilities can start at zero, but you'll definitely want Awareness, if only to make best use of Open Palm Caress, and the others seem very consistent with the concept as well. Additional dots in caste or favored abilities are one BP each, all others are two. Four free specialties (no more than three in a particular skill). Thaumaturgy is technically a type of Occult specialty, but you can buy any number of different Arts (Alchemy, Astrology, the Art of the Dead aka charcoal-circle necromancy, Demonology & Elemental Vitriol, Elemental Earth, Elemental Fire, Elemental Wood, Enchantment, Exorcism & Warding, Geomancy aka marble-circle sorcery, God-Bothering, Husbandry, Weather-Working & Elemental Air, conceivably others) with up to three degrees in each at four bonus points per degree, or any three specific Procedures for one bonus point. Thaumaturgy doesn't usually have the raw power of charms, but it's cheap and versatile, and can be impressive with the right setup.

There's also Backgrounds - we were already talking about Contacts? As a GSP you could take more focused professional Spies, in addition or instead. Specify who your main contacts are or where spies are stationed, one per dot. You get one free dot each in Backing (a specific Yozi), Cult, and Influence (demons loyal to your Yozi patron), plus seven more to increase those further, or buy Allies, Artifacts, Contacts. Demonic Minions (each instance is a separate first-circle demon who'll obey you without being bound; a 3-dot minion can leave the demon realm and appear in your presence with a simple prayer roll, no magical summoning needed), Familiars (houseruled to be somewhat more powerful, almost in line with equivalent-rating Artifacts), Followers, Manses (also covers uncapped demesnes), a Mentor, Past Life Memories, Resources, knowledge of Superscience (very helpful for operating, maintaining or repairing First Age artifacts, or faithful reproductions thereof, not so much for designing new stuff from scratch), and relationship with your Unwoven Coadjutor. Extra backgrounds can be bought very cheaply with bonus points, but Cult can't normally be bought above 2 at character creation; if you want the benefits of a 3-dot cult, either buy a 2-dot and magnify the output through a temple-manse and/or Vestment of Holy Vigilance, or explain how you're keeping the equivalent population of a small city hidden from witch-hunters, safe from hostile environments or natural disasters, supplied with the necessities of life, and maintaining their relentless, reverent loyalty.

You also need to pick an Urge, which is like a second Quest but imposed by a specific Yozi. Not necessarily the same one as your Caste or Favored. Which specific yozi it's from determines what happens when your Limit overflows.

Finally, that list of intimacies. Minimum two are accounted for by sifu and yozi patron, but laying out up to five more would help a lot with characterization.

And, of course, compiling all the info into a single post for final review and ease of future reference.
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No. 866602 ID: d36af7

>>866426
>>Infinite Resplendence Amulet sounds cool and like a very good fit.
Going with the base 3-dot model, the 4-dot with one additional magical material, or the 5-dot with all of them, possibly omitting soulsteel?

Orichalcum adds +4 Appearance, and a stealth-defeating glow. Can be switched off.
Moonsilver provides low-profile armor, camouflage, and a disguise bonus.
Jade provides the hands-free equivalent of a heliograph tower and set of signal flags, mostly useful for comms and morale when leading a military unit, and can incidentally be used as a controlled, highly directional light source.
Soulsteel means that the amulet's attuned wearer is treated as being in a shadowland, without regard for (or significant impact on) the actual geomantic situation. This is seldom useful for Creation-based exalts, since it reduces the rate at which they recover motes, but could be a great asset for someone on a long visit to some realm where they wouldn't normally be able to respire ambient essence at all, or anybody with the Transcendent Desert Creature mutation.
> how many points I have left
As a ronin sidereal akuma? Let's see, 9+8+6+4= 27 attribute dots which can be cashed in for 4 BP each,
10 dots among caste skills and four (not five!) favored skills, another 15 free-choice worth two each, and four specialties, so those could be cashed in for a total of 44 BP,
Colleges of Sidereal Astrology cost the same as skills, with five by caste and one favored, but as a ronin you don't get any free training,
Five caste/favored charm slots (worth 5 each) and three more free-choice (worth 7), so 46 BP there,
Seven dots in backgrounds, minimum WP 5 and Virtues totaling 9, all worth one each, so 21 BP up for grabs there,
Normally you'd have 18 BP to start with. Investiture as an akuma provides another 30, and the ability to take quite a few negative mutations, derangements, and other assorted disadvantages, if you're so inclined.

In total, you have 267 soul-motes available, but that figure is a bit deceptively high. You'll want to start by spending at least 4 on Stamina 1, for the ability to survive outside of a very advanced hospital's intensive-care ward, 10 more on raising your Essence to 3, and similar bare necessities. Attributes and abilities can be bought up to 6 instead of the normal human limit of 5, or to 7 if you first spend 30 more BP on Essence 6.

If you want to eventually have access to Onyx/Labryinth Circle Necromancy, which has some really amazing mirror-related tricks, you'll want the Mantle of Soot. It's a 6-dot artifact, and thus not normally for sale at all, but I'll give it to you for 9 BP. Iron/Shadowland Circle Necromancy requires Essence 3 and 3 dots in Occult, and counts as an Occult charm, so a total of 13 BP if Occult isn't Favored or 8 if it is. Could buy known spells with BP, but it might be a better deal to spend a point or three on a copy of The Black Treatise, or a dreamscape tutor gem, or a manse including an appropriately morbid library. Any of those could include several spells which you could then learn in a week each, a particular 3-dot Vitriol-aspect hearthstone could reduce that to a single day per spell, and it's a favorable XP-to-BP ratio. Of course, anything you want to use in the immediate conflict would need to be bought properly up front.
>>
No. 866747 ID: 3abd97

>>866553
>For best results, though, you'd want to have a raksha noble living in there full time
The Fae that are living stories slash worlds slash spaceships? Okay sounds fun. How much worse is it if I don't have one?

>>866602
>Infinite Resplendence Amulet
Probably the 4-dot, maybe 5? Moonsilver or maybe Orichalcum seems the best fit (are the bonus and glow on the same switch or separate?), though I might go for the 3-combo.

Since this is supposed to be a general use tool and most of the people she'd want to help are probably in Creation, probably best not to take soulsteel. Picking up something to help regain essence in an alien realm seems like a preparation to take at a later date when planning that kind of extended trip.

>the ability to take quite a few negative mutations, derangements, and other assorted disadvantages
Any interesting ones that would seem pertinent? Not looking for maximum minmax so much as I'm open to in-theme or interesting character weirdness.

>necromancy stuff
Google tells me the Mantle of Soot gives me a significant artificial boost to essence and sorcery for necromancy? I'm fine with grabbing a study item (dreamscape tutor gem sounds pretty in-theme) + hearthstone to pick up most the actual spells later. Maybe one or two workhouse spells now since otherwise the specialized artifact and/or caster stats aren't doing anything?

>all that number stuff
Kiiiinda overwhelming there. Not really sure what I'm supposed to be making decisions on. Does favored skills mean I should pick 4 of the things from >>865823 ?
>>
No. 866859 ID: d36af7

>>866747
>The Fae that are living stories slash worlds slash spaceships?
Continuously writing bad fanfic about themselves is the basis of their metabolism. Eating souls isn't strictly necessary, but in some cases does provide them a significant power boost, even apart from recreational value.
>Okay sounds fun. How much worse is it if I don't have one?
Strictly speaking what you need is a freehold, which actually implies at least two, one of them embedded in the landscape and sessile/nonvolitional, the other ruling the place and keeping the bonefire fed. Without that stabilizing force, anything and everything left inside the chancel without Shaping defenses (which are expensive) is subject to random mutation on a weekly basis, plus 'wandering monster' trouble due to spontaneous generation.
>Infinite Resplendence Amulet
>orichalcum
>(are the bonus and glow on the same switch or separate?)
Same switch, all or nothing. Transcendent loveliness and unwanted attention are two sides of the same coin. If you're going for the 4-dot, Moonsilver seems like the obvious mirror-theme fit, since it can provide that Terminator 2 liquid-metal face-morph effect.

Incidentally, all Infinite Resplendence Amulets incorporate Adamant, the sixth magical material with no known corresponding exalt type (apart from the type of Alchemicals whose anima power is a more thorough memory-wipe than Sidereals get). That MM bonus is part of the amulet's baseline abilities of transformative clothing, sanitation, and minor environmental protection.
>Since this is supposed to be a general use tool and most of the people she'd want to help are probably in Creation, probably best not to take soulsteel. Picking up something to help regain essence in an alien realm seems like a preparation to take at a later date when planning that kind of extended trip.
If you want to hide from Sidereals and Yozis at the same time, and you're in a hurry, the Labyrinth beneath the realm of the dead is one of the few plausible options. Easy to enter, difficult to leave, no living Essence to respire while inside (except during Calibration). If you're in a living world and need to recharge fast, there's always the option of simply taking the amulet off, or even leaving it behind for eventual retrieval via Craft charms.
>the ability to take quite a few negative mutations, derangements, and other assorted disadvantages
>Any interesting ones that would seem pertinent? Not looking for maximum minmax so much as I'm open to in-theme or interesting character weirdness.
I'll compile a list, and try to find a good fan-made Szoreny charmset while I'm at it.
>necromancy stuff
>Google tells me the Mantle of Soot gives me a significant artificial boost to essence and sorcery for necromancy?
Yep.
>I'm fine with grabbing a study item (dreamscape tutor gem sounds pretty in-theme) + hearthstone to pick up most the actual spells later.
Could have both in one: a 3-dot Vitriol-aspect or maybe Kimbery-aspect manse which produces a Stone of Acrid Understanding and has the Archive and Sympathetic Dream Link powers could provide status updates and training while you sleep. With some other powers, it might only be physically accessible through an esoteric and counterintuitive procedure such as "continuing to travel for five days after the point where you know for certain you've lost the way and should turn back," which would keep unwanted visitors to a minimum. Possibly supplemented by more conventional traps, defensive turrets, etc., though for best results on that you'd probably want to bump it up to 4- or 5-dot.
>Maybe one or two workhouse spells now
Summon Ghost, Banish Ghost, and Countermagic hardly need to be explained.
Blood Mirror Speech lets you send somebody a text message by flinging some of your blood at a mirror. Notably superior to the equivalent sorcery spell, Written Upon The Water, in that it doesn't require you to take the time to write the message out manually, persists until the message has been understood rather than vanishing half-finished if the recipient is distracted, and allows them to send a reply, unless they don't have blood. Corresponding downsides are that it costs a health level of lethal damage to cast, and requires an actual mirror at both ends rather than any body of liquid being sufficient.
Bone Puppet Dance provides the skeletal equivalent of bloodbending, letting you pull the 'stop hitting yourself' gag on somebody at range.
Death Flies Two Sails lets you conjure a boat. Moves under it's own power at 30 mph (which is very fast by pre-industrial standards), carries yourself plus three passengers or 600 lb, and reduces random-encounter risks on Underworld seas. True sunlight melts it in about a minute, so it's only consistently useful in the living world underground or at night.
Door of the Dead turns any reflective surface into a temporary portal from Creation to the Underworld or vice-versa.
Easing the Forsaken Memory lets you arbitrarily edit 'haunting' effects (cold spots, spooky noises, illusory blood on the walls, etc.) out to a range of tens of miles. Can be used as remote, persistent social influence to inspire particular emotions, create fake clues to a murder or buried treasure, etc.
Hungry Creeping Shadow creates an assassin-blob that attempts to hug and drown it's designated target. Immune to everything but magic and fire.
Master Puppeteer's Knife de-animates necrotech war machines one at a time, or a whole bunch of regular zombies.
Piercing The Shroud is that quick Labryinth access spell I mentioned. Only works at night, though.
Shade Prison Amulet prepares a piece of bone to trap the next loose po soul (or in Jukashi's terminology, "zomby goast") which touches it, to be released when the bone is broken. With appropriate craftsmanship producing bone projectiles that reliably break on impact, this could be used to transport and deploy expendable skirmishers. Sidereal Archery charms would reduce the need for crafting and enable shooting around corners.
Shattering Void Mirror is an attack, dealing damage proportional to the target's current HP. Ignores armor and drains some motes, too.
Smoothing the Crease-Worn Mind provides temporary respite from the maddening whispers of the Neverborn - and denies their guidance to those who would willingly serve them.
Stones Worn Smooth crunches up a ghost into a hearthstone to power artifacts or recover essence. Only lasts a few weeks, then they pop back or pass on as if incapacitated by mundane violence.

Might as well discuss sorcery, too. As an akuma you can access up to the highest circle, but only through your patron yozi's themes, and you need to take the First (Yozi) Excellency as a prereq, which costs a number of charm slots equal to your Essence.
Most notable spell, only available to yozi initiations, is Slave-Spawn Summons. Works much like regular demon-summoning sorcery, but in seconds rather than hours. Still only one opening per day... while inside Creation. If you've got a manse that's Outside Fate, or some other loophole, you could toss out new demonic minions in combat time (though you'd want a bodyguard or some other way to avoid actual melee, since it does still require delicate concentration). Summoning the Lesser Minions of the Eyeless Face isn't as powerful, but rubbery featureless humanoids drawn forth from a pool of scented oil might fit the aesthetic better, and there's a higher-circle spell which lets you use them as body doubles. After that, priority is probably defensive effects:
Burning Eyes of the Offender makes you glow too bright to look at. Kimbery's sorcerous initiation can't be used to cast it, nor any other spell based on fire or burning energies.
Curtain of Quartz creates orbiting rocks that are very sparkly and distracting to anyone nearby (but not you personally) and can absorb incoming energy weapons.
Fugue of Truth breaks through illusions, magical or otherwise.
Impervious Sphere of Water transmutes a 10' radius around your heart from air to magically breathable water, or from water to air. Held in place by a magical shell of force as long as you concentrate, during which the only other voluntary action you can take is using anima powers.
Invulnerable Skin of Bronze... do I really need to spell this out? Think of the 'metal' powerup from Mario 64.
Personal Tempest slows your movement by half, but deflects incoming attacks as if you were peeking out of a stone bunker.
Sleep of Stony Safety gives you and a few allies an actual stone bunker for the night. Well, more of a vampire-style 'sink into the earth' deal. No vulnerable viewports, and inconvenient biological processes are paused. Raising the Earth's Bones is the one for permanent construction, though that's drifting out of your core themes.
Shadowy Simulacrums of Smoke creates a cloud of fog of muddled sounds and transient illusory decoys. Caster can see and hear through it normally, and it stays behind if you leave.
Paralyzing Contradiction lets you stun-lock everybody with Intelligence 2+ who can see or hear you, until they either puzzle their way out of a koan (with an extended Lore roll) or suffer a physical attack.
Private Plaza of Downcast Eyes is the basic anti-scrying ward.
Virtuous Guardian of Flame would be totally incompatible with Kimbery-style sorcery, but you might be able to invent a variant based on some other material.
Coin of Distant Vision creates a scrying sensor. Slip it into somebody's pocket and you can observe with all senses (except touch) as if you were following them. If the coin gets stuck in a sealed container, you can only see the inside of the container and sense approximate range and distance.
Disguise of the New Face takes ten minutes to weave an illusion. Notably inferior to Loom-Snarling Deception except that it can also be applied to a willing or immobilized subject, and while remaining outside Fate.
Incantation of Effective Restoration repairs objects. Less useful on magitech, but it can reduce maintenance time by half.
Open the Spirit Door lets you gatecrash a god's immaterial sanctum. If you've got demons which serve you willingly rather than being bound by sorcery, they could set up their own sanctums, into which this spell would then let you enter unannounced, perhaps to raid the fridge or sleep on the couch.
The Parting of the Seas is that classic Moses trick. Be careful not to fall asleep or otherwise get distracted while midway across an ocean.
River of Blood is that other classic Moses trick. Very bad for the environment.
The Spy Who Walks in Darkness can only be cast on the night of the full moon, and only lasts a number of days equal to your intelligence + occult total.
Droning Suggestion, unlike almost all other spells, can be cast without visibly flaring your anima.
Theft of Memory isn't quite as subtle but can be concealed with sleight-of-hand. The stolen memory is stored in a gemstone, sold separately.
The Violent Opening of Closed Portals breaks down doors or bores holes in walls, unless they're magically reinforced.
Water From Stone might be useful if you want to use puddle-dependent powers in an arid environment.
Assassin's Fatal Touch lets you command the loyalty of weasels. Wait, no, that's Commanding The Beasts (which also works on non-mustelids). Now what was...? Oh, right, deadly single-target poison. Needs fifteen minutes of setup and something the target touched no more than an hour earlier.
Corrupted Words stops someone from communicating about a particular subject. Try to push through it? Vomit unlimited maggots.
The Eye And The Mouth translates writing.
Eye of Alliance creates an empathic comm network.
Flight of Separation lets you shatter into a flock of birds, fly around at 20 mph, and then reassemble up to a few miles away.
Floral Ferry is comparable to Death Flies Two Sails, in that it creates a small self-propelled boat, but has greater capacity (ten passengers or 2000 pounds), at the expense of defense systems. No issue with sunlight, but the autopilot is locked in to a destination set at casting, and it crumbles to nothing ten minutes after arrival, instead of being steered freely. Doesn't require any committed motes, or leave a trail of blood and bile, though. In fact, with Kimbery's initiation, all water- or poison-related spells are much cheaper.
Keel Cleaves the Clouds lets you trick a watercraft into traveling through air. Can be disrupted by mundane action, and air spirits don't like it, but landing is always gentle.
Malediction of the Distorted Compass destroys someone's sense of direction until the next sunrise. They might get lost on the way from their own bedroom to the adjacent bathroom.
Mists of Eventide is a knockout-gas grenade, The resulting 25 hours of unconsciousness are not restful, and involve no dreams.
Shadow Summons lets you steal somebody's shadow via arcane link, and then either send it back with a verbal warning (up to about 15 minutes, unless you can delay sunrise somehow) or burn it to cause them terrible pain for the next week. Takes a full month to grow back. Again, burning is incompatible with Kimbery's style.
Spoke the Wooden Face lets you see and speak through a face you previously carved into a living tree. Easy enough to reskin into something glass-based.
Viridian Mantle of Underwater Journeys transforms seaweed into magical SCUBA gear. Potentially inferior/redundant with Kimbery charms, though it has the advantage of not needing committed motes. Main benefit, ability to breathe water, is also available as a 1-dot artifact called a Gill Cloak, which even mortals can use with some thaumaturgical support.
>since otherwise the specialized artifact and/or caster stats aren't doing anything?
I'm adapting some rules from 3e, allowing sorcerers (or necromancers) to create quirky persistent non-artifact magical effects even without actual spells known. Requires at least a few days of ritual setup, potentially weeks or years, and appropriate lab space and resources, but then provides solid mechanical justification for the accumulation of weird stuff like Strela Leonial's Bottle of Infinite Ravenous Worms, alarming fragility and all.
>all that number stuff
>Kiiiinda overwhelming there. Not really sure what I'm supposed to be making decisions on. Does favored skills mean I should pick 4 of the things from >>865823 ?
There's 25 skills, except for Craft which counts as one for 'favored' purposes but has twelve elemental variants (Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and Wood cover mundane stuff, Vitriol for helltech, Lightning for magitech, Crystal for fate and gossamer, Oil for necrotech, Metal for unattuned magical materials, Smoke for modding spirits, Steam for biotech) which each have to be bought separately. Each of them, again counting Craft as one, has an associated astrological college. Sidereal Astrology is this whole other can of worms; start by learning at least one dot in a college, pray to the Pattern Spiders, and I'll explain the rest as it comes up. Here's the whole list:
Journeys: Resistance (the Mast), Ride (the Messenger), Sail (the Captain), Survival (the Ship's Wheel), Thrown (the Gull)
Serenity: Craft (the Peacock), Dodge (the Ewer), Linguistics (the Pillar), Performance (the Musician), Socialize (the Lovers)
Battles: Archery (the Quiver), Athletics (the Banner), Melee (the Spear), Presence (the Gauntlet), War (the Shield)
Secrets: Investigation (the Key), Larceny (the Guardians), Lore (the Treasure Trove), Occult (the Sorcerer), Stealth (the Mask)
Endings: Awareness (the Crow), Bureaucracy (the Haywain), Integrity (the Rising Smoke), Martial Arts (the Sword), Medicine (the Corpse)

Five skills and colleges set by caste, four other skills and one college by personal favor, are cheaper. How many points go into different skills may be dictated largely by which Sidereal charms you want, or that at least sets minimums, but caste/favored determines how expensive those skill and charms are, and how much time and XP it'll cost to learn more later.
>>
No. 866915 ID: af6e04

>[stats] Does that sound about right?
Looks good to me.

>skill stuff
You kinda lost me completely here. I don't have any of the exalted books, I'm just operating on what little scraps I can get from google searches. I have no idea how specialties work, what the requirements for my charms are, or really what any of these skills do. Likewise lost in the paragraph about contacts.

>You also need to pick an Urge, which is like a second Quest but imposed by a specific Yozi. Not necessarily the same one as your Caste or Favored. Which specific yozi it's from determines what happens when your Limit overflows.
I don't know what the Urges associated with each Yozi are.

>Finally, that list of intimacies. Minimum two are accounted for by sifu and yozi patron, but laying out up to five more would help a lot with characterization.
That I can handle, probably! Let me think about it for a bit. If I come back with any characters who are grossly unfitting for the setting then tell me.
>>
No. 867024 ID: 3abd97

Okay let's try to pin down some things in the pile of options.

Lute Silhouette Speculation in Comet's Reflection
-Ronin Sidereal Akuma
-Chosen of Serenity
-Starting Essence: at least 3
-Kimberly as Yozi patron
-Black Tide Style martial arts
-Craft (Air) 3 (Glassblowing +1) 'day job'
-Parabola-esk Chancel, day job workshop, raksha
-Infinite Resplendence Amulet, 4-Dot, Moonsilver
-Mantle of Soot
-Charms, Skill, Mutations TBD

I don't really know what numbers to assign to virtues (past my broad musing here >>865729 ) or attributes so I'll trust your judgement there (if she's trekking / swimming between places probably better stamina than your average caster / social specialist?).

One intimacy should probably go towards the relationship with the raksha(s).

>>866859
>Could have both in one: a 3-dot Vitriol-aspect [...] up to 4- or 5-dot.
Okay that sounds cool. Can I assume I don't have to specify in advance what spells I'm got queued for later learning in that library?
>If you've got a manse that's Outside Fate, or some other loophole
Can I cram it into the chancel? Or maybe that's putting too many eggs in one basket.

>all dem spells
What's the difference between the first block of spells and the second? The first are recommended practical things, or the second are akuma only, or higher circle?

Those sound interesting, I'll figure out which few I'd like to start with.

>create quirky persistent non-artifact magical effects even without actual spells known
That sounds like a fun side-thing to fool around with, especially when if I can arrange for them to show up with Craft coincidence delivery manipulation.

>25 skills + astrology
Which one of those craft variants applies to remaking people's hearts and minds?
>>
No. 867073 ID: 094652

Embri, the Huldra-Geisha-Ninja-Assassin.

And yes, we're going to ignore the fact that she's somehow in the Exalt universe despite plans to have her appear in the Blood Mire after her sister Ivori within the next ten years. For now. (I just want to play one of these fox nymphs with ninja powers already!)

Willpower: 7 (Dedicated but easily Distracted)
Compassion: 2 (Loves little sister and devoted to house and teammates. Shows no mercy to almost everyone else.)
Conviction: 4 (Dedicated to protecting her charges and completing the mission, in that order, by any means necessary... or she would if she wasn't distracted by all sorts of things)
Temperance: 4 (Years of training have honed her to a sword's point of near-slave obedience, but recent events have shaken her faith. Not to mention her masters are not here. At all.)
Valor: 1 (Half her life has been seducing targets and poisoning / murdering / ruining them and their families. The only versatility she's learned is how to improvise the exact means.)

Cares (To Embri, this means those she has sworn under her charge):
Ivori: Will protect her sister no matter what. Her sister isn't here, but those that resemble another Huldra might elicit some form of affection.
Oyabun: Will obey her master's kill orders, so long as they do not involve killing her charges. Seeing as how her Oyabun isn't on this PLANET, that's a minor issue, but illusion magic might be enough of a trigger to unleash her inner murder-ninja.
Oathbound: Embri will defend those who she has sworn a (usually temporary) contract with. The only ones who can break this contract are herself, her sister, and her Oyabun.
Other Ninja: Embri feels a sense of Kinship between other ninja and will attempt to learn new tricks from them... unless they are attacking her charges, at which point she'll try to obliterate them as quickly as possible.

Strengths and weaknesses:
Speed++, Strength-, Wisdom-, Clever+, Tough--, Pretty+++

Skills:
Seduction (Can seduce targets that are sexually attracted to females)
Stealth
Espionage
Pickpocket (Mostly reverse-pick-pocketing, like Skyrim poisoning)

Superpower Origins: From The Event that separated her from her sister. She woke up in this world with a wood-affinity superpower; she can now absorb or be absorbed by wood-based objects. If it's an object that has less mass than herself, she can 'consume' it and either regurgitate it later, back to its original form
(and if the level of impurities like ink or metal tips was minor, those get restored too) or use it as fuel for energy. She can absorb a limited number of patterns with a limited total weight limit. If the object has more mass than herself, she can 'infest' the object and meld with it, causing it to take on a lighter shade (based on her white fur) and slowly changing it according to her needs. However, the wood's enchantments might affect and overwhelm her, so this isn't an automatic walk-through-everything card.

Before all this, Embri's ultimate goal was to uplift her noble house into the annals of royalty. But now, the most pressing need in the back of her mind is to find her beloved sister Ivori. But to be honest, serving under a noble house and uplifting them to a dynasty of kings is her thing.

Embri's kept silent about herself and her abilities until now. But she's sick of waiting.
>>
No. 867732 ID: d36af7

>>866915
>I have no idea how specialties work, what the requirements for my charms are, or really what any of these skills do.
Yozi charms never have prerequisites other than Essence or other charms of the same Yozi. You might need other traits to use a charm effectively, but not to learn it. Martial Arts charms require the Martial Arts ability, of course; you should probably take that as favored, and you'll need to start with a rating of at least 3 to qualify for the entry-level Black Claw Style charms. Maybe go straight for 5.

More generally, it's best to think of skills (technically 'abilities' but that's too easy to confuse with 'attributes') in Exalted as more like broad character archetypes, almost equivalent to whole classes in a system like D&D. "Sail" covers everything from tying knots to predicting the weather, "Investigation" covers every 'detective' job from crime scene forensics to interviews, "Lore" is every field of academic study, "Thrown" ranges from needles and chakrams to massive beam-sling siege weapons.

One dot in a skill is the minimal basics. Might be talented, with a big dice pool thanks to good attributes or an Excellency or virtue channels or whatever, but you're going to be recognizably amateurish. One dot in Lore is enough to be literate, one dot in Occult is enough to learn basic thaumaturgical procedures (and know some of the very simplest without spending any points, such as how to summon ghosts in a graveyard by saying the right words and spilling some blood), one dot in Athletics is enough to swim or climb a tree without assistance, one dot in Ride is enough to direct a calm and well-trained horse outside combat, one dot in Craft (Earth) is enough to set up a peasant's ramshackle hut or, with supervision, contribute to a larger construction project by laying rows of bricks. Two or three dots is the trained/competent professional level. Someone who's going to contribute to the construction of an artifact needs at least 3 dots each in Lore, Occult, and the relevant Craft. Four dots is famous experts in the field: an elite soldier might have Melee 4, the master of a guild of cabinet-makers might have Craft (Wood) 4. Five dots, plus three specialties, is the peak of human capability. An Olympic gold medal winner might have Athletics 5 (Pole-Vaulting +3), supported by physical Attributes in the 3-5 range.

You want Malice to be an amazing burglar? Larceny skill covers general 'criminal' stuff, including disguises, picking locks, disarming traps, and fencing stolen goods. Recognizing the best loot might benefit from a few dots in Bureaucracy (which covers merchant stuff) and/or Lore, which might also be helpful for identifying the most vulnerable parts of a machine. Stealth is, I hope, self-explanatory. Dodge covers getting out the way of attacks and hazards, but also fancy footwork in general, and overlaps with Athletics for jumping. Awareness is mostly paired with Perception for noticing stuff, particularly as contested rolls against somebody else's Stealth, but it's also your 'initiative' stat in combat.

>Likewise lost in the paragraph about contacts.
If you want to have access to (and, OOC, possibly invent) inside information about the manse where the initial action takes place, such as where the treasure vaults and secret passages are, one dot in Spies is enough, but then that's all you'd get, and there would also be an agent inside (disguised as a chambermaid or something) who probably needs to be rescued from the explosion.

A Contact might be able to provide a layout of the non-secret areas, including where guards are visibly stationed, but no more than rumors about the deeper stuff. The advantage is that they'd also provide broader friend-of-a-friend social connections, and won't need extraction from a deep-cover op.
>>
No. 867771 ID: d36af7

>>867024
>I don't really know what numbers to assign to virtues (past my broad musing here >>865729 )

Genuine desire to help, deep focus on others' identity as people rather than value as assets, says higher Compassion than Conviction to me. Similarly, engaging in combat only indirectly and from a distance doesn't imply high Valor. If somebody shouted "What sorcery is this? Come out and face me properly, steel against steel, instead of cowering behind illusions!" ...would she take that seriously at all? If not, I'm thinking Compassion 5, Conviction 3, Temperance 2, Valor 2.
>It's all getting at the stuff hidden inside, the potential unrealized or suppressed or broken down, pulling it out into the open, and making it shine, bright and whole.
I could also see Temperance 4, though. There are some parallels with example characters like Mirror Flag or Meticulous Owl or the Green Lady, but with them, the idea seems to be a vast web of lies with nothing at all left in the center. Deep concern with honesty, getting the truth out where everybody can see it, means Temperance. If you want Lute Silhouette to be the one who stays mostly functional when the whole party's been dosed with hallucinogens and dumped in a disorienting kaleidioscopic oubliette, because that's basically Tuesday for her, Temperance is part of how you make that happen.

A lot of the 'unpredictable and dangerous' can come from behavioral modifications due to Yozi charms. For example, among the options for Intolerable Burning Truths:
• Mother Before Daughter: The Infernal can’t
knowingly betray beloved characters or ancestors
from whom she descends (i.e. parents, grandparents, etc.). Betrayal means a course of action or inaction that she believes will result in more harm than good.
When making rolls to navigate anywhere or track a beloved character, she adds bonus successes equal to the number of beloved characters she has.
• Trust Is Naïve: The Infernal refuses to believe anything bad about a beloved character. At best, she can be persuaded that such a character is a victim who has been duped into poor decisions by the wickedness of others. She requires only a single scene of action or persuasion to build a positive Intimacy toward anyone she has never reviled.
• Existence Is Agony: The Infernal can’t show
mercy. She may spare an enemy, but only with the
intent to prolong his suffering. If multiple courses of action seem to offer roughly equivalent benefit to herself, she must choose the path she believes will maximize harm to non-beloved characters along the way. Compassion 3+ no longer compels her to care about anyone except beloved characters, though she may magnanimously choose to care about strangers in hopes of making them beloved.

'Reviled' means anyone or anything you have an intimacy toward with a negative emotional context, 'Beloved' means anyone or anything you have a positive intimacy toward, and also includes loyal descendants and things you own, but only if they're not reviled.

>or attributes so I'll trust your judgement there (if she's trekking / swimming between places probably better stamina than your average caster / social specialist?).
Attributes are hard to train up in play, particularly at high levels, so if you're going akuma it makes sense to go for extremes in order to take full advantage of that. Beautiful and terrible as the morning and the night, fair as the sea and the snow on the mountain, stronger than the foundations of the earth, etc. Buying all nine attributes up from zero to 6 dots only costs 216 BP, so that's at least a plausible option. Maybe leave Strength at 1, since her job doesn't involve hard hitting or heavy lifting, and Charisma at 0, plus some unconscious use of Avoiding The Truth Technique like http://www.kiwiblitz.com/comic/page-287, so she's very clear and upfront about what she's trying to do, but nobody believes her until it's too late?

Another thing to think about is grafted artifacts. Neither canonical Kimbery charms nor the Sidereal charmsset have a good general-purpose 'workshop up your sleeve' charm. If you're putting a lot of focus on Craft, that could be a problem. There's a 3-dot artifact, Bracers of Universal Crafting, which is an all-purpose toolkit and gives a broad bonus to fine manipulation. An upgraded 4-dot version provides all that plus Doc Ock-style tentacles (made of force fields, so when not in use it's just a couple of flat panels on your back) complete with extended reach and an integrated AI to simplify multitasking.

Could have your whole spinal column and most of the associated nerves ripped out, replaced with starmetal wire, and overclocked for improved reflexes. That'd be a 5-dot artifact, providing another +6 dexterity for most purposes - equivalent to, in d20 system terms, something like +20 to dex-based rolls, and with base dexterity 6, barefoot land movement speed of 216 feet per six seconds with other combat actions, or 324 in an all-out sprint. Even faster with Perfected Boots or equivalent power armor, or when swimming with Mother Sea Mastery and maybe Acrid Slipstream Assist.

>What's the difference between the first block of spells and the second?
The former is first-circle necromancy, using the morbid Essence of the Underworld. The latter is first-circle sorcery, using living Essence. Development in completely different directions.
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No. 867790 ID: af6e04

>In order to speed this process up, build a more shared setting, and make sure everybody's paying attention, please feel free to suggest ideas for other characters. A character's player can veto, at least during character creation, in which case the proposal turns out to have been nothing more than unsubstantiated in-setting rumor.
Alright, now that I have some free time and mental energy.

>Any co-owners, allowed to draw power from the site and possibly control some of it's functions when they're visiting?
Astius has plenty of hopeful and lazy mortals living within her castle who act as worshipers, maintenance workers, and voluntary revenants (when they die) and have low level access. She's also on friendly terms with a giant wyrm whose huge body/tail can often be found weaving a long path through the doors, hallways, and vents of the palace.

>How much geomantic power is focused here, on a scale from one to five?
Five. Astius doesn't go halfway.

>Does it have a winch-and-bucket elevator for ground access, or a magical levitation platform, or a skyship dock?
Huge levitation platform capable of taking up an entire village worth of mortals at once. Also has four of those UFO style light beams that can lift people up. Two on port side, two on starboard.

>Can the entire structure descend safely to the ground?
Yes indeed, though it's a time-consuming process. Large landing platform extrudes from the bottom of the castle to absorb inertia and keep the whole thing level on uneven ground.

>What is the structure's overall shape? Is the interior a luxurious palace, or starkly unfurnished like a tomb? Rugged and battle-hardened, or delicate as spun glass?
Very tall, high center of gravity. Cluster of towers stretching up far into the sky. Interior is a luxurious palace. The structure is not battle-hardened, but it is hardy and fortified.

>Does it conceal itself from all outside detection within a cloak of illusions?
Astius doesn't seem like the secret world type, so I'd say it's right out there for everybody to see.

>Are there any notable traps, secret passages, libraries, workshops, climate-control systems?
What kind of lich doesn't have a library? The largest known mobile library, it's easy to get lost among the towering bookshelves. Palace is full of large stone vents that range from just big enough to walk upright, to big enough to fit five men laying down. They make for good shortcuts if you know where you're going but they tend to be labyrinthine. Secret vaults are generally only accessible through these vents. Astius probably has a workshop too, but I'm having trouble thinking up anything creative for that.

>Lightning cannons on turret mounts, skeleton warriors which reassemble themselves almost as fast as they can be smashed apart?
On the former, I would say forbidding crackling orbs that bathe the exterior in an otherworldly light. And a simple yes on the latter. Similar lightning sentries can be found in high-security areas of the interior.
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No. 867989 ID: d36af7

>>867790
>Five. Astius doesn't go halfway.
Base of ten geomantic power points, then. Could take a five-dot hearthstone, or trade that off for more manse powers.
>Interior is a luxurious palace. The structure is not battle-hardened, but it is hardy
No extra points from Habitability nor Fragility, then, though there might be one or two points from a Vulnerability.
>maintenance workers
How intensive are the maintenance requirements, on a scale from one to five, and what are they specifically? Could include anything from ordinary sweeping and polishing and adjustments to machinery, to regularly scheduled ritual sacrifices, to a 'load-bearing boss' who props the place up just by staying in residence and observing certain sacred vows.
> and fortified.
> forbidding crackling orbs that bathe the exterior in an otherworldly light.
The Fortress power costs 3 geomantic energy points, improves how much damage the manse can take before suffering power failure, and provides some short-range anti-siege defenses. Let's say the 'otherworldly light' is roughly equivalent, in practical terms, to boiling oil.
>descend safely to the ground?
>Yes indeed, though it's a time-consuming process.
Limited Mobility, a 2-point power. Being built on an airborne demesne which moves around is a separate 1-point power,
>The largest known mobile library
Could be a 2-point Archive power, covering five subjects. Each 'subject' could be one dot in a particular specialty for a particular skill, one degree in a particular thaumaturgical Art, or spells, or maybe other things. A single Adamant or Void circle spell takes up three slots, Sapphire or Labyrinth circle spells take up one slot each, Emerald or Shaowland circle spells are five per slot. Could take the Archive power multiple times for greater capacity... or you could spend four geomantic power points on broader Ability Enlightenment, providing comprehensive knowledge of any four entire skills.
>reaspawning skeletons
Probably a Bound Servant Force, costing three points, with rapid repair as another of those anti-siege powers from Fortress. Magnitude 5, with one purchase, meaning around five or six hundred chump-level zombies, or no more than two hundred if they're equivalent to heroic mortals.
>levitation platform
One point on Magical Conveniences provides that and more.
>UFO abduction beams
If these can be used to grab unwilling targets, though, that's something more like Integrated Essence Artillery, a 4-point power, which would also require either Ability Enlightenment w/ Archery, sapient (a 5-point power), or Central Control (a 2-point power) for targeting. If someone can operate the controls without being attuned to the manse, that's an additional 1-point power, Password Activations.

>Astius probably has a workshop too, but I'm having trouble thinking up anything creative for that.
Well-equipped but mundane workspaces for any five Crafts (say, Air, Fire, Water, Wood, and Oil, for all the mundane trades needed to support a palace plus necrotech construction, repair, and maintenance) would be a single 2-point power.
A flawless workshop for a single Craft is a 3-point power. Thousands of square feet of shop floor, vast selection of raw materials including some exotic ingredients from the far corners of the world. The kind of infrastructure major powers in the default setting pick fights over.
After that the next big step is automation. A fully automated production line for mundane goods is a 4-point power, plus another point for each additional Craft it can work with, and needs a Maintenance rating of at least 3.
A fully automated production line for solid-state magic items is a 5-point power, and needs a Maintenance rating of at least 4. Nobody in the default setting is widely known to have access to a working one, much less the knowledge of how to build new ones.

Outside of actual crafting, there's magical stuff. A Host-Binding Circle, as a 2-point power, would make it possible to alter the summoning and binding of a second circle demon so you instead end up with an army of that demon's first-circle progeny all bound to your will at once.
Assuming this is a Void-aspected manse, could take the Ebon Dragnet power for 3 points. Anyone slain-but-not-disintegrated while inside lingers for a scene, conscious but physically incapacitated. That's enough to deliver a drawn-out final speech (maybe 20 minutes or more), or, since they're not quite all the way dead, to receive medical care and possibly recover in full. If not, after dying properly, they automatically stick around as a visible ghost for at least one additional scene.
Could take the Rainbow Tabernacle power which provides a discount and power boost to sorcery spells cast on the premises, or Black Tabernacle which works the same for necromancy spells. Normally costs 4 points, but Void aspect reduces Black Tabernacle to 3, and Solar aspect would similarly reduce Rainbow Tabernacle to 3.

>good shortcuts if you know where you're going but they tend to be labyrinthine. Secret vaults are generally only accessible through these vents.
A 1-point power could provide several minor tricks, such as a labyrinthine layout that subtly steers the unfamiliar back toward the exit, or traps that are more inconvenient or humiliating than deadly. The sort of thing McGuyver might be challenged by. Self-resetting traps could count as one of those Magical Conveniences.
Dangerous traps, as a 2-point power, provides five effects that could kill mortals, or injure weak or unwary exalts. Basic nasty-dungeon stuff: keyholes that spray acid when probed with lockpicks, a sloped hallway which releases a cascade of oil from the top and jets of fire at the bottom, a room with spikes on the ceiling and a net of steel wires concealed in the cracks between cobblestones to lift you up into 'em. The sort of thing Indiana Jones might be challenged by.
For three points, a single "ultra-deadly" trap. Not necessarily lethal; it might simply strand victims in a pocket dimension. Regardless, it's ridiculously excessive force against mortals, meant to pose a serious threat even to well-prepared exalts. The sort of thing Superman might be challenged by.

Concealed doors that open and close silently, providing a Stealth bonus to anyone who knows how to make use of them, are a 2-point power.

A Veil of Shadows that conceals certain areas (alcoves, meeting rooms, vaults) from outside observation, including scrying, would be a 2-point power, but that just imposes a penalty. Perfect wards against all scrying and teleportation would be a 3-point power for a single room up to 25 yards across, or 4 to cover the entire manse, and in either case partial protection from normal senses is also included. Extending the anti-teleport ward beyond the manse's walls would cost a total of 8 points (5 for the wards, 3 for Zone of Influence), or 9 for a range of miles (4-point Extended Zone of Influence), but then other manse powers can also operate within that range. Skeleton warriors could be sent out on patrol, powers like Comfort Zone or Subtle Breath Of Sextes Jylis could make hostile environments safe or vice versa.

If you want more powers than you have the points for, the basic answer is to draw power from somewhere else. Two ways to do that: one, call on the Yozis or Neverborn to do it for you, by casting an Adamant or Void circle spell (respectively). Nigh-unlimted power, subject to the boss's whims.
Two, do it yourself, the hard way. Multiple manses. Each one has a 1-point Network Node power, allowing them to share information instantly, regardless of distance. 'Donor' manses spend points on the Geomantic Relay power, no more than their rating, which provides no local benefit. 'Recipient' manses spent one point on the Geomantic Nexus power, and then can draw on the network's pool of additional points provided by those relays.
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No. 868055 ID: 3abd97

>>867771
>valor
>If somebody shouted [...] Come out and face me properly [...] would she take that seriously at all?
Probably not. Unless of course this was someone she was helping and answering the call to an honest fight was a necessary step in guiding them towards their best self. (A certain kind of hero might need to believe that can work).

I was more thinking "unpredictable and dangerous" in that her priorities don't line up in a way that will make sense to an uniformed observer. Like for someone who's been traumatized or abused, helping them reach their best self might be therapy that frees them to live their live again. But if you're a nascent Bruce Wayne, she'll make sure your parents are killed in front of you. How else could you reach your Batman potential?

It's an alien mindset or prioritization problem. Helping people be their best selves is ranked more highly as a compassionate action than things like "safety" or "what they actually want". I figure a similar problem contributes to "facing down death and terror with a smile", she's not ranking violence or imminent danger where most people would.

>temperance
>vast web of lies with nothing at all left in the center
Yeah not so much what I was thinking.

>Deep concern with honesty, getting the truth out where everybody can see it
>stays mostly functional when the whole party's been dosed with hallucinogens and dumped in a disorienting kaleidioscopic oubliette, because that's basically Tuesday for her
This sound very right though. Madness behind mirrors and getting people to be true to who they really are, and what they can be.

Looks like Compassion 5, Conviction 3, Temperance 4, Valor 2 then.

>behavioral modifications
Mother Before Daughter could work assuming "harm" fits her subject perception. Trust Is Naïve sounds like an entertaining way to treat how she sees people she's helping (they're just misguided). Would that disallow being able to play villain or foil to someone if that's what they needed? (Wouldn't be able to recognize driving someone to hate / oppose / attack you).

>Charisma at 0, plus some unconscious use of Avoiding The Truth Technique like http://www.kiwiblitz.com/comic/page-287, so she's very clear and upfront about what she's trying to do, but nobody believes her until it's too late?
Does charisma mean something different in an exalted setting? That seems a weird choice for someone invested in interpersonal stuff. I do enjoy characters who lie with the truth though, and people not believing the crazy person seems apropos.

>maxing all stat from the get go
>even more artifacts
I'm starting to suffer from Rhea's problem of confusing resource limits walking out from the underground to the forested wilderness. Also starting to get leery of getting too much stuff instead of investing in things she can do.

>power armor
That feels like the wrong direction.

>The former is first-circle necromancy, using the morbid Essence of the Underworld. The latter is first-circle sorcery, using living Essence. Development in completely different directions.
Silly me, thinking necromancy was a subset or sorcery. So separate initiations / awakenings for each then.
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No. 868276 ID: d36af7

>>868055
>Silly me, thinking necromancy was a subset or sorcery. So separate initiations / awakenings for each then.
Yes. Among the yozis, only Oramus and the Ebon Dragon have anything to do with necromancy, and even then no further than the Labyrinth circle, but becoming akuma wouldn't negate a sidereal's native charmset, including the potential for Shadowland circle initiation. If anything, Kimbery might leave that part of your soul alone because she's scared to touch it.

>Does charisma mean something different in an exalted setting? That seems a weird choice for someone invested in interpersonal stuff.
Charisma and Manipulation can both be used in social combat for many of the same things, and the core book honestly doesn't do a great job of explaining the difference. Lot of people think of it as Charisma being honest and Manipulation being dishonest, but I think that oversimplifies the matter. My interpretation is it's about force vs. finesse, like strength vs. dexterity. Charisma can be "You should do this because I want it, and I'm awesome, everyone should do whatever I say" while Manipulation can be "You should do this because you want it, deep in your heart of hearts, regardless of what I want." Any given akuma is literally in-setting a min-maxed character, rebuilt heart and soul to excel at a particular task, quite possibly at the expense of being remotely healthy or functional in other respects. Buying the first few dots in an attribute is actually fairly cheap: 5 xp and undefined training time (magical assistance or some other special justification is required) to buy from 0 to 1, 4 XP and one month from 1 to 2, 8 xp and two months from 2 to 3. There's no special penalty for charisma zero beyond having fewer dice for charisma-based actions. Same applies to Strength and Manipulation, but Appearance 0 makes any face-to-face interaction difficult or impossible, unless it's based on intimidation. Mental attributes at zero would mean you're not quite up to the level of "I think therefore I am," or even "fire bad!" Dexterity zero indicates near-total paralysis, while Stamina zero indicates skin like tissue paper and imminent, if not ongoing, vital organ failure. Extremely high mental attributes seemed like a fitting part of the 'unpredictable and dangerous' aspect, so she can routinely make observations and deductions that even extraordinary humans are incapable of, which would contribute to an alien perspective.

>Even more artifacts
>That feels like the wrong direction.
I'll try to stick closer to the themes, then. These are from Oadenol's Codex, including the design notes below each. Aesthetic tweaks or even radical variants are not only permissible, but encouraged, wherever inspiration strikes.

DARK RIDER (Artifact 3)
Dark riders are foot-high statuettes chipped from obsidian and attached to a thin base of magical material. The figures are humanoid but vaguely monstrous. They often show horns, large teeth or elongated normal features such as fingers or eyes.
A character activates the dark rider by committing six motes to it, making the statuette blur into the character’s shadow. The shadow takes the form depicted by the statuette. From there, it watches the character’s back, making it impossible to surprise him. The monstrous shadow also lends the character a frightening appearance, adding three dice to social rolls that benefit from the unnerving mien.
The dark rider can also be used offensively. A character mentally commands the rider and may insinuate it into another person’s shadow, where it conceals itself near-perfectly. Rolls to detect the rider are difficulty 5. The character can see through the shadow’s eyes at will, which causes both the character’s and the rider’s eyes to burn crimson (decreasing the detection difficulty to three). He can command the rider to return if it is within 10 miles, or to envelop a target. The rider then inflicts an eight-die clinch attack that, if the rider maintains it for at least two actions, forces the victim Elsewhere. The dark rider must then immediately return to its master and deposit the victim back in Creation.
Bright light (such as that of a Solar anima at the 12+ mote level) and fire both burn away the shadow instantly, ending the attunement and leaving nothing but a small statuette in its place.
No one of these abilities is very powerful, but all of them are useful. The shadow makes an effective personal guard, spy or kidnapper. It has a weakness against flame, but this is a two-dot drawback at best, perhaps accounting for the low attunement cost.

ILLUSION-SHATTERING MIRROR (Artifact 3)
These small hand-mirrors are backed by moonsilver instead of regular silver. When the mirror reflects a false image or appearance, from magical illusions to mundane disguises, the moonsilver alters the reflection to display the truth to anyone who looks in the mirror. Confronting a person suffering from an illusion effect with one of these mirrors shatters that effect. The mirror only performs its magic when attuned for eight motes.
This artifact definitely provides a great advantage. No illusions or disguises are safe against a character with the mirror, and it can even defeat some forms of mental influence. Some Charms may still confound the mirror if
potent enough (see the sidebar “Powers Versus Powers or Charms” on p. 13). Still, this artifact is reactive, not active. It is a significant defense but no more; a character wielding it does not become able to accomplish amazing things. It can also be inconvenient to keep glancing in a mirror. Because it doesn’t qualify for overwhelming advantage, it remains Artifact 3.


CLOAK OF VANISHING ESCAPE (Artifact 4)
The tough, white fabric of this cloak never seems to soil. It’s thick enough to keep a traveler warm like a heavy mantle, but that isn’t its purpose. The cloak’s wearer can wrap the cloak around herself and disappear in a burst of white light, reappearing anyplace she can clearly see. It attunes for five motes, while activating the cloak requires five motes and several seconds of concentration. In combat, the character takes a miscellaneous action to activate the artifact’s power before disappearing on her next action. The character can take up to one additional living creature for an additional five motes, and she can travel no more than (owner’s Essence) miles. Because the character must see her intended location, the cloak does not work well for the blind or in the dark.
Instantaneous teleportation is a great wonder in Creation, and this artifact makes a character almost impossible to corner or capture. It has the drawbacks of slow activation and limited targeting. It is possible to trap a character using this artifact (in a sealed cell or in total darkness) and to wound or kill her before she escapes—these justify the lower attunement and activation costs. Using it also means abandoning one’s allies. This is a tremendous advantage, but not world-shaking enough to make it Artifact 5.

FOLDING SHIP (Artifact 4)
This double-masted ocean-going merchant’s vessel has a hull of strong, gold-tinged wood and steelsilk sails (see p. 158). It requires no crew: the ship handles its own sail, bilge and the like. It needs only a helmsman. From the helm, a pilot can verbally command the rest of the ship.
At its owner’s command, the folding ship folds itself up in a visual spectacle, completing the one-minute process as a 1’ x 6” x 6” box that weighs 20 pounds. It takes just as long for the boat to unfold. Twelve straight hours as a box repairs the ship of any damage it may take. If the owner wants, the folding ship can reassemble as a vessel with self-moving oars and a shallower draft for river travel. The attunement cost is 10 motes, and using Sail Charms with an attuned folding ship provides a 2m (minimum 1m) discount.
The folding ship offers complete mastery of water travel. Though it could certainly be more impressive (one of the First Age, hearthstone-powered ships, perhaps), it needs no crew but the character and is ideal for getting just about anywhere on the water. Plus, it’s incredibly cool. This is a greater wonder.

FORGOTTEN BLADE (Artifact 5)
Perhaps the Sidereals forged the Forgotten Blade in the High First Age, but records of the weapon are scant even in Heaven. The Forgotten Blade may or may not be beautiful—it is impossible to remember. This daiklave has average statistics, but as long as one does not look at it, one cannot remember its appearance. In fact, no one but the person attuned to it can remember it at all when not in its presence. This unnatural mental influence requires two Willpower to shake off for a scene. Attuning requires five motes.
The weapon does not hurt people physically. It inflicts ‘phantom’ damage (mark it with a circle in health boxes). Its damage rating is normal for a daiklave, but the character wielding it adds Intelligence rather than Strength to calculate base damage. Each level of damage the weapon inflicts causes the victim to forget how to use one Ability (determined at random) and the last five years of her life. Someone “killed” by the Forgotten Blade suffers complete amnesia. Victims suffer normal wound penalties due to disorientation. Ability use returns as the wounds heal (at the same rate as bashing), but lost memories are gone forever. Compassionate warriors may prefer to cut away smaller chunks of memory or target specific memories with called shots. The difficulty of the attack increases by one (“forget only the last year,” or limit the number of random Abilities) to four (“forget the last five minutes,” or, “forget me completely”).
As an amazing power without any real analog, the Forgotten Blade clearly represents a five-dot power. Its only drawback is that if its owner lets his attunement lapse, he forgets he owns it.

RING OF BEING (Artifact 5)
Forged in the secret manse at the heart of the Imperial Mountain, each ring of being is made only of a single magical material, purified a dozen times over. This complete purity, commingled with the Essence of their unique forge, affirms and protects its wearer’s identity and nature. Only things of Creation proper can affect the character—the dead, Fair Folk, demons, gods and the Wyld cannot even target the character with their magic. They may use physical and social attacks, but everything else does not touch her. Elementals, however, are of Creation, and a weapon empowered as an artifact or by Charms still counts as physical force. A ring of being only functions for an Exalt natural to the magical material and costs 15 motes to attune.
This is very, very powerful. Its power names entire classes of entity that no longer threaten the character—at least not effectively. Mundane attacks could still take her down—don’t expect to wrestle the Unconquered Sun and win—but it’s not very likely.

One- and two-dot artifacts weren't included in that list because none of the ones listed there seemed like an amazing thematic fit, and in any case such items are more the sort of thing that could be acquired as 'random treasure' (in tombs or vaults, wielded by mortal heroes, presented as 'gifts' from benevolent or conniving spirits, etc.), or crafted in a reasonable time during play, or sold at auction without kingdom-toppling quantities of money changing hands. Almost anything you could buy off the shelf IRL is available as a 1- or 2-dot artifact, likely upgraded to be nigh indestructible, need no fuel besides ambient essence (or committed motes), and incorporate convenient functions that would be implausible for mundane engineering, such as the Thousand Comforts Lounge which can be easily rearranged into any single piece of overstuffed furniture, from an armchair to a small footrest to a king-sized bed. The ubiquity of such minor wonders in the First Age is a big part of what made quality of life so much better for most people, most of the time. Any 'minor magic item' effect can also be worked out, including consumables like scrolls and potions. In fact, there are single-use artifacts all the way up the scale, though the only 5-dot example I can remember offhand is a city-killing weapon.

>Also starting to get leery of getting too much stuff instead of investing in things she can do.
Charms, then. First there's the general charms, mostly meaning Excellencies and upgrades thereto.

Black Tide Style consists of seven charms, including the capstone which lets you punch somebody's air-only lungs into permanent water-only gills or vice versa, but since it's a terrestrial style you could buy it at half price if you first learn Roots of the Brass Lotus. Maybe throw in the first three or five charms of White Veil Style to make that a round number, and enhance your ability to fight with subtlety, delivering Touch effects or even mundane poisons without the target ever becoming aware that anything happened. All that would require Martial Arts 5, and White Veil would additionally require 2 in Socialize and either Larceny, Presence, or Stealth.

You probably don't want to take the first or second excellencies for any ability from the sidereal charmset. There are cases where they could be useful, particularly for reaching outside Kimbery's themes, but most of the time it'll be redundant. Training time is just a day or two, anyway, so it'd be easy to pick up later if you change your mind. Main one to consider is the Third Excellency, which allows rerolls. Yozis don't have any analogue to that, since they still can't really conceive of their own failure, or even inadequacy. If you've got a dot in a given skill and think you might need to use it when Kimbery's themes wouldn't apply, such as subduing someone you have no prior connection to without poison or excessive cruelty, or you just need an excellency as a prerequisite for some other charm, that's probably the one to pick.

There are two other general sidereal charms which require 4 dots and an excellency in the appropriate ability, and Essence 3. First is the Fateful (Ability) Excellency, which reduces target numbers. See, normally the way Exalted works is, you roll a pool of 10-sided dice, 7 or higher counts as a success, 10 counts as two successes. Spend a mote on the Fateful Excellency, and that'll turn into 6 or higher. Four motes (maybe more or less, with other target number modifying shenanigans, which Sidereals have a lot of) plus one willpower? Every single die in the pool counts as an automatic success. Represents messing with fate and probability to slant things toward the best plausible outcomes - but pushing that to extremes does, technically, cost you the slim chance of a heroic beyond-the-impossible outcome represented by rolling all 10s.
Propitious (Ability) Alignment ties into sidereal astrology, giving you a scene-long discount on excellencies for the skill in question that's partly based on your mastery of the corresponding astrological college.

On to Kimbery charms. First, there's the Excellency. Not technically required, but for an akuma it's sort of a no-brainer. Three charm slots if you're starting at Essence 3. It's the longest of the canon yozi excellencies in terms of wordcount.
The Great Mother is endlessly giving and too often forgiving, a self-defined victim of endless betrayal. She holds others to impossibly high standards, but thinks she is fair. Secrets are among the greatest purviews of her depths, particularly shameful truths and those kept with force and guile. Though her patronage and kindness are real, spurning her incites fury that drowns all opposition in her corrosive touch. Kimbery hides ugliness beyond imagining beneath playful waves of beauty, charm and poise. The Great Mother rejects the immediacy of brute force violence in favor of poison, acid, bleeding, curses, disease and other tactics that perpetuate spiteful suffering without further effort. Her social tricks follow the same logic, stirring undercurrents of distrust and dissent beneath the polite surface of society until the entire organization dissolves. Some Yozis call Kimbery lazy and cowardly for striking once and holding back while afflicted victims weaken, but she considers this elegant practicality. Everything she does harms someone or sets them up to suffer worse in the future, but she is capable of martyring herself to be the one in pain. Because her depths hold no lasting generosity, she demands payment proportional to her sacrifice. Whether beneficiaries ask for her gifts or not doesn’t matter, but she gleefully tortures those who insult her by refusing her largesse. Those who cannot pay her back conventionally pay with screams. She takes great pride in brokering deals, offering the just and true their darkest desires so that she may see them brought low. She considers herself to be the ultimate trafficker, moving everything from worlds to secrets, with a discerning eye for an advantageous bargain. She has a talent for temptation, using secret lusts against her enemies as a rook into further disfigurement. That Kimbery takes pleasure in the agonies of subordinates is her worst-kept secret, but she sacrifices this joy to avoid wasting what is hers. She shows no restraint in tormenting enemies, punishing them for actual transgressions and venting her bottled-up fury toward all who escape punishment. The Sea That Marched Against the Flame loves to warp herself and others into new shapes as useful as they are uncomfortable, imagining herself a great artist. She may be right, but even her siblings find her aesthetics bizarre and vile. Kimbery’s Excellency aids actions that create disturbing art in any media, whether conventional paintings and sculptures or artful blood spatters on a wall. Appropriate stunts can make almost anything into vile art. Her power helps keep secrets by any means necessary. This Charm assists all actions to cause delayed or ongoing harm. Purely immediate harm falls outside Kimbery’s purview unless punishing someone who has benefited from her help or betrayed her love. She may also impose harm for the sadistic joy of doing so rather than expediency or necessity.

Second (Kimbery) Excellency is an upgrade to the first, rather than a standalone charm. Just one charm slot, lets you add successes directly to a roll instead of, or in combination with, dice.

(Kimbery) Mythos Exultant requires Essence 3 and the excellency, and gives you a third option for stunt awards (normally every action, a big part of the economy of combat tactics): instead of recovering motes or willpower, you can heal damage. Just bashing or lethal, no aggravated. Lots of sidereal charms, particularly the capstones, have a cost in health levels of damage; this would let you use them far more freely, in addition to the obvious benefits if stabbed by an actual enemy.

(Kimbery) Inevitability Technique also requires Essence 3 and is another target-number dice trick. Not as powerful as the sidereal version in any single application, but far broader, and possibly more efficient at countering enemy probability manipulations.

Effortless (Kimbery) Dominance requires Essence 4 and provides a discount on the excellency based on how many times you've used it already in the scene, eventually all the way down to zero. In an extended action scene, the value of zero-mote excellency use can hardly be overstated; this charm (or equivalent), more so even than perfect defenses, is the tipping point where Celestial and Primordial Exalts become effectively unstoppable by almost anything but each other, since it means they can attack and defend with maxed-out dice pools while saving all their stunt awards to fuel other effects.

So Speaks (Kimbery) requires Essence 5 and reduces the cost of the excellency by half, not cumulative with Effortless Dominance.

Mother Sea Mastery negates penalties for operating underwater, including the water resistance which would otherwise prevent bows or swung melee weapons from working effectively, and provides broad bonuses to a lot of noncombat actions involving liquid, such as swimming or catching fish. At Essence 3+ it also negates fatigue from relevant actions.

Building off of MSM there's:
-Acrid Slipstream Assist doubles the speed of any water vehicle, or turns anything big enough to stand on (e.g. a daiklaive) into a surfboard
-Fathomless Poison Haven protects beloved targets against environmental hazards, any liquid is as the purest air to breath and cleanest water to drink
-Spiteful Sea Tincture, lays magic poison traps
-Tidal Renewal Discipline, fast recharge while submerged

Building off of Spiteful Sea Tincture:
-Sea Within Veins Prana provides total and permanent immunity to disease, plus a poison blood spray counterattack when wounded. Second purchase upgrades it to xenomorph-style acid.
-Great Mother's Tears is four separate poison-related upgrades they apparently couldn't think up good names for separately. One lets you make nonlethal knockout poisons, another is for mutagens, another limits the total penalties you can take from poisons and makes you immune to further poison damage once you're down to about half HP.
Ichor Flux Tendrils is the remote-control tentacle thing, and a second purchase lets them continue grappling somebody without requiring your attention.

Building off of Tidal Renewal Discipline:
-Sea Dissolves Herself lets you convert unwanted Shaping into an aquatic-themed mutation, and remove mutations you gave yourself.
-What Lurks Beneath lets you summon aquatic critters, basically aquaman's fish telepathy. Second purchase expands that to include first-circle demons. Third, at Essence 5+, to Cthulhu, Godzilla, or other such aquatic behemoths... though it doesn't actually let you control them.

Building off of Intolerable Burning Truths:
-All Things Betray is a surprise-negator and initiative booster
-Retributive Tsunami Force is a magical flurry of attacks, potentially including social attacks
-Bitter Heart Unbleeding adds your total number of negative intimacies to your soak against a single attack (it's worth noting that another Intolerable Burning Truths variant, Hate Springs Eternal, lets you maintain an unlimited number of negative intimacies, though it has other downsides which seemed inconsistent with the character you're designing) and further upgrades have other physical and social defensive benefits.


Then there's the shintai, at Essence 5 with lots of prerequisites. Your boss-mode transformation, basically. A huge gelatinous tentacle monster, virtually immune to anything but energy weapons.

Sidereal charms:
Most of the Resistance tree only requires 3 or fewer dots in the Resistance skill, exceptions being Heartless Maiden Trance, fourth or further purchases of Ox-Body for extra health levels, and of course the capstone.
-Water And Fire Treaty provides protection from environmental effects, including non-liquid-based problems which Fathomless Poison Haven won't cover. The upgrade, Water And Fire Legion, lets you bind a touched elemental to protect something you care about. Akuma cannot learn or use the usual sorcery spell for summoning and binding elementals.
-Someone Else's Destiny lets you catch incoming poison, sickness, or madness and tag somebody else with it instead. The upgrade, Shield of Destiny, lets you do much the same thing with post-soak damage and return it as a counterattack.
-Optimistic Security Practice is the illusory-hostages thing, plus a soak boost that's even better if you're not wearing armor (and the Infinite Resplendence Amulet doesn't count as armor). Upgrade is Heartless Maiden Trance.
-Storm's Eye Stance, the capstone, needs all six of those plus Essence 4.

Most of the Ride tree is about acquiring and upgrading minions. The only one that's not, Yellow Path, requires Ride 3. Mostly it's a strategic-scale travel speed boost, applicable regardless of the specific method of travel, but when you've got a deadline to beat it can grant miraculous shortcuts, effectively teleportation. Can't bypass active opposition, though. If you're trying to rescue a princess from an arranged marriage, it might let you run a thousand miles in ten seconds, if that's what it takes to get there at the exact moment when the priest is asking whether anyone objects, but you'd have to deal with any intervening guards or locked doors the old fashioned way. Kimbery's excellency could make that sort of miracle much more reliable.

For Sail, the main one you were looking for is Mirror-Shattering Method, which requires Sail 4 and Stone Skipping Spirit, a very straightforward charm which negates environmental problems for a ship you're aboard.
-Serendipitous Voyage helps you locate a ship (or other group conveyance, such as a trade caravan) headed where you want to go - whether or not that's the intended destination. Simplest way to a pirate's lair is to be captured, for example.
-Salt Into Ash Sleight and the upgrade, Walls of Salt and Ash, are mostly defenses against aquatic spirits.
-Five Ordeals Odyssey, the capstone, is a plot device for arranging 'out of the frying pan, into the fire' situations. Some obstacle to travel which you can't deal with effectively is replaced by a completely different obstacle.

With three charm slots (Adopting the Untamed Face lets you talk to animals, Becoming the Wilderness lets you treat the harshest natural environments like pleasant parkland) and Survival 4, you could use Dreaming The Wild Lands to shift scenery around. Big stuff takes an hour to get anywhere, but individual rocks and trees can move fast enough to function as an attack.
The other side of the Sidereal Survival tree is Sky And Rain Mantra => Sky Spirit Demand, for manipulating the weather and air elementals. Then the capstone, Wilderness-Commanding Practice, is basically a miles-wide druidic C3I system.

From Thrown, the two you probably want are Willful Weapon Method, which is the shadow-projectile trick, and Life Gets Worse Approach, which adds damage, embeds the weapon in the wound, and makes the victim attract other projectiles like a cartoon magnet. Both require only 3 dots in Thrown.

For Craft, you asked which are most applicable to reshaping bodies and minds? Well, Craft (Air) includes tattooing, and Craft (Wood) could be applicable to cosmetic or reconstructive surgery (though you'd also need Medicine). Reshaping minds is usually the province of social abilities, but Craft (Smoke) is the applicable skill for resculpting souls, including with some fairly basic necromancy spells, or fabricating new ones from scratch - good luck finding the right tools and materials for that, though. Craft (Steam) is for altering bodies on a genetic level, but learning it requires two dots each in Wood and Water plus an equal rating in Medicine, much the same way Craft (Lightning), for magitech, requires two dots each in Air and Fire plus an equal rating in Lore. Craft (Crystal) is the one for destiny and narrative, crucial for various Sidereal and Raksha stuff. As for specific charms:
-Elemental Vision broadens the applicability of Compassion channels, and provides a free target number reduction, for any action targeting an individual strongly associated with one of the elements for which you have the corresponding Craft skill rated at 4+. For example if you've got Craft (Fire) 4, you could channel Compassion on Dex + Medicine and Manipulation + Presence or Investigation rolls to vivisect a volcano god or torture information out of a fire-aspect dragon-blooded exalt. Wood requires only 2 dots if you're Chosen of Serenity, or Water for Secrets.
-World-Shaping Artistic Vision is another target-number manipulation thing that can easily apply to non-Craft actions, but requires some Craft rated at 4+
-Destiny-Knitting Entanglement requires any one craft at 3+, and can target anything you own regardless of how it's made
-Predestined Delivery Shaping requires any one Craft at 4+, but sending an object you don't know how to make is slower and less reliable. Craft (Crystal) always helps.
-Excellent Implementation of Objectives speeds up any Craft project for which you've got the relevant skill at 3+
-Mending Warped Designs requires EIoO and an appropriate Craft rated at 4+ based on the thing you're trying to repair, or Medicine for living creatures

For Dodge, everything but the capstone only requires 3 dots, apart from some upgrades which require 4, but maxing it out is probably smart if you're serious about not wanting to get hit - unless you've got Defense of Shining Joy, below.
-Absence negates penalties, and is prerequisite for all the rest.
-Duck Fate lets you dodge absolutely anything except the Great Curse, Paradox, and unexpected attacks. Not just physical stuff, either. Expensive and sometimes unreliable, particularly against high-Essence attackers.
-Trouble-Reduction Strategy lets you dodge on someone else's behalf, while they're within (dexterity) yards, including possible use of Duck Fate to negate normally undodgeable stuff like falling damage or heroin addiction.
-Avoidance Kata, the 'I was never here' effect, has Duck Fate as a prereq, and whoever you're protecting with Trouble-Reduction Strategy is retcon-ported away with you, whether they want to go or not, though as usual neither relocation nor memory edit work on those outside of fate.

Each dot in Linguistics is another language (or, really, a group of languages; by Exalted's standards, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish are basically just regional dialects of Latin) that you know, and also an improvement to your calligraphy, vocabulary, paragraph-format construction, etc. that serves as the equivalent of Appearance for social combat based on writing. Sidereals only get four non-general Linguistics charms. Blue Vervain Binding and Favorable Inflection Procedure require 3 dots, Abandoned Words Curse requires 4, and the capstone requires 5.

For Performance
-Heart-Brightening Presentation Style requires Performance 2, and lets you use any Bureaucracy, Performance, Presence, or Socialize Excellency for a roll with any of the other three skills, as well as allowing you to channel Compassion for any such roll. Yes, even a Socialize roll to break up a happy couple by seduction or slander, or a Bureaucracy roll to calculate how long you can starve those hardworking orphans before the factory's productivity will start to decline.
-Faultless Ceremony requires Performance 3
-Perfection In Life requires Performance 2, and enhances a social attack so anyone who fails to resist it gains a point of WP, but then can't change their mind and resist later in the scene
-Defense of Shining Joy requires Perfection In Life and Performance 3, and lets you use Performance instead of Dodge for, y'know, dodging. Also negates some penalties.
-Song of Spirit Persuasion requires Performance 3 and knowledge of the First Language
-Ice And Fire Binding requires Song of Spirit Persuasion and Faultless Ceremony, it's a multipurpose summoning ritual with some interesting teamwork options

For Socialize:
-Shun the Smiling Lady requires 2 dots, you touch somebody and people tend to stop loving them, at least in romantic ways
-Cash and Murder Games requires StSS and 3 dots, inflicts a relationship on somebody, causing them to view a particular other person in a particular way, and imposing penalties on any attempt they make to resist that person.
-Life Without Compunction requires StSS and 4 dots, lets you violate taboos or do outrageously offensive things without making people mad.
-You And Yours Stance requires all three of the above, makes it hard for people to attack you whenever it seems like you'd be willing and/or able to provide what they want.
-Fortuitous Fellowship requires only Socialize 4 and lets you create common-interest groups with a Wits + Socialize roll wherever a sufficient population exists. Much easier to target a group with various effects, rather than a scattered mass of strangers.

I'll do the rest later. Tired and hungry and this post is too long already.
>>
No. 869879 ID: d36af7

Alright, lemme try breaking this down into functional categories, particularly the stuff that couldn't be done by a sufficiently competent mortal.

Must-have:
First Kimbery Excellency
Sorcerous Enlightenment of Kimbery
Mother Sea Mastery
Swallowing the Lotus Root

Necromancy:
3 dots in Occult
Shadowland Circle Necromancy
Craft (Smoke) for soulforging
thaumaturgical Art of the Dead

Fleshwarping:
Medicine
2 dots each in Craft (Water) and Craft (Wood)
Craft (Genesis) for bioengineering - requires specialized workshop, probably at least a 2- or 3-dot manse
thaumaturgical Arts of Alchemy, Geomancy (mostly for enlightening essence), & Husbandry (long-range mental influence on animals and humans)
Spiteful Sea Tincture => Great Mother's Tears (add mutations)
Tidal Renewal Discipline => Sea Dissolves Herself (remove mutations)

Fate-weaving:
Craft (Crystal) is the key skill for sculpting the infinite possibilities of chaos into specific narrative outcomes. For best results you'd want to sneak into Heaven, work directly on the Loom of Fate itself, but it's also used in a lot of sidereal (and raksha) charms, and as the most open-ended way to boost sidereal astrology. If you want something done that could somehow happen by a series of mundane actions and coincidences, and you're not in a wild hurry, sidereal astrology is a very powerful tool.
Excellent Implementation of Objectives => Mending Warped Designs
Third Craft Excellency => Fateful Craft Excellency (some functions of Mending Warped Designs require 20 or 30 successes from a single roll, which can only be done reliably when all dice are converted to successes)

Movement:
Sidereal Athletics, Dodge, and Sail trees
Yellow Path from the Ride tree
resplendent destinies from the colleges of the Crow (lets you turn into a literal bird and fly), the Key (summons the Calibration Gate), the Messenger (lets you ride on an animal which could not otherwise support your weight, and some other bonuses), and the Ship's Wheel (strategic-scale speed boost, fatigue immunity for the duration of a single job)
Acrid Slipstream Assist

Spooky indirect attacks:
Spiteful Sea Tincture => Ichor Flux Tendrils
resplendent destinies from the college of the Rising Smoke (disintegration, super effective on demons; also lets you send and receive secure mail without a fixed address, and boosts charisma when dealing with judges, magistrates, and gods)
sidereal astrology in general, really, it's a whole system for potentially generation-spanning customized blessings and curses
4 dots in Occult + 3 prerequisite charms => Unweaving Method from the sidereal Occult tree, direct damage without the fiddly setup or paradox risk of disintegrating somebody with the Rising Smoke
Conning Chaos Technique, capstone of the sidereal Larceny tree (more of a long-term curse than a quick snipe, can result in uncontrolled wyld mutations for a designated target)
might also want Kimbery Mythos Exultant for combat-speed recovery of health level costs for those last two

Perfect defenses:
Kimbery charmtech building off of All Things Betray (flaw is dependence on either negative emotions, or proximity to large bodies of water)
Absence => Duck Fate (flaw is unreliability against high-Essence problems)
4 dots in melee + Harmony of Blows + Impeding the Flow => Serenity In Blood (flaw is attacks enhanced by sidereal astrology, particularly your own)
The Crystal Chameleon (aka Disco Ninja) and Crane styles of celestial martial arts seem like they could fit the character, though more likely as a further development rather than up front, and both happen to include perfect defenses. Crossed Wings Denial interferes with attacking and costs more each time it's used in a scene, while Flashing Leaves Evasion (aka Shadow Among Shadows) is weak against undodgeable attacks and reroll effects, though it could still be used to dodge, say, an avalanche, or find a dry path through a rainstorm if re-invoked every action. There's a fan-made SMA style based around portals, which could be a really good fit, but I need to go dig it out of some archive again. That, and the fan-made actually playable version of Obsidian Shards of Infinity Style.

I've also possibly completely lost my mind and invented a new custom 5-dot artifact, just for you. It's a hand mirror, frame shaped like a scorpion made of monstrous teeth (a tribute to, or parts from, Ishiika the Grass-Cutter Scythe, a creature or weapon larger than the world) which are held together with wires braided from the threads of Time. The tail serves as a handle from which the stinger-stylus partially detaches, for a tablet phone sort of interface. Use it to spy on somebody from afar, then reach through and grab them to quietly switch places. Flick the image with your finger to launch them into a wall, or off a nearby cliff, or lick for much the same result and incidentally also find out what they taste like. Several other interrelated powers, particularly when socketed with a hearthstone from a manse with Archive and/or Sympathetic Dream Link.

Inspiration for that was partly to create a more lunar/sidereal counterpart to the Atlas of the Unconquered General, an existing 4- or 5-dot artifact which also resembles a hand mirror. The basic version is a battle-management system, keeping track of terrain and the status of any armed forces within a two-mile radius, friendly or enemy. The five-dot version can also do speculative simulations: point at a unit on the map, pay five motes, and ask the corresponding player how they'd respond under particular conditions. If those conditions actually occur within the next day, they've got to either do as they said they would, or spend WP to represent the mental strain of quick adaptation in the face of an enemy commander who's anticipated their every move. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheTapeKnewYouWouldSayThat Very handy for laying elaborate multi-stage fakeout traps. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/BatmanTheAnimatedSeriesE25TheClockKing
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No. 870108 ID: 3abd97

>Charisma and Manipulation
Ah, I see. So Cha is for leaders, demagogues, battlefield commanders, fiery passionate heroes, inspiring speeches to large groups, that kind of thing.

>>868276
>>869879
Okay there's too much cool stuff in there for me to react all of it piece by piece without a huge post so instead I'm going to start figuring out which things I'm starting with.

(Although the fist excellency is a little confusing, it sounds more like a lore description of my patreon than a description of what the power actually does).

Okay, if I go Strength at 1, Charisma 0, other stats 6, how many motes does that leave me to purchase other things with? Actually might as well add in the must-haves, too.

I think I have three constrains to consider as I pick things: motes to spend, charm slots (are this distinct from mote cost?), and how many artifacts I can have attuned to me at once (do I pay for that out of the same starting mote pool, or are those points determined by / coming from somewhere else)?

Carrying capacity might also might be a limiting constrain for artifacts at str 1. Could she even wield that daiklave, for example?
>>
No. 870177 ID: 094652

Embri's M.O. is the Black Widow - seduce her targets into her web, then slaughter them with a series of traps, poisons, and the sharpest dagger in the toolshed. But most of her clients need to think that it's their decision to lose their minds and go down the alleyway for some vixen pussy, or they'll concentrate on a "look, don't touch" mindset to keep themselves from being easily seduced.

So I suppose a good skillset would be
Strength 0 - Intentionally keeps herself lithe for sex appeal, only uses kunai and shivs anyway
Dex 3 - Trained ninja, but she performs less competently than her sister and co-workers
Stamina 0 - Not very concerned about her health
Charisma 2 - As a high-profile assassin, she needs to look normal
Manipulation 6 - Her greatest power is to persuade others into following her to their doom
Appearance 4 - Stark raving beautiful
Intelligence 2 - Her intellect is dull but sufficient
Wits 2 - Does things patiently until the prey is in her web.
Perception 4 - A must-have for any assassin.

So she has an attribute loadout similar to Azure's, but plays differently; Azure is all about constantly being in the spotlight and hacking others with magic while they're distracted by her song and dance number, while Embri is luring targets TO the spotlight, beauty and sexuality that intentionally cloaks its features to entice others with a demand for more, to make them feel like the hero or the lucky fool chasing a mysterious sexual mythical creature, then shutting it off and killing the targets while their pants are down.
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No. 870204 ID: 3abd97

>>870177
>Stamina 0 - Not very concerned about her health
>>868276
>Stamina zero indicates skin like tissue paper and imminent, if not ongoing, vital organ failure
You might want to rethink that one, Kome.
>>
No. 870219 ID: 094652

>>870177
Well, I don't want to spend too many points in stats, because Embri's playstyle requires powers and skills. But yeah, 2's for all dump stats to make her average and untrained for anything other than her job.
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No. 870517 ID: d36af7

>>870108
>the first excellency is a little confusing
Primordial Excellencies are weird like that. Long story short, it can be used to enhance ANY action, regardless of the attributes or skills involved, provided the methodology and context of that action are sufficiently consistent with the given themes. Sidereals operate in a framework of auspicious correspondences between activities and constellations, but Primordials are the ones who set those stars in the sky. Why should they be constrained by categories such as 'sword' or 'bow' or 'fist' which they invented themselves, and could just as easily transcend? (Well, technically they must because denizens of those categories defeated and imprisoned them, but that's just a surrender-oath, not the root of their power.)

>motes to spend,
Let's stick with calling the character-building resource 'bonus points' to avoid confusion with motes of essence, the magical energy which tends to be rapidly spent and recovered in combat time.
>charm slots (are this distinct from mote cost?),
As an akuma you can completely forget about charm slots as a character-creation constraint. Caste/Favored Abilities remain significant, though, since they modify the cost of skills, sidereal charms, MA styles, and spells.
>and how many artifacts I can have attuned to me at once (do I pay for that out of the same starting mote pool, or are those points determined by / coming from somewhere else)?
As a sidereal exalt, you've got a personal essence pool proportionate to the sum of your Willpower and twice your Permanent Essence, which is to say 16 with WP10 and Ess3, and a peripheral essence pool proportionate to your Willpower, Virtues, and six times your permanent Essence, which is to say 42 with WP10, Ess3, and your current Virtue spread. Any or all of those 58 motes of essence could potentially be committed to artifacts, but the more you have locked up in an elaborate panoply, the less will be left over for other tactical necessities.

Generally you'll want to have peripheral essence committed to artifacts, keeping personal essence free, because that's the portion of your power which can be spent without setting off a stealth-defeating light show. Crystal Chameleon Style's capstone embraces that problem and 'crosses the line twice,' spreading out your anima banner across a whole battlefield to obscure your specific position (hence the fan nickname). There are a few different ways to get a larger peripheral pool, though it generally can't be committed to artifacts. Best available option for expanding your effective personal essence pool might be the Sidereal Stealth charm Soft Presence Practice, which allows you to spend peripheral motes on some charms without causing anima flare.
>Carrying capacity might also might be a limiting constrain for artifacts at str 1.
Starmetal Infinite Resplendence Amulet provides two thousand pounds of hammerspace cargo pockets, which doesn't count as encumbrance.
>Could she even wield that daiklave, for example?
Normal daiklaive requires strength 2, so she'd be attacking at a -1 internal penalty for insufficient strength. Could boost strength temporarily by using Kimbery charms to gain the Large mutation, or simply swap out the daiklaive statline for some other 2-dot artifact weapon with a lower strength requirement, such as a pair of hook daiklaives or razor claws, or a floating ribbon (longest reach of any melee weapon!), or serpent-sting staff, or thunderbolt shield, or even a ranged weapon such as a sky-cutter or short powerbow. Sidereal Archery has some fun tricks, of which shooting around corners and using a handful of sand or a whispered phrase as ammunition are only the beginning.

>>870177
Normalizing that to a more standard 8/6/4 spread for starting Exalts, how about Strength 1, Dex 5, Stamina 1, Charisma 4, Manipulation 5, Appearance 2 (plus a merit to be supernaturally normal/unremarkable/difficult to remember), Intelligence 2, Wits 3, Perception 4?
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No. 870519 ID: 094652

>>870517
Sounds good, fits the playstyle. Appearance will need makeup though.
>>
No. 870587 ID: 3abd97

>simply swap out the daiklaive statline for some other 2-dot artifact weapon
Oh right those things are customize-able. Thanks for reminding me of that, a giant sword is less her style anyways.

>42 peripheral essence that can be committed artifacts
Okay cool, a bigger budget than I was expecting.

>'bonus points'
Right. So how many of those to I have left to spend on other things once I've got my stats (str 1, cha 0, all-else 6) and the 4 Must-haves?

And as for the cost of things: artifacts cost as many 'bonus points' as their rank, right? What about skills, sidereal charms, MA styles, and spells?

I don't need an exact price point for every individual thing you've mentioned so much as I need a ballpark to work in when selecting what to start with. I'm certain my first attempt will need correcting, but that's preferable to trying to make a ranked list of every offering suggested. (I assume there's a lot more cool things than I can afford)!
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No. 870855 ID: d36af7

Found it.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14xv7d6dfacsd6Vz8JEo9ln_-aq2n01J_J1ZKYazX7lM/
Mechanics of the charm Strike Only the Horizon need adjustment to be balanced with the 2.5 errata and there are some other mechanical tweaks but the concept's all there.

>>870587
> So how many of those to I have left to spend on other things once I've got my stats (str 1, cha 0, all-else 6) and the 4 Must-haves?
43*4=172 spent on attributes, 6*5=30 spent on charms (assuming MA favored) plus 5 for the five dots in MA needed as prereq, another 35 altogether for Ess3, WP 10, Compassion 6, Conviction 3, Temperance 4, and Valor 2... that only leaves 25. You could gain up to another 30 by taking derangements, negative mutations, etc., but most likely would have so few skills as to be effectively a blank slate, approaching many common situations with almost childlike naiveté backed by superhuman innate capability.
>And as for the cost of things: artifacts cost as many 'bonus points' as their rank, right?
Backgrounds, including Artifacts, at the 1-, 2-, or 3-dot levels cost one per dot, yes. 4-dot backgrounds (such as a Starmetal/Moonsilver Infinite Resplendence Amulet) usually cost a total of 5, 5-dots usually cost 7, and 6+ aren't usually available at all. Rare exceptions, which can be addressed as they come up. As an Akuma, you also inherently (no points cost or tradeoff options) have a 5-dot demonic Patron, meaning you can get training, advice, and various other Backgrounds 'on loan,' so long as you're doing a satisfactory job and stay in touch. Contacting a demon lord remotely could be done by sorcery, thaumaturgy, prayer (which is based on the Performance and Integrity skills), cultist intermediaries (who might also be useful in other ways), or physical travel to the demon realm - Mirror-Shattering Method simplifies that last option considerably, provided you've got a ship that's rated to traverse sand and/or acid.
>What about skills,
One per dot if caste or favored, two per dot otherwise. Half that much for specialties, with a limit of three specialties per skill. It's possible, even relatively common, to take the same specialty three times.
>sidereal charms,
>and spells?
Five each if caste or favored (spells are based on Occult), seven otherwise.
>MA styles,
Tier-dependent. Assuming MA is caste/favored, Terrestrial styles (the 'roots' of the perfected lotus) cost 4 per charm, Celestial styles (the 'bulb') cost 5 per charm, and Sidereal styles (the 'blossom') cost 6 per charm. If Martial Arts is not favored, all those costs increase by 2 per charm. Swallowing the Lotus Root counts as a Celestial MA charm, and reduces the XP/BP cost of Terrestrial styles by half, so 2 per charm if caste/favored or 3 otherwise.
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No. 870858 ID: 3abd97

>>870855
>that only leaves 25
>so few skills as to be effectively a blank slate
I was afraid of that. I think I may to have to rethink the akuma extreme attribute min-maxing. Awesome stats at the near-complete expense of cool things you'd want to apply them towards doesn't sound terribly fun.

I'm gonna think on a starting build, probably end up over-budget, then we can work on paring it down to something that works.

>favored
Are favored things solely determined by caste or am I supposed to be making some kind of addition decision(s) as to what the character specifically favors?
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No. 870872 ID: 094652

Game-wise, Embri seems to be a hybrid mix of Sidereal and Alchemical(Moonsilver). Her great quest (ambition) is the Kingmaker: to take a house and bring it to greatness, the beginnings of a great vizier. However, her playstyle focuses on the agent, luring others against their otherwise... wise judgement into making poor decisions that lead straight into a mastercrafted backstabbing ambush. And in either case, her original class was always the Whitelist Assassin, the face on the streets right at the entrance of a dark alleyway, with clothes of an aspiring geisha, mannerisms of a common courtesan, and blades always ready for that sweet moment when the target is lured out of the light and into the shadows. That's a combination of looking normal and being forgettable - Moonsilver and Sidereal.

Story-wise, she's a Traveler who woke up a few months ago on a beach after The Event with a strange new Wood-Absorption ability, separated from her House and sister. Aaand I don't know what to do next.
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No. 870899 ID: d36af7

>>870858
You can pick four favored skills, and one favored astrological college, in addition to the five set by your caste. Low XP costs and zero training time for increasing those over the course of play.

Training time for Charms is also relatively short, particularly low-Essence Favored charms. You could save four charms (freeing up 20 BP) by skipping the Kimbery Excellency and sorcery, then buy the excellency in play with one day of training time and 8 XP in the bank. Could free up 10 more BP by starting with Essence 2 instead of three; no training time for that either, and it only costs 16 XP to buy later.

XP/BP tradeoffs are Exalted 2e's equivalent of an OD&D linear fighter/quadratic wizard problem: do you want to be tough and paranoid now, to survive the immediate exploding-sky-castle sort of problems, or will you invest in prospects for future development to get more power (with less work!) in the long term, at the risk of abrupt and tragic demise at the hands of those shorter-term problems due to bad tactics or bad luck? Instead of a binary choice, though, it's a question of priority among different capabilities.

You could spend those 30 points on, say, Dodge 3, Lore 3, Sail 4, Avoidance, Duck Fate, Stone Skipping Spirit, and Mirror-Shattering Method. Kimbery Excellency plus those 6-dot attributes lets you throw a pool of 12 dice at most mundane tasks, and Martial Arts 5 kicks that up to 20 or more in unarmed combat, so even without charms you can do most anything any heroic mortal could do, or take on a whole squad of average soldiers all by your lonesome and win easily, so long as you use the terrain to avoid being completely surrounded, and don't let 'em grapple you. Duck Fate is a panic button, for 'nobody could survive that!' sorts of problems, and Mirror-Shattering Method (particularly in combination with Mother Sea Mastery) is your getaway car. Main thing to worry about at that point would be unexpected attacks, and Ledaal Ji >>/questdis/121068 could help on that front with Fluttering Cry of Warning. Could simply stick close to him and avoid directly attacking anyone until you've bought All Things Betray or appropriate sidereal Awareness charms. Could gain another 8 bonus points by taking an oath of total pacifism linked to, say, two dots of Appearance (meaning you'll stop being quite as cute when you've got blood on your hands, even if it's just metaphorical) then spend them on Awareness 3 and Prior Warning. If assassins approached while you sleep, that would let you wake up, spend five minutes constructing a pillow-based decoy, and know for sure you had time left to depart the scene or select a counter-ambush spot before they even arrived. Then the proper sidereal surprise-negator, Expected Pain, would require only three days training. With a dreamscape tutor gem (possibly borrowed from your Patron rather than bought outright), that'd just be three good nights of sleep, possibly mixed right in with adventuring activities. Or, if you don't want to lock in Awareness as favored, you could go the Kimbery route, take any one of the Intolerable Burning Truths + All Things Betray.
>>
No. 870966 ID: 094652

>XP/BP tradeoff
As of now, most of Embri's skills simply aren't... applicable. She's specialized for social interaction, stealth, and crowd camoflage. She does have use with ninja training, but ultimately took less to it than Ivori. So I figure Embri should start out with a higher average ninja skill tree but low potential for growth, and start with a lower average manipulation skill tree but higher potential for growth, so that she can use her dexterity skills right now to escape the castle, and develop her actual gameplay skills later.
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No. 871407 ID: 3abd97

Lute Silhouette Speculation in Comet's Reflection
Ronin Sidereal Akuma (Kimberly)
Chosen of Serenity (favored: Craft, Dodge, Performance, Socialize, Linguistics)
-Additional: 4 favored skills, 1 favored astrological college
-3 specialties per skill
Motivation: Bring out people's best selves
Virtues: Willpower ??, Compassion 5, Conviction 3, Temperance 4, Valor 2
Essence: 3 2
Attributes: Strength 1, Dexterity 6, Stamina 6, Charisma 0, Manipulation 6, Appearance 6, Intelligence 6, Wits 6, Perception 6

Skills:
-Craft (Air) 3 (Glassblowing +1) 'day job'
-Sail 4
-Thrown 3

Charms:
-First Kimbery Excellency
-Sorcerous Enlightenment of Kimbery
-Mother Sea Mastery
-Swallowing the Lotus Root (???)
-Stone Skipping Spirit
-Mirror-Shattering Method
-Willful Weapon Method

Artifacts / Stuff:
-Scorpion Hand Mirror (Artifact 5, cost 7 BP, attune ?? motes)
-Forgotten Blade Ribbon (Artifact 5, cost 7 BP, attune 5 motes)
-Infinite Resplendence Amulet, Moonsilver (Artifact 4, cost 5 BP, attune 10 motes)
-Mantle of Soot (Artifact 6, cost 9 BP, attune ?? motes)
-Chancel w/ 'day job' workshop, raksha (2-3 dot, cost ?? BP)
-Dreamscape tutor gem Vitriol/Kimberly manse Stone of Acrid Understanding thing for learning necromancy and/or sorcery spells later [I think I have mashed several things together here] (3-5 dot, ?? cost ?? BP)
-Something for the shadow shuriken trick (probably artifact 1-2, or something made herself?)
-Salt (for MSM)
-Water (also for MSM)


Okay so you see my problem, I think. I'm bankrupt before I pick up all the interesting artifacts, let alone any skills or charms. I've only got skills as prerequisites, instead of investing in any she'd need to well, function. Do you need a minimum in linguistics to speak? Does it even make sense she'd already have 'helped' people in the past without ranks in socialize to make it possible? (Can history / skill conflicts be explained away by being mixmaxed by the yozi? Ie, she lost skills she'll have to relearn). It sorta seems like however this goes her first several batches of XP will have to go towards filling out basic necessary skill trees and charms.

So prioritizing: I'm pretty attached to the Infinite Resplendence Amulet, and she has to be able to do her moving through mirrors trick, which means Mirror-Shattering Method (I think) and preqs Sail and Stone Skipping Spirit and probably Mother Sea Mastery to enable it.

The Chancel's not as strongly required, but a chaotic personal dreamscape just seems such a good fit for the character, and as I understood it I need the a day job setup anyways for other stuff to be viable. Plus I was sorta assuming the glass-working would be something that linked back to pre-exaltation so it would be sorta weird to start without it.

I'm willing to put all the occult, necromancy and sorcery stuff aside for future growth (which also removes my reason for starting with essence 3), although that still leaves me bearing the costs for the Mantle of Soot and whatever the fast learning tool is now. Might make sense to outsource the learning tool to demonic patron loans as you suggested. The Mantle seems an awfully high ticket item to pull that with though (especially since once you reach the point where you can use it, you won't want to give it back).

The forgotten not-a-daiklaive sounds like a lot of fun, as does the idea of a battle-ribbon. It's perfect as an indirect attack too.

I could live without the hand mirror, although it sounds pretty neat and it seems a shame to ignore something tailor made for her.

Swallowing the Lotus Root seems like it can probably be put off if I don't invest in any martial arts yet.

Thrown / Willful Weapon Method isn't something I'd need to start with either, but you know, I might need some offensive capability, and it's a comparatively cheap way to get indirect attacks that physically damage things.

Regreatably, sacrificing the Excellency initially seems sorta necessary, especially if sticking with the yozi-maxed stats. Might be necessary to gouge some of those too.

Not really sure what to do with the favored choices yet. Occult, Sail, Martial Arts all seem like things I'll need to invest in for cool stuff later? Not sure if necromancy or sorcery count as skills. Not sure if I'm going to go far enough down the throw tree for that to be worth it. (Or occult even, beyond as a preq). No clue about a favored college. No idea how specialties might favor in.

I'd be willing to consider a weird mutation or two if you've got any that were in-theme.


So... yeah. Help turning this over-budget dysfunctional thing into something that might work?
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No. 871457 ID: d36af7

>>870872
>alchemical
>forgettable
How about Adamant caste? Their anima power is basically a MIB-style memory erasure ray. That would necessitate some adjustment of the attributes, though. Alchemical Exalts don't get caste or favored skills, but they DO get caste and favored attributes. The Adamant caste is associated with Strength, Appearance, and Perception, and they all need to start at at least 2. Pick three others as favored, maybe Dexterity, Manipulation, and Wits? Then you could have Strength 2, Dex 5, Stamina 1, Charisma 4, Manipulation 5, Appearance 5, Intelligence 2, Wits 3, Perception 4 at a cost of 12 bonus points. >>867073 Four more for virtues and WP, leaving you with two.
As for skills, how does this sound? Archery 3 (Unaware Targets +1), Athletics 3, Awareness 3, Dodge 3, Larceny 3 (Reverse Pickpocketing +1), Lore 3, Medicine 1, Performance 3 (While Naked +1), Socialize 3 (Seduction +1)
In terms of Backgrounds, you get a 3-dot Mentor for free, presumably representing the Oyabun, and 10 dots in other Backgrounds. Alchemicals get an unusually good deal on Artifacts: three for the price of one, and no extra cost at the 4+ dot level. You could, for example, spend six of those ten on artifacts and thereby start with not only that unique Mantle of Soot which Lute Silhouette Speculation is searching for, but also twelve dots of other artifacts. Maybe an Amulet of Shadow Walking (stealth, and phase thru walls, 3 dots), Quicksilver Aegis Talisman (concealable tentacle armor w/ autonomous close-range defenses, 5 dots), and a Time-Strung Bow (arrow can wait until the target would least expect it, great for assassinations, 4 dots)? Remaining four could then go to Resources 1 (all that thieving and whoring presumably brings in at least enough money to keep yourself fed) and Savant 3 (training in how to operate and maintain magitech, such as the Amulet of Shadow Walking or Quicksilver Aegis Talisman, though it's not much use for major repairs beyond initial diagnostics).

Alchemical charms are based on attributes. There are six "augmentation" charms that can be bought for any attribute: the first three act like excellencies, adding dice, successes, or allowing rerolls. The fourth increases the 'natural' rating of the attribute by one for as long as it's installed, and can be installed multiple times at higher Essence, which is particularly important because that increases the dice cap for other augmentations. For example, if Embri had the First Dexterity Augmentation, she could buy 5 dice for a total effective Dex of 10 for that one action, but with the First and the Fourth, she'd have Dex 6 all the time and could boost it temporarily up to 12. The Fifth Augmentation provides a scene-long boost, which can be more efficient than using the First or Second repeatedly, and unlike those two is compatible with rerolls from the Third. Disadvantage is slow warm-up and lack of subtlety. The Sixth Augmentation is sorta weird: it gives you the maximum possible rating in a specific skill, but only when that skill is used with the corresponding attribute. Can be taken lots of times, once for every skill.

So, here are my recommendations:
Second Manipulation Augmentation
Fourth Appearance Augmentation
Fifth Dexterity Augmentation
Sixth Intelligence + Craft Augmentation (this effectively gives you 5 dots in all twelve Craft skills, but only for intelligence-based rolls - which will be most of them)
Protosynthetic Ammunition Replicator
Pheromone Regulation Systems
Integrated Artifact Transmogrifier (pass for human instead of obviously being a cyborg)
Omnitool Implant
Technomorphic Integration Engine

Spend those last two bonus points to buy the Precursor Technology Absorption submodule twice so you can carry an unlimited number of mundane items internally. Could swap out the Ammunition Replicator for Thousandfold Courtesan Calculations if you want to focus more on social stuff, particularly in a sexual context, but honestly the main benefits of that only kick in you've got more Appearance augmentations.

Alchemicals can't normally develop new charms just by training. (It's possible, but involves something called a "transorganic desecration cyst," which, in case the name isn't clear enough, is bad juju and will mess you up. Could be fun, but consider carefully before committing.) Normal procedure is to go back to base, requisition materials, assemble a team of technicians and surgeons, and stew in a bacta tank until the installation process is complete. Same for Attributes and Essence. About the only things Alchemicals can get better at just by practice are Skills, Virtues, and Willpower.
>>
No. 871480 ID: 094652

>>871457
>starting attributes
Sounds good
>Backgrounds
I dunno how this works
>Artifacts - 3 for the price of 1 for first purchase
Awesome. As for the actual selection, can you post a link to relevant artifacts? For now, the Shadow Walk amulet and Time-Strung Bow would be appropriate for an ambush class.
>recommendations
Might need some fine-tuning, but mostly good.
>Alchemicals can only train skills, Virtues, and Willpower, everything else is made from installing augmentations
Generally, that was what I was planning anyway. Embri is basically the Agent of the party; she's the civilian who cases the joint, the distraction at the gates, the snake in the streets who catches off-duty captains at their weakest and eliminates them quietly, and the dancer at the party who relays information to the thieves. Developing her skills to increase the odds of these quick-and-decisive actions is more important for her than preparing for a war of attrition.
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No. 871744 ID: 1c2a1b

>>871480
Looks like I made a mistake, actually. You only start with eight charm slots (which ARE a meaningful concept for Alchemicals after character creation - physical slots into which magitech machinery is installed, and from which it can be removed with the same sorts of force that could amputate a limb) so drop the Protosynthetic Ammunition Replicator. It's somewhat redundant, since you could simply store internally as many arrows as you can get your grubby paws on using the Technomorphic Integration Engine, then later retrieve them for the same cost as the Replicator requires to produce from scratch. Some risk of running out, though, and you'd only have access to varieties of ammo previously purchased or stolen, and they'll be real objects, with corresponding forensic traces, rather than disintegrating back into ambient essence shortly after they hit.
> can you post a link to relevant artifacts?
No. Tell me what you're looking for, in terms of function and power level, I'll lay out some options.

The quicksilver aegis talisman is an automaton combining some of the best qualities of a quoddle and a T-1000. Polymorphic moonsilver tentacles can harden into a single blade for the user to wield like a sword, or a shield. It can form armor, or lashing whips to fend off or dispatch lesser opponents autonomously, without distracting you from dealing with some other task such as picking a lock, patching a damaged manse, or dueling a champion. Each tentacle can perform a separate task independently, or they can smoothly combine their efforts in various combinations. A more conventional sword, even a very fancy one, requires time and physical effort to draw; however slight the cost, those are valuable commodities in a combat situation, so a blade which leaps into your hand of it's own accord when needed, and quietly slinks away to hide when not, is something really special. The benefits of armor, and potential delays or complications of donning it when threatened yet removing it when not wishing to appear as a threat, are even greater. That versatility, the freedom to flicker instantly between empty-handed nudity and being fully girded for battle, plus a tireless robo-squid bodyguard watching your back so you know exactly when to do so, is what makes it a 5-dot artifact.

>>871407
>she has to be able to do her moving through mirrors trick, which means Mirror-Shattering Method (I think) and preqs Sail and Stone Skipping Spirit and
Essence 3 is another prerequisite of Mirror-Shattering Method. The scorpion mirror artifact (named Shard Fallen From Ishiika's Eye) could somewhat cover that aspect on it's own, though, being a single specific reflective surface you can step through.

The cheapest possible option for that would be to take an itinerant noble raksha as a 1- or 2-dot Ally, delegate the Chancel to them, and define a mutually-beneficial (though perhaps cosmetically antagonistic) relationship under which you carry the front door to that Chancel in your pocket much of the time. Raksha need dreams and drama the way humans need food and water, so it's not hard to imagine how such a being might benefit by associating with someone whose job description involves buying traumatic revelations and journeys of self-discovery by the ton, then handing them out like an ambitious politician distributing bread and beer to the poor. Nonetheless some thought should be put into the raksha's style and role, and what services they provide beyond a mobile shelter.

Hmm... if you're familiar with the Rise of the Runelords adventure path, perhaps the chancel's interior is based on the town of Sandpoint and environs, complete with glassworks? Only, it seems to be caught in a 'groundhog day' time loop, perpetually being raided by pyromaniac goblins. In truth, the townsfolk are mostly hollow illusions, little more than animate scenery, with a few actual mortal prisoners (who all know about the 'time loop,' but generally think they're alone in this knowledge) while the 'raiding' goblins are commoner raksha who serve the lord of the place, ritualistically enacting subtle variations on the daily violent mayhem.

Naturally, the chancel's front door, as well as the other access points which spontaneously appear somewhere within a few miles, seem to the uninitiated to be slightly anomalous mirrors, like the sort of sunglasses which reflect a view of the Nevada desert which remains constant no matter the actual surroundings. Gates are large enough to drive a cargo wagon through, yet also small enough to pick up with one hand and carry in an ordinary pocket, and magically self-concealing so nonheroic types won't be able to get in without an invitation, or probably even notice the door. A chancel makes an excellent foundation for one of those mysterious shops that wasn't there yesterday and won't be tomorrow, but always happens to have the exact thing you need to continue your quest. (Being able to actually produce the minor magic items sold by that sort of business, on the spot as needed, is one of the functions of resplendent destinies from the college of The Guardians.)

If you're starting at Essence 2, best option for arbitrary mirror access would be defining (and at appropriate moments, re-defining) locations for those other gates using the dramatic editing benefit of 2-die or higher stunts.
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No. 871780 ID: 094652

>>871744
- An artifact that allows Embri to merge herself with wood (or some other material, only one choice for now) and manipulate it to her will. The total mass of the material must exceed her body mass and any mass of whatever she brings with her. She will not be able to use this artifact if the mass of her inventory exceeds a specific limit. From there, she can exit from any part of the material or shapeshift it to her will to move. More material means the resulting piloted golem slows to a crawl; so she CAN turn into a giant statue the size of a mountain, but that would mean she'd also move and act with the (lack of) speed of a mountain. Any enchantments and properties of the material she merges with will likely hinder her as well.
- An aging vial that causes fermentation in seconds. Great for creating poisons out of food scraps. Also handy for creating a shot of whisky - for targets only, because the vial is cursed to make its contents allergenic - consumers feel sick after a few hours, might even break into hives.
- A knife that mends the skin and flesh of whatever it stabs, but will still work normally on other organs like brains, balls, and bone. Great for causing hard-to-identify internal bleeding. Near-useless for inflicting external wounds. The knife was originally created as an experiment to invent the perfect barber's knife, but was discarded when it became apparent that carving the beard from the inside resulted in hundreds of itchy ingrown hairs.
- A blanket that absorbs all light, which increases in intensity as it stays in unbent sunlight. Great for turning open alleyways into pitch-dark gruegrounds. It disperses heat at a comfortable rate and Embri uses it for her Kotatsu.
- A hand-mirror with strange properties that makes it near-invisible to most, but not to Embri. Great for keeping an eye on a target's back.
- Smoke grenades with the force of a frag. Can even kill at point-blank range, especially dangerous in the water. Can be retrieved and repaired at any LARGE water source, or a series of tiny water sources.

In a nutshell: Supernatural merging ability, poison, knives, shadows, mirrors, smoke bombs. Classic arsenal for an assassin. Might need to think up some appearance-based artifacts.
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No. 872327 ID: d22dc0

Okay, I was doing my best to read through some of the thread, but it gets very difficult for me to sift through very quickly; I'm going to post based of the starting instructions, and work from there.

The vibe I'm getting from this is that I'm essentially deigning a super hero. At a quick glance, we don't have anyone dedicated to being big and strong, so that seems like a good jumping off point.

Drawing on that as a template, I'm feeling like cleric/war priest domains that observe the forge are an interesting foundation thematically.

Personality wise, I'm not sure how feasible this is, but a character who has two sort of "aspects" she can manifest that are in conflict with each other. Sort of an anders/justice from DA2 situation.

Her quest would be to found a monastery untouchable by violence and strife, removed from the mortal realm so she can practice her craft with a number of disciples untroubled by the outside world. Unfortunately, in a time of great need she forged her soul anew with the power she needed to destroy her foes, and now her spiritual landscape has been shifted to one of wroth and violence. Pulling a little bit from the burning hate from Pd[n]To, but in my head it's a cold fire rather than a hot one. Uncaring and cruel, she has a duty to vanquish evil without hesitation, remorse, or consideration for other things like collateral damage or potential consequences. Her two aspects are in conflict within her very essence, and thus she cannot shirk her duties and sequester herself. Yet.

What exactly she is bound to do in terms of fighting evil is open for tweaking, but I imagine it's something along the lines of eliminating demons and stopping wars by killing the people/creatures who would start them.

I would imagine the Virtues to breakdown as so, with the values on the left being her warm aspect, and the ones on the right being her cold aspect. Both have the same total so there's no problem with willpower.

Willpower: 9

Compassion: 5 | 1
Conviction: 3 | 6
Temperance: 3 | 3
Valor: 2 | 3

What is important to her:

Mercy: All deserve a chance at redemption and understanding. She believes everyone, everywhere, is doing the best that they can, and should be respected as such. Never Kill when you can Main and all that jazz.

HOLY RETRIBUTION: TO CRUSH THE UNREPENTANT AND DESTROY THOSE WHO WOULD SOW THE SEEDS OF WAR AND DESTRUCTION. THERE IS NO CAUSE MORE TRUE AND VITAL. USE WHATEVER MEANS NECESSARY.

Smithing: It is an unmatched art in her eyes, and a true path towards divinity for in ones devotion to their craft, they can become as a god.

DEATH TO THE UNGODLY: THOSE WHO'S FORMS BLASPHEME THE GODS MUST BE STRUCK DOWN WITHOUT HESITATION OR COUNCIL. THEY WOULD SPILL THE BLOOD OF INNOCENTS AND FORGE THE CHAINS OF WAR. THEY GET NO REDEMPTION FOR THEY ARE LOST UPON THEIR CREATION.

Ceramics: Her second art, she uses ceramics to express her feelings when words fail her. Smithing is a form of godliness, pottery is her connection to mortality, empathy, and emotion.

Self sacrifice: Other beings are ultimately self serving and violent. It is the way of this wicked world. But those who are weaker than you deserve to be protected and warmed by the hearth, no matter how they might harm or spite you. Let not a blow befall another when it might break upon your back instead.

Cultivation of Faithful: There are those among the mortal populous who are capable, worthy, and willing to leave behind the pain of the mortal realm to pursue a life of cultivation, practicing whatever arts they see fit. They should be made aware of your goals, and brought under your wing as disciples of your ways

The Armaments of the Betrayer: Armor and weapons she once loved, forged for her by a friend who ultimately betrayed her in the pursuit of war and violence. They are buried on his grave, along with her past life. She is beyond needing such things.

Her Twin: A perverse and twist soul, who's life mirrors hers; his power was granted by a dark entity seeking to spread war across every known frontier. She knows not where he has gone, nor how she will deal with him, but he cannot be allowed to gain hat he desires.


Her stamina and resilience are unmatched, allowing her to work tirelessly at the forge for weeks without stopping for food, drink, or sleep. Her work requires heroic strength and precision, but she is slow and steady like a train, and has trouble switching tracks without causing a disaster. She is far from persuasive, and while she holds most life dear, she struggles when trying to make her intentions understood or comfort others. Like a mountain, she is physically unassailable, but difficult to read, and far from comforting.

Skills, in order of when they were learned and how much time has been spent on them

Smithing

Armed combat

Positive energy and magical healing

Killing Demons

Resisting Mental Influence

Bathing in Flame

Flight on Wings of light

Pottery/ceramics

Unarmed pasification

Where are my powers from? Assumedly, a pact with the sun incarne, although that's a best guess without much info on hand.
Routinely my powers are used to turn demons to ash, prevent their travel, protect and heal others with barriers made of light, smithing items no mortal could dream to forge, manifest radiant wings and to sustain myself physically and mentally, without detriment or need for replenishment.

If it's not redundant, I assume she would both be the one trying to interrupt the ritual, and the one trying to patch the explosion. I'm imagining a preemptive medicine type deal, where she wants to stop the situation before the demon actually arrives and her hand is forced. Doesn't usually work for her, but she knows that should her cold aspect be invoked, she won't really have the option to repair the ship anymore, so that's prudent to get straightened out before anything regrettable occurs.

As for name an appearance, I'm imagining she is built much like a mountain, and is similarly difficult to look up at. Her face is some combination of "don't stare at the sun" and "impossibly tall peak, shrouded in snow and clouds." I like the idea of her being perpetually back lit by some sort of warm halo or nimbus, no matter what angle you look at her from. She also has 60ft wings made of light sometimes.

Bridget resonates with me, although it's not a very exalted name. Maybe it's a truncated form of something, Bridge that Spans the Sun and Moon or another appropriately long winded title. Bridget Spaonsym?
>>
No. 872347 ID: d1248b

>>871780
>Supernatural merging ability,
This seems like the kind of thing that should probably be handled mostly with a charmset rather than a separate artifact. Sure enough, merging with smaller items and storing them inside your body is already covered by the Technomorphic Integration Engine, and phasing through larger objects is possible with the Amulet of Shadow Walking. The ability to turn mundane scenery into an ad-hoc warstrider like Misho here https://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0163.html would be possible for an alchemical exalt with a God-Machine Weaving Engine at Essence 5. Being warstrider-sized is the default condition for Alchemicals at Essence 6 or 7, and they grow further, to city- or mountain-sized, at Essence 8+. Even before that, Alchemicals have a lot of options for boosting their size, durability, and physical might - most of which, however, are Strength or Stamina charms. So, probably better to think of this as a theme for future growth rather than something you'll have full mastery of as a starting exalt.
>poison,
Something that can arbitrarily accelerate any sort of alchemical process would be very powerful, probably comparable to the 4-dot Celestial Phoenix Cauldron. If you just want a bottomless dispenser of irritating-but-seldom-lethal poison, first thing that comes to mind is 2-dot hearthstones such as the Gem Of Tears To Poison, or the Lips-Like-Poppies Gemstone. Could be an actual hearthstone linked to a manse, or an "elemental core," bought as an artifact, which needs to be brought back to base every three months for a recharge, or could be reworked as a standalone artifact. For either a hearthstone or an elemental core, you'd also need an artifact to socket it into. Basic 1-dot hearthstone amulet provides slightly improved mote recovery for a single mote commitment, various 2-dot or higher artifacts include a socket alongside other functions (such as weapons, bracelets which improve evasion and provide other MM-dependent combat benefits, or a dragon tear tiara which boosts perception particularly on occult matters), and a socket surgically implanted as a 2-dot artifact can actually expand your essence pool instead of requiring any committed motes. Poison that can reliably kill mortals, or meaningfully threaten exalts (at least, those without specialized anti-poison defenses) could instead be produced by a 3-dot, hearthstone, or there's the Frozen Hearts of the Tellerauthelot, each a 4-dot artifact. They produce a few doses per hour of Ice Marrow, which is not only equivalent to ultra-deadly Yozi Venom when in the veins of the living, but can also reanimate corpses as enhanced zombies, and provide an otherwise impossible degree of repair and maintenance to necromantic war machines.
>knives,
Take an adamant reaper daiklaive (or any sort of 2-dot artifact weapon with a hearthstone socket, really, but adamant keeps it compatible with the Technomorphic Integration Engine, and the reaper daiklaive's high-accuracy, low-damage statline seems appropriate for an assassin's weapon) then socket it with a variant of the Snakeskin Stone, a 3-dot lunar-aspected hearthstone. The original version causes the bearer to shed their skin when they sleep, healing all bashing damage and half of their lethal damage and concealing any remaining wounds from anything but a proper medical exam, since the remaining lethal damage represents purely internal injuries. This variant could apply that same sort of healing to anyone incapacitated by wounds from the weapon into which it's socketed, including by subsequent bleeding or infection, automatically staunching any bleeding wounds but making a 'buried' infection far more difficult to treat. Extras who would ordinarily be killed outright by such weapons might still be maimed or crippled, but almost always survive for at least a few hours or days unless subjected to further violence, making live capture quick and easy.
If you're taking a magic sword but don't plan to use it might, you might also want to think about a Scabbard of the Living Weapon. It's a 3-dot artifact which, as long as it's attuned for five motes with an attuned daiklaive sheathed inside, makes you completely immune to mundane damage. Charm-enhanced attacks, anybody with Essence 4 or higher, and artifacts or even thaumaturgy-enhanced weapons aren't "mundane," so it's of limited value in any serious fight with spirits or exalts, but you could get trampled by a herd of elephants, or have somebody strap you down to a table and try to chop your head off with a huge axe made of ordinary steel, and be in no danger unless they took the scabbard away first. An erupting volcano might be bad news due to the unbreathable fumes involved, but actual lava would be no more of a hazard than thick mud.
>shadows,
Negating light over a wide area could easily be a 4- or 5-dot power. Vulnerability to sunlight is what keeps a lot of nasty stuff in caves from rampaging freely across the surface, control over visibility can be a huge force-multiplier in combat at any scale, light deprivation could be used to kill crops, etc. Sounds like you're looking for something more in the two or three dot range, though, a tactical advantage rather than a terrifying strategic weapon. How about this, as a 3-dot artifact: at all times, it functions like a superior mundane blanket, muffling sounds enough to impose a -2 external penalty on hearing rolls and reducing damage from environmental effects by two, similar to and not cumulative with the magical material bonus of jade armor. After ten hours of direct sunlight, or 50 hours of any light bright enough to read by, the blanket radiates darkness equal and opposite to the light of a torch, imposing murky vision within five yards and making the bearer effectively invisible under normal conditions, or reducing the stealth-defeating effects of anima flare by one step. The aura of unnatural darkness itself, however, is as clearly visible in otherwise well-lit areas as a torch would be on a moonless night. The blanket maintains this level of charge indefinitely, and cannot be charged further by mundane light sources. Overcharging it requires a magical light source equivalent to direct sunlight, such as a bonfire-level anima flare (12+ motes for most exalts, 16+ for sidereals), focused through mirrors similar to those used for smelting orichalcum. Five hours of charging is enough to conceal a bonfire-level light source for one hour - the blanket cannot conceal a full iconic anima under any circumstances - or radiate near-total darkness out to a 5 yard radius, and murky vision to ten. Maximum overcharge requires 625 hours, enough to provide that level of darkness for five full days.
Whenever it's charged, you can throw the blanket at the exit to an enclosed space (no more than forty yards in radius) and spend 15 motes to duplicate the effects of Dragon's Lair Obtenebration: total darkness fills the space, impenetrable to any natural light and reducing magical light by half, user gains perfect awareness of the position of everyone else within the field, no limit on range or angle of the user's attacks so long as they stay inside the field, free reflexive attack on anyone entering the field which automatically counts as unexpected. Duration is one scene at normal full charge, plus one hour for every five hours of overcharge, so maximum duration is one day from the end of the scene in which it was activated. Can't be shut off early or relocated by anything less than adamant or labyrinth circle countermagic, and it's always fully discharged afterward.
>mirrors,
How about something that looks like a palm-sized chunk of glass while not in use. Commit two motes to it, it becomes reflective to you - and only you, remaining transparent to anyone else - and additionally turns your hand and forearm invisible when you're holding it outstretched. A 1-dot artifact on it's own, or add it as a secondary function to a reaper daiklaive to halve the DVs of anyone without supernaturally acute senses and thereby bump the sword up to 3 dots, or throw in a 'periscope mode' as an alternative to the standard adamant magical material bonus on a daiklaive which also functions as a windblade, https://youtu.be/brUwfQncCvI?t=3m27s which would be a 4-dot artifact overall and neatly explain how you reached this flying castle in the first place.
>smoke bombs.
Wood-aspected Elemental Pulse Grenade, more or less a rechargeable canister of nerve gas which fills a 10 yard radius exactly and leaves no dangerous residue, would be a 2-dot artifact.
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No. 872436 ID: d1248b

>>872327
First thing that springs to mind for a huge, tough holy warrior is Zenith caste Solar. Anima power is all about smiting creatures of darkness and burning the zombie-potential out of corpses.

Could do the 'dark side' as a limit break thing, and/or the charm Vile Anathema Shroud (Larceny 4, Essence 3, prereqs Flawlessly Impenetrable Disguise and any Larceny excellency) which makes your charms and anima flare look like those of an abyssal temporarily.

In terms of being the group's "tank," you'll mainly want Resistance charms, but a few others might be important: Integrity-Protecting Prana and Reflex Sidestep Technique for negating Shaping and unexpected attacks, and Spoken In Kindness from the Compassion-based celestial martial art Victorious Concession Style, for redirecting attacks to yourself.

>Smithing
That'd be Craft (Fire). If you want to be a master of mundane forge-work, you'll need decent Intelligence and Perception among your attributes, plus Dexterity for fine work, four or five dots in the actual Craft skill, maybe an appropriate specialty, the First or Second Craft Excellency, and a suitable workshop, which could be represented by Resources 3 or 4, or a 2-dot artifact, or part of a 2-dot manse... or, with Essence 3, you could take Craftsman Needs No Tools and beat a plowshare back into a battle-ready sword with no hammer or anvil but your bare hands, and no fuel or bellows but your own breath. No solar charm will ever allow you to work without raw materials, though. Closest you can get to that would be Wyld-Shaping Technique, which lets you forge the chaos beyond the edges of the world into new items, landscapes, and people.
>Armed combat
Solar Melee charms fall into three main trees: damage boost/multi-attack, retrieval/range, and defense. For defense, you want at least 3 dots in Melee and Dipping Swallow Defense => Bulwark Stance => Protection of Celestial Bliss. With at least 4 dots in melee, you could take Heavenly Guardian Defense instead of (or in addition to) PoCB, if you're expecting to need more than one perfect parry per scene. You'll also want the Second or Third Excellency, and Infinite (Melee) Mastery (which also requires Melee 4) as soon as you hit Essence 3, and of course Dexterity is crucial for all sorts of combat purposes.

The retrieval/range tree starts with Call The Blade, which lets you quick-draw any weapon you own, causing it to leap into your hand even from well beyond arm's reach. With Melee 4, Essence 3 you can upgrade that to Glorious Solar Saber, summoning an idealized holy weapon from your own imagination. With just Melee 3 and Essence 2 you could instead go for Summoning The Loyal Steel, which is the basic 'hammerspace' effect. Further upgrades to that charm allow more efficient storage of multiple weapons, for that Gate of Babylon/Infinite Blade Works sort of effect. Or, also building off of Call The Blade, you could learn the Iron Raptor Technique, throwing your weapon and having it return to you like a boomerang. With Melee 5, Essence 3, and Iron Raptor Technique, you can learn Blazing Solar Bolt, which is basically a mile-long laser beam of holy fire. You need to be holding a melee weapon to use that charm, but the weapon's stats don't factor in at all. Could be a stick you found on the side of the road.

There's also an Archery charm called Flashing Vengeance Draw which requires only 3 dots in Archery and one prerequisite charm, which can be used with melee weapons. Lets you draw so fast, at the start of a fight, that if you win initiative your first attack counts as unexpected due to sheer dazzling iaijutsu speed, even if you were in plain view and somebody else was initiating the hostilities.

>Positive energy and magical healing
Healing magic would be Solar Medicine charms, which are pretty amazing. Only one from the core set that requires Essence 3 is Wholeness-Restoring Meditation, for Crippling effects up to and including amputated limbs. Start with an Excellency and Flawless Diagnosis Technique, then Instant Treatment Methodology for combat-speed work, Contagion-Curing Touch to ignore penalties (including working without tools), Wound-Mending Care Technique for restoring health levels instantly instead of waiting for natural healing, then figure out which keywords are a priority. Poisons, diseases, aggravated damage, pain? Maybe stack some temporary health levels on there in advance? They've got it all.

That's not exactly 'positive energy,' though, more based on mastery of relatively ordinary medical techniques. If you want to rebuild somebody's body just by throwing energy bolts at them, as a solar, the Lore tree might actually be a better fit. Two Lore excellencies + Chaos-Repelling Pattern => Wyld Shaping Technique => Wyld Cauldron Technology. Needs Lore 5 and Essence 4. With all that, you can use the power of primal chaos to take somebody apart, body and soul, then put them back together different. Takes hours or days to set up, though. If you want to be able to 'hold the charge,' throw that kind of power around far from the bordermarches, best bet would be a 3-dot artifact called the Hand of the Great Maker. Needs a hearthstone or some other sort of power supply; the best option would be a Protoshinmaic Vortex, a separate 5-dot artifact which requires regular Wyld Shaping Technique maintenance. A PSV is basically a crumpled-up baby universe. Too much missed maintenance, containment becomes unstable and the detonation takes out everything within at least a mile radius. When I say "everything," I'm not just talking about physical objects, either. A perfect defense can protect you from the initial blast, but then you're stuck in a zone of Pure Chaos, with no landmarks and rolls to resist mutation on a minute-to-minute basis. Good news, a PSV is an incredibly intense and versatile power source. Some heavy-duty artifacts need multiple hearthstones, or specific elemental aspects, or both, but a single PSV is always a sufficient substitute, and usually enough for previously undreamed-of overclocking even beyond the item's normal capabilities. The only things that might require multiple PSVs are those that can't normally be powered by any comprehensible number of hearthstones at all, like a miles-wide Titan-Class Aerial Citadel. A set of Gates of Auspicious Passage, which allow instant travel for vehicles or armies across arbitrary distance and would normally require several hours of max output from multiple linked manses for a single minute, could be held open indefinitely by a rotating array of just 25 PSVs.

>Killing Demons
Regular combat charms cover a lot of that, particularly if they include a holy-keyword effect. There's a terrestrial martial arts style, Golden Janissary, which is all about that kind of thing. Mainly uses spears. You could teach mortals that style, after enlightening them with thaumaturgy or Lore charms, to have a squad - or in time, an army - of demon-slaying henchmen.

In terms of specific anti-demon techniques, the main thing to look at is Occult charms. Sorcery, of course, can summon, slay, or banish, but... I dunno, the character you're describing doesn't exactly seem like a sorcerer. Native solar Occult charms cover the important stuff, anyway. Start with Spirit-Detecting Glance, then Spirit-Cutting Attack, which only require 2 dots in Occult and do exactly what they say. With Occult 5, the former can be upgraded to All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight, which lets you directly observe magical auras, and the latter into Spirit-Repelling Diagram, which again is fairly straightforward. The main one, though, is Ghost-Eating Technique, at Essence 3, Occult 4, which lets you permanently slay spirits which would otherwise reform after 'lethal' violence. That's arguably the core purpose for which all the Exalted were originally created: to shatter the invincible and slay the eternal. At Essence 5, Ghost-Eating Technique can be further upgraded with Demon-Binding Redemption, allowing you to subjugate and enslave defeated demons rather than obliterating them outright. That's limited to a year and a day, and is subject to 'exact words' dickery - unlike a proper sorcerous binding, which covers both letter and spirit and can last indefinitely, but also requires more setup.

>Resisting Mental Influence
That's most of the solar Integrity tree, plus Judge's Ear Technique from Investigation (a lie detector) and Sagacious Reading of Intent from Linguistics (which analyzes a speaker or writer's intent, and negates any associated mental influence if it's fundamentally hostile)

>Bathing in Flame
Could be covered by Resistance charms, but the more efficient long-term option is Survival 5, Essence 3, Hardship-Surviving Mendicant Spirit => Element-Resisting Prana.

>Flight on Wings of light
At low Essence, your best option for this would be an artifact: Transcendent Phoenix Pinions, Wings of the Raptor, or a flight system incorporated into Celestial Battle Armor. Being able to fly completely under your own power (without mutations) would be an Essence 4 Athletics charm. Two options on that, actually: Eagle-Wing Style (with three prerequisite charms) for low-altitude tactical flight, Mountain-Crossing Leap Technique (with two completely different prerequisites) for jumping so high you come back down five minutes later, twenty miles away (or more at higher Essence). Adamant Skin Technique from the Resistance tree might be a good hedge against mishaps with that one, since it's one of the few charms that can fully protect against falling damage.

>Pottery/ceramics
Craft (Fire) again. I'm planning to somewhat rework the charms Object-Strengthening Touch, Durability Enhancing Technique, Chaos-Resistance Preparation, and The Art Of Permanence based on their 3rd edition versions, to make their utility a bit broader and clearer.
>Unarmed pasification
If you want to beat Godzilla unconscious with your mighty fists, or whatever improvised weapons are close at hand, that's what Solar Hero Style is all about. If you want to specifically pacify your enemies, subdue them without needless damage or death, it might be worth looking into Path of the Arbiter Style martial arts. It's a terrestrial style, total of nine charms, so you could master the entire style, and Golden Janissary as well (7 charms), at a cost of only nine charm slots including Swallowing the Lotus Root. The abilities are individually weaker than your native Solar set, but it includes handy powers like detecting disguised demons or mutant cultists by touch, setting entire groups of them on fire, conjuring your signature weapon and armor out of solid light, a perfect and absolute defense against inflicting unintended harm, and, with the capstone of Path of the Arbiter, giving a pre- or mid-battle "surrender or be destroyed"/"in the name of the moon, I will punish you" speech with some real tactical significance and power. Perhaps most interesting, you could take the Whispers background to give that mysterious dark side a way to help you out when you need it most, which, with some of my houserules, synergizes particularly well with Path of the Arbiter, allowing much more powerful weapons or armor to be produced than would normally be possible for a celestial exalt - possibly even more powerful than you'd get with Solar charms.

> sustain myself physically and mentally, without detriment or need for replenishment.
Solar charms can let you go a lot longer than normal without needing to eat, drink, sleep, etc., and find shelter or forage food in otherwise implausible conditions, but they won't let you renounce basic human metabolic needs outright. Abyssal charms can, though, and with Black Mirror Revelation (Occult 5, Essence 4, requires either Labyrinth Circle Necromancy or an excellency + upgrade) you can learn 'em.
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No. 872461 ID: d22dc0

>>872436
So, if you're approving the character's conceptual underpinnings, this description of ways to represent those skills with in game powers makes me assume that I'm to be sorting through these suggestions and finding what I think feels fitting or right, within a points constraint that you're mostly keeping track of until it comes down to bras tacks and I have to choose the exact details of what ways I can exercise my powers.

Broadly speaking, from what I've read there is one allotted amount of points that is split between everything you do. Somewhere in the range of 250-300 point units, which can get converted other units at an exchange rate of 4-1 for base attributes. The main places you spend your points are:

>Stats:
This covers willpower, virtues, ability scores, and your essence cap. These are broad physical limits that will determine how much power you can expend at any one time, and how good you are at using that power when compared to someone of equal training.

>Charms:
Charms seem to be small groups of skill trees that determine what you actually know how to do. They give off the impression of "moves" from the apocalypse system, rather than the more nebulous d&d terms of "this is what I'm good at". The relationship in fact seems nearly inverse to me; "because I know X move from Y skill tree, I am good at Z skill" as opposed to "Because I am good at Z skill, I can probably do X action with a decent chance of success, right?"

>Equipment:
You can attune to this stuff, often times objects so powerful a normal soul would have no chance to use it. They're also sometimes charms? But sometimes not? Seems to be a situation of "Y item allows me to preform X skill, as opposed to me having to learn how to do it of my own power." It took me about 6 hours to read most of the thread, and I got to a point somewhat close to the edge where I had simply burnt out and couldn't keep digging, so I don't know if I get the hole system currently, hence me posting this instead of making meaningful character choices. Want to straighten out the basic terms and mechanics.

From what I can tell, the game is played in scenes, where presumably each character will get to make one of these moves to influence the outcome of the scenario. The moves seem strangely narrow and specific to me, as I mentioned with the inverse relationship compared to what I'm used to. You have a lot of little skills that build on each other thematically in order to build your character's specialties.

Also there's something called sidereal? Which are important, but maybe not for everyone?


Actual Character Decisions:

Okay, so for my main focus I'd like to invest in smithing, protecting, and healing others. I'm imaging a relationship similar to any dual identity superhero book, with her cold aspect having about as much screen time as bruce wayne or clark kent do. The main character is her warm aspect.

And, to tie this in to other characters, I've been imaging the cold aspect as a negative of her, a polarized inverse, which is a type of reflection in itself. I think her mind and soul are very split on what her best self is, so I think that might be an interesting Dynamic for you to work with Magey. Spiritually she's bound to believe her cold aspect is her ideal self, but mentally and physically I think she desires to retain her compassion and mercy. Sort of a situation where One best self is so narrowly focused, there is no "self" left, just a burnt out computer-esque husk mindless preforming a directive, but the other is so reserved and removed she might as well not exist.

So, back to smithing. Based on what I've read I think Twilight might fit her better than zenith- she's less "holy warrior" and more "crafter and healer" in her warm aspect. The main points seem good to me- I want her to be better at this when she's at her worst than most mortals are at their best.

I was wondering if there was a way to spec her out with lower dexterity without having her crafting suffer for it. Some sort of charm or artifact, a skill that lets her substitute a different ability score in, maybe some sort of "slow and steady" vibe that replaces her dexterity with her wisdom? She makes no mistakes, not because of her deftness and grace, but because of her patience and experience kind of deal.

I'm thinking depending how much realizing her core features costs, that I might actually have her at essence 4, so craftsman needs no tools is appealing. Especially with one of her central goals being based on her lack of an ideal home base, I think that also implies a lack of an ideal workshop. No sure how much the re-emergence of the solars is going to plan into this setting, but if she found a group of other Twilight Solars to work with in a makeshift/under construction temple, that might make sense. She has a place to go when she's off duty, but it's not ideal, she has access to some tools, but not the perfect forge she desires. No need or desire to make something out of nothing, requiring materials falls well within the realm of her character.

As for tanking and resistance, her actual armed combat experience would be more akin with the multi-attack power and power attack realm. I was imaging that would be relegated more closely to her cold aspect, but with limited points, I might have it be closer to mundane training received through experience in a war before she was quite so exalted as she is now. The base inspiration for this deign draws on the warpriest class from pathfinder, so the class features detailing training with an array of weapons, heavy armor, the quickly strengthening your armaments with holy power for attack and defense, those were the basis for that skill on her background. Being able to make an ideal holy weapon lines up pretty closely with those powers, so I may look into that if I have the points to spare.

For healing, the mechanics sound exactly like what I want, but on the outset the thematic aspects sound contradictory to her character. It sounds to me like she's essentially just putting everyone back together again through mundane surgery, at a rate faster than is conceivably possible. Makes me think of Machi from HxH https://youtu.be/9i93O-nF4O0?t=55s

And while that's exactly the kind of power I'm trying to use, supernatural healing, mechanically it sits too close to crafting for me- putting all the bits in the right place is still a craft, whether it's flesh and bone or magical steel bars. Bridget has one true devotion, so it seems like the way this healing is explained run counter to her motivations as a character.

Carrying around a mini-universe to power spontaneous breaking down and re-building of people wasn't the original idea, but it does sound cool. Another thing to come back to depending on how the points hash out; I doubt I'll be able to afford it though, it sounds like something too expensive to be set up with leftovers.

Sounds like the solar path has everything I need for building her, including a perverse mirror aspect that has powers I can tap into to do what I need to do. I'll come back to the specifics of combat, but it sounds like occult is going to be an important skill for multiple facets. Dexterity is also recommended for two separate realms of her power, but as mentioned I wasn't planning on investing in dex. Will I be crippled as a character, given what I want to do, without high dex? Is that okay, in terms of your goals with this game? Still not sure exactly what we'll be doing since it seems like character creation takes a while, and we're going to be starting off at odds with eachother.

>Hardship-Surviving Mendicant Spirit => Element-Resisting Prana.
This looks like you were describing stats that would be useful for resisting fire, and then this is part of a charm tree? Take one, then the other?

I was imaging flying through my own power, but despite being worth a good chunk of committed motes, the Transcendent Phoenix Pinions sound like a very satisfactory item. If I can't afford the Eagle-Wing Style, which I would prefer since it's more in line with "I have the power to fly" as opposed to "I have an item that lets me fly", I'll probably default to the Pinions.

Path of the Arbiter Style sounds like what I'd go for rather than bludgeoning mothra to death with my fists. Or, it does when you describe it as the non-lethal pacification option, less so when it's described as immolating crowds of people. Based on your description though that'll probably be my main fighting style, which the motivation being Bridget growing sick and tired of slaughtering people during the war, so re-focusing on the cultivation of a means to passify hostiles without undo risk to their lives made the most sense. If you don't like having to mince the people foolish enough to turn against you, learning ho not to mince people is a good place to start. Mechanically, I was imagining something along the lines of a transition from traditional warpriest into the sacred fist archytype. https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/hybrid-classes/warpriest/archetypes/paizo-warpriest-archetypes/sacred-fist/

As for other unmentioned character things, I should probably propose attributes:
Strength 5, Dex 3, Stamina 6, Charisma 1, Manipulation 1, Appearance 1, Intelligence 5, Wits 5, Perception 5. My highest resources is my health and stamina, so naturally the others must be lower by comparison. Everything else relating to my craft is strong, but I'm weak socially, and not nearly as fast as I am any really anything else. Not sure what all the skills mean or do, so this is more of a rough guess based on what you said about the 10 point system, and their relative relations to eachother. If a scorce of 1 is supposed to be less than 7, I may re-consider. I'll want to narrow down skill cost before making a final decision, but I imagine I have very few points left with this load-out.

There was some discussion of the starting area, but to reaffirm my understanding the story thus far is that a lich, residing in her floating castle, was planning on summoning a demon. Bridget arrived, intent on intervening, but before a meaningful conclusion was had, a large explosion threatened to destroy the castle, and likely us with it given how geometrically powerful the castle is. This was at least partially to blame on Malaice, ho has snuck in with the help of a confidant in order to steal precious jewels that give access to a Gilgamesh style sage who is wise beyond belief, and likewise incapable of readily imparting useful wisdom. Somewhere in the mix we have at least two additional exalt, but I didn't see the post detailing the why and how of their involvement in the current situation.

Castle design seemed to be wildly over cost, so I have some proposed tweaks- the castle itself was created as a place for leisurely study and the pursuit of arts, right? So what if we take it down a notch, say that it's about as fragile as a regular library, only more harry potter-eque inside? I know the first rule of doing stuff together is "yes AND" but it seems like we may need to cut costs somewhere. I wasn't sure exactly what you meant by having extra manses giving power- basically we have small batteries with us? Why can we not just be surrounded by little one point batteries then? I'm confused as to how the power lending system works. An endlessly shifting library removed from mortal memory might have less need for defense and city moving capabilities, so maybe we could dial it back on the traps and defendability of the structure, focus on the leasurly spending of life after death. Maybe we could skin those lightning defenses as a lightning storm, traveling with the castle? Takes the form of massive fog-bank spilling endlessly when it lands, preferably somewhere over water perhaps, pierced only my the light of the full moon?
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No. 872477 ID: 3abd97

>>871744
...I'm rapidly approaching the point where I discard the optimized akuma attributes for something more conservative that actually lets me start with some charms and skills, but I suppose I'll try and figure this route out a little longer. It's looking like she'll end up starting with the attributes, some artifacts, and zero charms and skills. And I remain unconvinced this will be fun or interesting, even if it's more long term optimized. (And does it function? Like, if I go to work on someone with high Manipulate and no Socialize, what happens)?

Can work on the chancel stuff for now, as that should apply either way.

>if you're familiar with the Rise of the Runelords adventure path
Nope.

The groundhog looping town in the mirror being destroyed and rest daily is a fun concept though. Bonus points if the goblins manifest as rival serpent and feline factions, and the town is a casualty of their turf war. I'm reminded of how the rival fae courts are depicted in A Practical Guide to Evil- the same actors reborn (reset) to enact the same conflict and over and over. A thousand variations on the same story. Which side is the aggressor or the defender changes, who's the new upstarts or the old established power, who's the winner or the loser (well the city is the battlefield, it always looses), which prince or princess leads as their people's king or queen, etc.

Part of the cosmetically antagonistic relationship between Lute and the Raksha could be assuming roles on opposite sides of the cyclical conflict (given the nature of the loop, neither the roles nor side would have to be consistent). I don't really have any definite ideas how to define the Rakasha Lord's style role and services beyond that, right now. Maybe personality modeled on good-mood-Q. (As opposed to a rebuke-all-humanity-mood-Q).

I was imagining a marshy, jungle-y landscape (with distant mountains, some the wrong way up) rather than a desert. Although I could compromise on that if it's the difference between you being able to tap an existing resource to fill out a background thing versus having to invent an entire environment fresh.
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No. 872500 ID: 094652

Poison: Needs to be lethal If it doesn't kill quickly, it's not going to keep Embri from getting revenge-skewered. Any non-lethal poisons should be purchased on-site "for special occasions" or obtained from a squad member who is specialized for non-lethal methods.
1: Frozen Hearts of the Tellerauthelot - Holy crap this one's awesome. Lethal, abundant doses, and it can even create meatshields out of dead targets!
2: 3-dot Hearthstone - Less costly but it should do the trick.
Knife: Sounds good. This knife is specifically for backstabbing and 1v1 skirmishes with alerted targets in the brothel room. If she's forced to fight, her preference is a bow, caltrops, and some kunai. The scabbard means she won't have to worry anymore about low-grade assassins revenge-stealth-killing her with cheap weapons, that is a huge load off her mind.
Blanket: Worried I might not think of its full potential, but shadows for Embri.
Mirrors: Add as a knife mod, I was planning on having the mirror used specifically for assassinations. Plus, the knife itself can be used as a mirror with this mod, so that's one less artifact to keep track of.
Smoke Bombs: Nerve gas, nice.

So actually, some new ideas come to mind:
Caltrops that drop from underneath her kimono while she's running away. Just a small amount, but it can be triggered quickly to hinder pursuers when she's using a narrow escape route. They'd have to ignore her kimono entirely. Maybe they could be poisoned?
Time-Displaced Kunai - Much like the Time-Strung Bow, a few of Embri's kunai disappear and store their potential energy for the right moment. Unlike the bow, treat them as ethereal invisible kunai in the middle of a very slow time-bubble that will pop when an unsuspecting pursuer runs straight into it, causing the throwing dagger to instantly fire. This means if Embri isn't hitting any targets, she can slip a few of these in her ineffective kunai volleys and run for it, and when the enemy reaches the point where she threw, it's an instant trap. The kunai can only hold their charge for about ~30 seconds before they run out of stored horizontal kinetic energy, the bubble pops, and the kunai just fall straight to the ground.
Let me know what you think.
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No. 872507 ID: d1248b

>>872461
> one allotted amount of points that is split between everything you do. Somewhere in the range of 250-300 point units,
That was specific to Mageykun's character, an akuma. Someone who's sold their soul completely to an extraordinarily powerful demon, and had it all mulched up and re-forged, potentially in a shape so different as to be unrecognizable. Free-willed exalts face more constraints, being bound by minds that must be largely sane, memories and personal histories that formed in an environment of strictly linear time, etc.
>which can get converted other units at an exchange rate of 4-1 for base attributes.
Normal exalts have a much smaller pool of bonus points (hence the term, a small totipotent bonus added on top of a relatively rigid framework) but the conversion factors remain accurate. As a solar, you have 18 bonus points, plus up to ten more from disadvantages, but rather than zero your Attributes start with one dot each, plus 8 more in the primary category (physical, mental, or social), 6 in the secondary, and 4 in the tertiary.

>broad physical limits
Mental and spiritual as well, but this paragraph is otherwise a serviceably accurate summary.

>The relationship in fact seems nearly inverse to me; "because I know X move from Y skill tree, I am good at Z skill"
This is somewhat an artifact of the abstracted design process. Exalts are enhanced, uplifted humans; their charms are built on a foundation of human capability. Again, the metaphor of the Perfected Lotus: the dirt around the lotus's roots is mundane effort, repetitive practice, building muscles or training reflexes or simple humility acquired by sweeping out the dojo day after day. No dirt, no flower. Weak dirt, not as good a flower. Character design in this system is like gardening, or architecture. First you imagine the pinnacle, the perfumed penthouse suite, the milkshake that brings all the bees to the yard, then you work backwards through the stalks and pipes and girders, the foundations, the underlying rocks and mud necessary to support it all. Then you compare those glorious aspirations to cold, hard schedules and budgets.

Anyway, charms aren't the sum total of what you can do. Skills and Attributes are enough for mundane actions, stunting and willpower can push those to the limits of plausibility, virtues can be channeled to go even further in moments of heroic necessity, and then there's thaumaturgy, which covers everything from low-key folk magic to the most foolish sorts of demon summoning.

>You can attune to this stuff, often times objects so powerful a normal soul would have no chance to use it. They're also sometimes charms? But sometimes not? Seems to be a situation of "Y item allows me to preform X skill, as opposed to me having to learn how to do it of my own power."
Yes. Some artifacts have a particular affinity for some types of exalt, attuning more easily and with greater benefits, but that also means doubling down on your archetypal associations. Artifacts can be more interesting as a way to step outside your niche, develop complementary powers that you'd never have been able to learn. Touches on a couple of major themes: one, the value of infrastructure as a force multiplier, and two, the historical fact that, during the Primordial War, the Exalted Host stood together stronger than it's component parts, for each type of exalt complemented the others' strengths and covered their weaknesses.

>From what I can tell, the game is played in scenes,
Correct, to a point. Scenes are an explicit unit of time in play, traditionally approximated as twenty in-game minutes, which sets the duration of many magical effects. A scene could be a matter of seconds, when a mysterious figure appears, slips a few words into your ear or sharp things into your kidneys and vanishes again, or an hours-long overlong pursuit or battle. Scenes are times when something is happening, downtime is the region between scenes when nothing of real significance is happening.
>where presumably each character will get to make one of these moves to influence the outcome of the scenario.
Raksha work this way, explicitly and consciously directing narratives with the Shaping Combat rules - which are, and I say this as a connoisseur, really confusing. More conventional sorts of violence or social interaction are handled in a relatively strict gamist/simulationist blow-by-blow sort of framework, tracking movement in yards and time in seconds or minutes. I'm planning to try and actually play some of that out, more or less 'by the book,' once character creation is done. A single action in combat might plausibly be a flurry of five distinct attacks against five different targets, each attack supplemented, resisted, or otherwise modified by more than one charm from both the attacker and defender. The flurry might even be interrupted by counterattacks.
>something called sidereal?
Stripped of context, the word means having to do with the stars. Sidereal Exalted are Chosen of the Five Maidens of Destiny: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They are natural advisors, astrologers, matchmakers, schemers, spymasters. When they exert themselves beyond subtlety (which is a rare event, and not just because they are so few in number) their souls glow with starlight.

>Based on what I've read I think Twilight might fit her better than zenith
You get just as many Favored skills as Caste, so you could make a Twilight with lots of traditionally Zenith charmtech just as easily as the reverse. Key distinguishing point mechanically is the anima power, and from a characterization perspective, the reason this person Exalted. Why are you here? What's it all about? Is this character, first and foremost, someone who lives and breathes SCIENCE, who pokes into dark corners and takes notes on whatever is found there, learning more about how the world works largely as an end in itself? Or is this someone who lives and breathes RIGHTEOUSNESS, who pokes into dark corners and takes notes on what's gone wrong, learning more about how to fix it because that just ain't the way things ought to be? Twilight anima power lets you notice details, analyze magic, snap out of illusions. Zenith lets you smite and purify the unclean.

>I was wondering if there was a way to spec her out with lower dexterity without having her crafting suffer for it.
Crafting is based on the lowest among Dexterity, Intelligence, and Perception for small items assembled personally, but Dexterity isn't a factor for "larger works." A surgeon, or somebody working on Faberge Eggs, absolutely needs steady hands; somebody directing a team of journeymen and unskilled laborers, not so much.
>Some sort of charm or artifact,
Yep.
>>867771
>There's a 3-dot artifact, Bracers of Universal Crafting, which is an all-purpose toolkit and gives a broad bonus to fine manipulation.

>I might actually have her at essence 4, so craftsman needs no tools is appealing.
Boosting Essence to 4 costs 14 of your 18 bonus points, and is a poor BP/XP tradeoff, but on the other hand it saves three solid in-game months of training time and unlocks some of those very interesting charms. Speaking of which, if you're going for Craftsman Needs No Tools and E4, might as well take it a step further and pick up Words As Workshop Method. At that point, even the finest mundane forge would be entirely superfluous, except perhaps for stealth or energy-conservation purposes. The infrastructure you'd need to expand your options further would be the sort pf magical materials and exotic ingredients that major countries quarrel over. A smelting facility for turning gold into orichalcum, which is the magical material for which solars have the best affinity, typically involves an active volcano and enormous, high-precision mirrors for focusing sunlight. Building such mirrors is a matter of Craft (Air) rather than Craft (Fire), so Lute Silhouette Speculation might have valuable skills to offer for such a project, and favors to ask in return.

>multi-attack, power attack
If you want to do truly gratuitous amounts of damage, the real trick is to stack multipliers. Hungry Tiger Technique doubles the contribution of excess accuracy to raw damage, and is prerequisite for Fire And Stones Strike which adds to post-soak damage. Thunderbolt Attack Prana, over in the Athletics tree, defines a 'signature move' which gives you a small boost to the attack roll and doubles the post-soak damage, possibly including any additions from Fire And Stones Strike. One Weapon, Two Blows (another melee charm with no prereqs beyond the skill itself) allows you to apply that post-soak damage twice, and it's the prerequisite for Peony Blossom Attack, which lets you make a single attack roll against everyone within three yards at once. If you've got Peony Blossom Attack, Iron Raptor Technique, and Essence 4, you could learn the Grass-Cutting Strike and apply that single attack roll simultaneously to all targets in a 40 yard radius around you. Stacking all the multipliers could be expensive, but sometimes you just really need to take out, say, an entire unholy cathedral in one shot: all the cultists, the summoned demons, and even those thick stone pillars holding up the roof.

>Will I be crippled as a character, given what I want to do, without high dex? Is that okay, in terms of your goals with this game?
You'll have smaller dice pools for some actions, including a lot of combat stuff, and a slower tactical movement rate. There are ways to work around that. Dex 3, Melee 5, an Excellency, and a single simple combat-oriented 2-dot artifact, such as a daiklaive, thunderbolt shield, or medium armor, already puts you head and shoulders above any mortal combatant. Against a well-optimized celestial-tier combatant, you'd probably lose... but that's true anyway, without a full Chungian paranoia combo. Consider Marena (from Keychain of Creation), particularly her reluctance to directly oppose other exalts and overall inefficiency in combat. Would you say she's crippled as a character?

>This looks like you were describing stats that would be useful for resisting fire, and then this is part of a charm tree? Take one, then the other?
Both are Solar Survival charms. HSMS negates external penalties for harsh environments, including difficulty finding food and water in a barren desert, or fatigue from temperatures which even a completely unprotected person could survive for a few hours. Element-Resisting Prana requires HSMS, as well as Survival 5 and Essence 3, but then it provides immunity to environments so hazardous they could cause damage in combat time, such as a raging forest fire. Not actual attacks, though.

>If I can't afford the Eagle-Wing Style,
You can, it just needs Athletics 5, Essence 4, and four charm slots.

>immolating crowds of people
That's the capstone of Golden Janissary, not anything to do with Path of the Arbiter. Sorry about blurring those together.

>Strength 5, Dex 3, Stamina 6, Charisma 1, Manipulation 1, Appearance 1, Intelligence 5, Wits 5, Perception 5.

Hooboy. First, can't have social that low. Being Hephaestus-style ugly fits the forge-worker archetype, and relative lack of Manipulation too, but even if it's your tertiary category that still squeezes Charisma up to 5. Might not have much in the way of social skills, but there's a foundation of burning passion to work from at least.

For mental, if you want to be patient, how about making that the primary set with Intelligence 5, Wits 1, Perception 5? Covers the crafting stuff and slow reactions.

That leaves secondary physical. Can't normally start with attributes above 5. Could go with Strength 2, Dex 3, Stamina 4, then boost it to 3/3/5 with the 1-point mutation Large, which is at the upper end of the range for natural human sizes - or 3/3/3 boosted to 5/3/5 with the 2-point mutation Huge, which is well outside that range, on the order of nine feet tall. Mutations cost bonus points, of course, but you could get some back by taking an appropriate derangement.

More to come. Manses are tricky to explain, and I've got IRL stuff to do.
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No. 872544 ID: d1248b

>>872477
>I was imagining a marshy, jungle-y landscape (with distant mountains, some the wrong way up)
Sandpoint is a coastal town, named after mineral resources which are suited to the production of particularly high-quality glass, rather than an overall ubiquity of sand. Brinestump Marsh could be one of the other waypoints within the chancel. http://paizo.com/products/btpy8j5w?Pathfinder-Module-We-Be-Goblins

Also, an intriguingly relevant quote from the section in the first Rise of the Runelords adventure's description of the town: Aside from the occasional goblin, the citizens of Sandpoint have traditionally had little wor- ries about invasion or banditry—the region simply isn’t populated enough to make theft a lucrative business. Hanging from a bent nail at both the gatehouse and the southern bridge is a sign and a mirror—painted on each sign is the message: “Welcome to Sandpoint! Please stop to see yourself as we see you!”
>And does it function? Like, if I go to work on someone with high Manipulate and no Socialize, what happens
If you needed to roll Manipulation + Socialize, as an exalt with six in the former and zero in the latter, you could go ahead and roll those six dice. With an applicable Yozi excellency, you could buy six more dice, for a total of twelve. In-setting, you'd be making it up as you went along, re-deriving the rules of etiquette on the fly rather than remembering any sort of training. A fairly competent mortal courtier or con artist might have attributes and skills both at 3, so you'd be able to hold your own by dint of raw superhuman brilliance even without the excellency. Readily available points of comparison that spring to mind would be Kaylee's ability to charm high-class partygoers by talking shop about ship engines in the Firefly episode Shindig, or Ein helping Jet play Shogi in Cowboy Bebop, or Kevyn Andreyasn's adventures in military leadership, particularly starting here https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2004-11-04 No formal training, might be outplayed by someone with formal training since they already know the tricks instead of having to invent it all on the spot... but usually won't be, because she's just that good.

>>872500
As an Alchemical, you've got a larger than usual budget for artifacts, but it's still not unlimited. At some point you'll need to narrow this down to the items you're actually taking.
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No. 872580 ID: d22dc0

>>872507
>You have fewer points, but also haven't sold your soul to a demon

Makes sense! Although now that I'm thinking about it in terms of selling your soul for power, my background does pitch it as "some portion of my spirituality was auctioned off for greater power and re-forged into something that suits the needs of another entity". I was picturing that as the reason I have some super human characteristics in the first place though.

>1 in everything, then add 8/6/4
Got it. With that arrangement, I'll boil it down to:
Strength 2, Dex 3, Stamina 3, Charisma 5, Manipulation 1, Appearance 1, Intelligence 5, Wits 1, Perception 5.
Then, to get some extra BP, I'll take allergy (soulsteel), disturbing voice, and chakra eye, to get +4 points. With that I'll take huge and inexhaustible, for strength 4 and stamina 5. I'm curious about how taking chakra eye twice works, since it gives you -2 points, but taking it twice gives you a blight that costs 4 points.

I was thinking about taking disgusting scent, but it seems a little one-note to take a bunch of social debilitating mutations. The idea of smelling constantly like sulfur and copper is a cool idea though. I also though about taking hungry, since it's counteracted by inexhaustible, but that seems a bit like cheating.

>First you imagine the pinnacle, [...] Then you compare those glorious aspirations to cold, hard schedules and budgets.
Gottcha! I was imagining we were starting out as full blow god-like super heroes, but I'm more than happy to work towards a described ideal instead of starting there. Helps me re-contextualize what my actual goal in character creation is.

>charms aren't the sum total of what you can do
Good to know. There was an emphasis on them, so I was getting the impression most of what occurred in each scene would be moves gained from charm, and in between scenes we'd be mainly using skills, but from what I've read and what you've said it seems like there's a good opportunity to use a mix of both.

>Artifacts
Makes sense that it's cheaper to build within a theme- I like that idea, and think the themes of "stronger together" lends itself to the way you're encouraged to specialize- if everyone specializes in a theme, and them compliment each other, it'll be stronger than all of us building outside our theme. I think it also lends itself to interesting story development; if we're counting on each other to shore up our weaknesses and strengthen the team, then the inevitable conflicts and betrayal create more drama and interesting results.

>Scene
Pretty much exactly what I was thinking. Didn't realize it also doubled up as a defined unit of time, but that makes sense.

Okay so sidereal is another type of exalt, not a thing you can do, got it.

As for twilight vs zenith, her main reason isn't specifically science, but it isn't righteousness either. Crafting magic artifacts seems to be solidly within the realm of twilight, but she does it as an art form, not for understanding or discovery. Her evil purifying sidejob is almost entirely at odds with her character and motivations, so that's not her main gimick. Unless of course you think it makes more sense for her to be a Zenith because despite her primary goals and desires, she was granted power in order to purge evil. So I'll defer to you on whether her caste is a result of her needs, or a fundamental facet of her personality and self.

>all-purpose toolkit and gives a broad bonus to fine manipulation.
Sounds like something I want at some point. We'll have to see what my budget for charms and artifacts is since with my stats I've already spent all my BP, and that's before I've even looked at Essence level.

>Doing lots of damage in combat
Again, perhaps another after thought field. Not the primary focus of her character.

>You won't be the best at combat, but you can shore up your weak points
Sounds like a good fit then. I don't mind being bad at things in game, but I know there are certain systems or goals where deficiencies are self defeating to the character concept. For example, being required to a dex based weapon for sneak attack damage would mean that a low dex rouge is almost unable to use certain class features. If I don't have to worry about that, then there's no issue.

>Element-Resisting Prana
Sounds like exactly what I want. Not sure what my budget is since I've spent all my BP. It sounds like I want to try to get survival and occult and crafting as high as I can to start with.

>You can afford flying
Perhaps outright, but it's not the first priority. If I really wanted to, I could take more mutations and get wings. We'll see based on how much I can game the system and what I have room for in the budget.

>Golden Arbiter
Got it, I'll actually look them up on my own so I have a better understanding of the detail. I'll also look into backgrounds since I haven't even touched that subject yet

>Hephaestus-style ugly
I was imagining that would be relegated closer to 0 rather than 1, although I may be overestimating how ugly he is supposed to be. I was picturing 1 being equivalent to an ability score of 7 in traditional terms, which is below average but not hideous as to be unthinkable. Mechanically, it only boils down to a 10% debuff compared to your average joe, which didn't seem too unreasonable. Does it work differently than I'm imagining?

>I've got IRL stuff to do.
Please, take your time. You've been more than accommodating. I'm not in any rush.

Anyone want to chime in on my proposals to the castle and introductory scene? It's been a while since I've seen strngy, I hope they're doing alright. Seems like they too might have some tough stuff going on IRL.
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No. 872712 ID: d22dc0

Decided to look into backgrounds, and frutratingly I wasn't finding any sort list detailing different backgrounds, their costs, or what they did- mostly jut home-brew or incomplete list. I ended up finding this:

http://fap.if.usp.br/~fmneto/exalted/pdf/Exalted%202E%20-%20Dreams%20of%20the%20First%20Age%20-%20Book%202%20(Lords%20of%20Creation)%20[revised].pdf

And did a little reading. I'm going to throw some ideas out there based on what it says I get to spend, but obviously I understand you're the storyteller and get to decide how the rules actually work, so I'm just going to use this as a sort of inspiration/jumping off point as I try to familiarize myself with the system.

One of the first questions posed under the solar character creation thread i "how do you feel about other exalted" which is a good question that I don't know the answer to. I left the background vague enough to fill in with details from the setting, but as we narrow it don it might help establish the character better. So I guess question one is what war was I involved in and how did the exalted play into it? My core idea was that it involved fighting against demons at some level, with the scale and motivations behind it not yet filled in. I imagine before becoming exalted, Bridget would likely have been someone of low social standing and power, perhaps even to the point of slavery or indentured servitude, with the "war" perhaps being a large scale revolt she was pressed into to save the lives of herself and her loved ones.

Abilities:

>A Solar Exalt gets eight free dots in Abilities by virtue of Celestial Training—one dot in Bureaucracy, Presence or Socialize; Lore 2; Occult 2; Ride or Sail 1; and two dots allocated among Archery, Martial Arts, Melee or Thrown. Members of each Solar Caste also receive specialized training in areas considered appropriate to their societal role. Some of these Abilities are Caste Abilities, but others are not. Collectively, these are called Caste Training Abilities. Each Caste gains free dots in those Training Abilities in addition to the dots gained from the Celestial Training Abilities.

>Dawn Training Abilities: two dots in Archery, Martial Arts, Melee or Thrown; one dot in Ride or Sail; War 1

>Zenith Training Abilities: Bureaucracy 1, Performance 2, Presence 1

>Twilight Training Abilities: Craft 1, Lore 1, Medicine 1, Occult 1


>Night Training Abilities: two dots in Investigation or Larceny; one dot in Archery, Martial Arts, Melee or Thrown; Stealth 1

>Eclipse Training Abilities: Integrity 1; Linguistics 1; one dot in Ride or Sail; one dot in Bureaucracy, Performance, Presence or Socialize

>After noting all the free dots your character gets through training, pick her five Favored Abilities (which cannot be Caste Abilities). Divide 10 dots among your Caste and Favored Abilities. You must have at least one dot in every Favored Ability. Once that’s done, allocate the other 18 Ability dots as you wish. You cannot raise an Ability above 3 without spending bonus points.

So, based on that, I would choose the twilight caste and end up with:

Craft 1; Lore 1 + Lore 2; Martial Arts 1; Medicine 1; Melee 1; Occult 1 + Occult 2; Presence 1; Sail 1;

As my free set of skills. After that, most of the skills I want or need are covered under my caste, so I jut chose other skills I thought sounded fitting as my favored.
Athletics**
Awareness**
Integrity**
Resistance**
War**

I don't know if specialties are part of this procedure, so I may want to re-work this later, but I think 3 points in craft and resistance is the first place to start with my 5 leftover caste/favored points, and then I can actually get all my skills up to 3 with the remaining 18 points. Instead though I might only have 2 sail, 2 war, and 2 presence, and get 2 ride and 1 archery. If specialties come into play though I'll wanna re-distribute some of my points.


>Solar Exalted begin with 20 points in Backgrounds. Also, all Solars begin with one free dot in the Cult Background and one free dot in the Manse Background (representing a manse somewhere in Meru, most likely a one-dot Air or Earth manse unless the player assigns more dots to improve the quality of this manse).

Arsenal 1
Backing 1
Connections 1
Command 1
Cult 2
Manse 2
Panopoly 3
Reputation 1
Salary 1
Savant 5
Sifu 1
Wealth 3

With the backgrounds done, I think I'm starting to get a better feel for the origin story of the character. I think it probably fits the general arc of

"I lived in a small community, likely exploited or uncared for by the powerful. A demon invasion or something similar occurred, and I became exalted during the process, making me one of the few instrumental individuals in turning the tide. After saving the people almost singlehandedly, I was contacted by other exalted,
mainly solars, (connections + Sifu) nearby who had recently began to return. We set up a base of operations (manse), and got connected with some higher power in Yu-Shan, so now we're on the payroll (backing + salary) with a notable following (cult) thanks to my reputation. Re-purposing the spoils of war has given us access to a degree of resources (wealth + panopoly), and I earned a small reputation since the community wasn't really that notable to begin with. We organized and outfitted a small fighting force (arsenal + command) to help prevent this sort of thing from happening again. Savant is jut who I was before the war. Probably suffered a great deal of personal tragedy, and don't want much to do with the whole situation, but her compassion stops her from just abandoning the community, and she's sort of bound to service after becoming an exalt, despite how much she'd like to live a life of peace and quiet sequestered from the violence of the world.

>Each Solar begins with 15 Charms. At least five of them
must be associated with either Caste or Favored Abilities.

Have to get into that another time, it's getting late. Probably want to re-visit essence level as well, since I was originally under the impression my attributes cost all 18 points, but the pdf seemed to indicate I might be able to use those as a separate buying pool.
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No. 872732 ID: d1248b

>>872580
>Although now that I'm thinking about it in terms of selling your soul for power, my background does pitch it as "some portion of my spirituality was auctioned off for greater power and re-forged into something that suits the needs of another entity". I was picturing that as the reason I have some super human characteristics in the first place though.
The Immaculate Philosophy calls solars and lunars "anathema," and considers them to be more or less possessed by demons.

>Her evil purifying sidejob is almost entirely at odds with her character and motivations, so that's not her main gimick. Unless of course you think it makes more sense for her to be a Zenith because despite her primary goals and desires, she was granted power in order to purge evil. So I'll defer to you on whether her caste is a result of her needs, or a fundamental facet of her personality and self.
The iconic example Zenith, Panther, was an amoral pit fighter pre-exaltation. One day he stepped out onto the balcony to get some fresh air, saw some problems elsewhere in the city, and thought to himself, "that ain't the way things should be." http://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch03/ch03_05.html Now, instead of boxing for money, he tries to make the world a better place by picking fights with tyrants and misbehaving gods.

>We'll have to see what my budget for charms and artifacts is since with my stats I've already spent all my BP, and that's before I've even looked at Essence level.
Ten charms, seven dots in backgrounds no higher than 3 dots each. You start with 18 bonus points and Essence 2, buying Essence up costs 7 per dot for solars so Ess4 costs 14 BP, leaving you with four.

>Then, to get some extra BP, I'll take allergy (soulsteel), disturbing voice, and chakra eye, to get +4 points.
Allergy gets you +2, Disturbing Voice gets you +1. The split personality could easily be represented with a derangement worth at least another +1.
>With that I'll take huge and inexhaustible, for strength 4 and stamina 5. I'm curious about how taking chakra eye twice works, since it gives you -2 points, but taking it twice gives you a blight that costs 4 points.
Chakra Eye costs 2 points, because it's not a disadvantage. In terms of mutations, with the combination of Disturbing Voice and Huge you're now talking about some sort of hulking mountain troll who won't be widely acknowledged as human. If you want to go for that, instead of Inexhaustible (which I'm less than confident about in terms of balance), how about maxing out disadvantages with a congenital twisted leg for +2 (hitting the Hephaestus thing again) and Wandering Po for +4, then spending the eight points thus freed up on Thick Skin for +2 natural soak, and a second head? No off-hand penalty that way, makes flurried actions easier, and from an RP standpoint you get to argue with yourself out where the other PCs can see it and possibly interrupt. With the charm Soul Fire Resurgence (Essence 2, Resistance 2), you could even round out the forge troll archetype with willpower-fueled regeneration in combat time.

Then, for artifacts, you could take a pair of three-dots: a Cup of Flowing Blood (healing potion, rechargeable by equivalent injury) and a Necklace of Solar Charisma, which gives +3 dice to Appearance and Charisma rolls, but the main benefit is an anti-xenophobia mental influence: nobody will ever attack you just for looking like a dangerous monster, and anybody with lower Essence (which, if you're starting with E4, would include all unExalted humans, even god-blooded or enlightened martial artists, and many supernatural beings as well) will consider you normal and/or pleasant-looking, rather than peculiar or unsettling, regardless of the actual details of your appearance. Strictly an emotional tweak, doesn't affect memories at all.

>Does it work differently than I'm imagining?
Appearance 2 is your average peasant. Appearance 1 is somebody who's notably ugly, maybe lumpy or lopsided somehow; it counts as equivalent to Appearance 3 for purposes of intimidation, which is why poor personal hygiene and extensive facial scarring mix well with thuggish behavior. Appearance 0 is the 'unspeakably hideous' level, for rotting corpses and particularly unpleasant demons, and counts as equivalent to Appearance 5 for intimidation purposes. That's the level where random bystanders start screaming or fleeing or vomiting with minimal provocation. The way I'm thinking of it, Hephaestus wasn't all that ugly in objective terms, but the other gods of Mt. Olympus were all in at least the Appearance 3 or 4 range, and being married to Aphrodite highlights the contrast even more.
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No. 872735 ID: d1248b

>>872712
Those rules are for starting solars in the High First Age, before the Usurpation, when they'd been ruling the world for thousands of years and had it rigged up just the way they liked it. Default setting is the Age of Sorrows/Time of Tumult, some fifteen centuries and three apocalypses later. The majority of Solar Exaltations spent most of that time imprisoned under the sea rather than seeking out new hosts, and have now awakened from the sleep of ages in a ruined world where the dominant culture's official religion teaches that they must be killed on sight, while the runner-up (Lookshy) only disagrees on a few technicalities of the most tactically expedient way to do so, and who should be in charge of organizing such hunts. Accordingly, modern solars don't get any of the extensive formal training and free social capital those rules reflect. Some factions are willing to prop them up, such as the Cult of the Illuminated, but those tend to have ulterior motives, and even with the purest intentions, much of the First Age social and educational infrastructure is simply gone. On the strategic scale, newly exalted Solars tend to be more rebels and refugees than rock stars... at least when they're starting out.
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No. 872769 ID: d22dc0

Okay, lost my work for no discernible reason, lazarus isn't working, so lets try round 2.

I think I'll stick with the allergy, voice, and delusion, and go for Huge + Chakra eye. Tough is useful for being a tank, but I think the eye is jut more fun. Don't want to have to deal with murdering people in the middle of the night, or having a twisted leg, so we'll stick with ugly one headed troll woman for now.

For backgrounds I'm thinking then I parse it down to just her making the crucial difference, no other exalted in the mix, so we'll end up with

Cult 1
Manse 1
Reputation 1
Savant 3
Wealth 1

I have a small following of people who hail me as their savior and protector, and am known locally. I set up a small workshop and converted the spoils of war into a small pool of wealth and resources I can draw on.

The two items you mentioned sound good, but it also sounds like I won't have much left for getting combat oriented charms. We'll have to see what else I think I need.

Let me know if my skills are sorted appropriately; if I still get skill boosts for being a Twilight, then I'll want to stick with that because it gives me pretty much exactly the kind of skills I want.

If we're in the age of sorrows will we have to worry about remembering our sidereal PCs? Or did the mask thing happen later?
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No. 872800 ID: d1248b

>>872769
Wealth and Savant are directly derived from the economic and educational resources of the First Age. How about a 1-dot wood-aspected Manse producing a Farmer's Stone (which improves agricultural productivity on any farm the bearer regularly tends), Resources 3, Cult 1, Backing (town council) 2?

Bridget's family has lived in the rough lands near the edges of the world since time out of mind. Mostly they keep to themselves, dwelling in cliffs along the sides of canyons, working with earth and fire, meditating on the riddle of steel and other fragmentary technical secrets from long ago. The only common interaction with outsiders was toll-collecting: caravans are permitted to cross on stone arches constructed over the canyons, in exchange for live sheep and certain highly ritualized gestures of respect. Five years ago, the Guild became dissatisfied with this arrangement, and hired a sorcerer to summon a small army of demons with the intention of subjugating or possibly exterminating all the bridge-trolls. You Exalted while fighting those demons, and, in the course of back-tracing the chain of command to make sure any Guildsmen involved learned their lesson rather than trying again after a year or three, accidentally conquered and liberated a drug plantation, complete with several thousand slave workers. The plantation HQ was (well, still is) a manse, and while it didn't have any proper anti-siege defenses, on-site bureaucrats managed to hole up inside and defend themselves from the rioting slaves by using remote-access codes for powered sliding doors and the ridiculously overbuilt climate control systems. Now they all work for you. The last few years were spent in reseeding coca fields with food crops and other setup for self-sufficiency. Then one day, some bizarre castle, forged partly of black metal that makes you itchy and nauseous just to look at, flew overhead. Nobody but the Sun gets to cross above your territory without paying due respect and three goats; even Luna steers her Silver Chair a little bit off to one side every night. So, one Mountain-Crossing Leap later, here we are.

Sound good? Ten charm slots, three of which would be needed for Mountain-Crossing Leap; the prerequisites, Monkey Leap Technique and Soaring Crane Leap, give you a level of tactical maneuverability that's almost as good as flight. Golden wings could be the iconic anima banner. Two Survival charms for the environmental damage immunity, three Resistance charms for the fast healing and armor (Whirlwind Armor-Donning Prana => Glorious Solar Plate, or Durability of Oak Meditation => Iron Kettle Body if you want to go bare-chested, which is slightly less efficient but can be activated reflexively, even against an unexpected attack, and is also more compatible with martial arts. Glorious Solar Plate needs a few crucial seconds of sparkly transformation sequence before it's ready, and produces a stealth-defeating glow which provides extra protection against demons and other creatures of darkness), then... hm.

Last two could go into Call The Blade => Glorious Solar Saber,
or a Craft Excellency => Craftsman Needs No Tools,
or Heroism Encouraging Presence => Tiger Warrior Training Technique so you can turn starving refugees into a SWAT team with alarming speed and ease,
or an Athletics Excellency => Flying Faith Legion so sufficient loyalty lets any army you command follow along on Mountain-Crossing Leaps.
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No. 872897 ID: d22dc0

>>872800
Sounds like a good set up, I'll take hat you've suggested and go for the, Durability of Oak Meditation => Iron Kettle Body tree, and then I don't think I satisfy the pre-requs, but Craft Excellency => Craftsman Needs No Tools sounds like a good pick for me. If I'm allergic to the ship, I imagine the opening is going to be difficult for her.

Based on the book (again, I recognize you're running the show- this is just a jumping off point) I'll have personal motes somewhere in the 13 - 21 range, and peripheral Essence in the 36 - 50 range. Using 10 motes before I've even started is also a bit of a commitment. Not sure what else there is to buy, but I should probably settle for essence 3, and pump some points into skills and charms to make sure I'm ready to rumble, unless you'd advise otherwise. Looking at the arbiter style, there's some interesting points; mainly the capstone and protection from inflicting harm unintentionally. Most of the other stuff seems either uninteresting, or downright unusable for my character idea, like a weapon and armor when I want to use unarmed and go unarmored. I'm also not sure about the themes behind being an arbiter, but I think I can sort of fit it into the cold aspect of the character, who is much more oriented on commitment to an ideal.

Falling Blossom Style seems good for what I want to do, and if it combos with my ability to leap better then that's even better- but it sounded like I'd only be able to enhance my jumps when I make the movement action on my own turn. With some people using necromancer techniques on our team, there actually seems to be a opportunity for some cross play with the Falling Blossom Form- I could let a friendly PC coup-de-grace me while I'm dying and then return as a ghost, right?

Golden Janissary seems very cool for the whole vengeful destruction part, and I kinda like how it's almost exactly the opposite of what I was looking for; fits the dark mirror theme.

Jade mountain style seems very cool, and more applicable to the non-lethal style with the focus on grappling and tanking.

Terrible Ascent Driven Beast Style also seems very cool. Falling Without Fear also seems like it would pair well with the mountain leaping skill since you can save yourself if you get interrupted.

I'm not interested in the White Veil Style, or at least, I wouldn't be interested in such a style if it existed. I did like how the page wrote about it though, that was very fun.

Blazing Corona doesn't excite me as much as some of the other styles, but the ability to superheat attackers weapons and armor is not only useful, but thematic as well. Could be combined with the needs no tools charm to make an opponent drop weapons and armor, craft them into something on the spot, and them encourage them to surrender as they have lost their offense and defense.

The Hurricane Fist style seems thematically at odds, but the defensive abilities to use gusts of wind to knock away oppenents and attacks are cool. Could be themed as the red hot breath of the forge being exalted from my rather large lungs.

Ruthless Avalanche Style is also appealing for the defensive capabilities, and the advantages it gives for drawing agro. Not sure ho often I'll be on bare earth, but it's certainly strong in its element.

Arrow Frog style also seems very good with what I want to do- nothing encourages someone to top fighting like being slowly poisoned. If I can combine Internal Intent Venom with the charm that re-directs attacks to me that would be a strong deterrent I imagine; you can't attack other people, but if you attack me you hurt yourself.
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No. 872898 ID: d22dc0

Just realized I wad only looking at the terrestrial styles. I'll take a look at the celestial styles tomorrow night probably.
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No. 872983 ID: d1248b

>>872897
>Based on the book (again, I recognize you're running the show- this is just a jumping off point) I'll have personal motes somewhere in the 13 - 21 range, and peripheral Essence in the 36 - 50 range. Using 10 motes before I've even started is also a bit of a commitment. Not sure what else there is to buy, but I should probably settle for essence 3,
If you're starting with Mountain-Crossing Leap as the explanation for how you reached the sky castle to begin with, that requires Essence 4.

Let's lay out the BP budget point-by-point just to make sure we're on the same page.
18 - starting solar
+4 - negative mutations (allergy, disturbing voice, split personality)
-14 - Essence 4
-4 - Willpower 9
-2 - Chakra Eye
-2 - Huge

That doesn't leave any for Virtues, so we could go with Compassion 3, Conviction 3 (Heart Of Flint flaw, limit gain condition: character is frustrated by the intemperate or childish), Temperance 1, Valor 2, which would imply a Personal essence pool of 21, Peripheral of 46.

As for skills and charms:
Athletics 5
>Monkey Leap Technique
>Soaring Crane Leap
>Mountain-Crossing Leap
Craft (Fire) 4+
>Second (Craft) Excellency
>Craftsman Needs No Tools
Resistance 3+
>Soul Fire Resurgence
>Durability Of Oak Meditation
>Iron Kettle Body
Survival 5
>Hardship-Surviving Mendicant Spirit
>Eternal Elemental Harmony
That leaves four specialties and eight dots in skills. Some of those are going to need to go toward the minimum of one dot each in your five Favored skills; there's no equivalent minimum for Caste skills.
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No. 872992 ID: e1cb2c

>>872983
I like the heart of flint, but I’m not sure about the condition. Nothing straight out of the book seems exceptionally fitting, but the fanatical conviction seems slightly more fitting; instead of my goal or motivation though, it would really only make sense with the demon slaying idea. Let me know if you feel okay tweaking the condition for it or if you want to go strictly book rules
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No. 873037 ID: d22dc0

Okay, here's my skill load out- I assumed since I got a couple skills that got some points from being a solar, and some points from being a Twilight, that I should combine those. Otherwise I'm 2 points over if those bonuses don't stack.

Archery 1; Athletics** 5; Awareness** 1; Craft 4 (fire); Integrity** 1; Lore 3; Martial Arts 3; Medicine 2; Melee 1; Occult 3; Presence 1; Resistance** 3; Ride 1; Sail 1; Survival 5; War** 1;

For my four specialties, I don't really understand how these work, so I'm just going to put them into things I want to be good at.

Martial Arts, Medicine, Resistance, and Survival makes sense to me.

I'm also thinking of making the Laughing Wounds Style my first priority, or perhaps my second priority after developing some notable healing powers.
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No. 873090 ID: d1248b

>>873037
>For my four specialties, I don't really understand how these work,
Each must specify some subset of the potential applications of that skill to which it applies. That could be the result of realistic specialty training, like a War specialty in "near cliffs," a Craft (Fire) specialty in "swordsmithing," or an Integrity specialty in "demonic corruption," or an esoteric affinity like a Dodge specialty in "former lovers," or a Melee specialty in "products of my own forge." You can put up to three in the same skill, including the same one three times. Dragon-Blooded need to put some careful thought into specialties, since that's part of the dice cap for their Excellencies and thus a major factor in combat effectiveness; to everyone else, it's potentially significant, but more often valued as a characterization tool.
>>872500
>Caltrops that drop from underneath her kimono while she's running away. Just a small amount, but it can be triggered quickly to hinder pursuers when she's using a narrow escape route. They'd have to ignore her kimono entirely. Maybe they could be poisoned?
Technomorphic Integration Engine can already do this, at the cost of normal caltrops, and poison which could be as simple as raw sewage. For mote-economy reasons you might want to use wider stuff that counts as a single "item," such as a tatami mat woven with thorns and rusty nails, rather than wasting energy on single caltrops.
>Time-Displaced Kunai - Much like the Time-Strung Bow, a few of Embri's kunai disappear and store their potential energy for the right moment. Unlike the bow, treat them as ethereal invisible kunai in the middle of a very slow time-bubble that will pop when an unsuspecting pursuer runs straight into it, causing the throwing dagger to instantly fire. This means if Embri isn't hitting any targets, she can slip a few of these in her ineffective kunai volleys and run for it, and when the enemy reaches the point where she threw, it's an instant trap. The kunai can only hold their charge for about ~30 seconds before they run out of stored horizontal kinetic energy, the bubble pops, and the kunai just fall straight to the ground.
This is a vastly weaker effect than the Time-Strung Bow. If you simply want pursuit-deterrent traps, use that Intelligence+Craft augmentation and the Omnitool Implant to build them. Other avenues for further investment in that strategy would be the thaumaturgical Arts of Alchemy, Enchantment, and Warding & Exorcism, and the charms Dynamic Reaction Enhancement System => Incomparable Efficiency Upgrade to craft (and perform many other actions) faster.

Could have taken the Chemical Fog Generator, but that requires Stamina 3 and the upgrade to turn kunai (or any other projectile) into gas grenades requires Strength 3, Essence 3. If ability to run away fast enough is the concern, 1-dot artifact Perfected Boots let you run faster and jump higher, and the charm Personal Gravity Manipulation Apparatus lets you dial it down so you bounce like you're on the moon, or run along walls and ceilings, or both. There are further upgrades, including plasma jets, most of which require higher Strength. Accelerated Response System => Precalculated Evasion System improves your ability to dodge, even undodgeable effects with the Transphase Engine submodule, while the Anticipatory Simulation Processor counters unexpected attacks. Can't learn supernatural martial arts, even terrestrial styles, without a Perfected Lotus Matrix, but you do have the prereqs for that.
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No. 873125 ID: d22dc0

>>873090
Okay, I figure I'll spread my bases and then train up stuff I want to be good at later. Not sure how to be quite as succinct so I'll describe the idea I'm going for and maybe someone can help me think of a way to encapsulate it into a handy phrase.

Martial Arts Specialty in non-lethal take downs

Medicine Specialty in helping surrendered enemies

Resistance Specialty in defending against enemies I don't want to kill. Kinda going for a "Look, I don't want to have to do this, just give up before you hurt yourself" vibe

Survival Specialty for... hm, I'm actually kind of torn on this one. I want to be at my best working in the hottest heats- the endless sands of the south, reaching into the fires of the forge, etc, but I think my Mendicant spirit and the Elemental Resistant Prana should have me covered, right? As long as I'm good there, I think resisting the effects of the Wyld would be fitting. Given that I come from a family of mutants on a distant farm, I think it makes sense that I come from the borderlands between the River Providence and the Far/Near East. That accounts for the mutations and isolation, and the rituals- probably started as a way to find out or ward off fair folk and other malevolent beings more than anything else, but developed into a ironclad tradition as it was passed down.
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No. 873646 ID: ab7dcc

>>872477
A rarer and more advanced type of force-projection weapon developed later in the First Age is a set of gauntlets of distant touch (Artifact 3 for a pair). These light, articulated gauntlets connect to magical material bracers stretching up to the elbow. The bracers house the kinetic conduction coils, while the gloves manipulate and direct the dynamic Essence field the artifacts project. A pair of these gloves costs four motes to attune, which resizes them to perfectly fit their wearer. Used in close combat, the gloves add the pertinent magical material bonus for their construction to the character’s unarmed punches and allow unarmed parries of lethal and ranged attacks. When charged with an additional commitment of three motes, however, an invisible aura of force forms around both hands for the rest of the scene. During this time, the character may perform any task that would normally require his hands simply by making the appropriate gesture (the action uses its normal dice pool and difficulty), and the Exalt may affect any objects within (Essence rating x 3) yards. From a utilitarian standpoint, the gauntlets can levitate objects (but not the user), manipulate them, pull them close or push them away. In combat, the gloves can deliver ranged Martial Arts hand strikes or clinches that benefit from close combat magical material bonuses. Such attacks also impose a -1 penalty to the opponent’s Parry DV because of their invisible nature. Finally, a character wearing charged gauntlets can parry attacks directed at anyone else in range, though each such parry cumulatively decreases her Parry DV by -1 until her next action. All close and ranged attacks made using gauntlets of distant touch are considered unarmed for the purposes of compatibility with Martial Arts Charms.

Maybe combine these with Bracers of Universal Crafting and a Fourfold Demon Arm as a single 4-dot artifact, or throw in the effects of Forge-Hand Gauntlets to make it a 5-dot? An artificial arm, made sometimes of ice and other times of molten glass, which can manipulate things at range not by stretching and physically grabbing them, but rather by acting as a dynamic lens to distort images and thereby manipulate arcane forces.
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No. 873749 ID: ab7dcc

First actual played-out scene, I'm thinking, will be at the site where Malice has just crashed the airboat her boss loaned her by ramming it into an inexplicably high-altitude stone wall. There's now a small breach in that wall, but passing through it involves crawling under the airboat's hull and being exposed to leakage from the ship's omen weather reactor, which resembles a waterfall made of razorblades rather than actual water. That's no problem for Bridget, who has just leapt up from ground level (miles below), entered an arterial hallway, and encountered a patrol of skeleton warriors.

>>873037
As a starting solar in the Second Age, you only get a total of 25 dots in skills, before bonus points. The charms selected require 5 dots in Athletics, 4 dots in some Craft (presumably Fire), 3 dots in Resistance, and 5 in Survival. That's seventeen, so you'd have 8 left to spend. If you're taking Awareness, Integrity, and War favored, those need at least one each, leaving five. I'd recommend Lore 1, Martial Arts 3, Medicine 1 for the remainder, so you can read, punch, and apply bandages competently. With no offensive charms, you won't actually be all that scary in a fight, apart from constantly bouncing up to the high ground and relentless refusal to die.
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No. 873861 ID: 3abd97

>>873646
Oh the geeze the last thing I needed was more cool artifacts I'm already struggling to try and budget something acceptable out of the pile of too many things I said yes to.

Enabling crafting, being crystalline, and allowing remote interacting with things by distorting images is very much true to the original character concept though.

I'm not really sure really I understand the differences between the various mash-up combinations offered, though.

(Also if I can just mash artifacts together to save on cost that gives me a whole new set of angles to consider. Maybe the forgotten blade is just the stylus for the pocket mirror? :v ).

The Mantle of Soot looks like the most obvious first thing to cut. Specing myself so I actually start with necromancy to use it with from the start comes at too high a cost in other things left on the table, and it doesn't seem worth spending that much on a tight budget of points that won't be useful until after months of training. Too bad it's otherwise unobtainable.

>Somewhere in the mix we have at least two additional exalt, but I didn't see the post detailing the why and how of their involvement in the current situation.
I decided to try and make an interesting character first, worry about what she's doing there second.

Given her motivations / history, I'd guess Lute's reason for getting involved is she's targeting someone involved for her particular brand of help. Or maybe she's raiding the library for something pursuant to her growth into sorcery / necromancy since it doesn't look like she'll be starting with those. Or maybe the Fates and/or Yozi guided her there in service of unknown plots.
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No. 873884 ID: d22dc0

Sounds like a good use of the points. Thematically I’m re-considering the design elements of the character, based on what she can actually do- a large, warped woman who is more recognizable as a monster than an exalted at first, trained in “not fly, jump good”, surviving temperature extremes, and crafting with her bare hands. I like the backstory, and with her ideals of carving out a home space for herself, maybe instead that conflicting set of desires, her motivation is actually to claim back areas of creation from the Wyld, and slowly reshape the land to follow the accepted order of things? Follows with the highly valued rituals and dedication to tradition, and I think I can still uphold the gentle giant merciful soul aspect of the character well enough. Same backstory, just a new goal, to better fit her existing skills.

So Lute was already on board the ship then, which makes it easy- if the motivations for PCs don’t jump out at you as dreams you want to help realize then I think being there as part of a study holiday makes sense, considering the tower was described as a hit destination for non-mortals to do such things.

I was having trouble thinking about why skeletons would logically be in such a place, but I suppose it would help keep things tidy and make it easier to escort out a bothersome guest if need be. I think it’s amusing that we have a place of leisure and research just stacked on all sides with weapons and traps.
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No. 873961 ID: ab7dcc

>>873861
> Too bad it's otherwise unobtainable.
Three things are truly impossible in the Exalted setting, but they're actually all one thing: returning the dead to true life, rolling back the flow of time to alter the past, removing the Exaltation from a human without killing them in the process. The one impossible thing is to negate deep consequences. Exalted were made to do many other things, particularly some which shouldn't be possible, but clearly are.

Alright, let's say you don't have the Mantle of Soot in hand, or know for sure it still exists, or even that it ever existed, beyond the legends of the First Sorcerer's regalia and speculation on the 'dark mirror' metaphysical symmetries of grave goods. That just means, before you can start a fetch quest properly, you need more information - and where better to look for that sort of obscure necromantic lore than an ancient lich-queen's vast mobile library? An Archive may explicitly have one of it's slots devoted to "a powerful and dangerous secret," rather than spells or broader mundane knowledge.

Of course, you might first need to prevent that library from exploding before you can access it. Patching damaged essence-flows in a 5-dot manse would require a total of 20 dots among Lore, Occult, appropriate Craft (Earth, for a typical manse, but one bound to the sky might reasonably be based on Air instead), and the thaumaturgical Art of Geomancy, plus an expensive specialized toolkit. Bracers of Universal Crafting (or an upgraded variant thereof) would cover the tool requirement, since it can pluck at essence flows directly, but you can't muscle past inadequate background knowledge with an Excellency. That's why 5-dot manses are rare: ordinary humans, and even most dragon-blooded, are not capable of learning how to build them or conduct emergency repairs. To acquire skills at that level, you'd need to be at least Essence 6 - or an akuma.

Abruptly-yet-elegantly arriving in the right place, at just the right time, for all the wrong reasons, is a very Sidereal sort of thing to do.
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No. 873990 ID: 5f3f48

>20 dots among Lore, Occult, appropriate Craft (Earth, for a typical manse, but one bound to the sky might reasonably be based on Air instead), and the thaumaturgical Art of Geomancy
If I'm removing the Mantle of Soot from consideration due to opportunity cost I don't really see how investing more than twice the resources in being prepared to look for information on it would be more attractive.

Occult and Craft (Air) at least are things I probably would have invested in anyways, at least eventually. Now is still an open question.
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No. 874002 ID: 0bb62b

>>873990
I think that load out is what’s needed to fix the manse before it explodes, thereby giving you access to a library that you could use for research; if we mix and match skills we could probably get enough characters with enough knowledge to make sure we aren’t all destroyed in a fiery explosion, but right we haven’t heard from strngy, Tunic, Kome, or anyone else in a bit so it seems like it’ll probably be a non-starter for fixing the manse.

Question: if manses are basically leylines converging, how do you make them mobile? Or am I misunderstanding that element of the Manse/Demense anatomy
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No. 874008 ID: ab7dcc

>>873990
Lore is basically the 'science' skill. Covers most general academic knowledge, designing machinery with multiple moving parts, knowing what all the buttons are for in cases like this http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/20p71/ Sidereals have some astrological mental defenses based on intellectual snobbery, "I've got more Lore than you, therefore I can ignore whatever argument you're making." High-end crafting involves Lore at least as much as Occult.
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No. 874020 ID: ab7dcc

>>874002
>I think that load out is what’s needed to fix the manse before it explodes, thereby giving you access to a library that you could use for research;
Yes.
>if we mix and match skills we could probably get enough characters with enough knowledge to make sure we aren’t all destroyed in a fiery explosion,
Nope. Magitech maintenance can work that way, but emergency repairs on a manse that's likely to explode in a matter of minutes doesn't allow enough time for diverse specialists to coordinate, at least not without some serious supernatural mind-to-mind communication.
>Question: if manses are basically leylines converging,
That's an oversimplification, and outright inaccurate in many of the more interesting cases.
>how do you make them mobile?
Very carefully.
>Or am I misunderstanding that element of the Manse/Demense anatomy
Yes. Ley lines, or dragon lines, are natural flows of Essence through the landscape, often traceable back to powerful spirits such as the Celestial Incarnae, the slumbering Elemental Dragons, or third-circle demons. They're detectable with geomantic tools, and can be tapped or manipulated by magic, but for the most part just constitute part of the natural background level of ambient essence. There aren't a lot of rules for the exact locations and properties of dragon lines.
Demesnes are self-sustaining vortexes of essence contained in particular locations. Any essence user can detect an uncapped demesne from miles away, or attune themselves to it for a significant boost to mote recovery and other benefits. Ordinary mortals, animals, and inanimate objects who spend too much time in a demesne get mutated - along a consistent theme, unlike the true chaos of the wyld, but it's still not something to take lightly. Demesnes are strategic assets, and there's lots of rules about how to find and exploit, even create or destroy them, though engineering the geomantic landscape involves hundreds of workers and years of effort with potentially cataclysmic risks. Mishandling energies on that scale can easily result in miles-wide mutagenic explosions, while really serious errors cause a permanent curse across broad swathes of landscape. Best pop culture reference for a demesne being messed with by people who don't completely know what they're doing might be the Pool of the Great Forest Spirit in Princess Mononoke, particularly toward the end; a more competent (though no less disturbing) example would be the Nationwide Transmutation Circle(s) in FMA: Brotherhood, though the end results in that case bear more resemblance to high-end sorcery or necromancy, or celestial-tier exalts arriving in an environment of mostly heroic mortals and god-blooded, rather than what Exalted usually does with geomancy.
A manse is what you get when you cap a demesne with some sort of structure, to stabilize it and channel the energies toward more productive ends, such as on-site powers and a hearthstone which persists indefinitely rather than boiling off in a matter of days the way a demesne's 'essence tokens' do. Laymen think of a manse as being a stone building, but the gardens surrounding a manor might be just as important to the essence-channeling structure as any of the more conventional load-bearing walls, or a manse could consist of a single enormous organism, like the earth elementals known as 'gemlords,' or the living cavern Scathra Yn Thera. The Mountain Folk are particularly adept at constructing underground manses with minimal materials, sometimes no more than a few mirrors and optical-quality crystals to create a structure of reflected and refracted light, though such a thing is also extremely fragile.

Some demesnes are naturally mobile. Classic example is the Engine Rising To The Wounded Sky, on the slopes of Qaf, the Heaven-Violating Spear, one of the yozis not aligned with the Reclamation. Isidoros sought to climb to Qaf's (definitionally nonexistent) summit, then got bored and left - but one of his hoofprints stayed behind, sliding ever upward, to complete the impossible task in his absence rather than admitting defeat. Somebody built a fortress in that print, and so it moves endlessly up the mountain at the speed of a tireless galloping horse. For a more terrestrial example, the Denzik City-Ship, a group of more than a hundred blue-water merchant vessels networked together and traveling on a consistent annual circuit around the coasts facing the Blessed Isle and major islands of the West, could conceivably cultivate a water-aspect demesne which follows that same route, arranging and refitting the ships into a manse to cap it.

It's possible to put a mobile manse on a non-mobile demesne, but incredibly complex, difficult, and wasteful. Basically you need a whole network of manses, channeling parts of their power toward a central one, then that one lifts off from it's base, leaving only some minimal capstones behind, and then you've got a manse-like vehicle. One of those absurd extravagances of the First Age.
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No. 874078 ID: 3abd97

>I think that load out is what’s needed to fix the manse before it explodes
Look what I'm trying to do right now is:

1) Figure out which artifacts I'm actually taking, since I like what's probably too many (Can't be easily bought with xp later id skipped over now).
2) Figure out which charms and skills I want to buy with what's left of my points after that. (What's skipped now can be trained up later, but starting with too little is unfun / uninteresting).
3) Revisit if there's an interesting or fun negative mutation or two to take.
4) Make up however much I'm overbudget by gouging it out of those perfect sixes. (Hard to train up in play, but it's not worth sacrificing fun on the altar of perfection).

And what's motivating those choices is what combination of stuff lets her feel like the character concept. Stuff like "pragmatic defense" (see the build suggested in the last paragraph of >>870899 ) or "stopping the building from exploding" would be nice, but they don't rank high enough to jump the queue.

So in pursuit of that:

On the artificial arm (3rd arm or replacement?): What's the difference between proposed the 3-dot Gauntlets of Distant Touch versus the 4-dot combined with Bracers of Universal Crafting and a Fourfold Demon Arm, and the 5-dot combined with Forge-Hand Gauntlets? 3 is just ranged telekinesis, 4 adds invisible tools and the shape shifting, 5 adds... a Craft (fire) bonus, allows making the TK or tools red-hot, and a bunch of defense and combat bonuses that don't feel applicable. Having "an exceptional blacksmith’s forge on his person at all time" feels redundant with the chancel workshop, which I like better thematically. So based off that reading I guess I'd choose the 4-dot version.

Would it be possible to save cost on the Forgotten Blade (or non-blade derivatives) by nerfing it or merging the effect in with something else? I find it interesting, but at 5-dot, I think the arm pushes it out of contention as closer to core concept and something that would see a lot more frequent use. (A stylus for the hand mirror that people always forget seems apropos and amusing).
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No. 874099 ID: d22dc0

>>874020
>explanation on Manses

Perhaps I was not particularly articulate, or am still missing a key ingredient, but that explanation pretty much lines up with exactly what I thought. I just didn't really understand how a demense could be mobile, but some of those examples help a little with contextualizing it.

>>874078
Yeah, by all means! I wasn't trying to suggest you shoulder the burden of repairing by yourself, just trying to clarify what was being suggested.
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No. 874112 ID: ab7dcc

>>874078
> Having "an exceptional blacksmith’s forge on his person at all time" feels redundant with the chancel workshop,
With the forge-hand gauntlets, you can scoop up a handful of sand and blow it into glassware like a birthday clown making balloon animals, maybe even crafting relatively simple mundane stuff in combat time given the legendary skill levels involved. Psych somebody out by tapping them on the shoulder (from well beyond normal arm's reach) to get them to look the other way, then when they look back, half of the room's been redecorated with floor-to-ceiling mirrors.
>(Can't be easily bought with xp later if skipped over now)
If you've got a whole laundry list of high-rated artifacts you want, how about saying they're not yours, but rather your Patron's? Third-circle demons are known as "the Unquestionable," and all the resources of Hell are at their disposal unless in conflict with each other, the Yozis, or their jailers. You could be like James Bond, with R&D resources equivalent to a major country backing you up - but only one fancy toy at a time (or however many you pay for), as needed for the current assignment. There's no BP cost to define what your Patron has and is willing to lend out, not when they're already so powerful.

You'll likely have to return to a friendly base to swap them out - though, with the errata, Destiny-Knitting Entanglement would let you remotely observe and retrieve items which you metaphysically own even if you've never seen them. There are also a wide variety of options for returning to the demon realm - if you want a single-use "escape rope" sort of item, that'd be a 2-dot artifact Infernal Hospitality Prayer Strip. Opens a portal into your boss's office, guarantees at minimum 25 hours of shelter, food, and entertainment for the user and any well-behaved guests who come along, but it only works at sundown on the night of the new moon, or in places outside of fate. The inside of a chancel isn't actually all the way outside of fate; it's just middlemarches, not deep wyld. A manse could be built so that it's outside fate, which is a four-dot power, but, being structural rather than essence-powered, it doesn't necessarily need to be a four-dot manse. Best cheap options for a quick escape, though, would be either a 2-dot Key to the Infernal Gates which can open any lockable door as a portal to the Endless Desert, or the necromancy spell Piercing The Shroud for quick access to the Labyrinth. Expensive option would be another 5-dot artifact: the Scarlet Bridge. One end is a fixed structure in Hell, and the other end, whenever you're outside Hell, you can summon to your current location. Takes a lot of energy to keep in place, but for a few minutes at a time it's a path wide enough to march armies through. It can also be opened from the demon realm end, in which case it leads to the same place as the previous activation, unlike prayer strips or keys which don't include any return option apart from the usual hike across the Endless Desert.
>>
No. 874175 ID: fc3fc0

http://exaltedpast.wikidot.com/rules:wyldmutation

None jumped out at me as particularly fitting, but this list should be a decent enough reference for mutations if/when you're looking at them.
>>
No. 874263 ID: ab7dcc

>>874078
>an interesting or fun negative mutation
Magical Plague Carrier effectively works out to 8 points of disadvantages, and the disease could be something like, say, obsessive introspection and staring into mirrors, using the stats for Lypothymie. Amusingly, that makes poor Charisma an asset: low initial virulence helps conceal 'patient zero' status.
>>
No. 874323 ID: 3abd97

>>874112
Well that would be handy cost saving if I put the burden of one of the 5-dots on a patron.

>>874263
That is interesting, but how severe would that kind of thing be? It might mess with her main goal, or preclude having a cult or useful followers if anyone who spends prolonged time with her is eventually going to catch it.
>>
No. 874445 ID: 3abd97

Oh, it also occurs to me willpower didn't come up when we talked virtues. Is that not a concern for akuma? (Had my will subsumed by my patron).
>>
No. 874529 ID: ab7dcc

>>866915
>the Urges associated with each Yozi
Hard to explain, since a lot of possible Urges could fall under more than one yozi's themes. Better basis to choose is the mechanical consequence of repeatedly resisting it (or suffering too much stress from other sources) without venting Limit through acts of villainy.

Adorjan's limit break results in aphasia, Urges tend to involve bizarre obsessions.
Cecelyne's limit break results in getting sandblasted for physical damage, Urges tend to involve authority and conquest.
Isidoros's limit break results in despirited passivity, Urges tend to involve revolutionary upheval.
Malfeas's limit break results in contagious berserk rage, Urges tend to involve destruction.
the pyrian queen's limit break results in clinical detachment to the point of sociopathy, Urges tend to involve enforcing hierarchy and conformity.
Metagaos's limit break results in a sort of asceticism, discarding wealth and finding all pleasures unsatisfactory, Urges tend to involve acquisition and consumption.
The Ebon Dragon's limit break results in shameless debauchery and overindulgence, Urges tend to involve corruption.
>>
No. 874530 ID: 3abd97

>acts of villainy
>>/questarch/658722
Would this summary be accurate here?
>>
No. 874612 ID: 5c3123

>>/questdis/121667
>can't imagine ever using archery or ride unless absolutely forced to
Quoting from the character creation chapter in Manual of Exalted Power: Dragon-Blooded... "All Dynasts must have an absolute minimum of Archery 1, Lore 2, Martial Arts 1, Melee 1, Performance 1, Presence 1, Ride 1, Socialize 2 and War 1, to represent the basic training in the arts of war and the social graces that form the underpinnings of Realm culture. Most Dynasts will have all of these Abilities rated at two dots or more. Those who do not are generally regarded by their peers as deficient in critical life skills. They’re also terrible embarrassments to their poor families."

>An eight-hour heretical martial arts performance every night sounds like a logistical nightmare.
The very next charm in Crane Style, Humbling Enlightenment Commentary, drastically reduces Martial Arts training times. It's possible all his heretical martial arts training so far has taken place over a cumulative total of less than half an hour of face-to-face discussion and sparring, while another 35 minutes would suffice to master the pinnacle of Crane Style. That accelerated training is of no use without sufficient banked XP to take advantage of it, though.

Even without such training, learning the remainder of Crane Style from memory and books would at this point would take less than a season. Out here in the barbaric wilderness far from the Blessed Isle, even if there were any Immaculate monks present, they'd likely be more concerned with the lich-queen, and other active or visibly entrenched threats, rather than a scholar who keeps to himself and could easily disappear. The Stealth skill is associated with Air aspects, so Ji could acquire the first two dots with four XP, then up to five dots for only fifteen more, with no training time at all. Stealth charms will also be fairly cheap: 10 xp each, training times as low as one or two days.

>I don't suppose I could take [Tireless String-Plucking Meditation], Performance 1 (+3 Guqin), and actually pluck strings for eight hours a night for my mentor instead?
When a charm has Performance 4 as prerequisite, that means four dots in the actual Performance skill, not just specialties. Buying Essence 3 at character creation would require ten bonus points, likely meaning either several severe disadvantages or fewer Backgrounds. Freeing up two charm slots without losing Crane Form would mean trading off those medical charms, or even more bonus points. So, it's possible, but maybe not desirable just yet.

For Ledaal Ji, who doesn't have Performance as an aspect or favored skill, buying Performance from one dot up to four would cost 12 xp and six weeks of training, while Performance Charms cost 12 xp each, with training time between two and ten days depending on the specific charm. Training time is doubled without a tutor, quadrupled or worse if you're inventing charms from scratch. Essence 3 costs 20 xp (for dragon-blooded; other exalt types vary) but no training. So, Tireless String-Plucking Meditation might be less than 60 XP and two in-game months away, and I'm planning to award one XP per (non-spammy) post in this thread. 'Stepping off the path' before completing Crane Style would make it harder to resume, though.
>>
No. 874618 ID: 20ea96

>>874612
>one XP per (non-spammy) post in this thread
Aw. That sucks for me then, having a pre-genned character instead of taking a very long time building them in this thread for tons of free exp from the get-go.

>Tireless String-Plucking Meditation is prohibitively expensive
Forget it then. I'll leave Performance at 1 and run the character exactly as you have him built already, focusing all of his training time on martial arts.

Is there anything else I need to do, or is Ledaal Ji good to go, now that I've specified intimacies?
>>
No. 874623 ID: 3abd97

>I can't imagine ever using archery or ride
If it's any consolation, skills in exalted are pretty broad. For instance, my character would have to have ranks in archery to throw shadow-shurikens. Those skills might cover use-cases you're not thinking of.

>one XP per (non-spammy) post in this thread
I was assuming that didn't apply until after chargen? XP for talking over character ideas seems a little silly.
>>
No. 874638 ID: 5c3123

>>874623
>ranks in archery to throw shadow-shurikens
That'd be the Thrown skill, actually. Covers lever-arm projectiles, including beam-sling siege engines, whereas Archery is for bows and other weapons which use stored energy so the targeting is more or less point-and-click rather than dependent on rotational timing.

>XP for talking over character ideas seems a little silly.
Think of it as a balancing factor. Folks who don't know the system as well, but are eagerly trying to learn, get a little bit of a power boost as soon as they survive to the first few days of downtime. The really crazy stuff takes hundreds or thousands of XP, anyway, and balance between two characters often has more to do with how well their areas of expertise relate to the situation than any sort of absolute power scale. Challenge the world's greatest swordsman to a chess match, the chess grandmaster to a footrace, the olympic athlete to a cooking contest, the legendary pastry chef to swords at dawn, and you might win every time despite having fewer XP than any of them.

>>874618
>is Ledaal Ji good to go, now that I've specified intimacies?
Yep! As far as character creation, anyway. Want to jump right in to IC actions, or hammer out more of the environment first? What else is your mentor known to be capable of, beyond teaching the Bulb of the Perfected Lotus? What have they told you, if anything, about the history of the world, the Silver Pact, or the Thousand Streams River? How about that henchman, has he got a name?
>>
No. 874671 ID: 094652

>one XP per (non-spammy) post in this thread
Please tell me that's when the game starts, I've been quiet since I'm new to Exalted (barely scratched anything beyond the Keychain webcomic) and didn't want to irritate you guys with stupid questions.

There is ONE stupid question I'd like to ask, though - where can I find a quick wiki of Exalted character creation and rules? Because the official wiki's all whack and the rules for various PCs are scattered across multiple websites and etc.
>>
No. 874732 ID: 5c3123

>>874671
>when the game starts,
This thread IS the game. It started with the first post. Character creation is part of it.
>where can I find a quick wiki of Exalted character creation and rules?
Core rule is, when you want to do something, specify what resources you're spending in the attempt (willpower or virtue channel, which charms you're using, how many motes on an Excellency/Augmentation, etc.) and roll a bunch of 10-sided dice. When in doubt, roll too many dice, then I'll figure out how many of them are relevant.

When you want to know more about something specific, ask me. If you're embarrassed to ask (or just prefer massive OOC research projects over cheap XP), bootleg PDFs of all the Exalted 2nd Edition books are available on appropriate torrent sites. The Scroll of Errata and the Ink Monkeys Ultimate Collection are available for free, legitimately, on DriveThruRPG I think. There's also this http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/exalted/124885-how-to-put-a-band-aid-on-infernals?p=128384#post128384 though it's mainly relevant to GSPs and akuma, and https://ericminton.wordpress.com/category/exalted/ink-monkey-bones/
>>
No. 874791 ID: 094652

>>874732
... Great.

So, I picked out Embri's character flaws, the limit break things right?

Heart of Flint - A lifetime of luring people to their deaths and murdering them at their most trusting has hardened Embri's heart. She usually dealt with this emotional backlash by confiding in her sister... but her sister isn't here. Embri doesn't really care, her emotions would get in the way of murder. Of course, murder isn't the only thing she does, things like diplomacy and intrigue, things that require an understanding of emotions to manipulate...

Contempt of the Virtuous - Embri has lived her whole life among professionals. Her sister, her house, the other servants, all of them learned to live with high standards of discipline and self-maintenance; even if they were acting out or indulging in private, it was to prepare themselves for another day of rigid, dutiful focus. Now Embri has found herself among a new team, and they *CRASH*... aren't *BABIES SCREAMING*... Embri might find herself ranting at her teammates for their spoiled, shortsighted behavior.

That Time-Strung Bow - is it a powerbow? I read that Powerbows work best for low-strength characters.
>>
No. 874796 ID: 3abd97

>>874638
...oh I think I see what I confused. Shurikens use the Throw skill, but Sidereal Archery charms, right?

I guess I'll justify the character creation XP to myself as the character gaining experience through introspection. :v

>>874112
Okay, I think I'll take
-Infinite Resplendence Amulet, Moonsilver
-Third Arm (4 or 5 dot)
-Chancel / Ally (1-3 dot? Not clear on what scales with cost)
-Scorpion Hand Mirror (on loan from patron)

I'll consign the Forgotten Blade Ribbon to something I might swap the mirror out for on a different mission. Probably get the tutor gem or other study tools the from patron loans when needed too.

I'm considering Magical Plague Carrier >>874263 but I'd like more information on how it would work. Would this be fatal for people who contract it from me? Would be be permanent, or would they eventually fight off the infection? Can people be infected more than once? How severe would the effect be (starving in front of their reflections? A disruptive compulsion? A distraction?). What kind of exposure / infection rate? Would those I infect be infectious, or would people have to contract it from Lute? How hard would it be to treat or cure those infected? Basically, I'm interested, but I'm not willing to take it if it messes up creating best selves too much, or it ruins being able to have a cult / followers.

Then there's charms and skills with the points left over. I'd like to ask for help picking a build there?

Not interested in speccing for perfect defense. Necromancy and sorcery and fleshwarping and fate-weaving seem like things to consider training up later.

Thinking we can put Mirror-Shattering Method / Sail aside to grow into, and rely in the third arm and hand mirror to cover mirror / image weirdness and indirect actions for now.

On the table: Essence 2 or 3, the "Must-have"s, not-exploding-the-castle skills, social stuff, crafting, maybe dodging. Maybe throw and shadow shurikens, but that seems a lower priority.
>>
No. 874890 ID: 5c3123

>>874796
>Shurikens use the Throw skill, but Sidereal Archery charms, right?
No, they use Thrown charms, such as Essence Thorn Practice and Willful Weapon Method. Archery weapons, mainly meaning bows but also the various muzzle-loading flamethrowers, use Archery charms such as Any Direction Arrow and Generalized Ammunition Technique.

>Would this be fatal for people who contract it from me?
If it's based on Lypothymie, almost never.
>Would be be permanent, or would they eventually fight off the infection?
Lypothymie is active for five days, then goes into indefinite remission.
>Can people be infected more than once?
Yep.
>How severe would the effect be (starving in front of their reflections? A disruptive compulsion? A distraction?).
Depends on how much previously-unexamined inner conflict they've got. http://forwardcomic.com/archive.php?num=21
>What kind of exposure / infection rate?
Resistance is a roll of Temperance + Integrity. Virulence, that is, the difficulty of avoiding initial infection, is based on the carrier's Charisma. As long as Lute Silhouette has Charisma 0, only people with abnormally weak self-control would be at risk.
>Would those I infect be infectious, or would people have to contract it from Lute?
The former.
>How hard would it be to treat or cure those infected?
The difficulty of Medicine rolls to treat Lypothymie is based on the victim's Compassion. So, usually not very difficult, and only beyond an ordinary doctor's capabilities in the case of extremely sensitive and kindhearted types. Someone with no prior knowledge of the disease would be operating at a penalty, though.

>Then there's charms and skills with the points left over. I'd like to ask for help picking a build there?
If you're spending 172 on Attributes (strength 1, charisma 0, everything else 6) and another 25 for Essence 2, WP 10, Compassion 6, Conviction 3, Temperance 4, Valor 2, that leaves 70, plus 8 from Magical Plague Carrier. Assuming Chosen of Serenity, with Lore, Martial Arts, Occult, and Thrown favored, how about this?
[1]Ally 1: the Sandpoint Devil (relatively weak noble raksha w/ chancel)
[5]Artifact 4: Moonsilver/Starmetal Infinite Resplendence Amulet
[5]Artifact 4: Multifocal Lens Arm (no forge-hand capabilities, but might be upgraded later)
[1]Artifact 1: Starmetal Hearthstone Amulet
[3]Manse 3: Thread-Body Movement Stone
[7]Craft (Air) 6 (Restoring Symmetry +2)
>[5]Destiny-Knitting Entanglement
[8]Investigation 4
>[7]Efficient Secretary Technique
[6]Lore 6
[1]Martial Arts 1
[6]Occult 6
[6]Performance 6
>[5]Perfection In Life
>[5]Defense of Shining Joy
[2]Thrown 2
>[5]Essence Thorn Practice

Investigation is in there for a few different reasons. It's the operative skill for analyzing or tampering with forensic evidence, which is handy in case you want to do the MIB "I was never here" thing the hard way, or against people outside of fate. Socially, it's Socratic dialogue as an alternative to Perfomance-based grandstanding, and analyzing someone's motives without needing to say anything at all. Then there's charms: Efficient Secretary Technique means you can skip the tedium of basic research. Next up is Research Assistant Invocation, which, while it's meant for academic purposes and never a real combatant, can absolutely be used as an expendable 'substitution technique.' What sort of mirror-mage doesn't have a few decoys?

Defense of Shining Joy costs 5 motes, 1 wp, and an action to activate for a scene. That should generally be the first thing you do in (or just before) a fight, because it lets you dodge physical threats with the Performance skill, which you have, instead of the Dodge skill which you don't. Also negates various penalties, and improves your ability to defend others.
Essence Thorn Practice lets you create and throw a single-use magical blade, optionally traveling along with it for up to 20 yards. That would be easy to reskin as Barbatorem's mobility trick, lobbing his cleaver far ahead and then stepping out of the reflection on it, particularly in conjunction with the hearthstone's power. https://ericminton.wordpress.com/2014/10/08/ink-monkey-bones-22-new-infernal-hearthstones-part-2/ A 3-dot Gumela-bound manse could have Wyld Revocation (preventing entry except by some bizarre esoteric means) and Sympathetic Dream Link with plenty of points left for Archives.

Let's say the lens-arm approximately combines a Fourfold Demon Arm, Gauntlets of Distant Touch, Bracers of Universal Crafting, and a variant Elemental Lens which doubles the base damage of Sidereal charms that project blasts of energy or create a non-permanent weapon, which, ah... isn't exactly how Sidereal charms tend to work. There are a few, though, and Essence Thorn Practice is definitely one of them. Others would be the capstone of the Thrown tree, Generalized Ammunition Technique in the Archery tree (but only for non-solid improvised arrows), Shield of Destiny in the Resistance tree (when used to counterattack), Unweaving Method in the Occult tree, Invocation of the Storm-Following Silence in the Medicine tree, Blade of the Battle Maiden in Violet Bier of Sorrows Style, and Pneuma-Sealing Strike in Throne Shadow Style (when used to crush someone with their own stolen breath).

With just one more bonus point, say from a minor derangement, you could swap out that relatively bland hearthstone amulet for a 2-dot Dragon Tear Tiara, which provides a bonus to perception and occult sensitivity (including manse repair) in addition to the basic hearthstone socket.

Probably the first thing you should buy with XP is the First Kimbery Excellency.
>>
No. 875021 ID: 5c3123

>>874791
>So, I picked out Embri's character flaws, the limit break things right?
Alchemicals never fought in the Primordial War, because none of them had actually been built yet, so they aren't subject to the Great Curse. In fact, their status as the prototype template for other exalts provides a degree of resistance to it - though that won't be relevant for Embri, as no known type of exalt naturally resonates with Adamant. They technically do have a limit track, but it's seldom relevant. Their main psychological stress stat is Clarity, the balance between human warmth and machine efficiency, and it's not necessarily a bad thing to increase unless you're infected with Gremlin Syndrome.

>That Time-Strung Bow - is it a powerbow?
Mostly, yeah. Secondary feature is, well, remember that weird problem where Marijke got shot, but the arrow was deflected and went skipping along into the future? This lets you spend a point of willpower to do that on purpose, as an assassination tactic.
>I read that Powerbows work best for low-strength characters.
Strength still modifies damage. The advantage is in staying out of melee range.
>>/questdis/121720
>Caste Dots (+8): Strength+0, Appearance+4, Perception+4
You can't have Strength +0 as a starting Adamant-caste. All your caste attributes need to start with at least 2 dots.
>I forgot what abilities you recommended,
>>871457
>Archery 3 (Unaware Targets +1), Athletics 3, Awareness 3, Dodge 3, Larceny 3 (Reverse Pickpocketing +1), Lore 3, Medicine 1, Performance 3 (While Naked +1), Socialize 3 (Seduction +1)
Looks like I forgot to include Stealth. Huh. Well, you've got 18 bonus points to start with, spent 4 on virtues and WP, buying Strength up to an acceptable level would only cost 3 more.

How about spending ten on Stealth 5, and the last on three one-dot artifacts? A Winterbreath Jar for cold storage (chilled wine, ice cream, etc. to enhance a classy geisha routine, or keep the Frozen Heart maximally productive in warm environments, or so a severed head won't get too ripe while you're bringing it back as proof of another job well done), a pair of Perfected Boots (so you can routinely outrun cavalry and jump over 20' high walls), and a Fire Pearl (lighting candles as a flashy parlor trick, or more likely arson and corpse disposal).
>>
No. 875027 ID: 3abd97

>>874890
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/ExaltedSpirits
>Lypothymie
Oh! Okay, wasn't familiar with her. Neat. So would plague be someone else she turned into a spiritual-emotion? That would be a cool plot hook to explore.

That looks pretty solid. Weird magic mirror stuff, indirect actions, social-fu options (plus options to know more than she should about a person), with scholar/mage/academic/investigator on top? Yeah, seems to hit all the important thematic elements.

I'm just gonna review to make sure I get how this would works:

Social interaction would use Performance for putting on a show, or Investigation for analysis / profiling / questioning. Efficient Secretary Technique adds a level of bullshit information gathering on top of that.

Lore is fields of academic knowledge, but what's Occult apply to here? The theoretical underpinnings of magic and supernatural stuff? So... without sorcery or necromancy, it applies to using the third arm, the handmirror, and manse stuff?

Speaking of manse stuff, this leaves me at... 18 of the 20 craft+lore+occult dots needed to stop things exploding? 20/20 if it counts as restoring symmetry. I would need to drop something and take the thaumaturgical Art of Geomancy if I wanted to do that though?

Is Destiny-Knitting Entanglement just for swapping out lent artifacts? (Not sure it allows returning gear at the same time). And... spying and projectile retrieval and ant-theft measures I suppose.

What's the reason for taking Defense of Shining Joy instead of putting 5 points in dodge? I'd be rolling with 5 Dodge instead of 6 Performance, but it wouldn't cost motes or wp to set up.

Perfection In Life stops people changing their minds when persuaded or manipulated, and can also be used as party support as a source of wp.

>no forge-hand capabilities, but might be upgraded later
Oh cool, I didn't realize that was an option.

Is the Raksha getting powered up over time as it gets fed also an option?

>one more bonus point, say from a minor derangement
Like what? >>874175 makes it sound like derangement are the most severe class of mutations, which doesn't sound like what you mean.
>>
No. 875034 ID: d22dc0

Okay, I'm taking a second pass now to organize relevant information and straighten any last bits out.

Bridge that Spans the Sun and Moon, often referred to as Bridget, was once a dedicated smith in a past life, working tirelessly with her family to bend fire to their will. She lived on a remote farm that encompassed some of the last bridges on the Meander River, where her family had a long history of taking tribute and demanding respect from travelers, first to ward off the fey, but eventually upheld as tradition, and a method of sustenance. Her bloodline was twisted by the Wyld over many generations, and as a result her family resembles trolls more closely than anything else, their massive frames and unsettling third eye contrasted by voices that could reasonably be compared to the chirping, burbling noises thin ice makes as it is put under stress. Once she Exalted, she realized she had the power to enforce order and tradition, not just upon fire and steel, but upon the Wyld as well, and push back it's tainted essence wherever she can.

Tired of paying the tax, The Guild hired a sorcerer, who then summoned a small army of demons bent on helping the guild "re-negotiate" more favorable terms. While fighting against the tide, Bridget and her imaginary twin brother both Exalted, although this led to wildly different outcomes. Bridget went on to ensure the Guild wouldn't try this sort of stunt again any time soon, and ended up liberating several thousand slaves, along with the drug plantation they were being forced to work. Bridget's imaginary twin, urged on by dark whispers, had a falling out with Bridget, and went to go make use of his newfound powers, while Bridget has spent the past few years helping the people she liberated build a sustainable agricultural community. She buried the weapons and armor her brother gave her, and decided to train in the ways of martial arts to ensure she could adequately pacify any trouble makers without unneeded bloodshed. Presently, she is reeling from the collision of another vessel into the stomach churning black Castle that crossed her family's lands without paying it's due respect and sheep. Hopefully she can ensure no one here dies in a fiery explosion, or she'll likely never get what she's owed.

Character Specifics:

Compassion 4, Conviction 2, Temperance 1, Valor 2 (Soul of Honour, limit break condition: not fighting against cruel and despicable treatment of others)

Essence 4

Willpower 9

Personal essence pool of 21, Peripheral of 46.

Things She Cares About:

Things she wants to do include
>Bending the Wyld to her will, and enforcing structure and order upon it.
>Training to ensure she can pacify, protect, and heal others in need.

Things she wants to protect include:
>Her homestead
>The town she guards

Things that trouble her include:
>Her imaginary evil twin, who is out there doing who knows what in the name of getting stronger and dominating others
>Her old armor and weapons, buried on the battlefield

Things she does for fun include:
>smithing
>gardening

Mutations:
Allergy (soulsteel), disturbing voice, delusion (she has an evil twin brother; this is just plain not true)
Huge, Chakra Eye

Stats:

Strength 2(4), Dex 3, Stamina 3(5), Charisma 5, Manipulation 1, Appearance 1, Intelligence 5, Wits 1, Perception 5

Background:

1-dot wood-aspected Manse producing a Farmer's Stone, Resources 3, Cult 1, Backing (town council) 2

Skills:
Athletics 5, Craft (Fire) 4, Resistance 3 (unreciprocated levels of force 1), Survival 5 (resisting Wyld 1), Awareness 1, Integrity 1, and War 1, Lore 1, Martial Arts 3 (Non-lethal 1), Medicine 1 (surrendered enemies 1).

Charms:
Monkey Leap Technique, irrelevant compared to Soaring Crane
=>Soaring Crane Leap, allows me to jump 135ft vertically, or 270ft horizontally, in addition to moving my normal 9ft per tick. It also means instead of being 5/-1 action, jumping counts as a 0/0, but can only be done once on my turn, not every tick like walking.
=>Mountain-Crossing Leap, allows me to leap up to 20 miles, at the cost of 10 motes and 1 willpower. Takes roughly 5 minutes, although the duration is up to the storyteller as I understand it, which means that, if I had enough willpower and motes (I don't) I could travel at roughly 240 miles per hour, at the staggering cost of 120 motes + 12 willpower. Exhausting, but damn that's fast.

Hardship-Surviving Mendicant Spirit, which allows me to negate negative environmental penalties to my survival rolls for 10 motes, which makes it very easy to survive in the wilderness without any sort of prep work. It seems like this is something I need to commit motes to, but I'm not sure.
=>Element-Resisting Prana, which upgrades Hardship-Surviving Mendicant Spirit to not only negate negative environmental penalties to my survival roles, but to also make me wholly immune to environmental damage- standing in fire or acid, being struck my lighting, or walking along the bottom of a lake should all be done with ease. Do I still need to breath? Not sure.

Durability of Oak Meditation, which allows me to soak 9 extra L/B damage from an attack, after it hits, for 2 motes per attack. Because of the minimum damage rules this means I don't totally block the attack, because it already hit, I just reduce the dice pool down, to a minimum of the attacks base damage.
=>Iron Kettle Body, which allows me to pay an additional 4 motes, for 6 total, to increase the my extra soak to 14 for an entire scene.

First Craft (fire) Excellency, which allows me to add two dice to my pool at the cost of 1 mote, I think.
=>Craftsman Needs No Tools, which allows me to pay 7 motes and 1 willpower to negate the need for tools, as well as negative penalties for working without tools, on a single craft action. It also allows me to work 12 times more quickly on certain projects, which I guess makes the high cost more understandable.

This is actually only 9, but I'm pretty sure you had me speced out at 10, so i might be missing one. If I have a free slot though, I'd like to start working on parrying lethal and ranged damage, since that seems like it'll help me not die without armor or weapons.

I think that covers the character basics for now, which leave me wanting a lot of things, but such is life- if you start out at level 20, there's not much room to grow, is there?

I'd like to ask, do undead like skeletons, and necromancy in general, represent a warping or perversion of creation? Would my character have any sort of moral reason to immediately view the skeletons as Bad Things? I'm not sure if they're tied into the energies of the Wyld at all, but from what I remember about the deathlords shadowlands, the whole undead thing goes against the normal order of creation, in which case I'd have to see about setting that right.
>>
No. 875079 ID: 094652

Still looking for a way to Munchkin my 3X Artifact dot purchases - for now, I intend to invest 7 backstory points into those, let me know what the effects of investing bonus points are - 1 or 3. As far as I can tell, 4+ dot artifacts are liable to be stolen, with the risk increasing as the object gains higher rarity levels.

Still, Alchemicals can purchase said 4+ artifacts without spending additional points.

So there's one thing I think I missed - the hearthstone for the stealth knife, the one that mods it to heal stab wounds so the internal bleeding is harder to identify without a proper autopsy (which might be forbidden in certain areas because the body needs to be pristine for the funeral). What category of purchases do Hearthstones belong to - Artifacts, Charms, or something else? And as for Charms, do I still have enough bonus points to purchase what you recommended?
>>
No. 875081 ID: 20ea96

>>874638
>Want to jump right in to IC actions?
Not without the rest of the party.

>hammer out more of the environment first?
Sounds like the world is already firmly established. Unless I'm misunderstanding the meaning of "environment".

>What else is your mentor known to be capable of?
Given their profoundly heretical status, and after a brief browse-through of what little information on Lunar Exalted I can find, I'll suggest Master as being a person of many forms, shifting and changing as the mood suits them, both humanoid and animal shapes. Their gender is ambiguous, sex ever changing, and their heart filled only with a divine love for nature, sometimes gentle and sometimes viscerally ruthless and cruel. The sort of person who on the one hand will do things like benevolently feed the birds, tend to the local flora such that it flourishes, and purify unnatural contamination from the world wherever they have the power to do so, while at the same time also doing things like taking all their meals raw and alive. An aesthetic somewhere between a serene, otherworldly angel and a hot-blooded, predatory wild beast. Skills mainly related to shapeshifting, nature, and the martial arts they're in the process of teaching, and generally more focused on things that are meaningful in non-civilized settings. Their name is irrelevant because Ledaal Ji will only refer to them as Master.

>What have they told you, if anything, about the history of the world, the Silver Pact, or the Thousand Streams River?
Well, that's up to you, isn't it? I don't exactly have a sourcebook handy.

>How about that henchman, has he got a name?
Ledaal Ji will prefer the term "companion". How about... Alcaeus? If he's technically a slave, it's unlikely he'll have a surname.
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No. 875093 ID: 5c3123

>>875027
>what's Occult apply to here? The theoretical underpinnings of magic and supernatural stuff?
Yep. Also the relevant skill for attacking with Ichor Flux Tendrils, once you learn that charm.
> I would need to drop something and take the thaumaturgical Art of Geomancy if I wanted to do that though?
That would help but is not strictly necessary.
>Is Destiny-Knitting Entanglement just for swapping out lent artifacts?
Nope. Anything you own, you can spend 2 motes to check on remotely, and optionally pull closer by structured coincidence. If this item already in the same scene, retrieving it costs nothing and is reflexive (though it does count as a charm activation, so you can't do so while using non-comboable charms), so for example a sword knocked away during a duel might fly up in the air, bounce off a passing seagull, and drop effortlessly back into your hand.
>What's the reason for taking Defense of Shining Joy instead of putting 5 points in dodge?
It negates a lot of DV penalties. Suppose you get flanked by a couple of massive zombie ogres, flawlessly coordinated by their unholy master. Your dodge DV gets reduced by 2 due to being surrounded, another 4 by coordinated attacks, and if you're trying to hit back that's probably at least a further -1 from your own actions. Altogether, that would drop your dodge DV to zero before stunt bonuses, meaning you'd be in grave danger. With DoSJ, all those penalties are negated, so they probably won't be able to lay a finger on you. It also means you can use your anima power to boost dodging even further.

>Like what? >>874175 makes it sound like derangement are the most severe class of mutations,
They copied that chart wrong. A derangement is a type of negative mutation with no physical component, and any given derangement has versions for all three degrees of severity.
Megalomania, Deficiency [-1]: When the character encounters people who do not accede to his commands or who demonstrate greater leadership abilities than himself, his player rolls Compassion. On a failed roll, the character develops a strong dislike for any person who undermines the character’s sense of superiority. A botch drives the character into an immediate homicidal rage. These effects last for one scene, though the character may resist them by spending a Willpower point. Debility [-2]: The Compassion roll automatically suffers a -1 internal penalty or the character may not spend Willpower to resist the compulsion. In addition, the effects last for a full day. Deformity [-4]: The Compassion roll suffers a -2 internal penalty and the character may not spend Willpower to resist the compulsion. The effects last until the character is persuaded through Social rolls to forgive the person who failed to recognize his superiority. Otherwise, the effect with regard to that particular person is permanent.
That might be a good fit, and not much of a problem for someone with such high Compassion. Lute Silhouette Speculation isn't exactly self-aggrandizing in a conventional sense, but does believe she has a uniquely important role in guiding individuals and the world, yes?
>>875034
>(unreciprocated levels of force 1)
I'm not sure what you mean by this, so it'd be hard to adjudicate when it applies. How about "While standing on stone" instead?
>(surrendered enemies 1)
Ragara Myrrun, one of the example characters from Scroll of Exalts, has a Medicine specialty in "Treating Harm He Inflicted." That might be a better fit here, since it'll still cover most surrenders, but also training accidents among friends, or patching up Bridget's own wounds in the all too likely event that some magic ritual eventually requires willingly-given blood - which Soul Fire Resurgence wouldn't restore.
> irrelevant compared to Soaring Crane
Monkey Leap Technique is scene-long and requires only 3m committed, whereas for Soaring Crane Leap you're paying 4m per action.
>It seems like this is something I need to commit motes to,
Any charm that's not instant, permanent, or sorcerous requires committed motes.
>Do I still need to breath?
Yes. Suffocation is not a type of environmental damage. You could ignore toxic fumes, including choke-damp, or 'forage' for breathable air on the ocean floor, but solar charms alone won't let you actually breathe water, much less hard vacuum. A gill cloak is only a 1-dot artifact, though, or 2 dots for an actual space suit, and there are other options: sorcery, Black Tide Style martial arts, blessings from various gods or elementals, all sorts of stuff.
>First Craft (fire) Excellency
The excellency applies equally to any and all Craft skills you have at least one dot in.
>missing one
Soul Fire Resurgence. No more than once per action, pay one WP, roll Valor (or other virtues, when appropriate) and heal a number of health levels equal to the successes. Doesn't work on self-inflicted injury.
>do undead like skeletons, and necromancy in general, represent a warping or perversion of creation?
In the judgement of the Unconquered Sun, yes, they are Creatures of Darkness. Holy charms have extra effects on them, mostly aggravated damage.
>Would my character have any sort of moral reason to immediately view the skeletons as Bad Things?
Apart from grander metaphysical issues, walking corpses almost always smell terrible and carry nasty diseases, so prompt and thorough disposal is a sensible public health/sanitation measure.
>I'm not sure if they're tied into the energies of the Wyld at all
Not usually.
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No. 875124 ID: 5c3123
File 152180515097.png - (14.39MB , 3840x2303 , Creation Map v5_2c.png )
875124

>>875081
>Sounds like the world is already firmly established.
The broad strokes, yes. Elemental poles, demon princes, history on the scale of centuries and geography on the scale of continents. If we're using the attached map, these events are likely somewhere in square W-7. You will note that W-7 consists of a quarter-million square miles, roughly the same as France, and yet, on that map, contains no named landmarks.

No sourcebook I'm aware of describes the headwaters of the Meander River in any more detail than a sentence or two. The immediate area might look somewhat like this http://www.mangahere.cc/manga/gate_jietai_kare_no_chi_nite_kaku_tatakeri/c041/43.html but with mostly giant mushrooms rather than normal trees. Details on that scale, landscape features and political groups small enough for individuals to meaningfully interact with, have barely been established at all.

How far off is the nearest tribe of parrotmen? Which color are they, and what sort of reception could Alcaeus expect if you dropped by to visit? What small gods or other spirits do they deal with on a regular basis, and what sort of rival tribes dispute their borders? Human barbarians, other sorts of beastmen, Arckhzeki or some less-infamous wyld mutants, chakra orchids or some other mind-slaving parasite, Mother Bog or some other landscape-scale behemoth, maybe a lost city of relatively civilized people with a few bits of semi-functional infrastructure dating back to the Shogunate, or perhaps even further?

>Their name is irrelevant because Ledaal Ji will only refer to them as Master.
What is the single consistent feature which their shapeshifting never completely obscures? When the silver light of their anima is on full display, which animal (or plant, or other living thing) does it take the iconic form of? Where is the territory they nurture and defend?

> I don't exactly have a sourcebook handy.
Ah, well, that's the fun part! Other Lunars have met with Ledaal Ji's master, or sent sorcerous messenger-cherubs, or otherwise discussed matters of significance where he could overhear. From context, the Silver Pact is an alliance or code of conduct (or both) for Anathema, somehow involving magical tattoos, while the Thousand Streams River is a philosophy and/or political agenda of truly vast scope and duration. I am asking you to invent some specific details about those subjects, which Ji has been deliberately informed of, or eavesdropped, or inferred from other fragmentary sources. Over the course of play we will find out how much of that information was accurate.
>>875079
>What category of purchases do Hearthstones belong to - Artifacts, Charms, or something else?
A proper hearthstone is bought with the Manse background. Alchemicals don't normally have access to that, as there aren't any demesnes or manses in Autocthonia, but since this game takes place in Creation it seems fair to give them at least the same level of access that Solars have. Normally, though, Alchemicals cover hearthstone-equivalent needs with essence capacitors and/or elemental cores, which are both freestanding artifacts that require periodic recharging. Essence Capacitors have a one day on/two days off duty cycle, and don't grant any hearthstone-like powers, but the recharge just requires ambient essence. Elemental Cores provide steady output for three months, plus a hearthstone-like power, but can only recharge inside a special reactor - either the heart of an Essence 8+ alchemical exalt, taking the form of a city, or a mobile metacore reactor, which is a 5-dot artifact in it's own right and requires an uncapped demesne for power.
>And as for Charms, do I still have enough bonus points to purchase what you recommended?
All alchemicals start with eight charm slots (four general, four dedicated) and eight charms to fill them at no cost in bonus points. I was recommending the Second Manipulation Augmentation, Fourth Appearance Augmentation, Fifth Dexterity Augmentation, Sixth Intelligence + Craft Augmentation, Pheromone Regulation Systems, Integrated Artifact Transmogrifier, Omnitool Implant, and Technomorphic Integration Engine, which is eight charms. Those last two require Wits 3 and Intelligence 2, respectively, so you'd need to shift a point from Charisma over to Wits, leaving you with Strength 2, Dexterity 5 (6 with the augmentation), Stamina 1, Charisma 2, Manipulation 4 (plus up to two successes for 2m each from the augmentation), Appearance 5 (up to 10 for a scene for 3m per dot with the augmentation), Intelligence 2, Wits 3, Perception 5.

Embri's got 13 motes of personal essence, 8 of which are committed to installed charms, leaving only 5 free for charm use without visible anima flare. That's enough for the Manipulation augmentation, or messing around with pheromones, but not both at once, though either way leaves a mote free for storing and retrieving items.

You could free up one or two more motes of personal essence by linking up those charms into arrays as groups of four, the downside being they then can't be installed and removed separately. You'd probably want to keep prerequisites together, meaning Omnitool and TIE with the Intelligence+Craft and Pheromones with Manipulation, but the other three have no charm prereqs so they could go anywhere. Probably makes the most sense to stick Dex with the tools as a "tech" array, and the other four as a "social" array. Then you'd only have six personal motes committed to installed charms, seven free, allowing pheromone manipulation plus a single auto success on the social attack roll without any anima flare to give you away.

Presumably the Integrated Artifact Transmogrifier and Omnitool Implant would be paid for with 9m from her 39-mote peripheral pool and kept active full-time. Spending fifteen motes (over the course of five actions) to warm up the Appearance augmentation is her "go loud" option, providing overwhelming force in most face-to-face social contexts and usually flaring her anima to the level where most people won't be able to remember the event accurately afterward, but also clearly revealing her as a supernatural being to any that do. Resisting costs a number of WP equal to her Essence.
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No. 875198 ID: d22dc0

>>875124
>No sourcebook I'm aware of describes the headwaters of the Meander River

Perfect! Totally coincidental, but I think that's fitting.

>How far off is the nearest tribe of parrotmen? Which color are they
In the Fungus Plains there's a splinter cell of Red Parrotmen who were unhappy with the decision to allow Blue from Red to live, but, being outvoted, decided to leave their tribe and head west to ensure they could raise their offspring properly, without the influence of the other tribes. I think when they left around RY 700, they numbered around 5 septs, so in 70 years there probably hasn't been significant growth, just a couple generations.

>what sort of reception could Alcaeus expect if you dropped by to visit?
Not sure how to answer this one, as it seems I'm visiting Alcaeus, but also giving the reception? I'm also not sure who Alcaeus is

>What small gods or other spirits do they deal with on a regular basis and what sort of rival tribes dispute their borders?
Based on the description of the Parrotmen, and the picture you provided about the terrain, what do you think of them worshiping an infant forest walker located in the Fungal Plains? Until recently it was actually an elemental, bound to the natural world of creation, but worship catalyzed it's growth into not just a place, but an idea beyond it's physical boundaries sometime in the last century.

In addition, the parrotmen have to contend with two ghosts fettered to the area, who died during the Usurpation; one, a powerful solar, hunted and killed, the other being the hunter of the Solar, who died during the ensuing fight. Both were so committed to seeing the other one dead that they resisted re-incarnation so they could be sure they vanquished their foe. Upon finding each other as ghosts, they continued their fight, and over the many years, have lost any semblance of personality or self, their endless duel the only thing keeping them here. Each one has a tribe local to the area that associates themselves with their "patron". A small group of dragon-blooded, descended from a disgraced house that attempted to assassinate the Empress long ago, are pledged to the service of a ghost carrying out their eternal work against the Solars, and fight against a larger group of humans who fled from some horrifying monstrosity that had emerged from the Wyld beyond Lake Carda to commit unspeakable crimes against civilization; these humans of course followed the ghost of the solar, who was also chased from their home and hunted like prey. After many generations, much like the ghosts they follow, neither tribe remembers why they fight each other, only that this is simply how things have always been, and how things will always be. And, just for kicks, we'll say there's a larger population of bovine beastmen who worship a minor harvest god centered around seasonal decay and the growth of life from death. Some notable traditions include the cultivation of rotting flesh on still living bodies, the subsequent sacrifices needed to create hollowed fields upon which bountiful harvests will grow, and the fermentation of mushroom wine, infused in containers that lend it hallucinogenic properties when imbibed.

The parrotmen fight most with the other beastmen, who's territory they moved into, as well as the humans, who attack all beastmen.
The dragon-blooded fight most with the the Humans, and occasionally form uneasy alliances with the heffers
The humans seem to be at odds with everyone, but while they actively hunt the dragon-blooded, they seem to fear the other beastmen, and stay far away unless cornered.
The Heffers have been there the longest, and have cultivated land, metal tools, and walls defending their territory, but have struggled to maintain their lands against the outsiders pushing ever closer.

I imagine, given how I described they Wyld's influence on the area, that we must be close to it, and therefore that plays into this power dynamic, so I think it makes sense that there's pervasive mutations across the various groups of people, but I think the Elemental of the Forest, now turned God, prevented the Fair Folk from being too big of a problem. It's likely though that a small contingent of overly mutated people from the various groups have created a safe haven for themselves somewhere nearby though, if anyone wants to chime in there. I'm realizing now that I might be monopolizing a bit, but there's still plenty of room for other history, spirits, gods, and other things in the area.
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No. 875282 ID: 5c3123

>>875198
>who Alcaeus is
Yisheng Ji's companion. Under what circumstances did he become separated from the other parrotmen, and how happy would this particular tribe be to see him?

>elemental into god
That's not how that works. An elemental can develop into a Lesser Elemental Dragon and thereby acquire social status equivalent to a celestial god, but metaphysically they're two completely different things... though I suppose, in truly unusual circumstances, a sufficiently desperate god left unemployed by the Great Contagion could bind-or-assassinate and replace a sufficiently successful elemental, in order to usurp the theoretically-lesser spirit's cult.

>ghosts
It'd be unusual to see ghosts active in an area with no shadowlands, but if it's just one or two extremely old and powerful individuals, that could make sense. Are there shadowlands any closer than the Mound of Forsaken Seeds? Perhaps some remnant of the lich-queen Astius's domain, beneath Lake Carda - which was created by damming up one of those minor rivers, as part of the combined geomantic engineering and military expansion through which the yakfolk secured their current territory.
>A small group of dragon-blooded, descended from a disgraced house that attempted to assassinate the Empress long ago,
Surviving descendants of Manosque, the Empress's eldest child? Manosque Viridian seized the Eye of Autocthon about 520 years ago (presumably from the ruins of Bagrash Köl's empire, way up north in what's now the Haslanti League) and used it to de-power the Realm Defense Grid as part of a very nearly successful coup attempt, which ended abruptly when his entire army, only a day's march from the capital, simply fell into the sky. (The Eye of Autocthon is very powerful, and was poorly understood even in the High First Age. Do not taunt happy fun ball.) The remainder of House Manosque was put to the sword, but it's conceivable a few members of that army, those who happened to be within arm's reach of flight-capable artifact vehicles, could have escaped, with some children, grandchildren, and great*25-grandchildren, still in hiding. Now that the Empress is missing, their ancestor's status as her eldest child might be newly relevant. How many of them in total, and how many of those have actually Exalted?

>The dragon-blooded fight most with the the Humans, and occasionally form uneasy alliances with the heffers
Let's say the Manosque exiles hammered out something like a Cselenite pact between the Yak Folk and a local elemental court led by the Mushroom King, who (in concert with the river god Lord of Nine Falls) has twice defeated the demon Octavian, the Living Tower in battle - the only entities ever to have done so.

The yak folk are relatively few in number, slow to breed and requiring considerable food, but huge and physically imposing. They're like buck-ogres, but with fewer heads and more brains, and hold about five or six times their own number in human or near-human slaves, who are routinely bound by sorcery such that attempting to discuss the possibility of disobedience or escape causes them to vomit live maggots. Most of the yak folk have enlightened essence. Every adult carries both a staff and a sword; many of the staves - maybe 25% - have some useful enchantment, and a few are artifact-quality weapons or sorcerous tools, of which the greatest is a Singing Staff capable of reshaping stone with arbitrary precision. It was carried into exile by the Manosque scions, then gifted to the yak folk leader, as payment for her hospitality and as a symbol of the alliance.

The yak folk outnumber the dragon-blooded about a hundred to one, including many terrestrial martial artists and a few sorcerers, but no exalted - except perhaps a distant Lunar patron whose assistance is far from guaranteed. If not for their common enemies (mainly necrolatrist barbarians under the ghost of Burning Soul Godo, and beyond them, the mobile swamp which has some personal grudge against Godo but is unwilling or unable to ally with any other local faction on any level beyond a basic protection racket) the Manosque scions and the yak-folk would soon be killing or trying to enslave each other, driven by a mix of ideology and raw ambition. In such a conflict, both sides would surely take losses they could ill afford to replace, so neither is eager to start such a fight - not without a decisive advantage from outside forces, anyway.

The sapient swamp will accept many things as payment: corrosion-resistant metals, any magical trinkets that won't be damaged by a bit of dirt and damp. What Mother Bog often takes, though, is corpses. From the bodies of draft animals or big strong men she makes her shambling laborers and soldiers, graceful deer or beautiful women are sculpted into her dancing silver-tongued emissaries, and from small children or beloved pets she makes creeping sorcerer-assassins. None of the bog's minions, it must be noted, are in any sense undead; they are simply new life made from the remains of the old, as all swamps - all carnivores and herbivores - have always done.

The Lord of Nine Falls is the god of the tributaries of the Meander River, which include (as the name suggests) nine major waterfalls. Each waterfall has an artificial cave behind it, hollowed out by the Singing Staff, with a dock for ships and a spiraling ramp leading upward. Across each canyon there is a bridge, each an identical 1-dot air aspect manse. The bridges are made from fine latticework which can be commanded to expand wide enough for cargo wagons, or to fold up almost as thin as a blade. They are networked together, so that anyone who knows the code can use controls on any bridge to open or close any other bridge. The Nine Bridges were built as a collaborative project between the remnants of House Manosque and the Yak Folk, and have served well for centuries, keeping the plateaus and valleys at the core of their shared territory not only well defended, but virtually unknown to the outside world. However, this dependence on impassable terrain also makes the renegade red parrotmen - and all you other air-mobile types - a strategic threat far out of proportion to their numbers.
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No. 875289 ID: 3abd97

>>875079
>As far as I can tell, 4+ dot artifacts are liable to be stolen, with the risk increasing as the object gains higher rarity levels.
I don't think artifact theft in general is especially problematic. I was more making the point that if you take something really valuable, plan to trade it away, and then make sure you don't know it's value in character... don't count on not getting cheated in some way.

>>875093
>so you can't do so while using non-comboable charms
So which of my current charms are non-comboable?

>Megalomania
Hm. Thinking about it, but not really feeling it. Maybe a Delusion would fit better, but I haven't thought of a good one yet.

>Neuralizer anima flare
So would Embri have any control over who that affects, or is she just strobing memory-erasure as long as she's glowing? That's going to make any serious combat action interesting. I wonder how often I'll be rolling Investigation: what-the-heck-where-we-just-doing in the aftermath of fight scenes.

What are the cutoffs for caste-marks and anima lightshows becoming visible anyways?

What things give away my status as an akuma, by the way? (Does it affect the appearance of my anima)? I assume that's something I'm supposed to keep quiet (to keep from being killed by the Yozi's opponents, or unpersoned by the Bureau of Destiny). Less sure how that would be approached in party: Malice is a Green Sun Princess, so we're nominally on the same broad side (assuming neither of us have betrayed the reclamation), Bridget's an anathema and Ledaal Ji takes instruction from one, which puts them both in the Scarlet Empire's bad side (if the empire found out what Ji was up to, anyways), and I have no idea where alchemicals fit into those politics. If Astius is still working for the Neverborn that put them against anyone who wants Creation to keep existing.

>>875124
>>875198
>I'm realizing now that I might be monopolizing a bit
Don't worry about it, plenty of room to toss in ideas for factions and surroundings.

The mushroom forests sound cool to me.

>chakra orchids or some other mind-slaving parasite
And I approve of a community of some kind of horrid parasites trying to make a go of it.

>I'm also not sure who Alcaeus is
Ledaal Ji's minion.
>>
No. 875291 ID: 3abd97

>>875282
This all sounds good. I dig the sapient swamp.

A seemingly inaccessible shadowland under the lake (unless you have the right charms or gear to operate underwater, or find a way to drain it) sounds interesting. With Kimberly charms and an interest in necromancy that seems like a plot hook I could do something with eventually.

>How many of them in total, and how many of those have actually Exalted?
Um. A dozen exalts or less, maybe? Less confident on picking arbitrary numbers for the larger population.
>>
No. 875331 ID: fc3fc0

>>875282
>descendants of Manosque, the Empress's eldest child?

Sure, let's go with that! The whole "mostly put to the sword, but a few escaped" was kinda what I was going for. It's likely that there was a group of doomsday preppers within the house, ready for the worst, who happened to get lucky when their flighty instincts proved correct.

>How many of them in total
>The yak folk outnumber the dragon-blooded about a hundred to one
>The yak folk are relatively few in number
>and hold about five or six times their own number in human or near-human slaves

This is a bit tough then; if theres a dozen exalted Dragon-blooded Scions, then there's at least a dozen of them all together, meaning we need at least 1200 Yak Folk, which means that their slave population is at least 6,000 strong, and if we assume conditions somewhat similar to the trans-atlantic slave trade, there would need to be a human population of roughly 30,000 to support that kind of slavery. All in all, this represents roughly a tenth of a percent of the population that was in frace around 1850, so if we want to boost the numbers to fill the area more thoroughly that would certainly be doable. I'm not sure what kind of population density you're imagining, given that this area is unmapped, and therefore largely unimportant to the rest of the Near East and the Scavenged Lands, as well as the empire as a whole. We could easily up everything by a factor of ten, but at that point you start to wonder about how much of a difference absolute values vs percentage values would affect a war effort.

>Yisheng Ji's companion. Under what circumstances did he become separated from the other parrotmen, and how happy would this particular tribe be to see him?

Seems prudent to leave that one for Tunic

>a sufficiently desperate god left unemployed by the Great Contagion
Is it possible for someone to duplicate the creation of the Dawnstar and Unconquerable Sun on a significantly smaller, and obviously flawed scale? Rather than simply taking the domain of an elemental, could a god sufficiently shape their own domain, create the ship which they pilot?

>no exalted - except perhaps a distant Lunar patron
Yeah, that sounds good . Perhaps some Half-castes make up their elite warriors and give them some connection to an otherwise long gone ancestor; The kids like to think they're self sufficient, but every now and then you can't roll with the punches and have to call home to your folks.

>>875289
>Don't worry about it
It's hard to convey tone over text like this, but that's reassuring; I definitely like to talk and create, but I don't want to talk over anyone or take up all the fun opportunities.

Maybe those chackra orchids and such could be part of the living swamp? I don't know much about them to be honest, there's a lot of exalted and I don't read quite as quickly or as accurately as JamesLeng, so I'm mostly filling in bits and pieces where I can.
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No. 875338 ID: 094652

>>875289
Noted. Still, there's an important opportunity to trade a 6-dot artifact for a 3-dot hearthstone and some opportunities, instead of buying a 6-dot artifact with diminishing returns on bonus points while Embri wastes her potential for artifact discounts on a hearthstone. If you guys can come up with an appropriate play to trade fairly, we save more than 4 dots total.

>>875124
On that note, though, I think the essence charm hearthstone replacement would be a better fit. The one-day on, two days off thing is acceptable, as the specialized internal bleeding assassination would be reserved for high-priority targets, like guard captains or wealthy merchants. For nobodies like night guards or gang members, a simple shank-and-stuff (in the closet) will suffice.
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No. 875357 ID: 20ea96

>>875124
>What is the single consistent feature which their shapeshifting never completely obscures? When the silver light of their anima is on full display, which animal (or plant, or other living thing) does it take the iconic form of? Where is the territory they nurture and defend?
How about taking the iconic form of the great grey shrike, and retaining the bird's characteristic black eye stripe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_grey_shrike
I suppose that would make their favored terrain lightly-forested grasslands and/or bogs? That would likely make them a friend of Mother Bog, the sapient swamp.

>Silver Pact is an alliance or code of conduct (or both) for Anathema, somehow involving magical tattoos
Considering you can be murdered by religious zealots just for associating with Anathema, Ledaal Ji should know very little about it, for his own safety. Perhaps just enough to help him avoid danger presented by other Anathema bound by the Silver Pact. His Master could have taught him how to visually and/or spiritually identify and distinguish Silver Pact tattoos from ordinary tattoos, as well as some way to indicate to Silver Pact members that he is non-hostile to the faction. Perhaps a sacred phrase or a specific form of divine resonance.

>the Thousand Streams River is a philosophy and/or political agenda of truly vast scope and duration
I'm assuming Ledaal Ji is just a relatively weak, low-level acolyte, since you noted "all his heretical martial arts training so far has taken place over a cumulative total of less than half an hour of face-to-face discussion and sparring", so again, he should know almost nothing about something as huge and important as the Thousand Streams River philosophy. Half an hour isn't much time to even summarize something "of truly vast scope and duration", not to mention the necessity of holding back on the advanced concepts until the basic concepts are mastered. Perhaps Ledaal Ji made an crude, shallow-minded guesstimation that it had something to do with the way a thousand myriad, weak streams will eventually merge into a single mighty, unstoppable river. And in the same way, there can be a thousand myriad paths for an individual to take on the road to enlightenment of the Tao. That all ways are correct if you only have the knowledge and strength of will to follow them. And in a more politically-minded context, an unenlightened one such as himself could easily imagine a thousand myriad factions, individually weak, but when united into a single entity, all moving in the same direction, invulnerable.
>>
No. 875360 ID: 20ea96

>>875331
>>875198
>how happy would this particular tribe be to see Alcaeus?
>Red parrotmen who were unhappy with the decision to allow Blue from Red to live
>Alcaeus is a blue parrotman
From what you've written, it seems you pretty clearly answered that they would absolutely despise Alcaeus, to the fullest extent of fantasy racism.

>Under what circumstances did he become separated from the other parrotmen?
Given his status as a slave to the dragonblooded, there's no doubt he was captured by dragonblooded. Yet despite this, he seems to be on very good terms with Ledaal Ji, a dragonblooded, so it's clearly not a source of racially-motivated angst for him. Perhaps his tribe attacked a member of/stole from/committed some other crime against a major dragonblooded house, and were summarily made an example of, being forcefully suppressed and their members sold into slavery. This would have happened at a very young age, when Alcaeus was merely a chick. Presumably, House Ledaal purchased him for a similarly young Ledaal Ji as a personal servant/companion. Thus, while Alcaeus is legally a slave, the emotional bond between them is more like childhood friends. Having a mandatory presence for a young minor noble like Ledaal Ji, studying all sorts of scholarly topics later in life, a clever parrotman with a knack for memorization like Alcaeus would naturally have learned much. Discovering a particular interest in alchemy, and being privileged enough to be able to share many of Ledaal Ji's resources, he would eventually reach his current status as a master alchemist. Plus, as an excuse, it never hurts to have a talented slave serving you, right?
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No. 875379 ID: 5c3123

>>875289
>What are the cutoffs for caste-marks and anima lightshows becoming visible anyways?

Main rule to remember is one step up for every four motes of peripheral essence, one step back down per scene (or per 20 minutes in particularly long scenes) without spending any.

In a little more detail, at one to three motes, there's a faint sparkling which requires a perception roll to notice. Not a problem unless you're under particularly close scrutiny, but it can take an hour or more to fade completely.
At four to seven motes, magical stealth fails (it's still possible to hide behind opaque cover, but notably harder), and anyone who spots you will know which type of exalt you are thanks to the color and shape of a glowing mark on your forehead.
At eight to eleven motes, you're surrounded by a glowing aura bright enough to read by, which shines through solid objects clearly enough that anyone within hundreds of yards who's not blind or sound asleep can't possibly fail to notice.
At twelve to fifteen motes, the aura becomes a rippling bonfire, enough to light up a large room or be visible as a spark on the horizon from miles away. This is the level where anima powers activate for free, and it also tends to have lasting (though largely cosmetic) effects on the environment.
Sixteen motes is the maximum. No matter how many more you spend in a scene, it can drop back down to the previous level after a single action. It's known as the "iconic" level because, rather than glowing even brighter, it reveals your specific personal identity as an iconic image.

All that applies to Solars, Lunars, GSPs, and Abyssals. Terrestrial exalts don't have caste marks, and the elemental energies of their animas cause physical damage to anything nearby at the 8 mote or higher levels. Alchemicals exude trace amounts of the corresponding magical material, making them easier to track for up to an hour, in that same range.

Sidereals are the oddest exception. They're inherently subtler; they don't flare as bright, just as the stars are less visible than the sun or moon. Caste marks still require a roll to notice up to 8 motes, and stealth or disguises have some chance of success up to 12. They get a bonfire-equivalent glow at 16 motes, which persists for the scene, but never display a personal iconic image - though some claim to be able to recognize individuals by subtle differences in the aura's color.

>So would Embri have any control over who that affects, or is she just strobing memory-erasure as long as she's glowing?
At 12+ peripheral motes, it's on whether she wants it or not.
>What things give away my status as an akuma, by the way?
Only way to really be sure would be the spiritual equivalent of a cavity search or MRI scan. Any of the Incarnae, Lytek (god of exaltation), or somebody wielding Lytek's diagnostic tools could definitely do that. High-essence Solar or Lunar charms might enable soul analysis. An adamant-circle sorcerer could call upon the yozi surrender oath to summon whichever demon performed the Investiture and bind them to the task of identifying you (and other agents); the Unconquered Sun, or Verumipra, Ambassador to the Cursed City and Warden of the Exiles, could compel the yozis themselves to testify.
More likely, though, you'd have to worry about circumstantial evidence. Noticing that somebody is a Creature of Darkness is fairly easy - one of the entry-level charms from Golden Janissary style can do it with a touch, and practitioners might smite you on general principles. Celestial Lions, Heaven's police force, can do so with a glance. Loom-Snarling Deception won't cover that by itself, you need an upgrade charm... which is not automatically available to all akuma.

Someone might simply ask whether you're an akuma and check your answer with some sort of lie detector, such as the solar Investigation charm Judge's Ear Technique.

When you use Kimbery's charms, someone with the ability to directly observe essence flows (essence sight) and sufficient occult knowledge might recognize them as such. For charms with the Obvious keyword, essence sight would not be necessary, though expertise still would.

There's a spell, Universal Precept Shroud, which can conceal any and all telltales except during use of Obvious-keyword charms. Casting it by yourself would require initiation into sapphire-circle sorcery, and getting the full effect normally requires Essence 5, but there are some loopholes: with a Sorcery-Capturing Cord of braided starmetal and moonsilver (a 4-dot artifact) you could store a spell cast by someone else and deploy it later as if you were the caster, with the right 4-dot manse (Twice-Striking Lightning Prism hearthstone, Rainbow Tabernacle for one of the powers) you could boost your effective Essence to the necessary level for spellcasting purposes. Let's say that spell is already in place, since it's within the scope of demonic patronage and clearly mission-relevant, but you still need to worry about the possibility of being exposed by countermagic.

Handy backup option for such a contingency would be a Veil of Fathomless Wickedness, 2-dot artifact which can defeat any scan because it doesn't technically conceal your nature as a CoD, but rather transforms you enough that you no longer are one. Bad news, it also locks out all your charms and other essence-based powers. Sidereal Astrology still works, but it's seldom the best tool for immediate self-defense.

>(Does it affect the appearance of my anima)?
If you had an iconic anima, it would be subtly distorted in some manner symbolic of your damnation. Fortunately, you don't, and Venus's blue goes well with oceanic imagery anyway.

>I have no idea where alchemicals fit into those politics.
Neither does anyone else. Solars and Lunars are well-documented in Immaculate dogma, Abyssals fit well enough since they're similar to solars but worse, all that's easy enough for most people to wrap their heads around. Sidereals and GSPs keep a lower profile, but most of the GSP powerset is Yozi charms which were adequately studied in akuma, and by direct experimentation on the yozis during the High First Age, and even some records all the way back to the Primordial War. GSPs may develop strange new sorts of transcendence, but only after months or years of 'making it up as they go along,' allowing others a chance to adapt. Broad agendas of all the fallen titans are no great secret, however obscure the latest specific implementation is.

Alchemicals come from a completely alien world, with language and culture that have evolved to fit totally different environmental pressures for upwards of 4500 years, and they're wielding a broad, well-developed set of powers that nobody outside Autocthonia has ever seen in action before. Not the wisest sages, not the most ancient ghosts in the Underworld, not even the yozis themselves. Gaia, the Incarnae, and a select few others such as Lytek or Queen Merela might possibly be able to recognize the broad strokes of it from Autocthon's initial concept sketches for Exaltation, but no prototype was built to those original plans, not until after the War, within the Great Maker's self-imposed exile, inner workings of which were hidden by the Seal of Eight Divinities.

>If Astius is still working for the Neverborn
Astius was never really working for the Neverborn. The Lich-Queen is uniquely old, among Abyssal Exalts: one of the Solars which survived the Usurpation, at least long enough to have never been stuck in the Jade Prison, hunted down and forced to reincarnate again and again during the Shogunate. Finally came near a place called the Well of Udr. Somebody... existed there. "Lived" isn't the right word. Owned that place, brooked no intruders. With writhing snakes where fingers ought to be, summoned an entity known as Loras, the Death Sun to drive off the intruders, then returned to her studies. Loras is shaped vaguely like a human, but thirty feet tall. Wears robes of black glass, carries an immense sword, obliterated an army and broke a skyship in half with about as much visible interest or effort as scraping horse-dung off cobblestones, devoured ghosts like salty pub snacks. The Death Sun explained to Astius, with unexpected courtesy, "There are two ways I can complete my bound task at this point. Killing you, or," and then she picked the other one.

Didn't have any more trouble from the Wyld Hunt after that. Built a little kingdom, out on the fringes of the world, but anything she cared about too much kept exploding in black fire, and anyone who cared about her too much tended to go insane, or abruptly die in inexplicably horrific ways. Blighted the very landscape sometimes, or suffered seemingly random injuries herself. More than once a whole crowd of people tried to cut out their own eyes after seeing her iconic anima banner. Only the dead were safe, and they've got their own limitations. As such, even with the best leadership and logistical management she could provide, the whole empire-building project never really got off the ground.

>>875331
>I'm not sure what kind of population density you're imagining,
On that map, inside square W-7, you see that cluster of mountains? All the yak folk, their croplands, supply lines, and the remnants of House Manosque occupy a small enough portion of that area that they've managed to avoid being noticed in any serious way through multiple centuries of wandering adventurers, some of whom have superpowers, as well as sporadic aerial scouting by Lookshyan forces, Fair Folk, and who knows what else. There might be over a hundred Manosques in total, but some of them would have to be children or unExalted adults, and even with magical genetics and extended DB lifespans, twenty-plus generations of inbreeding starting from a very narrow gene pool would have to cause some sort of problems. Marrying barbarians or the yakfolk's slaves would dilute the potential for exaltation, and options for strengthening it again are few and unpleasant. Purity Crucible Strike risks the subject's death while a Dragon's Nest requires a 3-dot or higher demense and all the other complications of building a manse, not least the risk of yak folk sabotaging it to preserve the balance of power.

>Is it possible for someone to duplicate the creation of the Dawnstar and Unconquerable Sun on a significantly smaller, and obviously flawed scale?
Well, there were these things called Titan-class Aerial Citadels, which could be adequately summarized as a mix of http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092067/ and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116629/ so in that sense, yes.
>Rather than simply taking the domain of an elemental, could a god sufficiently shape their own domain, create the ship which they pilot?
There's a second-circle demon, Florivet, the Whim-of-the-Wind, who sails around on a ship made from his own surgically extracted bones, which were replaced with red glass. Fairly decent guy, as demons go, likes getting drunk and going on adventures.

>>875357
>I'm assuming Ledaal Ji is just a relatively weak, low-level acolyte,
Being Exalted at all puts him head and shoulders above the common mass of humanity. Initiation into Celestial Martial Arts puts him on the same level as the sort of folks (Immaculate monks) who are nominally in charge of going out and picking fights with the Anathema. Once you've got that, and sorcery, all that's left is mastering other styles, or increasing Essence and expanding the native DB charmset (which includes at least one old-age-resistance charm, Well-Tended Garden Of The Soul), or extrinsic power such as artifacts and manses.

There are some frustratingly hard-to-explain differences between cultivation as depicted in I Shall Seal The Heavens and the way training and XP work in Exalted. Humbling Enlightenment Commentary accelerates training for the martial arts, so that each minute provides as much benefit as would normally be possible in a full day. Half an hour is the equivalent of more than a month, and that month-equivalent of training gave focus and direction to six years worth of downtime XP.

There's a 5-dot hearthstone right in the core book which stops the bearer from aging, and a few different options in Dreams of the First Age, including a 6-dot artifact crown which, in addition to solving the whole 'old age' issue, causes it's wearer to rapidly regenerate from any injury, even growing back whole and alive if reduced to a fine pink mist. Only way to kill the user is to remove the crown and keep it away from them for a few minutes, or interfere with the crown's annual maintenance and recharging. Building a 6-dot artifact from scratch is... possible in theory. You'd need six exotic ingredients, each equivalent to a 5-dot artifact, then the design process would require Lore, Occult, and an appropriate Craft all at 8 dots, and several hundred successes on an extended action with one roll per season.

Charms can help, mostly Solar or Alchemical. Embri's Omnitool Implant and Bridget's Craftsman Needs No Tools would be good places to start, though far from sufficient in themselves. That 12x speed multiplier means the roll interval for crafting artifacts is reduced from three months to a week.
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No. 875383 ID: 094652

>>875021
What are the relevant rules for Clarity? I mean, from a stat perspective, how does this tie in to Embri's existing rigidity and cold-heartedness?

>You can't have Strength +0 as a starting Adamant-caste. All your caste attributes need to start with at least 2 dots.
Well dang. That makes the powerbow less effective, huh. So Embri's Strength needs to be average (2) or more because of caste rules, then? Does that rule apply to Favored stats as well?
How about this, then: Strength 2, Appearance 4-5, Perception 4-5. Need to decide if a mystically-gorgeous appearance is more important than sniper-precise perception.
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No. 875402 ID: 3abd97

>Main rule to remember is one step up for every four motes of peripheral essence, one step back down per scene (or per 20 minutes in particularly long scenes) without spending any.
Ah. So we're not intended to be running around with all our peripheral motes assigned to artifacts then? We're supposed to attune them as needed? Unless maintaining already committed motes doesn't count as a new expenditure.

>Akuma discovery stuff
Less bad than I feared it might be. In the immediate scenario, it sounds like Astius (possibly sorcery and confirmed demon summoning) is best specced to make me, probably followed by Bridget, with anti creature of darkness stuff.

>Veil of Fathomless Wickedness
Going to pass on that for now. I'm happy with the proposed build in >>874890 (still toying with the idea of taking a derangement or not) and there's not much room for removing things to free up points. (And I don't even have any Sidereal Astrology to fall back on yet).

Maybe I'll obtain one later in the course of play, or if I'm going somewhere where I'm more likely to be found out, I'll artifact-swap with my patron.

Are there decisions to be made about said patron? I'm guessing Kimberly doesn't handle the day to day managing of material and my Q is some upper tier demon in her service.

>Building a 6-dot artifact from scratch is... possible in theory
There's an interesting possible plot hook or long term goal. Several of the PCs are crafters, to different extents. Agreeing to some kind of long term shared project might be one way to get them working together.
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No. 875415 ID: d22dc0

>>875402
Based on what I read, attuned motes do count towards glowy powers, but you only need to keep that to a minimum if you don’t want to make a big aura. For example, Bridget is probably pretty confident in herself, and likely won’t worry about people realizing her treacherous exaltation. In addition, she hasn’t actually learned any martial arts or charms that would let her realize your demonic influences. At least, I don’t think so. Her only real powers thus far are:

Jumping good
Resisting the elements
Surviving some otherwise dangerous wounds
Turning raw material into finished products on the fly

Given that she is expressly uneducated in the ways of the first era, and has low occult currently, she probably doesn’t know much about the Yozai, so there’s not much of a reason for her to dislike Lute just for being an Akuma. As long as they get along well during this crisis, should be no reason for friction. In fact, Kimberly was instrumental in bringing about the Holy Tyrant, who in turn brought about the Unconquored Sun, so historically there’s a viewpoint that favors the Yozai as benefactors of creation. It certainly wouldn’t exist without them.
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No. 875469 ID: 5c3123

>>875081
>Not without the rest of the party.
I'm not going to enforce the PCs all being in the same place and on the same side. The way the rules for downtime activities work, once you're more established, sometimes it'll make more sense to split up for months at a time, and the way social combat works it's very much possible for allegiances to shift, at least when they haven't been locked in with Righteous Lion Defense or equivalent. Every Exalt's charmset has it's own version of that, with it's own limits on what it can be applied to.

>>875415
>Kimberly
The only letter 'L' in "Kimbery, the Great Mother, the Sea That Marched Against The Flame" is the one in the word 'flame.' http://plagueofhats.blogspot.com/2010/09/yozi-kimberly.html

>>875402
>Unless maintaining already committed motes doesn't count as a new expenditure.
That's correct.
>Are there decisions to be made about said patron? I'm guessing Kimberly doesn't handle the day to day managing of material and my Q is some upper tier demon in her service.
Conveniently, third-circle demons are actually somewhat easier to stat out than weaker ones. They've got Essence 8, 9, or 10, willpower usually in the same range, virtues wherever they need to be for the personality archetype, 18-25 base dice for any conceivable action, pretty much every spirit charm that doesn't go against their themes, and a couple of unique powers. No need to worry about Backgrounds because they're Unquestionable, so everything in Hell is up for grabs. I think Madelrada, That Which Wears Down The Mountains is Kimbery's only 3rd-circle soul with a canonical stat block, so do you want to be a spy for the living army and grandmaster of strategic attrition, or make up a different one?

>>875383
>What are the relevant rules for Clarity?
First there's a long section explaining that it's all about efficiency, not brutal sociopathy (at least until Gremlin Syndrome gets involved). Skipping that since I can probably explain it better as specific examples come up.
GAINING CLARITY There are two kinds of Clarity: permanent and temporary points. Permanent points of Clarity cannot be removed as long as the conditions that produced them remain in place. Temporary Clarity fluctuates according to behavior and situation. Characters may gain Clarity in the following ways: • Transhuman Essence: Alchemicals gain one point of permanent Clarity for each dot of Essence they possess over five. • Suppressing Virtues: Whenever an Alchemical spends a point of Willpower to suppress a Virtue he possesses at 3+, he gains a point of temporary Clarity. Alchemicals may automatically fail any Virtue roll without paying Willpower by accepting two points of Clarity instead. • Forsaking Humanity: Alchemicals gain a point of temporary Clarity after spending a full week without meaningful, nonviolent human contact of any kind. Other Alchemical Exalted do not count as humans for this purpose. • Charms: Charms with the Exemplar keyword bestow permanent Clarity while they are installed. Some Charms grant temporary Clarity when they are invoked, as well. See Chapter Five for more details. LOSING CLARITY Unlike Limit, Clarity does not “break” at 10 points. Gains in excess of this total are simply ignored. As mentioned, permanent Clarity can be lost only by removing the situation that produced it (usually by removing an Exemplar Charm). Temporary Clarity, however, can be removed in two ways. • Human Contact: At the end of a scene in which the Alchemical meaningfully interacts with normal humans, roll Compassion (applying penalties according to current Clarity). Add one bonus die to this roll if the Alchemical bears an emotional Intimacy toward any of the humans with whom she interacted. If the roll is successful, the Exalt loses one point of temporary Clarity. On a botch, the Alchemical’s alienation deepens, and she gains a point of temporary Clarity. Only one point of Clarity may be lost in this manner each day. • Embracing Virtue: Whenever the Alchemical spends a point of Willpower to channel a Virtue, he loses a point of temporary Clarity. EFFECTS OF CLARITY Rising Clarity erodes an Alchemical’s ability to empathize with humans, even as it attunes her to the alien logical processes of her Primordial patron and his component souls. This is a gradual process with several recognizable stages, each with its associated benefits and drawbacks. 0–2: The Alchemical’s thought processes and behavior seem as ordinary and human as her traits would indicate. 3–4: The Exalt grows notably colder, though not inhumanly so. She seems faintly impatient with and disdainful toward mortal failings. In general, she has less time for people. All social rolls not pertaining to intimidation suffer a -1 internal penalty, unless the Alchemical is interacting with an Autochthonian spirit, automaton or Alchemical of equal or greater Clarity. In those instances, the Exalt enjoys a +1 situational bonus die. Compassion rolls suffer a -1 internal penalty. The senselessness of broad emotional commitments becomes obvious at this level of Clarity, restricting the Alchemical’s available range of Intimacies. She may not retain emotional Intimacies toward broad social groups (as opposed to narrow ones — the Delzahn, children, or the inhabitants of a certain city would be purged, while the National Tripartite Assembly of Yugash, the Council of Entities or the character’s assembly would not). Intimacies toward groups that directly support her Motivation or are of regular material benefit or hindrance to the Alchemical remain unaffected. 5–7: The Alchemical’s movements and speech become clipped and laconic for greater efficiency. She no longer pities mortals for their imperfections, correctly recognizing pity as a waste of cognitive function. In short, she is notably inhuman. Emotional needs are taken into account only for motivational purposes. Mistakes meet with prompt chastisement and punishment if possible, or the prompt filing of disciplinary reports with the defective mortal’s superiors otherwise. The thrum and boom of distant gears sometimes impresses itself on the Alchemical in her dreams. All bonuses and penalties from the previous stage double at this level. The Alchemical may no longer sustain emotional Intimacies to broad social groups at all. Such Intimacies may remain only if they are valued for strategic import alone. Antagonistic Intimacies at this level of Clarity may be sustained only if the subject of the Intimacy is a serious, ongoing threat to the Alchemical or her goals. Emotional Intimacies of friendship may be retained only if this friendship is of material benefit to the Alchemical. 8–9: The Exalt has progressed beyond humanity, able to look back on it as a necessary but regrettably imperfect phase of her evolution. When absolutely necessary, she can present a façade of polite courtesy to facilitate expedient interaction with less enlightened minds. Her dreams are full of the crystalline hum of the Machine God’s logic processes, and this stream of autonomic data sometimes impresses itself on her waking mind. Internal penalties and bonuses rise to three dice, and the Exalt gains a situational bonus die to all Mental Attribute or Temperance rolls involving memory, analytical deduction or dispassionate self-control. The Alchemical may now retain emotional Intimacies of friendship only if such ties directly support her Motivation. Intimacies based on love disappear at this range of Clarity unless the relationship is of material benefit to the Alchemical. 10: The Alchemical’s voice carries occasional undertones of multilayered harmony, indicating her perfect synchronization with the Design of Autochthon. Her eyes are glassy, amorally regarding the world as an array of pure variables swirling around the goals she has set for herself. Humans receive no more consideration or priority in such calculations than any other piece of data. Social penalties and bonuses rise to four dice, while mental bonuses rise to three dice. All Compassion rolls made for the Exalt automatically fail. The Alchemical may sustain no emotional Intimacies at all. Groups, objects, nations and individuals are valued only for their utility in fulfilling the Exalt’s Motivation. Grand Autocrat Kerok of Yugash might be retained as an Intimacy, for example, but only because he is an unusually effective leader and policy maker, and extraordinary measures should thus be taken to see that he is preserved.
>That makes the powerbow less effective, huh.
...no? Base damage for a time-strung bow is Strength+3, plus any bonus for arrow type, so higher strength means it hits harder.
>So Embri's Strength needs to be average (2) or more because of caste rules, then?
That's correct.
>Does that rule apply to Favored stats as well?
No.
>How about this, then: Strength 2, Appearance 4-5, Perception 4-5.
You can buy additional dots in caste or favored attributes for only 3 BP each. I was recommending Strength 2, Dexterity 5 (6 with the augmentation), Stamina 1, Charisma 2, Manipulation 4 (plus up to two successes for 2m each from the augmentation), Appearance 5 (up to 10 for a scene for 3m per dot with the augmentation), Intelligence 2, Wits 3, Perception 5, Archery 3 (Unaware Targets +1), Athletics 3, Awareness 3, Dodge 3, Larceny 3 (Reverse Pickpocketing +1), Lore 3, Medicine 1, Performance 3 (While Naked +1), Socialize 3 (Seduction +1), Stealth 5. That would cost 3 bonus points for the attributes and 10 for the skills, while Willpower 7, Compassion 2, Conviction 4, Temperance 4, Valor 1 costs 4 BP, which is 17 out of the 18 you get without disadvantages. Last one could go to another dot of Artifacts, or mundane Resources so you can afford a safe place to sleep, steady supply of food, some non-artifact weapons...
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No. 875474 ID: d22dc0

>>875469
Huh, I thought ISP was glowing like a miniature sun because she had so many notes devoted to her stuff- what was causing her to light up before she had done anything in the scene?

Also seems like it might be useful for me to garner some sort of natural or cheap hardness- any easy way to do that?
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No. 875487 ID: 5c3123

>>875474
>what was causing her to light up before she had done anything in the scene?
She'd activated several charms, technically within the scene but 'off-screen,' before joining the fight. Infinite Melee Mastery all by itself was probably 20 motes.
>some sort of natural or cheap hardness- any easy way to do that?
The only really easy way to get Hardness is artifact armor, but that's not compatible with Iron Kettle Body. At Essence 5 you could buy another Resistance charm building off IKB, called Unbroken Chain Resolve, which provides very temporary natural Hardness. There are sorcery spells, such as Invulnerable Skin of Bronze.

The Solar charmset has perfection as a major theme, but it's also somewhat constrained by the human context. Humans don't normally have skin that casually turns blades, so solars are mostly limited to reducing the damage, or transient perfect soak such as Adamant Skin Technique, and a well-rounded defensive strategy for them needs to focus on dodging or parrying first. If you want to be a traditional sort of tank, somebody who gets hit a lot and takes some damage from it but doesn't stay down, the Alchemical or Lunar Stamina charmsets are much better suited to that, with the combination of quick and easy regeneration and effects which reduce an otherwise deadly wound to mere incapacitation. Malfeas's charmset also has a lot of 'natural armor' sorts of effects, starting with Scar-Writ Saga Shield which provides always-on Hardness after a few repurchases, so a GSP or Malfeas akuma might work.

Simplest option is just to get yourself some good armor, though, particularly if you're already planning to focus on forge-work. A timeless lesson from the last panel here: http://guildedage.net/comic/chapter-1-page-8/
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No. 875505 ID: d22dc0

>>875487
Worth considering in the future, but I think I'll forgo fitting a specific role for the character integrity. Was kinda aiming for an unarmed, unarmored martial artist, don't see a reason to scrap the whole basic character design idea for slightly better tanking. Does my Elemental-Resistant Prana work against things like that fire based anima flare effect? Or am I just going to have to grin and bear it as a grapple focused unarmored martial artist.
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No. 875546 ID: 5c3123

>>875505
>Does my Elemental-Resistant Prana work against things like that fire based anima flare effect?
Having natural lethal soak (as all exalts and many other magical beings do) is enough to protect against terrestrial anima flux at the 8-mote (per minute) and 12-mote (per 9 seconds) levels, but not at the iconic (every second) level. Element-Resisting Prana covers accidental damage from the iconic level, but not if it's being deliberately used as an attack. To protect against environmental-damage attacks, you'd need the upgrade Steadfast Elemental Emperor Stance.

So, Bridget's just jumped more than a mile up in the air to demand sheep from whoever's in charge of this flying castle. Fortunately the walls seem to be made primarily of some white stuff that looks like fog and feels like ivory, and is easy enough to climb; that awful black metal with screaming faces inside is only used for occasional joints and fastenings.

The most readily apparent entrance to the structure is a breach in the wall where a vehicle recently crashed into it. The vehicle's structure is made from silk and bronze bamboo. There are four figures in the cabin: a chiropteran (anthropomorphic bat), a giant spider, a bloody-furred ape, and the most heartwrenchingly beautiful horse-sized wasp Bridget has ever seen. The four are arguing over which among them is most at fault for the crash; chiropteran seems to be nominally in charge, but does not have the full respect of the others.

Entering the castle through this breach would require either traversing the airship's cabin, or crawling underneath it's hull, through an endless cascade of whirling knives which seems to be venting from the ship's damaged engine, streaming down the castle's wall (leaving ugly scratches on the ivory/fog/whatever blocks) before arcing out into empty air and dissipating as acrid smoke.

Inside the castle, there's a 13-foot-wide hallway guarded by five human skeletons wearing lamellar armor and wielding halberds, directed by a human (possibly still living, but gaunt and jaundiced) in black robes, with a mummified hand worn on a necklace and an elaborately embroidered hat.
>>
No. 875557 ID: 3abd97

>Kimberly
Funny, I would have thought names chosen to deliberately mess with spell check were more the Ebon Dragon's thing.

>clarity stuff
Well that sure seems fitting for an assassin.

>do you want to be a spy for the living army and grandmaster of strategic attrition, or make up a different one?
http://exalted3e.wikidot.com/lex:madelrada
Gotta say, she sounds nearly ideal for a spymaster. I mean, no one wants to be a piece sacrificed in pursuit of the great game, but long term attrition and your opponents never being sure when you've actually suffered a setback is the way to play it. Seems like the kind of person who would be able to put esoteric sidereal tricks to good use, or find find ways to advance a greater agenda in Lute's seemingly chaotic pursuit of her own quest.

I think that's just about it, save the derangement, and I'm having a hard time finding a useful list to consider.
>>
No. 875560 ID: fc3fc0
875560

>Temperance 1
>heartwrenchingly beautiful horse-sized wasp

I think Bridget wants to get closer to that wasp. I think the idea is that we're supposed to describe our actions with flavor and such so I'm gonna go ahead and give a little vignette down below, but tl;dr, I activated Iron Kettle Body on the ground upon seeing an airship that makes me itchy, and then upon landing and having my heart wrenched, I'm going to jump over to their crashed ship with Soaring Crane Leap. I'm still not sure what exactly counts towards anima flare; mountain crossing leap was used about 5 minutes ago, so that's not relevant, but Iron Kettle Body, despite being activated 5 minutes ago, is still ongoing since it lasts a whole scene; do those 6 count towards my total when I use my Soaring Crane Jump?

Bridges the Sun and Moon had felt her skin crawl before, but not like this. The castle trespassing on the land of her blood made her uneasy, but traditions had to be upheld. Steeling herself for the daunting task ahead, she prepared to help whoever laid claim to the flying fortresses understand the rules, and right the wrongs they had committed. Never had she been required to go to such lengths, save once, and that was an ordeal not easily forgotten. Through sheer dedication alone, she soared into the sky, a harpoon intent on ensuring it's prey did not escape. When she landed however, her priorities changed as she saw the damage that had been done to the castle. She would not- could not- let herself be swayed from her task, but should everyone here die before amends could be made, then she would have failed in her duties anyways. She jumped towards the nearest anchor point, as a bird might dive to catch an early meal, effortlessly approaching the travelers who would likely need to be rescued shortly.

"You have crossed the border, and must pay tax. This damage will be mended first. Who possesses the knowledge required?"

>>875379
>There might be over a hundred Manosques in total
Let's up everything by a factor of ten then, with 120 Manosques, 12000 Yak Folk, 60,000 almost-human slaves, and 300,000 disorganized nearly-humans taking up that space. Given the size of the area, we're still barely scratching the surface for possible population density if historical french population numbers are applicable in this scenario.
>>
No. 875561 ID: 094652

>>875469
>Clarity notes
Thanks. Clarity is worrisome, the mechanics claw into Embri's main function. What's her starting essence again?
>Current Build
Mostly okay, but might need a few extra tweaks.

I figure that any bonus points invested in Background are a 1:1 deal, even when making an alchemical.

Perception doesn't have to be godlike for assassins, does it?

What I'm getting at is: no BP in Stats, invest 4 BP into Background: 3 for Savant, 1 for Resources. That means of the initial ten dots Embri has for Background, they all get invested for the 3:1 deal in Artifacts.

After consideration, Embri could lose 1-2 points in Conviction, if needed.

And finally, Performance (While Naked+1) isn't a good specialization for Embri - she'll be preparing her knives around the moment the target has made it to the brothel room, so undressing at this point is a rare occurrence.
>>
No. 875577 ID: 5c3123

rolled 6, 9, 9 = 24

>>875557
>no one wants to be a piece sacrificed in pursuit of the great game,
Entry-level wisdom in that position is to make yourself such an exquisitely valuable piece, the boss prefers your continued presence over any plausible gain from a sacrifice. Tricky to achieve in practice, particularly when everyone else on your side knows the score just as well and is trying to do the same thing.
>finding a useful list to consider
Make something up. Spell out conditions when it applies, the Virtue roll or WP needed to resist, effects if you don't, and some suitably more severe loss of composure on a botch.
>>875561
>Clarity is worrisome, the mechanics claw into Embri's main function.
Well, so long as you're getting regular social contact with humans, it's easy enough to keep under control, particularly if you genuinely care about some of them. More Compassion would definitely help with that, though. Or, if you'd prefer crocodile tears, http://unicornjelly.com/uni518.html there's a charm called the Empathy Simulation Engine.
>What's her starting essence again?
Exalts start at Essence 2 by default. That's also the lowest level where spirits, Dragon Kings, etc. can be fully sapient and self-aware. In the Exalted setting, Humanity has sapience at Essence 1 as their racial 'hat.'
>bonus points invested in Background are a 1:1 deal,
Up to 3 dots, yes. The 4th or 5th dot in a background costs 2 BP, and can't be bought with ordinary non-BP Background allocation. Alchemicals with the Artifact background are a special exception to that rule.
>Savant 3, Resources 1, Artifact 6, Artifact 4
If you want to be an elegant and flawlessly-groomed courtesan with abundant supplies of mundane ninja tools, rather than a peasant clad in sackcloth and armed with crudely repurposed farm equipment, you might want to either bump Resources up to 2 or 3, or else include among those artifacts a Collar of Dawn's Cleansing Light and Compliant Umbral Panoply, or something equivalent. The former keeps you clean and tidy, negating some social penalties, while the latter lets you resculpt and solidify your shadow into any shape you care to imagine. Omnitool Implant covers most specialized tools, but what if you need, say, a grappling hook and length of rope? Or a wooden beam just the right size to hold a door shut? Or a parachute? Or a horse? Granted, a shadow-horse would only move when you mentally direct it, rather than taking it's own actions in combat, but that also means you don't need Ride skill to keep it under control.
>isn't a good specialization for Embri
How about 'with a blade close at hand,' then? Doesn't apply while all the sharp things are off in Elsewhere, but does for more conventional up-the-sleeve sorts of concealed carry.

>>875560
>"You have crossed the border, and must pay tax. This damage will be mended first. Who possesses the knowledge required?"
Without dots in Linguistics, Bridget only speaks her native language, and can only understand speech or writing from the same language family - probably either Forest-tongue (native peoples of the East) or Rivertongue (the Hundred Kingdoms and wide-ranging trade routes).

The three demons' native language is the Malfean dialect of Old Realm, but the beauteous wasp happens to know Bridget's native language (or something adequately close), as well as High Realm, the language of the dragon-blooded and patricians of the Blessed Isle, and thus can serve as an interpreter, at least until Malice's stats are finished.

If you're making a serious effort to persuade, negotiate with, or interrogate someone, rather than small talk or a casual call for volunteers, everybody involved should roll Wits+Awareness for Join Debate, to determine who gets a word in edgewise first. The agata NPC has Wits 2, Awareness 1, and the other two demons can't understand what Bridget is saying, so I'm rolling three ten-sided dice.
>>
No. 875583 ID: fc3fc0

rolled 5, 10 = 15

>>875577
>Bridget only speaks her native language

Yep, that’s kinda what I was planning; isolated monster people don’t have much need for the words of outsiders. We’ll lock in river tongue as it fits her disturbing voice and her background somewhat. With awareness 1 and Wits 1, Bridget slowly rumbles in. I think her talking is reasonably compared to whalesong, albeit more unsettling; it is slow and purposeful, not really eloquent or agile in any sense of the word.
>>
No. 875586 ID: 5c3123

>>875583
Ten counts as two, so that's a tie, you both act on tick 0. Speaking in-character almost always qualifies as at least a 1-die stunt, though. In general, you should probably roll a few more dice than you think you'll need, to account for stunting, circumstantial bonuses, etc.

Are you doing a single Charisma+Investigation attack, asking for information about who's got the repair skills? Or maybe try a flurry, to try and get whoever-it-is with the right skills on the job immediately, rather than after five more minutes of arguing and increasingly turbulent Essence flows? That'd face multiple-action penalties, though, and you'll probably need all the successes you can get since you don't know any of this creature's psychological weak points, and it's got an overwhelming advantage in relative Appearance, so MDV modifiers will be slanted against you even if the base is low.
>>
No. 875589 ID: d22dc0

rolled 2, 7, 2, 6, 9, 4, 1, 10, 1, 4 = 46

>>875586
I'll always roll 5 extra dice, then, just to cover my bases. I'm also happy to just let you roll for me, if it makes things easier. I've never been particularly superstitious, so I don't care much about rolling my own dice, or even seeing the rolls. I trust you to create an interesting game, mechanically and story wise. As a general rule, We'll say the leftmost dice are counted first, and any unnecessary dice rolls further to the right will simply be ignored?

Bridget deliberates for a brief moment, deciding whether to address the one in charge, who doesn't seem to understand her, or command its breath-taking subordinate and hope she is stronger than their established Hierarchy. Time being of the essence, she chooses the latter, and makes her demands known with a massive, calloused finger directed towards the Wasp:

"This Manse must be fixed. By the Unconquered Sun, you will assume command. I will escort your chosen pilot to the helm, you will see resources allocated to the needed repairs."

Assuming this is charisma + another social skill, and since I don't have any on my list, I'll just go ahead and roll 5, plus 5 extra as I mentioned earlier, for a total of 10d10.

Seems interesting to me that, given the natural course of combat in most games is to kill or otherwise subdue an opponent, that all social encounters are automatically "combat". Makes sense in certain situations, but in this scenario for example, it's interesting to me that we're immediately trying to see who will defeat the other; having just appeared, the idea that everyone's first instinct is to try to defeat me seems a bit of a different set of starting assumptions compared to other games with a social conflict element.
>>
No. 875664 ID: 5c3123

>>875589
>rolled 2, 7, 2, 6, 9, 4, 1, 10,
Erring on the side of generosity, let's say that's Charisma 5 + relevant skill 0 + stunt 2 (speaking in character, invoking the UCS to intimidate demons) + 1 from taking a moment to study the situation (aiming). Four successes.

The beauteous wasp looks out through one of the airship's badly damaged windows, cants his head quizzically, asking "And who are you, sir or madam?" Overly formal, with a bizarre buzzing accent, but some hint of sarcasm still comes through. Turning back to his crewmates without waiting for a reply, in Old Realm the wasp says "Some local ogre is demanding a docking fee and help with repairs. 'Covert insertion' my razor-sharp translucent ass! We need to get moving again, quick."
The blood ape smiles at that, turns to Malice, and with a voice like gargling tar asks "Ya want I should murderize 'im, boss?"
"Tough talk from the only one here with no plan for solo freefall. You volunteering to get left behind?" answers the wasp.
The blood ape indignantly attempts to clarify. "Not you, ya cake-eater, I meant the local boy!"
"Pretty sure this one's female, actually. I've studied human anatomy at great length. Never seen any quite that size before, though, at least not a live one." interjects the spider. Others don't seem to consider that distinction immediately relevant.

The wasp is mostly ignoring your point, or in mechanical terms, defending with Dodge MDV. Base value is (Willpower + Integrity + Essence)/2, or 5 in the wasp's case. Another +3 from relative Appearance, maybe a stunt bonus (stunting often benefits defenses more than attacks), and... I'm not seeing any possible penalties that could add up to nearly enough to matter. Swing and a miss.

That stunt does allow you to do some 'dramatic editing,' though (nothing that would contradict previously established facts), and also to recover either 4 motes OR 1 wp out of the 14m & 1wp you've spent on jumping around.

Malice should probably get a chance to act before events proceed too much further, so I suppose we're waiting on Strngy.
>>
No. 875700 ID: 5c3123

Embri and Lute Silhouette Speculation In Comet's Reflection have each, separately, infiltrated the lich-queen's extravagant bedchamber. The Mantle of Soot, which both of them came here to retrieve, is not present in the cabinet where prior research indicated it is usually stored. Conceivably, whichever of the two secret agents arrived first has already snatched the prize, tucked it away in her extradimensional storage, and is now feigning ignorance in order to waste an enemy agent's time and possibly lead them into a trap. Embri's oyabun is no friend to any raksha nor the yozis, while Lute Silhouette works closely with both, so lasting cooperation between the two of them seems unlikely.

The bed itself appears (on a material level at least) to be unoccupied apart from badly stained silk pillows, and a suit of plate armor with elaborately articulated facial features.

There's been a booming crunch upstairs, on the north side, and a sorcerous ritual is still ongoing somewhere in the basement.


Embri
Adamant-caste Alchemical Exalt
Essence 2, Willpower 7, Compassion 2, Conviction 4, Temperance 2, Valor 1
*Strength 2
*Dexterity 5
>Fifth Augmentation (raises effective natural value to 6)
*Stamina 1
Charisma 2
*Manipulation 4
>Second Augmentation (up to two successes for 2m each)
>Pheromone Regulation Systems (4m per scene, max range Appearance x10 yards)
*Appearance 5
>Fourth Augmentation (up to total of 10 for a scene for 3m per dot)
>Integrated Artifact Transmogrifier
Intelligence 2
>Sixth Augmentation (Craft)
>Technomorphic Integration Engine
>>Precursor Technology Absorbtion x2
Wits 3
>Omnitool Implant (4m indefinite)
*Perception 4
Archery 3 (Unaware Targets +1), Athletics 3, Awareness 3, Dodge 3, Larceny 3 (Reverse Pickpocketing +1), Lore 3, Medicine 1, Performance 3 (With A Blade Close At Hand +1), Socialize 3 (Seduction +1), Stealth 5
Artifact 5 (Frozen Heart of the Tellerauthelot [0], Time-Strung Bow [8m], Thousandfold Obscenity Gown [6m], Windblade [1m, plus 10 per hour], Winterbreath Jar [0]), Artifact 2 (Concealed Knife Bracer [4m], Dragonfly's Ranging Eye w/ essence sight [4m], Green Jade Essence Pulse Grenade [0], Superheavy Plate [8m]), Mentor 3, Resources 3 (stripper ninja), Savant 3
Four dedicated charm slots, holding an array consisting of the Manipulation and Appearance charms. Four general slots, holding an array consisting of the Dex, Int, and Wits charms. 13 personal motes, 6 of which are committed to charms. 39 peripheral motes, 4 each committed to IAT & omnitool, and 6 to TIE storage, leaving 24 free. Note that the essence pulse grenade and it's winding key, being made primarily made of green jade rather than adamant, cannot be stored in Embri's Technomorphic Integration Engine and so must be concealed by mundane Larceny skill (fortunately it's deadly function is not obvious at a glance). Recharging it after use costs 6 motes and a miscellaneous action. All other listed artifacts are either adamant, or non-MM-specific. Bracket lists attunement cost, which need not be committed while in storage. Mundane items cost nothing to store, but 1 uncommitted mote to retrieve. Dozens or hundreds of arrows in storage, many pre-poisoned with ice marrow, and various other nonmagical ninja gizmos.
While stored in the Winterbreath Jar, the Frozen Heart of the Tellerauthelot produces 8 doses of ice marrow per hour. Ice marrow has a shelf life of only one hour, but may last much longer inside a necrotech monstrosity, or indefinitely on arrows outside the normal flow of time. Naturally the heart can't produce anything while it is itself being stored outside of time, such as in the Technomorphic Integration Engine, so it's not in storage by default.
>>
No. 875701 ID: add037

rolled 7, 3, 8, 4, 4, 6, 8, 6, 3, 7 = 56

>Malice has just crashed the airboat her boss loaned her by ramming it into an inexplicably high-altitude stone wall.
Intentional of course, but nobody else needs to know this.

>>875664
Malice greets Bridget with an apprehensive fangfilled smile and turns to her wasp minion. Please stop arguing you three, it's making me nervous. Try to convince the local to come with us. She seems to think you're in charge so start barking orders. And get those bone heads out of our way!"

Do these guys have names that I've bothered to remember?

I'm just gonna roll a buncha dice
>>
No. 875710 ID: 094652

rolled 10, 9, 3, 1, 7, 4, 3, 9, 9, 1 = 56

>There's been a booming crunch upstairs
Yeah, there goes Embri's Exit point. Whatever made that noise is probably at war, or is so bratty and angry it may as well BE one.

>a sorcerous ritual is still ongoing somewhere in the basement
Embri's main goal is to escape the castle, but disrupting any enchantments made on this castle should help greatly, as they'll also serve for a good distraction. She'll go that way.

Timeline (how things actually went depends on roll): Embri snuck in. Embri searched for maid clothes in servant rooms on her way to the main bedroom. Then she attempted to steal the Mantle of Soot in the bedroom. After walking towards her exit strategy, she heard a loud noise in that general direction, prompting her to fall back. Using the information she gathered, she decided to disrupt the casters in the basement. Embri pretended to be a maid/guest when there were no shadows to hide behind.
>>
No. 875789 ID: 5c3123

rolled 4, 1, 3, 3, 9, 1, 1, 5 = 27

>>875701
>Do these guys have names that I've bothered to remember?
Erymanthus sometimes hands out business cards (small plates of carved bone, not paper) which say "Legbreaker," but that's more of a job description than a name. He's the cargomaster, in charge of loading, unloading, keeping it all balanced and securely tied down, and is also the most qualified for maintenance or repairs on the omen-weather engine and associated machinery. Blood apes aren't typically known for highly technical or intellectual skills, but this one studied at the Tin Orchid Academy. "Maintenance" seems to involve a lot of howling and hammering with his bare fists, but there's no arguing with his results: the only engine troubles you've had this whole trip were deliberately inflicted.

The agata serving as the ship's navigator and scout doesn't seem to have a consistent name, but receives many odd (and apparently insulting) nicknames from the blood ape, of which 'cake-eater' is the latest. The two of them constantly disparage and even sabotage each other, have occasional frantic makeouts that soon escalate into noisy airborne sex, and consider this a normal, healthy type of romantic relationship. (Demons are weird.)

The golden orb-weaver anhule is female, goes by 'Jo.' Handles the airship's rigging, gasbag repairs, and any medical needs. Vaguely desires romance but hasn't met the right person yet, no interest whatsoever in conventional sex, excessively eager for 'exploratory' surgery in which web bondage substitutes for anaesthesia.

The three of them have a shared sanctum, a palatial space carved out of Elsewhere with an immaterial portal linked to the airship. It's got about 25 rooms, with floors and pillars of jumbled bone bound together by sticky red silk and sinew, high arched ceilings in some places so there's plenty of room to stretch your wings, in other sections a maze of crossbars ideal for brachiation. Lighting inside tends to be dim and green, filtered through walls and 'windows' of oily iridescent scallop-textured paper. Constant soft creaking and grinding punctuated by distant sourceless screams, unless somebody's playing the pipe organ in the main hall. Most of the floors are a knobby mess of rubble, where they're not studded with outright spike traps. Jo has a charm to teleport captives into there.

>get those bone heads out of our way!
Legbreaker doesn't need to be told twice. Swinging out of the airship, he jumps down into the hallway and decapitates three skeletal halberdiers with claw, other claw, and bite before they have a chance to react. I'm rolling his Join Battle, and anyone else who wants to participate in this fight should also roll for that.

The robed human seems to be shaping a necromancy spell. Waving hands, chanting, ribbons of dark energy coalescing into a hovering rune, the whole bit. The remaining two intact skeletal guards are defending their supervisor, and may be able to endure the blood ape's assault for the few seconds until the spell can be cast. Figuring out what the spell's effect will be is a reflexive Wits + Occult roll.
>>
No. 875817 ID: add037

rolled 3, 1, 2, 8, 2, 10, 3, 6, 7, 7 = 49

>reflexive Wits + Occult roll.
Not sure what my Occult is, so I'm gonna do 10d10 again.

Can I use Hidden Predator Camoflauge to get to the caster unseen and mess up his spell?
>>

rolled 5, 9, 7, 4, 8, 6, 4, 9, 6, 2, 2, 8, 10, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3, 4, 5 = 112

>>875700
>>875710
Lute smiles bemusedly after her competition, who seemed to be doing her very best to ignore her, more focused on other things, up until the distant sound of expensive property damage prompted a quick exit. Very focused, that one. Perhaps too focused? Creatively interpreting Kome's planned timeline not acknowledging Lute at all.

Rolling for... perception and investigation I think? (Maybe wits or manipulation I'm not sure). So have a bunch of dice. What did Lute Silhouette Speculation manage to pick up on about Embri, or get out of her, observing or interacting with her before the crash? Can I tell she's an exalt, or an alchemical (is she obviously artificial the way Elegant Nova of Progression is?), or an assassin, or not really a maid? Did I discern her mission? Anything about her motivation or character? Just trying to see what information I have to start with.

Next action might be to check up on the ritual or crash that noise with the Shard Fallen From Ishiika's Eye, though I might need a quick primer on it's use. (What functions have essence costs, limitations of who and what I can target).

>Without dots in Linguistics, Bridget only speaks her native language
I don't think any of us took dots in Linguistics. That might be tricky. Did Lute and Embri share a language? (Well, presumably one or both might have pretended they didn't).

>Conceivably, whichever of the two secret agents arrived first has already snatched the prize, tucked it away in her extradimensional storage, and is now feigning ignorance
Mute Smugness Speculation isn't telling.
>>
No. 875894 ID: 094652

rolled 3, 2, 8, 8, 7, 10, 7, 9, 1, 1 = 56

>>875890
Shadowlight lesson #273: Who hunts the hunters of hunters? Why, the hunters, of course.

By now, Embri's perception should have picked up on another spy's trail. Maybe not enough to pinpoint the spy, but enough to know that whoever else they sent in this castle is a professional on Ivori's level, someone who could kick her ass any day of the week.

Luckily, Embri was always a whole new game when dealing with traditional ninjas. Fighting in the light means using resources and opportunities where a regular ninja would only see obstacles and trials.

Embri has placed small, subtle clues of a spy's movements whenever she detected something suspicious. A scuffle in the walls here, a long string of silk there. Things that would mark the telltale signs of a cat burglar, NOT a master of disguises and crowds. If she's searched, most of her gear is in the hole in her back, covered with a thin layer of padding. They won't pay too much attention if she accuses them of trying to fondle her backside.

If Embri is lucky enough, she can find another maid and strike up conversation. Get them to start yapping about their personal lives, and learn some new information in the process. She's very pretty, empty-headed damsels love to talk to the pretties. And with enough work, she can perform a subtle switcheroo with the hapless maid. For instance, by yapping about a rumor convincing her of an unguarded piece of raw jewelry in a specific room. The hapless maid can be manipulated into thinking she could make a profit by switching the jewelry with her own, but only if she's quiet and subtle about it. Then Embri will take on the yapping persona while the maid acts like a poor spy, and is promptly skewered by the competition, leaving Embri's hands directly clean for the day and the spy with delays or evidence pointing to her intrusion.

If she can only find guards, Embri has replicated the movement of a maid, but with a hurried step and constantly looking up into the ceiling. A couple guards notice this and catch up. Embri hurriedly exclaims there's something following her, something she can't explain, and she feigns concern over what the guards intend to DO about that.

Rolling to manipulate the guards into tailing her but redirecting their suspicions on the existing spy in the shadows, using their suspicious nature to look around for her.

In the event that they catch on, she can deal with the guards herself by manipulating them further into coming up with a basic plan to have one guard a small room while the other interrogates her inside. From there, she can quickly stealth kill her interrogator with a little dexterity and some technomorphically-integrated knives, and deal with the remaining guard with classic ninja assassination.
>>
No. 875952 ID: 20ea96

rolled 10, 2, 1, 8, 7, 5, 7, 9, 3, 5 = 57

>>875379
>There's a 5-dot hearthstone which stops the bearer from aging
>>865044
>Which of you snuck in to rob the vault while everybody else is distracted
Ledaal Ji is of the opinion that demonic rituals are other people's business, as long as nobody is trying to involve him in them. He is certainly no shining crusader. Fortune favors a quick and nimble opportunist, however, and his Master has suggested this would be an excellent chance to put some of that crane-style training into practical application for the first time. If Ledaal Ji is lucky, perhaps he'll even manage to come away with more than just life experience.

>>873749
>There's now a small breach in that wall, but passing through it involves crawling under the airboat's hull and being exposed to leakage from the ship's omen weather reactor, which resembles a waterfall made of razorblades rather than actual water.
Ledaal Ji shall go for a spirited dance between the iron raindrops. A swords dance through a sea of blades. Flitting through the air and twisting in unnatural ways, changing velocity faster than the casual eye could allow itself to believe. Perhaps he will suffer a few tender kisses, but let the spilled blood be the red marks on the manual of his body, pointing out and carving away his flaws. Polishing the unrefined gem of his martial art.
>>
No. 876201 ID: 5c3123

>>>875894
>rolled 3, 2, 8, 8, 7, 10, 7, 9, 1, 1
Perception + Awareness. Shortly after leaving the bedchamber, Embri becomes clearly aware that someone is watching her from afar, but not exactly who.
>manipulate the guards
Treating that same roll as Manipulation + [Larceny or Socialize]... skeletal troops seem to be mindless automata, thus effectively impossible to seduce or distract, but their handlers are not, and every squad on patrol includes someone who can respond effectively to the unexpected. Ghosts sometimes yeild to her charms, while ghost-blooded (living proof that the dead can not only be seduced, but occasionally impregnate the living) are almost trivially driven into hypervigilant paranoia with just the right blend of artificial pheromones. 'Accidentally' unveiling an impact-actuated flint sparker and small packet of firedust from behind a tapestry - which Embri herself planted earlier, as one of several contingencies against pursuit - quickly persuades the guards that this cute, bumbling maid couldn't possibly be the nefarious saboteur they're now looking for.

Half the skeletons in the castle are soon gathered together, and their handlers briefed on the developing situation. Looks like they'll be splitting back up into three groups of 25 each: one to reinforce guards around the summoning vault and hearthroom (separate areas, but mostly accessed through the same choke points, and damage to either could have devastating repercussions), one to sweep for other incendiary devices (starting in the rare/high-value/irreplaceable section of the library), one to escort any support staff or other noncombatants to either their personal quarters, or some big room where they can all keep an eye on each other, then once that's secure, repel a group of non-sneaky hostile intruders near the airship dock on the third floor. Maids are supposed to go with that third group, of course, but those hooded robes the handlers wear are one-size-fits-all, even loose enough to be worn over the maid uniform, so thirty seconds in a broom closet with one of the ghost-blooded might be enough for a change of disguise.

>>875817
>Not sure what my Occult is, so
I'm not either, which is a problem. Malice needs a finalized character sheet before participating in these events. I'll work on compiling what we already decided on, and recommendations for the rest. If the batgirl visible in the crashed airship gets attacked in any serious way before then, that'll lock in Splintered Gale Shintai as one of your charm selections. "Oops, turns out she was actually a perfect copy of you, body and mind, but without the magic powers."

>>875952
>Ledaal Ji shall go for a spirited dance between the iron raindrops.
Avoiding the cascading blades requires a dodge or parry DV of 8 or higher. Ji's Dex + Dodge + Essence gives a base dodge DV of 6, two-die stunt raises that to just enough.
>rolled 10, 2, 1, 8, 7
Treating that as a Wits + Awareness roll for Join Battle with a 2-die stunt, Ji takes advantage of the distraction provided by the overeager blood ape's initial roar to react two seconds sooner than anyone else in the fight. He can manage better than twenty miles per hour in an all-out sprint, which is enough to slip past the skeletal guards and be out of sight around a corner before anyone else can react - though committing fully to such a dash means -2 dodge DV for those three seconds, and no parrying at all without a stunt to explain how it's integrated into the motion.

Where's Alcaeus at this point? Stowaways aboard Malice's airship, or did you reach the sky-castle by some other means, perhaps involving that erudite, distractable, casually-shapeshifting type of elementals native to the clouds?

The cloud-people rarely accept visitors, and even if they were less insular, their cities are only solid enough to support weight during Calibration, or for a week at a time within the year when reinforced by sorcery. Naturally, they'd object on a visceral level to cloud-stuff being bound into permanently fixed shapes with soulsteel ligatures, so studying such a seemingly unique phenomenon might be an excellent way to gain leverage with them. As long as they remember you being instrumental in the manse's destruction, they may be grateful... or, if their memories for worldly matters are as short as is rumored, learning to replicate the techniques by which this place was built should at least enable you to teach them fear. Thanks to Iris-Bulb Discourse, they would not even be able to escape your grasp by dematerializing.

Many have speculated - and Master Shrike has quietly confirmed, though without elaboration - that the Cloud People's collective knowledge of the Art of Astrology surpasses that of the famously clock-and-star-obsessed nation of Varangia, as their position on the upper side of the very highest clouds enables them to view the stars clearly regardless of weather conditions, perhaps even during daylight hours. They almost certainly have some sort of rare wisdom to share (no such thing as too much of that), and might even provide key insights on the worrysome problem of predestined death. Specifically, whether you've got one coming and if so, enough detail on the circumstances to derive a plan for delaying it indefinitely, if not thwarting the Maidens outright.

Blatant defiance of Fate is supposedly one of the few things that greater gods bestir themselves to punish, but if their plan involved killing you sooner than you'd prefer to die (i.e. at all) before you started making a fuss, accepting that sort of risk is just another facet of acknowledging exactly who you've secretly been at war with all along. Then again, it's possible that fated plans can be as mutable as any other bureaucratic intention when a sufficiently powerful player's interests are threatened, however petty those interests may be. For example, Spinner of Glorious Tales, one of the gods of Great Forks who drove off the Princess Magnificent With Lips Of Coral And Robes Of Black Feathers (an extraordinarily powerful and dangerous ghost), supposedly began life as a mortal bard and secured deification by first acquiring precise knowledge of the fated day, hour, and minute of his own last breath, then relating a distinct intriguingly incomplete anecdote to each of three celestial gods during the Carnival of Meeting, then slipping away to the next, arranging it all such that, when they caught up with him, he would have time to finish only one of the stories with his last breath, the other two being lost to Lethe immediately afterward. Faced with that reverse-blackmail, they rescued him from his destined end. However, deification leaves something to be desired as an overall immortality strategy. Gods certainly enjoy life, and fear no old age nor ordinary violence, but they can be coerced and even permanently killed - that's a big part of how Immaculate Monks keep busy when the Anathema aren't around. Conventional divinity would also mean losing some of the advantages of exaltation.

>>875890
>rolled 5, 9, 7, 4, 8, 6, 4, 9, 6, 2, 2, 8, 10, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3, 4, 5
>What did Lute Silhouette Speculation manage to pick up on about Embri, or get out of her, observing or interacting with her before the crash? Can I tell she's an exalt, or an alchemical (is she obviously artificial the way Elegant Nova of Progression is?), or an assassin, or not really a maid? Did I discern her mission? Anything about her motivation or character?

Read Motivation is a Perception + (higher of Investigation or Socialize) roll against a difficulty of the target's (Manipulation + Socialize)/2. As in combat, half the defender's dice pool is used as a static value in order to approximate the results of an opposed roll, without skewing the results by introducing excessive variability. Perception 6 + Investigation 4 + a 2-die stunt (the previously established detail of her ignoring you) is twelve dice for five successes - would've been seven successes with one extra die, or a target number one lower, nine with both. Figuring out one of her relevant Intimacies would've required 8 successes. Four successes is enough to read Embri's current dominant emotion and place it in the context of the scene - in this case, confirmation of the intent to steal something, and strong suspicion that she wouldn't hesitate over a few expedient murders in the course of doing so.

In terms of physical evidence, she's got the appropriate clothes and mannerisms of a chambermaid, but they're slanted slightly toward seductive caricature. Her skin and hair are implausibly perfect, with few natural blemishes and no evidence whatsoever of aging or calluses from hard work. That's consistent with exaltation, though far from conclusive.

In terms of magic, she's got a fist-sized device concealed in her skirts. A quick prayer to the device's Least God reveals that it was originally crafted by the Mountain Folk, consists mainly of green jade, and a deluge of other technical minutia, most of which is confusing and irrelevant. The device can't be fetched with Destiny-Knitting Entanglement, which implies it's owned by another essence-user, further indirect evidence of Embri being some type of exalt - or at least a highly favored god-blood with unusual connections.

First attempt with Efficient Secretary Technique can't find anything about Embri's personal history. No previous employers, no family, no teahouse or brothel where she'd be recognized by the regular customers and staff. That almost certainly means she's Outside of Fate, and either arrived in Creation very recently, or her activities are being covered up by someone either moderately powerful and very diligent, or something very powerful and subtle yet indiscriminate. Rather similar to Lute's own situation, perhaps.

DKnE and EST both cost two motes per attempt, but those four motes are recovered by the stunt award. EST is subject to a certain amount of literal-genie 'exact words' dickery, though, so carefully phrased followup questions may be useful if you're willing to throw more motes at it. There are some possibly counterintuitive restrictions on what information the 'google spider' can and cannot retrieve:
-Common knowledge (known to at least 100 people inside fate), objective facts, and the contents of your personal library.
-Nothing subjective. It might be able to tell you who was holding the knife when a given lethal stab wound was inflicted, but not who committed a murder (at least not until the trial's over and an official judgement has been filed somewhere) because the difference between murder and other types of killing is a question of justification and intent.
-Nothing deliberately concealed or innately esoteric. It cannot read minds, find someone who's using mundane Stealth skill, or anything else requiring a contested roll. It cannot diagnose medical problems. It cannot provide a shortcut in sorcerous engineering, even if someone already did all the work, wrote it down somewhere, and showed it to a hundred other people inside fate... unless the book they wrote it in happens to be properly filed as part of your personal library, and even in that case it can't check the math.
-It definitely can solve ordinary math problems, including multivariate calculus and prime factorization of alarmingly large numbers, and do other things that would normally require an uncontested Investigation, Lore, or Occult roll with difficulty no more than 5, returning the answer in seconds regardless of how long the action would normally take.
-It cannot predict the future, not even in trivial common-knowledge ways. Ask who's winning a battle in progress, a one-sided massacre where the outcome was never in doubt for any of the hundred-plus participants and witnesses, and you won't get a useful answer.
-It's meant for quick answers about banal subjects, and interprets ambiguities accordingly. A vague question about some warlord's current activity will usually return something like "sleeping" or "eating lunch" rather than strategic agendas. It can provide extensive detail when necessary, though, such as reading off the complete transcript of a politician's hours-long public speech, or any specified section thereof.

>I don't think any of us took dots in Linguistics. That might be tricky.
Chosen of Serenity have Linguistics in-caste, so you can buy dots and even specialties in the skill with no training time, potentially picking up new languages and good-as-a-native accents the moment they're encountered, so long as you've got the XP to spend. The charm Blue Vervain Binding would let you spend XP you haven't earned yet, and extend that option of instant language training to other people, http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2003-09-24 in addition to the temporary translation capability.

> Did Lute and Embri share a language?
Lute's "native" language is most likely the Malfean dialect of Old Realm, since that's Madelrada's preferred tongue. Alchemical exalts would normally speak Autocthonic, which is derived from Old Realm but even more divergent than High Realm is from the dialect of the Blessed Isle's peasantry, and thus mutually unintelligible under normal circumstances. However, if Embri was created as a purpose-built infiltrator, believing herself to be an agent of a non-Autocthonian ninja clan somewhere in the Hundred Kingdoms, Rivertongue would make more sense.

>Next action might be to check up on the ritual or crash that noise with the Shard Fallen From Ishiika's Eye, though I might need a quick primer on it's use. (What functions have essence costs, limitations of who and what I can target).
The Shard Fallen was spoils of war, rather than a purpose-built device with the designer's notes readily available. Madelrada's subsidiary souls have sporadically investigated it's functions and loaned it out to various agents over the past eight centuries or so, but still haven't definitively worked out everything it's capable of. The only known functions with essence costs (besides basic attunement) are attacks: jabbing with the stylus-tail, poking or grasping at a reflected image using your hand or tongue. Doing the same things without spending motes has purely cosmetic effects: for example, the stylus can be used to take notes, or licking a reflected image can reveal the taste and smells associated with whatever it's an image of. It's possible to attack using the mirror without spending motes, but only as a social prop, or by brandishing it like a frying pan at hand-to-hand range. Even those functions have some magical bonuses, though.

With your Thread-Body Movement Stone socketed where a normal scorpion's mouth would be (ironically the least toothy part), both of the Shard Fallen's claws and one of it's eight legs unfurl. After a bit of experimentation, counterclockwise caresses around the mirror's rim rewind the image to a point in time just before Embri left, but her preserved reflection appears to be made of crystalline clockwork, brass, and clay rather than flesh. Clothes are unchanged. High magnification turns up a stray bit of lint which fell from her dress. Retrieving that thread from the floor (fortunately it's fresh; an arcane link based on something so superficial would be useless for occult purposes in a matter of hours at most) and tying it around the scorpion's stinger switches the image in the mirror to a realtime view, tracking along smoothly as Embri walks down the hall and revealing her shadowy surroundings clear as day out to fifty yards. 'Clicking' the unfurled leg switches back and forth between spying on Embri, or reflecting things more or less the way a normal mirror would. Seems like, to spy on the vault where the ritual is going on, you'll need to touch the stinger to an arcane link that leads to someone who's already down there.
>>
No. 876218 ID: 20ea96

rolled 5, 3, 3, 4, 8, 7, 1, 7, 2, 4 = 44

>>876201
>an all-out sprint, which is enough to slip past the skeletal guards and be out of sight around a corner before anyone else can react
>no parrying at all without a stunt to explain how it's integrated into the motion.
Fluttering like a lone feather through an invisible tornado of inexplicable speed and direction, Ledaal Ji started his dance with the momentum of a boulder at the top of a hill, where death lay hidden in the dewdrops on the grass. In traversing between the blades to safety, he is also able to make use of them to accumulate a burst of speed on the other side, for the very thing that made them dangerous, their physicality borne of force, can be exploited by the light-as-air birdman during this dance: slippery, treacherous stepping stones of ice across a frigid river of death, through which one may avoid the bridge.

>Where's Alcaeus at this point?
Well he's certainly not getting in the same way Ledaal Ji is. I suppose if there is no other way in, he'll be seeking passage through the crashed airship. I worry for his safety inside this castle though. I'm not 100% sure what his physicial capabilities are, but if he's not confident in at least being able to escape with his life, perhaps he should stay outside and find a place to hide. I'd rather not have to close this scene cradling his corpse in my arms.

>cloud-people object to the castle
>studying such a seemingly unique phenomenon might be an excellent way to gain leverage with them
>their memories for worldly matters are short
Indeed, some negotatiation should certainly have taken place at some point in the past, in which Ledaal Ji and company bargained for transportation to this castle, promising that we would do our very best to study its architecture if we could, with implications that we may raze it if we find a way to, backed by the explicit truth that we care nothing at all for the castle beyond what we may acquire from it, nor do we have any grievances against the cloud-people. Even should we fail and acquire nothing at all, our end of the bargain is fulfilled by us simply moving against the castle with theft of its secrets in mind.

If the castle is destroyed and/or we successfully acquire the technique of its construction, we should almost certainly be able to find a way to acquire a portion of the cloud-people's astrological wisdom as well.

>Blatant defiance of Fate is supposedly one of the few things that greater gods bestir themselves to punish
Ah, heavenly tribulation. That's how you know you're getting somewhere good.
>>
No. 876245 ID: 094652

rolled 10, 6, 2, 7, 10, 3, 5, 7, 9, 8 = 67

>Three groups, each with 25 undead soldiers and their handlers. Total number of skeletons in the castle ~= 150
Is that too many for Embri to handle? I don't think it's too many to handle.

>First Company, protect the Vault at the choke-point entrances
Tempting, but no. A full frontal assault / Master-Level infiltration would be required, followed by precise knowledge and tools for vault-cracking which Embri does not have. If her sister or comrades were here, this would be their first target, but ANYTHING Embri does in this area will be suspicious and she'll lose all her advantages.

>Second Company, go to the restricted section of the library with all our priceless tomes and make sure they're not on fire, then do a sweep for incendiary detonators around the area
Now THIS looks like a breadwinner. If Embri sets a firebomb in a controlled location, she can steal rare books by copying their contents and storing them in her personal Elsewhere hammerspace. Right now, she needs information about this world she has found herself in, and stealing scores of books, expensive or not, would be the best use of her time. Plus, the guards won't find it too suspicious if one of the bookworm maids is busy grabbing tomes from the restricted sections of the library, running for the exit, and then giving them all to the nearest guard station for safekeeping while the library is on fire, especially if they run back in to get more.

>Third Company, escort our non-security staff to a safe room and defend them until the crisis ends
This might be the quickest way to leave, unless the room in question is a bunker with no windows for her windblade to fly out of. Embri could manipulate the maids further in there, but they wouldn't be able to do much. Still, it would be relatively safe against the other intruders, and she could incite panic when she needs to leave.

>What do
Depends: Can Embri's current augmentations take physical objects like books and create copies in seconds with intact data in her personal Hammerspace? Can she do it by touching them with her hands?

If so: Embri will 'seduce' one of the handlers into a private room by acting like she's fatigued and needs someone to help her get her corset off, and she would be grateful enough for a quick fondling session, and look she uses pheromones and stuff. After ensuring the handler is sufficiently dealt with (for once, Embri isn't taking the directly lethal approach, she'll just poison him to sleep, stuff him in a box in the closet, and barricade the door with everything in the room... which might kill him from suffocation, but meh), she'll follow the other handlers to the library, subtly planting incendiaries along the way. After a quick tour of the library and its contents, she'll detonate the incendiaries or light a fire or whatever she can do while everyone isn't looking, and begin stealing books in broad daylight, only to give them to someone outside for safekeeping. You know, so they don't catch on fire, which she'll request the other handlers to help her with. She'll also instruct the skeletons to grab any books that they know are worth less than a few silvers (so they'll filter out the penny dreadfuls and children's fables) and just throw them anywhere outside. When they're done getting the books to a safe location, Embri will "review" each book by its cover only (copying them with her augments while nobody's looking) to ensure they won't get fired for missing anything important.

If not: Screw it, her current pickings are good enough. Embri will follow the other maids to the safe room, and converse with the other maids there. Getting them panicked will help her slip out in the confusion when the time is right, instead of being searched individually. She'll also look for a quick exit, she needs to get out of this castle as quickly as possible. If she can get to a window, she could use her flying sword to glide down to safety. If not, she'll knock out a handler once she gets the maids adequately clucking and flapping like chickens from fear of the "ninja in the shadows waiting to burn them all alive", steal his robe, and go for the basement. If anyone asks, the handler needs to get orders about what to do about the gaggle of panicking maids.
>>
No. 876255 ID: 5c3123

>>876245
> Can Embri's current augmentations take physical objects like books and create copies in seconds with intact data in her personal Hammerspace?
She might be able to steal an arbitrarily large number of ordinary books or other mundane items in four seconds each, but it'll only work if she can establish ownership of them first, in some metaphysical sense. Not enough Intelligence + Occult to be 100% sure how that works. Any books qualifying as artifacts would require a 1 mote commitment each, and might not be hammerspace-compatible at all if they make extensive use of the Magical Materials.

Even if that worked, it's a matter of moving the originals and leaving the shelves conspicuously empty, not copying anything. Embri could make copies using Craft (Air), given raw materials, but without other magic to speed the process along, copying out an entire library by hand might plausibly involve hundreds of person-years of tedious scribing, with particularly high risk of errors if you're working by rote without understanding whichever language the books are written in.
>>

rolled 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 3, 4, 10, 9, 8, 10, 6, 9, 4, 7, 10, 7, 2, 5, 5, 8, 9, 4, 1, 2, 9, 6, 6, 6, 1 = 177

>spying on Embri
Ah, what a good little thief, Lute beams. She's show me the guards plan to distribute themselves, and which directions a few points of interest are in. Very helpful.

Wait? What. No. No no no no. Lute frowns in consternation and jabs the thief's image for emphasis. No planting incendiaries in the library! Bad thief. Stop that.

If Embri attempts to plant incendiaries where they would harm the libraries, I'm going to spend essence to attempt to disrupt said planting through the Shard Fallen From Ishiika's Eye. Lute would, after all, prefer those libraries remained intact.

>Seems like, to spy on the vault where the ritual is going on, you'll need to touch the stinger to an arcane link that leads to someone who's already down there.
Well! Lute turns slowing, a critical eye roving over her surroundings. She is in the bedchambers of the Lady of the Castle, who is almost certainly involved in the ritual. Surely there must be something suitable to use a focus nearby?

I'm guessing looking around the room for something to use as an arcane link is Perception + Investigation? Maybe occult.

>Lute's "native" language is most likely the Malfean dialect of Old Realm
Well being limited to speaking something Mafean seems like a bad idea for keeping Lute's allegiances secret.

>you can buy dots and even specialties in the skill with no training time, potentially picking up new languages and good-as-a-native accents the moment they're encountered, so long as you've got the XP to spend
Oh that's really cool. I'll probably be doing that at least once then (although I should save at least 8 XP for the First Kimbery Excellency). What's the XP to dots exchange rate? We discussed BP before >>870855 .
>>
No. 876364 ID: 5c3123

Malice
Scourge-caste Green Sun Princess, Metagaos favored
QUEST: Shatter all the basalt roads of Jacint, the Prince Upon The Tower, and eat his still-beating heart
Urge (Cecelynian): Assemble an air force to undercut Lookshy's protection of the Hundred Kingdoms
Essence 2, Willpower 5, Compassion 2, Conviction 1, Temperance 3, Valor 4 [1 BP on soul stuff]

11 personal motes, 29 peripheral motes, of which 5 will usually be committed to Hellscry Chakra and 5 more to the personal forcefield projector.

Attributes:
Strength 1, Dexterity 5, Stamina 3
Charisma 1, Manipulation 1, Appearance 3
Intelligence 1, Wits 5, Perception 5

Skills:
Archery 0
*Athletics 1
*Awareness 5
Bureaucracy 0
Craft (Air) 0, (Earth) 0, (Fire) 0, (Vitriol) 0, (Water) 0, (Wood) 0
*Dodge 0
*Integrity 1
Investigation 0
*Larceny 2
Linguistics 1 (chiropteran tribal dialect too high-pitched for normal hearing, Old Realm)
Lore 0
*Martial Arts 2
Medicine 0
Melee 0
*Occult 1
Performance 0
Presence 0
Resistance 0
Ride 0
Sail 0
Socialize 0
*Stealth 5
Survival 1
*Thrown 5
*War 1

Backgrounds:
Artifact 2 (yasal crystal - somewhere between a genie bottle and a pokeball)
Artifact 2 (vitriol-tainted starmetal discreet essence armor - costs 3 motes to activate for a scene, or 6 to avoid a glow. Soak 5L/5B, hardness 3, reduces minimum damage by 1)
Cult 1
Backing (demons) 1
Influence (demons) 1
Unwoven Coadjutor 4 (a sesselja, master of the Black Claw, Dagger Wind, Orgiastic Fugitive, Shadow Hunter, and Victorious Concession martial arts styles) [2 BP]

Charms: [15 BP for five favored charms]
>Black Claw style:
Open Palm Caress
>Adorjan:
Wind-Born Stride
Thousandfold Typhoon Hand
>Metagaos:
Sprawling Marsh Indulgence
Hidden Predator Camouflage
>Cecelyne:
First Cecelyne Excellency x2
Hellscry Chakra
Transcendent Desert Creature
Crumbling Sand-Self Embodiment
>Isidoros:
Indomitable Hedonism Drive
Unbothered By Flies
>Ebon Dragon:
Cracked Cell Circumvention
Witness To Darkness
Nemesis Self Imagined Anew

Mutations: [net cost 0 BP]
Can't wear ordinary belts, shirts, or armor due to wing membrane [-2], Cannibalism (roll Temperance at -1, or spend 1 wp to resist on a failed roll) [-2], Diet (blood of mammals and birds) [-2], Enhanced Hearing (bat ears) [1], Enhanced Vision (four eyes) [1], Fragile (10s on blunt damage dice apply two lethal levels instead) [-2], Fur [1], Glider [4], Prehensile Tail (actually a tongue) [2], Ugly [-1]

Fragility, tongue, additional eyes, and pudginess resulting in downgrade of Wings to Glider are due to the sesselja coadjutor's influence. Proper flight could be recovered with 4 xp and two months of either starvation or vigorous exercise, perhaps warmup for learning Dagger Wind Style. Derangement is trauma-based / cultural, similarly curable with mundane skills. Other mutations are chiropteran beastman racial template, which also includes Night Vision (superceded by Witness To Darkness).

Look good? I think that's everything but the specialties and intimacies. In addition to four natural specialties, you get two more from your Unwoven Coadjutor.

You can put specialties into Linguistics to learn a particular regional dialect well enough to be mistaken for a native, instead of the usual dice bonus. For example, speaking Old Realm with the same accent as the Dogs of the Unbroken Earth (gods who protect the wilderness untouched by civilization) might make it much easier to extort offerings of milk and meat from isolated homesteaders out on the frontier, or, maybe once you've got the Ebon Dragon's disguise charms, rile up some of the actual Dogs into a road-ruining rampage. Not that that'd be a very hard sell, since they naturally hate road-builders more than anyone.
>>
No. 876472 ID: 5c3123

>>876303
>Lute frowns in consternation and jabs the thief's image for emphasis. No planting incendiaries in the library! Bad thief. Stop that.
>If Embri attempts to plant incendiaries where they would harm the libraries, I'm going to spend essence to attempt to disrupt said planting through the Shard Fallen From Ishiika's Eye.

That's a roll of Dexterity + (best among Archery, Martial Arts, or Thrown)+ 1 from accuracy, -1 success for range. Costs three motes. No applicable charms. Can't aim usefully since you haven't "shot a pattern" with this thing yet. Want to spend Willpower, either on it's own or through a virtue, to maximize your chance of success?

Attack roll will be compared to Embri's choice of physical defense value: she could dodge, or parry with a bare hand (or foot, which is usually suboptimal), or with the incendiary device itself, likely activating it prematurely.
>>
No. 876479 ID: 3abd97

>>876472
No stunt dice? Darn. Do I only get those with charm use?

>Want to spend Willpower, either on it's own or through a virtue, to maximize your chance of success?
What are the rules for that? You can spend a willpower whenever for a bonus die, or you can spend a willpower to add one Virtue's worth of extra dice, with some limit on the number of times you can do that?
>>
No. 876485 ID: d0ac55

>>876472
Attack roll will be compared to Embri's choice of physical defense value: she could dodge, or parry with a bare hand (or foot, which is usually suboptimal), or with the incendiary device itself, likely activating it prematurely.
Gee whiz, such complicated options for a ninja with natural dexterity 6, Atheletics 3, and Dodge 3! Whatever will I OF COURSE EMBRI'S DODGING
>>
No. 876488 ID: 3abd97

Actually, I won't wait for clarification on how virtue channeling works, I'll just spend the one wp, and regain it if the description was good enough for a stunt.

Be it a dodge or a hit, the thief will (hopefully) get the message someone doesn't want the library burnt down, and will rethink.

>dexterity 6, Atheletics 3, and Dodge 3
Wouldn't an attack out of thin air count as surprise, and force DV 0?
>>
No. 876522 ID: 5c3123

rolled 2, 4, 8, 7, 5, 9, 4, 6, 1, 4, 2 = 52

>>876479
>No stunt dice?
Ah, sorry, that description does qualify as a two-die stunt. Three, if protecting the library (or something else immediately relevant) resonates with your Urge. What is Lute's Urge, actually?
>>876488
>Wouldn't an attack out of thin air count as surprise, and force DV 0?
Apparently there's some perceptible cue of the oncoming 'nudge,' at least for someone who's already wise to the fact that they're being watched. Want to try the same thing on yourself, next, to find out exactly what it is?

>>876485
That description does not qualify for a stunt bonus, however. Dodge DV against the attack is 6, eight successes on the attack roll is a hit by 2. Raw damage is twelve bashing, Embri has no armor (well, none equipped; without the Instant Aegis Upgrade submodule, which requires Stamina 5, the plate armor would take a minute or two to put on), no natural soak boost, and stamina 1, so eleven dice of post-soak bashing damage. Also, gimme a (Dexterity or Stamina) + Athletics roll to resist knockback.
>>
No. 876526 ID: 5c3123

>>876522
>rolled 2, 4, 8, 7, 5, 9, 4, 6, 1, 4, 2
That's three successes, filling Embri's -0 and both -1 health levels. She's going to be taking a -1 wound penalty to most actions now. After that, she's got four -2 health levels (two is the default for a human, two more for being an Essence 2 alchemical), a -4, an Incapacitated level, and after that bashing damage starts rolling over into lethal.
>>
No. 876565 ID: 3abd97

>if protecting the library (or something else immediately relevant) resonates with your Urge
Well, I was thinking if Lute's personal quest is to bring forth people's best selves by bringing that which we keep hidden in ourselves to light, she wouldn't approve of reckless destruction of secrets. And her high lore and occult make her a scholarly type.

>What is Lute's Urge, actually?
Oh, I didn't have one picked, I wasn't sure if those applied outside of GSPs. From this list, right? >>874529 (Although I notice Kimbery and Szoreny aren't represented).

Going by Limits, the Ebon Dragon's sounds like it would be the most entertaining to play with, and a lot of Lute's 'help' might qualify as corrupting. Pyrian queen pushing sociopathy might also be interesting, but hierarchy and conformity are a bad fit. Adorjan's limit would be pretty crippling, but thematic (and probably result in silly attempts at non-verbal performance based communication) and a bizarre obsession could fit.

I'll think on a specific Urge, but I'm open to suggestions too.

>filling Embri's -0 and both -1 health levels
Well! The Shard Fallen From Ishiika's Eye bites harder than Lute Silhouette speculated. Hopefully that dissuades the thief from arson.

Is it possible to be merciful, pull my punch, and spare her the -1 level of damage?
>>
No. 876570 ID: d0ac55

>>876526
Ow.

That is NOT good. Whoever is spying on her has their own sniping abilities. Embri's damaged, but stable.

Wait, that doesn't make any sense. She let her guard down, it would be easy enough to shoot the incendiary detonator she was placing and set her on fire, dooming her and leaving her fire-warded spoils for the taking. But they merely scratched her, and since they're still hiding it means they're also a spy, yet they pulled their punches. Which means they... protected the library? With the distraction in the unimportant section, they could steal far more tomes in the shadows than Embri could in the light. What's so important about this place?

Maybe it's just a religious thing. Embri opts to explicitly craft a book, write a few notes in it, and put it into the bookshelf for the other thief to see and pick up themselves.

The notes go something like this:

"You could unmask me, I could cause havok. Let's stop fighting each other, fellow shadow. We both stand to make a profit while staying out of each others' way.

I do not understand what sacrilege against the conducts of war you think I am committing by committing arson in the heart of my opponent's fortress. What I can tell you, is that this is not the only firestarter I was able to place. If they were all to go off at once before the guards can find them, the fire WILL reach this library.

If you seek to protect this place and make your profit, I have a favorable alternative. The vault. I will not despoil it, because I can not. I do not have a heart of shadow as apt as your own.

Here is my proposal: I will scribe pages from these books. I will not steal the originals. When I am done, you are to notify me of a potential exit. I will lead the guards to open this exit for me, and perform a chain of distractions (using the non-fire tricks) simultaneously while exiting, diverting the guards from the vault. This will be your window of opportunity to steal what you want. I'm sure you can find your own way out.

I will move to the other side of the library and scribe what I can from this place. Place your reply in this book. I am trusting you, with your conduct of war, not to trap your reply. I will know if you have. Remember, my destruction will trigger the fires, and you will hunt me down and utterly destroy me if I trigger them myself.

Oh, and before you ask: the owner's bedroom was ransacked. So neither of us is getting what we wanted there. Prepare the weregild dedicated to your master for failure, as I do now."
>>
No. 876594 ID: 5c3123

>>876565
>Lute's personal quest
Akuma, having sold their souls for power, lack the free will to choose their own larger goals in life. "Bring forth people's best selves" must therefore be the Urge from Lute Silhouette's yozi master. Good news is, it's not limited to the yozi's archetypal themes as GSPs are... bad news is, that's because there's no coadjutor or equivalent internal mechanism to enable a smooth reset if the urge is completed, or becomes impossible. Fortunately, with an open-ended goal like that, it's not likely to come up.

>Is it possible to be merciful, pull my punch, and spare her the -1 level of damage?
Maybe next time. http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20071217 That kind of problem is why Shogunate-era tactical manuals emphasize the first round of testing for any newly built or captured weapon should be done under relatively controlled conditions, rather than in the field. Mnemonic phrase for that is "even a rock can kill." It's got a clever double meaning: simple low-tech weapons are deadly enough in the right hands, and poorly-understood high-tech stuff can explode in your face even if it looks harmless. Madelrada is of the opinion that this doctrine was driven as much by a 'sour grapes' attitude toward the fading glories of the First Age as by true practicality, but also that subtle flaws in a worthy enemy's thinking make that perspective all the more important to study, so that similar flaws can be exploited when they recur.

>>876570
>craft a book
Writing a quick note might be done in minutes, or seconds with superlative skill, but high speed calligraphy is dexterity-based and Embri only has the augmentation for intelligence-based crafting. You would also need materials, and a roll. Forging a copy of a book sufficient to pass even casual inspection - a hollow shell whose spine wouldn't be clearly out-of-place on the shelf - might take hours. An accurate copy, all the words and diagrams, by hand? Months. Per book. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-f1drY3EdqDQ/V9bbQjY7fVI/AAAAAABrZFk/YG0dxQoM72A/w1900/MR-350390-738179-18.jpg There are magical ways to speed the process up, but Embri doesn't have any of those installed yet.

That's in addition to the roll you haven't made yet for resisting knockback, which has tactical significance because being launched fifteen feet into a wall while visibly injured would attract scrutiny from the guards, and a medical exam... which might incidentally find that gas grenade.
>>
No. 876613 ID: 094652

rolled 1, 6, 3, 6, 10, 8, 3, 4, 2, 4 = 47

>>876594
I did not understand stunt dice. So, I'm supposed to do roleplay or something? I'll try.

Embri suddenly jerked as something in her back reverberated. She was pushed forward, but held what little ground she could before being lifted off her feet. She touched base with the bookshelf with just enough finesse to keep it from tipping over. Embri instantly turned around with a knife in hand, only to realize there was nobody there, and there was no hole in her clothing. There was, however, a jarring stab wound in her back, thankfully unpoisoned, or whatever was needed to poison the strange being she had become.

Rolling to prevent knockback from being fatally high-profile.
>>
No. 876620 ID: 5c3123

>>876613
Knockback avoidance succeeds, but stun resistance fails, so Embri's at -2 to non-reflexive actions for a few seconds, in addition to the wound penalty. Not much of an issue outside combat time. Bracing on the bookshelf qualifies as a two-die stunt, meaning in addition to recovering motes or WP you get to do some dramatic editing, such as declaring that sufficient materials (ink, paper) are readily available for that note you wanted to write.
>stab wound
No, just blunt force trauma so far. Estimated time to complete repair is nine hours, assuming rest, or indefinite with continued exertion.

>>876303
>She is in the bedchambers of the Lady of the Castle, who is almost certainly involved in the ritual. Surely there must be something suitable to use a focus nearby?
Indeed there is a wealth of such connections, and she is! The ritual-vault in question hasn't even been warded against scrying, at least not by conventional means. The Shard Fallen grasps a new viewpoint with it's left claw, to reveal...

At first glance, a naked corpse, pustulent and rotten, somehow standing upright and wreathed in coruscating shadows. Female, or possibly a eunuch. Fascination, revulsion, and stranger feelings abruptly collide within Lute's mind like four out-of-control freight trains aimed at a singularly ill-starred intersection. https://www.xkcd.com/253/

In mechanical terms, the lich-queen prepared for this contingency with some scene-long line-of-sight Unnatural Mental Influence effects. First up, Atrocity Without Witness, enhanced with Honey-Tongued Serpent Attack and Killing Words Technique. Nine successes, normally against your dodge MDV, but HTSA makes it unexpected, so in the absence of a method to negate that, it hits DV 0 automatically. Normally you'd be able to pay two willpower to resist the Compulsion to ignore the Abyssal (as well as the Illusion repressing memories afterward, though the Shard Fallen could deal with that part for you) but all those threshold successes increase the cost to five, while Killing Words Technique means you have to pay in lethal health levels instead.

Five lethal would fill all of Lute Silhouette's -0, -1, and -2 health levels, leaving only one each of -4 and Incapacitated. There are six more Dying levels after that, but without Kimbery Mythos Exultant or some other serious magical healing, dropping down into those means no chance of recovering on your own.

That's the first UMI effect. There are two more.
>>
No. 876628 ID: 5c3123

>>/questdis/122028
>Maybe I could have sent a message via Destinty Knitting Entanglement? I'm not sure that has a send function.
The 'send' version is an Essence 3 charm, Predestined Delivery Shaping. You could try poking at stuff with the Shard Fallen From Ishiika's Eye's tail-stylus, including writing with it.
>I may have gotten myself killed even faster
You do have the option of not rejecting the influence, thereby taking no damage - but also being compelled to ignore the lich-queen and her current activities. A rather binary 'take it or bleed it' choice, which is why I wanted to get that one out of the way before moving on to the other two, which offer more complex options.
>>
No. 876729 ID: add037

rolled 5, 4, 3, 3, 2, 10 = 27

>>876364
Looks good to me! Still not really sure on what the yasal crystal does though. Picking specialties and intimacies is still difficult with my limited understanding of the setting.

>Unwoven Coadjutor
What is the name of my sifu/heart's desire?

>pudginess resulting in downgrade of Wings to Glider
Hahahaha perfect

So with Wits 5 and Occult 1 this would be a total of six dice, yes?
>>

rolled 6, 1, 2, 2, 7, 10, 10, 9, 3, 4 = 54

>>876594
>Urge must be her personal quest
Works for me, seems like it would be double edged enough to count

>>876620
Lute's hand reflexively tightens it's grip on Shard Fallen as her other snaps in place to cover the horrid-yet-entrancing imagery and her other snaps in place to cover her eyes.

Not resisting the compulsion or taking the damage, thank you very much. Not sure if there's anything for me roll for, but have some dice.

Also dang, Killing Words Technique is nasty and cost efficient to boot. Is that 1wp anytime someone triggers the Atrocity Without Witness, or just once when setting up the scene long defenses?

>as well as the Illusion repressing memories afterward, though the Shard Fallen could deal with that part for you
A recording stopping me from attempting the same dumb thing because I forgot I did would be useful. http://goblinscomic.com/comic/12132011

>>876729
>Still not really sure on what the yasal crystal does though
I think it's this:
http://jamesx007.blogspot.com/2009/01/yasal-crystal-artifact-or.html

>So with Wits 5 and Occult 1 this would be a total of six dice, yes?
Yes, but you may often want to roll a few more dice than you think you need, in case you get a bonus of some kind, or earn stunt dice.
>>
No. 876849 ID: 5c3123

>>876739
>>dang, Killing Words Technique is nasty and cost efficient to boot. Is that 1wp anytime someone triggers the Atrocity Without Witness, or just once when setting up the scene long defenses?
Just once. It's a surcharge on the charm's activation. KWT is just turning insult to injury, though, it's HTSA that's really the nasty part here.
>Not resisting the compulsion or taking the damage, thank you very much.
Alright, next up is Inescapable Massacre Technique, also enhanced with Killing Words. Ten successes against your dodge MDV, which has a base of 6 for (Willpower 10 + Integrity 0 + Essence 2), +2 for the stunt of covering the mirror with your hand, +2 for going against Conviction since you already decided to look away, but -3 because confrontation would align with your Urge. Three threshold successes.

Now you're faced with two conflicting compulsions: AWW says ignore the lich-queen and the action she's involved in or lose 5 lhl, IMT says don't leave the scene nor avoid the action she's involved in or lose 4 lhl. Only way to avoid grievous injury at this point is to somehow reconcile the two and obey both, then eventually weasel out of one or the other, possibly by arranging circumstances to take advantage of the rules for Impossible and/or Unacceptable Orders. (For most people, the only Unacceptable Order is self-destruction; exact reasons are tricky but a major one is to avoid having social combat make physical combat irrelevant by simply talking enemies to death.)

The last effect, Morbid Fascination Style, faces a stronger MDV with fewer successes, and fails. At least Lute isn't also compelled to sit quietly and watch without interfering.

>I think it's this
That's correct. As I said, basically a pokeball: throw it at any spirit no higher than Essence 3 to trap them inside and thereby add their powers to your own - just as soon as you either make friends, or break their will to resist, anyway. Cecelyne's charmtech will help. She's all about the genie-in-a-bottle dynamic, from either end.

>>876729
>rolled 5, 4, 3, 3, 2, 10
Can't identify the spell exactly, but that's enough to figure out it's targeting Legbreaker, and that the spell's effect isn't friendly (in case that wasn't obvious from context) but also probably won't directly cause any serious harm. Might be intended to restrain? Interrupting the casting will almost certainly make some sort of ugly mess, but it's generally far less severe than a deliberately constructed attack spell, and more likely to be the caster's problem than effectively targeting you or your minions.

Going ahead with the stab-the-caster plan? Remaining skeletons can't see you, and blocking or dodging while casting is excessively difficult, so this might be a good opportunity to show off with something trickier than a basic attack - and whether that means precision mercy or gruesome overkill is, of course, up to you.

>>876218
>if there is no other way in,
Let's say Alcaeus has his own pair of Path-Carving Boots (shaped differently, of course) and is using them to circle around the exterior, hoping to find a proper airship dock or some other less violent way of getting inside. That way, if one of you is taken prisoner, the other might be positioned to arrange ransom or rescue.

Currently, though, Ledaal Ji is loose inside the castle. Two bonfire-level anima banners are visible straight through the walls: sun-bright behind him, though it's the middle of the night, and void-dark down below. These are convenient points of reference for navigation in unfamiliar twisting hallways, while running around far too fast for the slow-witted skeletal guards to intercept or surround. Does he have his own Path-Carving Boots equipped, leaving yard-wide basalt streaks on the floor to ensure he's not wandering in circles? Or would he rather have a chance of not being followed? More importantly, what sort of things is he actively seeking out?
>>
No. 876851 ID: 094652

rolled 6, 6, 6, 1, 2, 10, 9, 4, 8, 10 = 62

>>876620
Embri writes a quick note (in Rivertongue dialect, which is pre-programmed in her somehow) to her rival about desiring a ceasefire, along with a mutually-beneficial string of distractions which will allow both of them to leave with their faces intact. She leaves the note in a book which has been placed upside down and sticking out a few inches, then immediately leaves.

This has all gotten out of hand. Even the other spies in the castle will defend this 'sacred' place. Embri will leave with her spoils as is. But of course, there's the issue of finding a relatively safe exit that's loosely guarded with minimal warding in place.

Embri speed-walks through the castle, looking for an opportunity, pretending to check on the other skeletons. Hopefully, she can find a map or seduce and then interrogate a guard captain.

Embri also attempts to will herself to bring up her options in this weird body of hers. Maybe she has the key in these weird powers of hers and she hasn't realized it yet. (OOC, would like a brief description of current slotted augmentations)
>>
No. 876864 ID: 5c3123

>>876851
Fifth Dexterity Augmentation is strictly passive, always-on. Sixth Intelligence Augmentation, likewise, passively adds to your mundane skills. Integrated Artifact Transmogrifier keeps you looking like a normal organic human instead of a weird robot. None of those are really obvious magic powers.

Second Manipulation Augmentation adds successes to Manipulation rolls, and Pheromone Regulation Systems let you mess with people's minds by creating supernaturally powerful emotions. https://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0121.html

Omnitool Implant lets you turn your hands into any sort of fine tools. Go go gadget lockpicks, tweezers, surgical-grade scalpel, you name it. Not great for weapons but sometimes better than nothing. Of course, that means your hands won't look like normal hands while you're using it, so be careful who's watching if you want to maintain a cover story.

Fourth Appearance Augmentation is another social boost, stronger and less subtle. Can stack with the pheromone thing. Using it does not necessarily out you as a machine-person, but you will obviously be some sort of supernatural being. Most likely it'll cost enough motes that you'll flare your anima and activate the memory-distortion power, anyway. Even if someone does remember it clearly, the simplest explanation (which you could even offer them) is that the "maid" was some sort of undercover goddess, slumming among the common people, who has now shucked her disguise. Lots of morality-play sorts of myths involve a figure like that, most often bluntly decreeing punishments for the wicked and rewards for the just (or at least those who pleased her) in order to wrap up major loose threads of the plot just before departing.

Main bag of tricks is the Technomorphic Integration Engine. Apart from a virtually unlimited supply of mundane ninja gear, that's where you're keeping all your artifacts other than the rechargeable poison gas grenade.

One of the items in there, the Thousandfold Obscenity Gown, is yet another social tool. Semiliquid red robes give you a seduction bonus, and can secrete... well, let's call it "red milk." When somebody drinks that, which costs a mote per dose and takes five minutes of bodily contact, they gain an intimacy toward you. If they later lose the intimacy, it deals three levels of lethal damage on the way out - enough to kill nameless extras outright.

Dragonfly's Ranging Eye goes over one of your eyes and lets you see essence flows, like a scouter from DBZ. Can see in the dark and through some walls, but probably not thick stone-equivalent walls inside a manse. It also lets you see around corners, by repositioning the viewpoint, though with such a basic model, it has to stay within both forty yards and line-of-sight to your actual eye.

If this has turned into a combat mission, you might want to gear up accordingly. If you'd had your armor on (it's a superheavy suit of plate armor made from alchemically perfected diamonds) that mysterious space-warping attack would have been an almost negligible threat, one die of bashing damage per hit at most instead of more than ten. Downside is, even though the armor's magically lightweight, it does slow you down a little bit (-1 dodge DV, etc.), and thick fluted plates of shiny, sparkly diamonds are not concealable. Might as well completely drop the maid disguise at that point.

There's the time-strung bow, which can be used as a regular bow to shoot people, or an assassination tool to hit them whenever they'd least expect it within the next five days, no matter how far away they run during that time.

In terms of less-obvious combat gear, there's the Concealed Knife Bracer, which is, as the name suggests, a quick-draw holster for six knives. Also includes an auto-retrieval system, so you can throw them without worrying about running out or leaving too much evidence behind.

Gas grenade, of course, fills a ten-yard radius with poison gas. Not quite certain death, but it'll certainly ruin any ordinary mortal's week. Can be set on a time delay, up to an hour, but probably shouldn't be left behind since it's reusable: just six motes and a few seconds of fiddling with the special jade key.

Finally there's your Windblade, which is a flying surfboard (not actually usable as a sword, sorry, budget constraints; good news is, time-strung bow and throwing knives can be used while flying), and the Winterbreath Jar which is an extremely sturdy jar that's magically always cold inside, and the Unmelting Heart of the Tellerauthelot which extrudes an extremely deadly poison that turns people it kills into supercharged ice zombies. Also works on ordinary pre-existing corpses, they don't have to die from the poison specifically.

Each zombie can absorb 50 doses of the stuff, usually burning through two doses per hour just to stay animate, and more to repair damage. The Heart creates eight doses per hour under ideal conditions (the Winterbreath Jar helps), so you couldn't maintain more than four zombies long term without additional support from some other power source. The ice-bound dead do seem to follow your instructions, within the limits of their ability to understand. Might be possible to use ice marrow to "bribe" the skeletal troops themselves, get them working for you regardless of what their handlers say. If it worked, the ones on your side would be stronger, tougher, and even somewhat faster than loyalists, maybe enough to overcome the numerical disadvantage, particularly in narrower hallways... but if it didn't work, you might be handing out that buff to the local troops for nothing.
>>
No. 877022 ID: 20ea96

rolled 8, 7, 5, 4, 4, 3, 3, 9, 5, 2 = 50

>>876849
>Alcaeus is searching for some other less violent way of getting inside
Sounds good.
>if one of you is taken prisoner, the other might be positioned to arrange ransom or rescue
Do we have a way to communicate telepathically without risk of message interception? That would be an exceptionally valuable ability to have, navigating this castle from opposite ends. It will allow us to easily rendevous and escape when the time comes, especially if that time comes rather sooner than expected and our retreat must be made expeditiously. (Such as if someone actually does figure out how to nullify the castle's support magic)

>Does he have his own Path-Carving Boots equipped, leaving yard-wide basalt streaks on the floor to ensure he's not wandering in circles? Or would he rather have a chance of not being followed?
Ledaal Ji would rather avoid giving anyone a breadcrumb trail leading right to him. However, that is not to say there isn't anything he could do on that front. If possible, he shall lightly damage or otherwise mark small items as he goes. Passing through a hallway with the speed of the wind, it is simple to wield a small blade, and scar the scenery in ways unlikely to be noticed by the casual observer. A particular horizontal scratch with a unique flourish on the wall, hallway furniture, lighting fixtures, and so on. Ledaal Ji needs only to pay attention to signs of his own marking to avoid traveling in circles through labyrinthine castle corridors.

>More importantly, what sort of things is he actively seeking out?
Ledaal Ji is hunting for two things: knowledge and artifacts. Certainly there will be a vault somewhere, full of valuable items, but it will almost certainly be the most heavily guarded area, especially during a high-alert invasion like this one. A better target would be a private study, where the master of the house may relax and pore over their research. Magical artifacts used on a regular basis will almost certainly be located in a convenient place like that, and not sealed away in the vault. Therefore, Ledaal Ji shall attempt to sniff out such a location while the castle attention is diverted to the higher-priority areas.
>>
No. 877024 ID: 3abd97

>Now you're faced with two conflicting compulsions: AWW says ignore the lich-queen and the action she's involved in or lose 5 lhl, IMT says don't leave the scene nor avoid the action she's involved in or lose 4 lhl. Only way to avoid grievous injury at this point is to somehow reconcile the two and obey both

How about this: as long as Lute carries the Shard Fallen with an arcane link to the lich queen she hasn't left the scene or action, as each remains capable of delivering ranged attacks via the artifact. The scene travels with her. This satisfies IMT. AWW is satisfied by ignoring the lich-queen. Which, while not wise, can be accomplished while remaining on a common battlefield.
>>
No. 877063 ID: 5c3123

>>877024
Alright. That also means you can't "change the channel" back to Embri, or to break illusions in the local environment, or even rewind... but you could brandish the Shard, 'accidentally' sharing the live feed of that eye-stabbing nude scene with any others who care to look.

You're still in the lich-queen's bedroom. That seemingly empty suit of armor laying on the bed has propped itself up on one elbow and is saying something in Skytongue, with a voice like the sound of dry autumn leaves burning and inflection suggestive of mild surprise.

>>877022
>Do we have a way to communicate telepathically without risk of message interception? That would be an exceptionally valuable ability to have,
An ability many air-aspected dragonblooded have, and one which absolutely every Lookshyan exalt learns before they turn eighteen, but sadly not one Ledaal Ji has mastered for himself yet.

Very practical people, the Lookshyans. What they lack in quality and quantity (fewer lineages of Exaltation there, each with weaker blood than any Great House save shameful Nellens, which depends on House Ledaal for protection) they make up for with home-ground advantage, magitech support, and mandatory military service. While a Realm DB is learning how to play the sanxian, take tea correctly, and avoid being 'pranked' into heroin addiction, a Lookshyan is training to whisper in such a way as can be heard by the right person from miles off, and to shoot bolts of lightning from empty hands. Both of those tricks are easy enough to pick up, given basic skill with linguistics and science respectively, but it's probably better not to do so just yet, even if there was time: stepping off the path of Crane Style halfway through would make it far more difficult to complete. Same problem applies to any Celestial Martial Art, at least for non-Anathema students. That's a big part of why Immaculate Monks lead such structured lives, so they won't be tempted to distract themselves with practical adaptations to worldly problems.

>A better target would be a private study, where the master of the house may relax and pore over their research. Magical artifacts used on a regular basis will almost certainly be located in a convenient place like that, and not sealed away in the vault.
What seems to be the main magical research lab, where that anti-glow is building toward a climax, is under very heavy guard at the moment. A full platoon, possibly more.

There are several lesser workshops, however, including one which stinks of rust and pickled meat, resembling a nightmarishly perverse hybrid of a machine shop, luxury spa, surgical theater, and small-town blasphemous shrine. Vats of formaldehyde the size of bathtubs, tables meant for either massage or autopsy with elaborately articulated side-segments for supporting arms with too many elbows, neatly organized racks of gaudy ritual tools for scrubbing, cutting, stitching, and clamping, racks of neatly labeled bottles with oils and acids and powders and incense. Bells far up above, with sinewy ropes by which to operate them from down on the shop floor. Iron shavings and old bloodstains in most of the hard-to-reach crevices, though important working parts all seem to be well-maintained.

A heavyset, matronly woman in a slightly frilly black-and-white dress shuffles into the lab, dumps out a wicker basket full of jumbled human femurs into the appropriate bin like she's done it a hundred times before, then notes Ji's presence. "If I may be so bold, sir, you're obviously working on something important, but don't seem to know your way around this place just yet. Anything I could help you find?"
>>
No. 877071 ID: 094652

rolled 5, 10, 2, 3, 5, 10, 3, 3, 9, 4 = 54

>>876864
Might as well test the poison out.

Embri figures that with a handler robe, she can take a single skeleton for 'maintenance' into a broom closet. And then restrain the skeleton soldier with everything she can find before using a single dose of venom.

If it works:
Embri has a solid high-profile exit strategy: don armor, summon a bunch of arrows with half of remaining motes, fire at will on the skeletons. While she's running, the arrows will hit the skeletons from behind when they're distracted chasing her, and she can order them to open a path. Simple.
1. Don armor
2. Fire arrows at skeletons in stealth
3. Attempt to walk to the nearest exit point with the cloak still on
4. Totally get spotted
5. Run and laugh as skeletons are mind-controlled by your venom arrows
6. Order your minions (and non-existent fellow ninja) to clear a path while you escape.

If not:
Embri deals with the skeleton quite violently. She'll search it for runes or other strange markings. Then she'll use her Dragonfly's Ranging Eye to check for incoming guards and make her way out. Maybe the upper levels will be less guarded now that the players have caused some havok down below. A few extra traps, bombs, and other such things are placed on her way to the stairs.
She may need to switch to lethal methods.
>>
No. 877081 ID: 5f3f48

>>877063
If I understand right then, to escape the effects, I either need to wait for the scene to end (probably with the summoning being completed or something exploding I'm guessing), accidentally trick someone else into changing the channel for me (so I'm made to leave the scene instead of leaving deliberately), find an edge case where the compulsions are impossible or fatal to comply with, or go stare at Embri's anima and forget the compulsions.

>Skytongue
If I grab a dot of linguistics to understand that, what else would be included? Since they cover whole families at once.

Ditto for Rivertongue, since that's what Embri and maybe Bridget are speaking.

I'm assuming it won't be practical to pick up every language being used in the castle, so I'm looking for information on what's broadly applicable.
>>
No. 877158 ID: 5c3123

>>877071
Requisitioning a skeletal 'soldier' for help with lifting something heavy is simple enough. The handler instructs it: "All standing orders must remain in place, but otherwise obey her as you would me, until the task is complete or one hour has elapsed, whichever comes first. After that, return here."
As soon as you're out of sight, a single dose of ice marrow on it's tongue - why does it even have a tongue, when there's so little other flesh? - rapidly covers the skeletrooper in a layer of frost. As a quick check on whether the standing order against damaging the manse is still in force, Embri orders it to punch a load-bearing wall, and it complies without hesitation. Unfortunately, it also crunches up a few of it's own phalanges in the process. With the Dragonfly's Ranging Eye in place, she can see the ice marrow flowing inside, moving to repair the damage... and when it's spent, the frost thaws, causing further damage throughout the whole skeletal structure. Looks like it might take more than one dose each to keep them loyal to you through a combat situation.

Speaking of structural damage... while the congealed-cloudstuff walls still appear mostly opaque under Essence sight, flows of energy beneath the surface are plainly visible, and becoming increasingly unsettled. Embri does not have enough Occult skill to know for sure what this means, but has more than enough Lore and (Intelligence + Craft (Earth)) to recognize it as resembling the lead-up to an earthquake.

>While she's running, the arrows will hit the skeletons from behind when they're distracted chasing her,
That's not quite how the Time-Strung Bow usually works, but definitely close enough to be stunt-worthy. Any living guards who see this happen might, in the heat of battle or with a bit of help from memory-melting anima flare, think the bluish translucent crystalline plate armor is the same stuff as the bluish translucent ice hijacking their skeletal minions. On the off chance the maid's face is recognized, she might appear to be just another victim of some unseen archer further back, rather than the mastermind.

Heading for the docks to hijack an airship, or just the nearest room with a window and zooming off with your windblade? Trying to track down Lute Silhouette first to drag her along? Ice skeletons seem to be able to nonlethally subdue living targets by inflicting hypothermia with a touch. Gimme a Join War roll, in any case, since you're now commanding a Magnitude 1 group of soldiers and ordering them around in battle.
>>877081
>If I grab a dot of linguistics to understand that, what else would be included? Since they cover whole families at once.
Majority of the dialects in Creation's Northern direction, including Tear Eaters, Icewalkers, city-states such as Gethamane and Whitewall and fjord-centered Arendelle in the far northwest. Not the more isolated tribes such as Varajtul and Hushed Ones, though.

>Ditto for Rivertongue,
Mainly that one is associated with Nexus, the Guild, scavenger-lords and commerce relatively independent of the Realm's control. Far more people speak it as a second language than natively. It evolved in response to the necessities of trade, rather than being deliberately designed by ancient god-kings to reinforce the borders of the world.
>>
No. 877170 ID: 094652

rolled 1, 9, 8, 1, 9, 1, 8, 2, 9, 10 = 58

>>877158
>punch a load-bearing wall, and it complies without hesitation
Yay, they're loyal-
>resembling the lead-up to an earthquake
Crap. Definitely need to leave right now.

>Airship
Want that. Stealing an airship is both profit AND a good bulwark against the upcoming earthquake on a mountain. Either way, Embri needs to leave right now.

Here's the plan:

Embri only has 7 doses remaining in her regular storage, and using an arrow would be dangerous and probably damage the skeleton into using the poison to heal, but Embri only needs 3-4 skeletons. The one who was damaged punching the wall, take this note saying that the castle is going to crumble or some other self-destruct, go to the library and draw this castle crumbling or exploding or whatever, act it out or point at the note repeatedly, anything to spread the warning in the one place Embri knows the other spy could attack her from. It will not stop for as long as it can.

Embri will convert three other skeletons with the poison, double-doses each, via more 'requests' from the other handlers. In the event that they are 'spotted' acting suspicious Embri has programmed the skeletons with 'kidnap' protocols, by hoisting her up and carrying her to the dock, using a quick route with many windows. Embri will act like a damsel in distress, first acting unaware, followed by confused agitation at the grabby hands, followed by girly shrieking, and finally 'accidentally' touching the skeletons causing her to act unconscious as they pick her up and hold her in the air as they run. Hopefully nobody will think about why the maid is covered in diamond-crusted armor when she's clearly in the wall-grinding grip of three skeletons.

Plan A: Using the kidnapping disguise, rush through to the docks, try to find an unmanned, relatively small airship so her literal skeleton crew won't have any problems manning it, but she'll take what she can get, and notify any pursuers that the castle is going to explode.

Plan B: If the skeletons are on the verge of being neutralized, they will throw her out a window to fake her death, so her windblade can carry her far away before the castle self-destructs.
>>
No. 877198 ID: 5c3123

>>877170
>Embri only has 7 doses remaining in her regular storage,
No, she's got 25 doses of ice marrow, it's just that most of them are pre-applied to individual arrows. The temporal stasis of Elsewhere is a very nice loophole for shelf-life problems.

>programmed the skeletons with 'kidnap' protocols, by hoisting her up and carrying her to the dock,
Hypothermia would become a problem as soon as they grab you. Ordinary clothing definitely isn't adequate protection, and even the armor might not be. The effect is a penalty to dexterity rather than automatic incapacitation.

>relatively small airship so her literal skeleton crew won't have any problems manning it
Neither Embri nor the skeletons are adequately trained to serve as an airship's crew, much less as the captain. You'll likely need to press-gang somebody with dots in Sail to make that work.

Even the Windblade requires three dots in Ride for best results, though Embri is safe enough in routine non-combat flight thanks to superlative Dexterity and the craft's intuitive interface.
>>
No. 877308 ID: 094652

>>877198
Embri will walk there, then. She'll claim that the blue tint is part of some master plan from the mistress; there are blue, red, and green tinted skeletons, each with specific enchantments and orders written in. She was instructed to bring at least two of the skeletons to the docks, have them walk around the area. The other guards should be on the lookout for the red-tinted skeletons, they'll come next. The next handler should have more strange instructions, but it should fit together when all the steps are followed.

Once she's inside, she'll look for a sufficient airship, something relatively small but well-manned, get into the cabin, redress in her Thousandfold Obscenity Gown, quickly seduce a well-trained ship captain, and ask for a simple joyride across the perimeter - call it a personal patrol. Why, they could even harass the local barbarians for sport!

If that doesn't work, or even if it does work, she'll change tone and whisper into his ear that she's following secret orders from the mistress, and no she doesn't have the whole picture yet but her orders are very simple and very specific. The three skeletons are to come on deck and help the engineering team while they do a 4-mile radius sweep. No, she doesn't know what they are ordered to do, yes, they have a restraining order of five feet from any non-combatants.
>>
No. 877425 ID: 5c3123

>>877308
>the blue tint is part of some master plan from the mistress;
This is accepted as plausible, since the lich-queen has pursued stranger plans, and the harbormaster asks if it has something to do with the blue parrotman who just showed up.

>she'll look for a sufficient airship, something relatively small
There's only one docked right now. It's a heavy cargo model, 450 feet long, crew of twenty, but maybe could get by with as few as ten in an emergency. Crewmembers are presumed to be in bed asleep, because they just got here, most were pedaling hard all day, and it's almost midnight.

A second, much smaller and more technically sophisticated (e.g. non-pedal-powered) airship arrived more recently, but not at the dock. The parrotman - Alcaeus - is attempting to claim the crash was a result of faulty instructions from local traffic control rather than any sort of piloting error, and otherwise cast aspersions on the competence and hospitality of the sky-castle's residents.

The harbormaster finds such claims implausible up until Lt. Malroth, a skeleton-handler who was patrolling the upper hallways, arrives at the dock horribly maimed (missing an eye, most of his nose, both legs at the knee and one arm near the shoulder) but bandaged up with sticky silk fibers, riding a Beauteous Wasp along with a bat-woman who has a faintly glowing red ring on her forehead. Lt. Malroth reports that he attacked the newcomers without any clear provocation, in violation of protocol, then was subdued and given medical treatment by them.

>>877081
>go stare at Embri's anima and forget the compulsions.
The effect of Embri's anima doesn't break other mental influences, and only kicks in at the end of a scene in any case.
>>
No. 877446 ID: 5c3123

Incidentally, though he's not aware of either situation IC, Ledaal Ji's Satchel of Resplendent Healing contains acupuncture needles which could be used to restore those nine levels of lethal damage Lute Silhouette Speculation In Comet's Reflection hasn't quite taken yet in just over two hours, as well as an instrument which could regrow Lt. Malroth's various amputated bits in about two days each, with power from a 2-dot or higher Wood- or Solar-aspect hearthstone.

Bridget has a wood-aspect hearthstone, but unfortunately it's only 1-dot.
>>
No. 877465 ID: 3f5235

rolled 5, 9, 10, 8, 2, 4, 1, 5, 8, 2 = 54

>>877063
>Anything I could help you find?
Ledaal Ji should have no difficulty in pretending to be an eccentric-yet-benign-to-the-help researcher into the blasphemous arts, given that is, in fact, pretty much exactly what he is already. In the air of one who is frustrated about something completely unrelated to you, and therefore both not-to-be-excessively-bothered, and dismissive enough of you that it is safe to be off-guard in their presence: "Indeed! I cannot for the life of me recall where I've put my notes! Have you seen any important-looking documents lying about recently? I know they're around here somewhere, in one of these workshops no doubt." Ledaal Ji will continue to root through drawers or other feasible paper-containers as he makes the inquiry. His divine sense will search through and commit to memory any interesting-looking material he finds, significantly faster and in greater detail than his physical body's brief flip-through would appear to be doing.
>>
No. 877470 ID: 094652

rolled 8, 5, 2, 2, 10, 7, 3, 2, 7, 10 = 56

>>877425
Crewmembers are presumed to be in bed asleep
Embri's current thought process:@#$% @#$%^&*( @#$% @#$%er @#$%ing @#$%

How many are accustomed to the ship and sleeping in it right now? Ideally, she needs to recruit seven sailors, so using her brainwashing gown while they're sleeping would work.

The main issue is that most of the castle's population seems fervently loyal to the mistress, and even her enemies treat her with reverence! Embri has to find and brainwash/seduce/convert/whatever someone with a high Sail ability, and at least seven other minions, to steal the ship successfully!

>Lt. Malroth reports that he attacked the newcomers without any clear provocation, in violation of protocol
... Of course, maybe that's just her paranoia talking. Looks like this idiot may be out of a job soon. While he can't do much by himself, if he wrests control of the other skeletons at port before the mistress realizes what is going on, they could flee to safety. Without a body, she can easily thrall him to her in a matter of weeks, and figure out how to wrest control of the skeletons completely - or ditch them and hire a proper pirate crew.
>along with a bat-woman who has a faintly glowing red ring on her forehead
That bat-woman is clearly someone of note, what with the weird symbol on her forehead. If she has power, that might be just enough

Embri will talk with everyone she can, and make a decision on who to con into flying the ship for her - and ultimately save their collective hides. Use motes but try not to activate the anima flare.

If she's unmasked, Embri will unleash her anima deneuralizer and dart away on the windblade while the skeletons distract. Igniting the gas bomb could also work if it deals zero-damage to Embri even at point-blank range. Mundane smoke bomb also works.
>>
No. 877472 ID: 5c3123

>>877465
After rifling through graftable skin reserves to check that all the vellum in there is blank, Ji is directed to the main scriptorium and adjacent library, most of which seems to be devoted to relatively mundane scheduling, mapping, inventory control, and suchlike. Sorcery archive is on strict lockdown at the moment due to a sabotage scare, nobody in or out without direct authorization from the queen, and the guards are pretty sure there aren't any recent lab notes from anyone other than her in there anyway. She should be done with that big do-not-disturb ritual within the hour, though, if you want to ask.

Browsing through the stacks, Ji notes that one reagent-use ledger's spine is overhanging the shelf just slightly, and further that it's been put away upside-down. Inside there's a note in Rivertongue, written with great skill but in equally great haste, on a fresh green leaf from a rare sort of tree (one that isn't known to grow anywhere within several hundred miles, and which he happens to recognize because the sap is a powerful antipyretic) and spattered with blood no more than a few minutes old. The note seems to be written from one secret agent to another of a different faction, and frankly outlines a plan of temporary alliance, burglary, and arson.
>>876570
>Let's stop fighting each other, fellow shadow.

Before Ledaal Ji processes the full implications of this, Alcaeus comes running in, path-carving boots in hand, and with a tone of (largely feigned) panic asks whether there's a doctor in the house. Apparently someone at the airship dock picked a fight with a blood ape and has, predictably, been gruesomely injured. Still alive, though, which is rather unusual for a mortal in that situation.
>>

rolled 7, 6, 10, 4, 7, 8, 10, 10, 5, 10, 9, 2, 8, 9, 4, 3, 6, 4, 8, 10, 4, 10, 6, 7, 2, 4, 8, 1, 10, 5 = 197

>>877063
>That seemingly empty suit of armor laying on the bed has propped itself up on one elbow and is saying something in Skytongue, with a voice like the sound of dry autumn leaves burning and inflection suggestive of mild surprise.
Discovering she is not alone, Lute's demeanor changes. Turning away from her hand mirror towards the being stirring from rest, she offers an earnest and anticipary smile, apparently completely at ease.

I'll buy a vowel dot of language to understand. (Do I need to ask Efficient Secretary Technique to repeat what the armor just said, as I would understand it now, but I didn't before)?.

Attempting a social performance / manipulation to answer the armor's concerns or explain Lute's presence where she was not expected.

I also feel like I should get Defense of Shining Joy up, just in case.

>>877158
>Speaking of structural damage... while the congealed-cloudstuff walls still appear mostly opaque under Essence sight, flows of energy beneath the surface are plainly visible, and becoming increasingly unsettled. Embri does not have enough Occult skill to know for sure what this means, but has more than enough Lore and (Intelligence + Craft (Earth)) to recognize it as resembling the lead-up to an earthquake.
Is this phenomenon visible in the bedroom? Lute's got a lot of Lore+Int+Craft(Air) dice.
>>
No. 877611 ID: 5c3123

>>877470
>How many are accustomed to the ship and sleeping in it right now?
None of them. Airship bunks significantly compromise comfort in the name of minimizing mass, so dockside beds are universally preferred when available. Might be two or three aboard to handle overnight maintenance, refueling, and security, but they'd be wide awake and at least a little bit suspicious of unscheduled visitors.
>Ideally, she needs to recruit seven sailors, so using her brainwashing gown while they're sleeping would work.
Five minutes each, plus sneaking around without waking them up... compromising the whole crew that way would take at least an hour or two. Might not have that kind of time; the magical instability inside the walls looks like it's building toward a climax within the next few minutes.
>>877498
>buy first dot of Linguistics for 3 xp
Lute Silhouette's XP is now spent up through this post: >>866426 and she knows Rivertongue.
>buy second dot of Linguistics for 1 xp
Lute Silhouette's XP is now spent up through this post: >>866232 and she knows Skytongue.

It turns out that the suit of armor is a sort of mechanical prosthesis worn by a ghost, optimized to avoid the strain of materializing ephemera by direct exertion of Essence. Movable articulation of the facial features, fingers, genitals, and even toes is disconcertingly elaborate. The suit is currently occupied by the higher soul of Lich Queen Astius's favorite grandson, Melchior, (NSFW) https://yuni.deviantart.com/art/Grave-of-the-Light-704820408 who ascended to the role of prince-consort upon his demise (they were no longer blood relatives at that point, at least according to local law, since ghosts don't even have blood in the traditional sense), and whose formal duties consist almost entirely of looking pretty in the occasional public ceremony and keeping her thoroughly entertained in bed. He seems to be a reasonably canny politician, at least enough so to fend off various rivals for the queen's affections over most of the past two or three sixty-year cycles.
>Is this phenomenon visible in the bedroom?
Lute Silhouette Speculation in Comet's Reflection is neither attuned to the manse, nor equipped with an artifact that provides essence sight (at least not one she's willing or able to use for such at the moment), nor does she have a charm such as Telltale Symphony active. By the time uncontrolled essence venting is evident to the naked eye, it will be too late.

The prince-consort, however, is attuned to the manse, and describes relevant sensations clearly enough for Lute Silhouette to understand and begin to address the underlying problems.
>rolled 7, 6, 10, 4, 7, 8, 10, 10, 5, 10, 9, 2, 8,
With a one-die stunt for damage control, that's thirteen successes, beating the difficulty by ten. Two more successes thanks to the lens-arm's high precision essence-manipulation capabilities, offset by penalties for working blind, and distraction from constantly keeping that Shard delicately balanced on the periphery of her awareness, neither avoiding nor taking conscious notice of it. Under the circumstances, I'm going to say that means you manage to do all necessary stabilization from within the bedroom, without even calling attention to yourself, just using the arm to knock on walls like the Fonz. You also get to decide where in the manse the new essence vents flare up, and to some extent what form they take. Has to stay consistent with the properties of raw void-essence, though.

Unless somebody causes further damage, imminent explosion (as referred to in the OP) has been canceled. That's just a patch job, though. Full repairs will require something like a hundred man-years of work, mostly from people with Craft (Air) at 3 dots, 4 for supervisors. Some other Craft skills will be relevant as well. Somebody with Resources 4 or equivalent could pay for the damages without losing a dot in the appropriate background, but it would put a noticeable dent in their budget. Split the project into 15 stages, about 20,000 man-hours of work each, any given stage requires a 3-dot purchase worth of materials and labor. Anyone with Resources 4 can afford a number of such purchases per season equal to the sum of the Bureaucracy of whoever does their bookkeeping, and the Temperance of whoever has the last word on denying frivolous or wasteful purchases, so someone with very poor personal finance skills might be tapped out for two or three years by such a project, maybe more if other expensive problems came up in the meantime. Major cost-of-living cuts (with potential social and even medical consequences) or 'on-screen' profit from adventures can help close the gap when money is tight, and really significant treasures - the equivalent of a purchase at least one dot above your current Resources rating - can actually increase the Resources background, if properly invested. Likewise, a 3-dot purchase is possible for Resources 3, but then reduces it to 2, due to selling off revenue-generating assets, income offset by debts, or something like that. A one-dot artifact might sell for the equivalent of a 3-dot Resources purchase, but that's a very rough guideline. Converting artifacts to cash (or vice-versa) is meant to be an adventure hook rather than downtime activity. It's usually less like trying to get a better deal at Honest Ed's Used Cars, more like trying come up with a bribe that'll convince Max Rockatansky to walk away.

Only people on site with readily accessible Resources 4+ are Bridget, the Lich-Queen Astius, and the Sandpoint Devil. The former two are likely to insist, as a matter of justice, that those parties responsible for the actual damage provide some sort of restitution, while the latter is a little bit like this fella http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20050411 but has bat wings, knows how to run an airship, and is generally much smarter than he looks. Only speaks Old Realm, though, southwestern rakshastan dialect.

Lute Silhouette could easily requisition assets of that magnitude from Madelrada, but even with Destiny-Knitting Entanglement, the logistics may be a non-trivial problem. It takes a lot of 'coincidences' to haul an ordinary brick all the way out of Hell, across the Endless Desert, and then a mile up into the sky, and you'll be wanting far more than just one brick. Probably need a sorcerer involved to finish such a job in any sort of hurry, or at least a few competent cultists and stuff for thaumaturgical summoning.

Embri and Malice's respective patrons certainly have that kind of money, as do many members of Ledaal Ji's extended family, but none of them are inclined to extend lines of credit without some assurance that their strategic interests will somehow be advanced by doing so.
>>
No. 877686 ID: 20ea96

rolled 2, 7, 5, 2, 2, 5, 5, 6, 3, 6 = 43

>>877472
>whether there's a doctor in the house
"Indeed, I am one. Lead the way."

>leaf note
Ah, someone must have been very desperate to get this message to someone else. Truly a pity then, that (with a surreptitious flick of the wrist) the leaf seems to accidentally come dislodged from its hiding place. How unfortunate that a breeze happened to blow by, sweeping it gracefully into Ledaal Ji's pocket and coolly drying the wet blood in the process, such that it won't be ruined or smeared. How annoying that this random, irrelevant doctor is now running off to some emergency with the note in his pocket.

>Alcaeus
As they proceed, Ledaal Ji will covertly scan the note for exploitable information, and quietly share what he's learned so far with Alcaeus, including that the queen is currently involved in some massive ritual and thus our timeframe to loot and escape will fall to sometime within the hour. The queen of this place is most certainly someone Not-To-Be-Trifled-With. Making good use of competing antagonistic factions will greatly increase our own chances to survive and profit.
>>

rolled 1, 6, 1, 4, 7, 9, 3, 5, 4, 4 = 44

>I'm going to say that means you manage to do all necessary stabilization from within the bedroom, without even calling attention to yourself, just using the arm to knock on walls like the Fonz.
Lute raps out a quick series of knocks (dah-di-di-dah-di, di-dit) and then offers the prince consort a thumbs up.

>You also get to decide where in the manse the new essence vents flare up, and to some extent what form they take. Has to stay consistent with the properties of raw void-essence, though.
I'm going to assume putting the essence vents indoors is a bad idea. And that putting them in the ritual chamber an excessively bad idea.

Let's say... smokestacks. But when examined closely, what one might mistake for smoke is actually a collection of strangely muted bubbles. Capturing one and gazing inside it, you are treated to a disturbing vision pertaining to the subject of a positive intimacy. Popping one is unhealthy. Left to their own devices, they drift in the sky, slowly calcifying in the sunlight, until they fall to earth as stone marbles.

>long term repairs
One would think a security conscious ruler might raise some objections sub-contracting repairs to the forces of hell, or to a fae. Planning is probably premature, until such time as ownership of the manse has changed, or accommodations some kind have been arranged.

>>877686
>Truly a pity then, that (with a surreptitious flick of the wrist) the leaf seems to accidentally come dislodged from its hiding place. How unfortunate that a breeze happened to blow by, sweeping it gracefully into Ledaal Ji's pocket and coolly drying the wet blood in the process, such that it won't be ruined or smeared. How annoying that this random, irrelevant doctor is now running off to some emergency with the note in his pocket.
I'd like to use Destiny-Knitting Entanglement to make sure that note eventually makes it's way to Lute. The chain of coincidences has already begun!
>>
No. 877708 ID: 094652

rolled 1, 6, 6, 9, 2, 7, 9, 7, 9, 5 = 61

Well.

The castle isn't rumbling, so Embri might have anywhere between a minute and an hour. Right now, convincing a higher-ranked handler to order the workers for her is the main priority. She can always fall off the pier and fly herself to safety.

So Embri is going to strike conversation with the thoroughly eviscerated Lt. Malroth and more subtly with his fluffy batty friend. Attempt to find a way to convince them they want to do a patrol on the ship, using a literal skeleton crew along with the few sailors still nearby. Embri can negotiate with the bat lady once they're safely out of range of the detonation.

Embri tries to subtly steer the conversation towards the crashed second ship, which might have something loose and would need engineers to fix or it could lose its property values. After the major breach in protocol that Lt. Malroth intentionally disobeyed, it might help alleviate his upcoming punishment (and get some fresh air to dull the pain from his crippling wounds) if he were away from the castle on dutiful maintenance business, at least long enough for the mistress to stop being angry and write up a joke on Lt. Malroth's behavior and injuries.

As for the bat lady, Embri will just talk girly and discuss fashion trends.
>>
No. 877714 ID: 2dfd8a

rolled 3, 4, 6, 9, 8, 5, 4, 4, 6, 3 = 52

Bridget, satisfied that the violence had come to a close and everyone was safely treated, had set about the task of fixing the damages to the manse; that is, she was going to, until it let out a final shudder, hiss, and pop, before calmly settling into its cracks and scrapes. Obviously the construction was still compromised, given the gaping hole the airship parked itself in, but things seemed to be calm for now; so then, seeing as no one here seemed to have the authority to make amends for trespassing, she would seek out whoever could. Her hulking form is betrayed by gentle footsteps, neatly sweeping the skeletal remains into small cairns as she passes by; her blazing aura should ensure someone of note responds to her presence as she tries to find whoever is responsible here.

Rolling (int+investigation) I assume, +5 misc dice.
>>
No. 877836 ID: 5c3123

>>877686
>quietly share what he's learned so far with Alcaeus
Let's call that Manipulation + (lower of Larceny or Socialize) for hiding a discussion of criminal activity in jargon and metaphor.
>rolled 2, 7
No dots in Larceny, no relevant stunt, but one success anyway. The idea of a volatile situation with competing factions and a short timetable has been conveyed, but presence of literal incendiary devices and other key tactical details might be less clear. Want to covertly pass Alcaeus the note, so he can look it over himself, or spend 1 WP to hang on to it and try to think up other ways to explain?

>"Indeed, I am one. Lead the way."
The patient, one Lt. Malroth, is at a small and underequipped infirmary near the airship dock. Amputated limbs (consistent with an interrupted erymanthus attack) have been adequately bandaged with spider silk, so risk of death by blood loss at this point is minimal, but no effort was made at disinfection. Facial wounds do not appear to have been inflicted with claws or teeth; looks more like some sort of miscast spell backlash, or maybe an energy weapon. Between his own skills, and the contents of his Resplendent Satchel of Healing, Ledaal Ji is perfectly capable of fixing all that. Even regrowing those limbs, once a suitable hearthstone is obtained.

However, the patient seems stable for the moment, and the issue of payment has yet to be addressed.

>>877692
>I'm going to assume putting the essence vents indoors is a bad idea.
Putting them somewhere people or valuable items might accidentally bump into is a bad idea, but there's no particular reason the focal point of the venting needs to be on the outside. Think of it like a topological defect in a crystal, or a turbulent vortex in a closed system of fluid with otherwise laminar flow: it's existence somewhere within the boundaries is unavoidable given certain outside factors (the fact that this 5-dot demesne now only has four dots worth of manse capping it), but, like a coin buried in a lump of dough, you can massage the whole system in such a way that the hard, dangerous focal point of the anomaly moves around to somewhere more convenient.
>And that putting them in the ritual chamber an excessively bad idea.
This is likely true.
>Let's say... smokestacks. But when examined closely, what one might mistake for smoke is actually a collection of strangely muted bubbles. Capturing one and gazing inside it, you are treated to a disturbing vision pertaining to the subject of a positive intimacy. Popping one is unhealthy.
This could work.
>Left to their own devices, they drift in the sky, slowly calcifying in the sunlight, until they fall to earth as stone marbles.
Neither essence vents in general nor Void essence in particular are typically associated with new solid objects being created, however. More often the reverse.

>>877708
>Embri is going to strike conversation with the thoroughly eviscerated Lt. Malroth
"Dismembered" might be a better word. His viscera are mostly still in place.
>Attempt to find a way to convince them they want to do a patrol on the ship,
Malroth is currently on medical leave, lacks the authority to alter the patrol schedule even when he's on duty, and as for casual small talk, is angling to spend the next few hours or days in an opium-induced stupor just as soon as he's finished answering the doctor's questions. Might have more luck talking to some higher-ranking officer. However, discussing serious matters in front of all the troops would be mass social combat, so you might be at a disadvantage without your own retinue of followers - hijacked skeletons would be as useless for that purpose as effete courtiers against a cavalry charge.
>>877714
>seeing as no one here seemed to have the authority to make amends for trespassing, she would seek out whoever could.
>rolled 3, 4, 6, 9, 8, 5, 4
Perception plus Socialize plus a stunt off the anima banner, letting them come to you... two successes. Do you want to talk to the exchequer immediately, or the lich-queen herself in about half an hour?
>>
No. 877962 ID: f3e670

>>877836
>Do you want to talk to the exchequer immediately?
Yeah, let’s do it. I’m not sure about the general area and disposition of the approaching party, so I’ll wait on a little flavor text to jump off of. Bridget is generally in a proud and commanding stance, but she is obviously unwilling to inflict violence in most circumstances. The image that comes to mind is a large, gnarled oak- somewhat imposing, looming even, but rarely threatening in its own right.
>>
No. 877987 ID: 094652

Embri does not realize the castle is stabilized.

With scant few minutes remaining, and all strategies to get the airship manned shot down, Embri decides there's one final course of action: to retreat, hunker down, and perform further subterfuge at another potential treasure node; the crashed airship. She'll figure out where it is and then put her plan in action:

Rather than jump off completely and risk pursuit by elite guards with flight superpowers, Embri is going to use up her skeletons by making them the center of attention. Embri gathers her minions, ordering them to surround her and standby until she gets the signal prepped, and looks busy at something that looks like a control panel next to the open air, mumbling about the complexity of the devices she needs to install on behalf of the mistress, when one of her skeletons suddenly raises its weapon and (intentionally) narrowly misses Embri. Bonus points if she can get some fake blood on the weapon. Embri goes limp and falls, the blue skeletons march over to the airship and attempt to fly it out, effectively scuttling it if nobody is paying attention. Most likely, the other dockworkers will witness the perceived betrayal of the handler by the skeletons and take them out quickly, but will also assume Embri was killed.

Embri was busy preparing her windblade, and proceeds to fly at low altitude towards the crashed, smaller airship. She can scavenge the area for parts, listen in on the loose security, or wait for the castle to explode and take out the security team while they're utterly distracted.

Anything that doesn't involve staying in an exploding castle.
>>
No. 878182 ID: 20ea96

rolled 5, 9, 9, 5, 4, 2, 9, 6, 9, 3 = 61

>>877836
>Manipulation + (lower of Larceny or Socialize) for hiding a discussion of criminal activity in jargon and metaphor.
>No dots in Larceny, no relevant stunt
Uh, I was intending to just say it quietly while we were moving, given the empty labyrinthine halls and no accompaniment. I didn't realize it would be a whole scene. I would have stunted had I known that. Here I was, stunting the retrieval of the leaf, only to have that not be a roll at all, while passing my companion a message actually needed a stunt. Seems I can never catch a break from screwing myself over, huh? Would have preferred not being punished for failing to do something I could have easily done, had I known I was supposed to do it.

Fine, what's done is done. After committing the contents of the note to memory, Ledaal Ji will walk side-by-side with Alcaeus. The leaf, casually falling from his pocket, will swirl in a sudden, unexpected breeze, coincidentally landing right into Alcaeus's satchel, for him to discover (having been secretively informed it is there). Ledaal Ji will let Alcaeus keep it for review, no need to return it. Just dispose of it when he's done with it.
>>
No. 878560 ID: 5c3123

>>877987
>Embri does not realize the castle is stabilized.
Until she looks at it through the Dragonfly's Ranging Eye again and notices that the energy flows seem to be settling down, rather than continuing to escalate their thrashing.
>>878182
>needed a stunt
Only time you need to stunt an action is when it wouldn't otherwise be possible.
>Seems I can never catch a break from screwing myself over,
Such a degree of self-criticism seems excessive for almost any situation, much less a crunch-heavy game system with which you have so little prior experience.

If you're in a mood to learn from mistakes, though, I would say neglect of the dramatic editing option - by all the players, not just you - is a more frequent and serious oversight than failure to stunt at all.

>empty labyrinthine halls and no accompaniment
No amount of mundane stealth is sufficient to conceal a person's presence from the senses of a manse which they stand within, as many a heroic mortal has discovered (to their sometimes lethal dismay) in the course of attempting to burgle a Dynastic household. Not all manses have the capacity to comprehend, retain, or share that information, but in such a powerful manse, whose design you came here to study (and thus, presumably, do not already fully understand), "No one else is in the room, therefore we are not being watched" is a dangerous assumption.
> Just dispose of it when he's done with it.
He suggests with a smile, after looking it over, that he's got a clever idea for how to pursue a strategic advantage by doing so. Must be dreadfully boring to live in the same house for centuries, speculates the parrotman. People come and go, and you can't possibly remember them all, particularly not the sort of people who make their whole living by being forgettable. http://www.viruscomix.com/page529.html

>>877692
> that note eventually makes it's way to Lute.
An envelope slides through a crack under the bedroom door, ramps off a doorstop, through the air and into Lute Silhouette's free hand. Written on the inner surfaces of the envelope:
>"My beloved queen,
>The enclosed was found at an improvised dead-drop in the library - after the official search was already complete. It can be concluded that guards have been compromised by at least one infiltrating faction. I am uncertain who can be trusted, excepting only your majesty herself.
>Your loyal servant,
>Alcaeus"
It contains Embri's note. >>876570

>>877962
A new scene, then. Everybody who wants to claim innocence of all wrongdoing and/or demand payment for services rendered, or at least persuade some courtiers to support such claims before the Lich-Queen herself becomes personally involved, is directed to meet in a suitably grand hall. Anyone involved, gimme a Wits + Awareness roll for Join Debate. Stunts on that roll should probably involve some sort of formal introduction.
>>
No. 878591 ID: 094652

>>878560
Well, daring deception IS the core of Embri's class, buuut...
>Mediocre Wits+Awareness stats
>Possesses the mantle in her hammerspace, easy to detect by magical means
>Knocked out a handler and left him in a dangerous situation
>Attempted arson of a library so sacred that enemies of the owner defended it
>Injured, -1 to most skill checks
>Stole undead guards
>Made undead guard punch a wall
>Left an orgy of evidence of all of the above
Naaah.

Embri will focus on either (A) stealing the airship at the docks, or (B) investigating the crashed airship in the woods.
>>
No. 878609 ID: 3dc0e0

rolled 1, 4, 8, 4, 4 = 21

>>878560
Bridget enters the grand hall, silent. She remains so until addressed, stepping forward to proclaim her demands:

"By the light of the Unconquered Sun, I have been named the one who Bridges the Sun and Moon. By the blood of my ancestors, I have been named the one who enforces our borders. You all, who would deign themselves grander than Luna, who moves her chariot to respect our lands, owe a debt of 3 sheep, and a ceremony within my residence. Any number of representatives may be delegated to undertake such a task, as long as at least one is present for the duration."

I think I have 1 wits and 1 awareness- actions using my voice are penalized though. I'll jut go ahead and roll 5d10.
>>
No. 878621 ID: 5c3123

>>878591
Option A is infeasible with current assets. The smaller, more advanced, less structurally intact airship is in the process of being repaired by a tiger-sized spider named Jo. Planning to approach through the hallways as a maid and offer ice-enhanced skeletons as laborers, or deploy the windblade and circle around to scope out the crash site from outside, or what?

Windblade has another 36 hours of flight time left before it's next scheduled maintenance, and zooms around up to 70mph at a cost of 10 motes per hour of flight. Returning to base after this mission's done should take about 10-15 hours of flight time, mostly depending on the weather and whether you need to shake pursuit. If you don't do that maintenance, it's good for another 70 hours of flight with increasing internal wear-and-tear but no obvious performance problems. After that, you'll start losing speed, the controls will get wobbly, and it'll be making anguished little beeping noises. If you try to muscle through that for another three days to a week of full-time flying, averaging maybe 25 mph (meaning ordinary airships, birds, or galloping horses could usefully pursue you), eventually the windblade will crap out completely. Getting it running again at that point would likely require spare parts which Embri doesn't have available. Fortunately, she does have supplies for basic maintenance, and the Omnitool Implant makes it possible to do that maintenance in an hour or two, with any dry tent or cave-mouth standing in for a workshop.
>>

rolled 9, 3, 3, 7, 1, 1, 6, 4, 4, 10 = 48

>>878560
A women walks towards the assemblage, trailed by the prince consort. Their entrance causes a minor stir among the more observant of the guard- they didn't pass through one of the main entrances, and there are no known secret passages in the direction they're walking from. Just a mirror.

With a slightly manic smile, she announces herself, "I am Lute Silhouette Speculation in Comet's Reflection and I'm here to help."

Seems the place to be, as a social operator. Maybe play the role as a mediator, helping some of the other 'guests' make their claims, and gain assets or advantages in return? Negotiate a potential repair contract between one of the parties capable and those who hold the manse? Could also try to take credit / claim payment for stopping the castle from exploding, but doing it as quickly and unnoticed as she did might make that difficult. (Could also possibly take credit for dissuading the thief's arson, although that would mean outing said thief, and she's still potentially useful and apparently willing to cooperate).

I'd also like to have activated Defense in Shining Joy before my entrance, just in case negotiations sour, or the Lich Queen (or the demon) aren't in a talking mood when they arrive.

>new scene, then
Clicking the left claw to toggle out of hazardous scrying before the Lich Queen can reestablish UMI defenses, then.
>>
No. 878756 ID: 094652

rolled 1, 9, 3, 2, 3, 10, 7, 4, 3, 5 = 47

Embri will be compromised in a matter of hours. Once they find the guard stuffed in the closet, he could easily notify everyone to be on the lookout for impostor maids and handlers. Embri has analyzed that any other disguises are significantly harder to maintain, so she'll be out of masks. She can't slip into shadows as well as her current rival, who will attempt to locate and steal the mantle back. So, it's time to go. Embri will fake her death and spy on the crashed airship from the trees. She'll wear armor to prevent further damage and just scan the ship from a medium distance midway on a bushy tree.

But since she's got time, she'll take a good look at the first airship before she bails. There might be some technology she can copy. Or whatever.

On the plus side, since she didn't directly kill anyone in the castle, negotiations to ransom the expensive Mantle of Soot back should go smoothly.
>>
No. 879294 ID: 2007b6

Will Ledaal Ji and Malice be involving themselves in the discussion of finances before the queen arrives, or doing something else?

>>878724
>Clicking the left claw to toggle out of hazardous scrying
Thinking about the events afterward would normally require paying WP to resist Atrocity Without Witness, but that lingering repressive shame is an Illusion effect which the mirror can easily cure.

The Shard Fallen now contains (among many other records) a video of Queen Astius with all her nasty basilisk-gaze charms active, which could be replayed by anyone who knows how to work the scorpion-mirror's controls.

>>878756
>Embri will fake her death
By longstanding custom in the lich-queen's domain, low-ranking employees (such as maids) should remove their uniforms before committing suicide. Embri requisitions a lantern, to make sure that anyone outside will be able to see her, and performs a whirling striptease before backflipping off the end of the airship dock's pier, disappearing into the moonless night.

Ten seconds later and a quarter-mile closer to the ground, she steps onto her windblade and glides safely to a halt, safely concealed inside a cloud. It'll take two minutes to put on armor, half a minute to fly back up to the castle.
>spy on the crashed airship from the trees
There are very few trees more than a mile above the ground, and maintaining stealth at all will be tricky. See, Embri's only got 7 motes of personal essence free. If she spends at least four but no more than seven motes of peripheral essence, the resulting glow will make stealth more difficult (though not impossible, with good cover), and overwhelm the Integrated Artifact Transmogrifier, so anyone who does get a good look at her will almost certainly recognize her as an Alchemical Exalt. If she spends 8 or more peripheral essence, stealth at typical combat ranges is impossible even with hard cover, though she might escape meaningful notice from far enough away. The 12+ level would make her anima banner visible from miles off, but also activate her memory-warping anima power, making strategic stealth far easier.

Attuning the armor requires 8 committed motes, and powering the windblade costs 10 motes per hour. So, options to choose between:
A) Avoid significant anima flare by spending all 7 personal + 3 peripheral on powering the windblade, recover that with stunts, and then commit mostly personal motes to the armor. Stealth maintained, but very little margin for error, and all personal motes being committed means no more charm use without a light show. Needs two stunted actions inside a cloud, one of which could be retrieval and activation of the windblade, but the other needs to come before the armor is retrieved.
B) Similar plan, but retrieve and power up the windblade before jumping, recovering the motes with easier stunts involving the dance and 'tragic' departure. Having a personal magitech vehicle out and ready for use would cast doubt on the legitimacy of the apparent suicide, though, so you'd need to roll for a social attack (fortunately the dance itself could be used as such), possibly spending more motes on mood-setting pheromones or your anima power to really be sure.
C) Forget conventional stealth. Attune the armor and power the windblade entirely with peripheral motes, flare iconic down inside the cloud bank, fly back up, activate Appearance augmentations (also with peripheral motes) until you're overwhelmingly prettier than anyone else on site, seize command of the wrecked airship and get it moving again while everybody else is at the budget meeting. Omnitool plus Craft augmentation means Embri might well be a better engineer than whoever's currently doing repairs.
>>
No. 879313 ID: 3abd97

>a video of Queen Astius with all her nasty basilisk-gaze charms active
I'm surprised the UMIs are recordable, that's interesting!

I wonder if and when someone sees those recordings if Astius would still be the person rolling for successes, and if she would still be able to apply excellencies or supplemental charms.

>Attuning the armor requires 8 committed motes
Why wouldn't Embri's armor already be attuned? Can attunement not be maintained when it's unequipped?
>>
No. 879318 ID: 20ea96

rolled 2, 8, 2, 10, 10, 7, 2, 4, 4, 8 = 57

>>878560
>Will Ledaal Ji and Malice be involving themselves in the discussion of finances?
I don't recall ever meeting anyone by this name, but certainly, Ledaal Ji is going to extract payment for any and all healing services rendered. He will, in fact, request payment for all non-emergency operations up front, before said services are rendered, and quoting mildly extortionate prices, taking advantage of a detected element of timely desperation and backed up by a guarantee of success (once the patient(s) has been examined and such claims can be made freely and truthfully).

>claim innocence of all wrongdoing and/or demand payment for services rendered, or at least persuade some courtiers to support such claims before the Lich-Queen herself becomes personally involved, is directed to meet in a suitably grand hall
Ledaal Ji will then turn right around and use his medical work here as an alibi. Introducing himself as one "Doctor Xu", he will explain that he was far from the scene, busy with his own personal research before being called over to repair the injuries of these strangers, and that the library will vouch for his presence. Naturally, he wasn't going to turn down a little extra funding for his thauma-architectural soul studies. That being said, he has reason to believe some of his research notes may have gone missing recently. If any of the courtiers happened to have perhaps seen any notes on the subject around, he would be profoundly grateful not to have to bother the lich-queen with such trivial matters. Naturally, a few shiny (and recently-earned) tokens of appreciation may find their way into the pockets of those Ledaal Ji perceives to be more favorable to his... plight. A little diplomatic gratitude goes a long way.
>>
No. 879321 ID: 2007b6

>>879313
>I wonder if and when someone sees those recordings if Astius would still be the person rolling for successes, and if she would still be able to apply excellencies or supplemental charms.
She applied supplemental charms and rolled the dice once, then that attack applies to the defenses of all witnesses, realtime or otherwise.
>Why wouldn't Embri's armor already be attuned? Can attunement not be maintained when it's unequipped?
For most artifacts, attunement takes 20 minutes, and lapses after a day out of contact. There are various exceptions: tattoos, grafts, and sapient hellforged artifacts can't be voluntarily deattuned, warstriders can be attuned and released about as quickly as someone can physically climb in and out of the cockpit, a Cup of Flowing Blood can have multiple attuned users at once. The Technomorphic Integration Engine is one of those exceptions: while an artifact is stored, Embri only needs to keep 1 mote committed to storing it, instead of however many would be required for powering it, and then she can re-attune it instantly (as part of the same action as retrieving it from storage) rather than over the course of a scene. Normally that's a good deal, since her mote pools are so limited, and the armor isn't particularly stealthy anyway.
>>
No. 880188 ID: 2007b6

>>879318
>rolled 2, 8, 2, 10, 10, 7
Wits 2 + Awareness 1 + a 2-die stunt enhanced to three by Motivation relevance. Ledaal Ji sets the reaction count for this scene of social combat with six successes, and acts on tick 0.
>>878724
>rolled 9, 3, 3, 7, 1, 1, 6, 4
Lute Silhouette rolls two successes, and will act on tick 4.
>>878609
>rolled 1, 4, 8, 4, 4
Bridges The Sun And Moon rolls one success, and will act on tick 5.

The NPC exchequer rolled three successes, and so will act on tick 3, backed up by two dozen assorted clerks, courtiers, and guards - a magnitude 2 social unit. Having such a group means that the tactics of debate involve matters of official policy, procedure, and decorum at least as much as personal preferences. Rather than willpower, the exchequer may spend loyalty to resist successful social attacks on the group, and running out of it means losing the group's support.

A beauteous wasp-demon is present, but not visibly engaged with the discussion. Chiropteran nominally in command of that crashed airship is either somewhere else, or being supernaturally stealthy. The Lich-Queen Astius is expected to wrap up her other business and arrive somewhere around tick 28; might be be wise to have some things settled here before she gets involved.

So, "Doctor Xu" has walked in like he owns the place and seized the initiative to such an extent that he can count on three minutes of speaking before anyone else gets their wits together enough for a substantial interruption or counterpoint. What's his first action?

Simplest option would be demanding the money (how much money exactly? >>/questdis/122464 ) as a single social attack. Could ask for something else at the same time, as a flurry, or take time to lay groundwork with a monologue (adding bonus dice, like aiming in physical combat), or both. Downside to a more committed attack is, as ever, lack of reserves for defense. In a rhetorical context, that means MDV penalties. Parrying is harder when someone can use your own words against you, and dodging is harder when you're engaged in the conversation deeply enough to contribute to it.
>>
No. 880215 ID: 094652

After much consideration... Plan B.
>>
No. 880432 ID: 2007b6

>>880215
Embri descends through a hole in the more natural, non-solidified clouds underneath the sky castle, and moments later finds herself flying above a seaside town.

Nearest part of the ocean is supposed to be a couple thousand miles away to the west, and there's no other body of water significantly closer than that which is wide enough to prevent her from seeing the far shore at this altitude. Landmarks on the horizon are all wrong, too, and it's a bright, mostly clear day, whereas above the clouds it was the middle of a moonless night and densely overcast.
>>
No. 880463 ID: 094652

rolled 6, 3, 9, 10, 7, 5, 8, 3, 6, 2 = 59

Embri's first thought is to take a look around. She contemplates the probability that she was caputred by the lich-queen and hypnotized to lower her mental defenses. There's little she can do if she is in the lich-queen's thrall, but hey, live in the moment.

Embri opts to scout the area in a wide berth, favoring distance in the event that the hypothetical-hypno-enchantment has a limited range and manipulation. Then she'll land on the outskirts of the town, apply a suitable disguise, and gather intel on her way to the main market.

And find an inn. It's been a long night.
>>
No. 880925 ID: 20ea96

rolled 8, 10, 6, 4, 4, 1, 9, 6, 2, 7 = 57

>>880188
>demand the money
>>/questdis/122464
>a mercenary sorcerer earns around five jade talents per year
>preventing their senseless death might conceivably be worth more than twenty talents
Okay, pay me five jade talents and I'll restore the arm, patch up the wounds, and be on my way. A year's salary is very reasonable in exchange for life, limb, and whatever business you've all gotten yourselves injured in trying to accomplish. Unless you'd rather wait around for another, cheaper doctor to drop by, happy to take their pitiful wage just to get this fellow standing again, still in no shape to be jogging, let alone fighting. Hardly healing at all, in my opinion. But decide quickly. I have other things to do. Oh, and that'll be up front. Sorry Link, I can't give credit.

>exchequer
>>877472
>Sorcery archive is on strict lockdown at the moment due to a sabotage scare, nobody in or out without direct authorization from the queen
I've been extremely busy with my research recently regarding strengthening the castle, which I am supposed to be in the middle of right now. You know, we wouldn't be having these problems with broken walls and intruders and sabotage and whatnot if I was actually allowed to work in peace and solitude with the resources I need, like I originally requested. I visited the library earlier and was told the sorcery archive is on strict lockdown, even to me! I need access to that for my research! Want me to patch up this giant, literal security hole immediately? Fetch me someone with authority to accompany me to the archive so I can get what I need and get on with it. Then you can send the guards around and easily sweep up whatever petty troublemakers are still lingering, unable to escape. Honestly, I barely show my face around most of the year, hard at work, and this is the treatment I get. Tsk.
>>
No. 881059 ID: 5f3f48

>>880188
Oh, is the prince consort present or participating? I tried to stunt bringing him along in >>878724
>>
No. 881468 ID: 2007b6

>>880925
>rolled 8, 10, 6, 4, 4, 1, 9
>pay me
Charisma 2 + Presence 1 + aim 3 + stunt 3 (two-die plus Motivation) + 1 success from spending WP (recovered by stunt award) -2 multiple action penalty for a two-attack flurry => five successes. The exchequer's dodge MDV is 4, +2 from relative magnitude, +2 because unloading a big heap of cash on someone who you barely know in exchange for outlandish promises goes against Temperance, -1 because the proposed course of action is consistent with organizational policy, and -2 for relative Appearance.

Orders are given, and heaps of jade are brought forth, nearly two hundred and fifty pounds in total. Of the five ledger talents presented, half of it (two talents and four bars) are made available for Doctor Xu's immediate use, the rest to be held in escrow until Malroth's promised full recovery.

The jade is mostly in the form of neatly stacked obols, with occasional shekels or larger pieces, but none of is is proper Earth aspected white, nor any other wholesome terrestrial element. It's black, and not the deep swirling indigo of Water aspected 'black' jade, no, a hard empty obsidian-black, iridescent as if coated in a sheen of oil but almost painfully dry to the touch, like compacted ashes. Alcaeus says it's from the Underworld, unsuitable as an ingredient in medical alchemy, but most likely equivalent to normal jade in nearly all other respects.

>let me in to the higher-security archives
Manipulation 2 + Presence 1 + various other bonuses, -3 multiple action penalty, the Exchequer's Dodge MDV is at an additional -1 for onslaught, but that's irrelevant as the proposed action is beyond the exchequer's authority. The captain of the guard ordered the lockdown, and it's clearly a security matter, so only he or the Queen herself can permit exceptions.

>>881059
Yes, that was a valid use of dramatic editing.

>>880463
>land on the outskirts of the town, apply a suitable disguise, and gather intel
Northern approach has a wall and gatehouse with guards, but an unattended bridge allows entry on foot from the south. There's a large sign on the bridge, written in Old Realm, with a palm-sized mirror hanging from it.
>find an inn
Nobody around here seems to speak Rivertongue with any useful degree of fluency. Embri nonetheless manages to locate six hospitality businesses: of the two largest, which seem likely to have rooms for rent, the quieter and cleaner one has a pair of deer carved from white wood over the door, while the other features a corroded iron statue of an ant-headed dragon (with notably broad shoulders and hips, relative to typical depictions of dragons) and a bulletin board inside with what seem to be bounty notices and similar job postings. Three others mainly serve alcohol (one has a substantial sideline in gambling, seafood, and combinations thereof), while the last is a brothel.

A brewery, tannery, glassworks, and lumber mill are also evident from far off, thanks to their distinctive noises and smells. Other notable buildings include a temple with an open-air courtyard in the center and stone-marked graves out back (outer walls are recent construction, though the seven standing stones and circular altar in the courtyard look far older), and ruined foundations of a massive lighthouse, quite possibly dating back to the First Age.

All over town, but particularly around the temple, preparations are underway for some sort of festival. Lots of butterfly imagery and fireworks. One of the locals tries to explain that they're celebrating both the butterfly-god's temple being completed, and night being the same length as day - but her tone implies that the latter is somehow just as infrequent.
>>
No. 881910 ID: 2007b6

So, Ledaal Ji has acted, then on tick 3 the Exchquer took a miscellaneous action to deliver the first half of the requested funds. Lute Silhouette is up next.

Malice the chiropteran GSP hasn't declared any actions in a while. Is strngy still playing?
>>
No. 881923 ID: 094652

rolled 2, 4, 9, 4, 10, 1, 10, 1, 9, 6 = 56

Embri's first order of business is to visit the market, buy some stuff on sale, and view the local festivities. Not for entertainment, but because you never know when an army of guardsmen will give you a pop quiz at spearpoint. Also, she's looking for potential targets to seduce, sedate, and steal everything from.

Embri chooses the white deer inn. She'll rent a room for a week and set up the area with her own personalized traps and trinkets.

Embri manages to fox-purr for the first time in weeks, as she swears she can almost feel that Mantle of Something from within her Hammerspace.
>>
No. 881932 ID: d22dc0

>>881910
I believe so, but from what I've gathered Strngy is also going through some life changes, and might need a little time before they can re-join in full force.
>>

rolled 1, 7, 3, 5, 6, 8, 2, 5, 2, 3, 2, 8 = 52

Ah, very good, the dynast's petition has already been accepted. A fine showing by the good doctor "Xu". Now... the Scourge, illuminated mountain that she is, seems less at home in this arena. Rather than speaking immediately, Lute bides her time, waiting to speak up and support the mountain at the right moment. After all, if Lute would guide the giant to her best self, supporting her is a good first step at gaining her ear.

Setting up a coordinated action with Bridges the Sun and Moon to support her claim. I think the correct order of operations is I roll for that now, Bridget stalls with guard or aim to sync with my next tick, then we both roll for social attacks?
>>

>>882475
Oh whups, Bridget is a Twilight, not a Scrouge. Was trying to play off her caste mark being visible but I must have confused her with Malice momentarily.
>>
No. 882732 ID: d22dc0

rolled 7, 1, 5, 9, 4, 3, 3, 7, 4, 1, 9, 10, 2, 6, 9 = 80

>>882475
Gentleness is not something one oft expects of Bridget, at least not from people who do not know her. Deftness of body and precision are also assumed to be lacking. Yet, as she steps forward, proclaiming her demands, the care in her steps is undeniable. The Exchequer, lazily waiting while other do as she bids, her clerks hastily moving scrolls and books rescued from the fire but not yet organized in their search for Jade, is momentarily distracted; a flash of light in the corner of her eye, some sort of impossible reflection glinting at just the right moment, gives Bridget the opportunity to act. It is hardly a moment before the table is transformed into a topographical map of the area, Bridget's home outlined for clarity.

"Here, across this stream; the clearing is suitable to disembark, and not a stones throw from where the ceremony shall be conducted. Presenting payment and submitting to our hospitality swiftly will allow the completion of our business together within two sunrises, and should you be judged sufficient, no further actions will be necessary."

Mechanically, Bridget aims until she and lute can Make a coordinated attack. She uses craftsman needs no tools and crafts the table into a map. Spending 7 from my peripheral pool; if I get a stunt reward, I'd like to regain motes. Gonna roll, uh, 15d10 sounds good?
>>
No. 884710 ID: 2007b6

Coordinated attack succeeds; Lute Silhouette Speculation and Bridges The Sun And Moon present their arguments together on tick 9.
>>882732
Charisma 5, ability capped by Socialize zero, another two dice from the stunt... only two successes.
"Setting aside any diplomatic repercussions of violating our longstanding policy against swearing fealty to ground-based powers," says the exchequer, "the treasury does not currently contain any living sheep. Even if it did, what exactly are you offering in return, apart from crude threats?"
Seems to be mostly of a rhetorical question, though the petition wasn't formally denied outright.

While Bridget thinks over how to respond, the exchequer turns toward Lute Silhouette's side of the discussion. What's she pushing for?

>>881923
During that week, the town is invaded, sacked, and burned to the ground by vicious little goblins.

Twice.

None of the townsfolk seem to note anything odd about the place being all charcoal and wailing widows one evening, then cheery festival preparation among tidy intact buildings the next morning, though with the language barrier it's hard to be completely sure.

Just after the second 'reset,' a young woman enters town, along the same path Embri used. She's clad in dirt and rags, dragging herself along the ground on a small, crude cart - though at a glance it's unclear exactly how, since her arms and legs alike seem to be paralyzed. Peeking through the Essence sight of the Dragonfly's Ranging Eye reveals that she's a supernatural being of significant power, and eavesdropping on her attempts at conversation with the locals reveals that she can speak Rivertongue.

>rolled 2, 4, 9, 4, 10, 1, 10, 1, 9
Embri does not suffer any random mutations during that first week. Does feel like the flow of time is somehow crooked, though.
>>
No. 884723 ID: 094652

rolled 2, 5, 2, 3, 1, 1, 9, 7, 1, 2 = 33

On the first week, Embri lured hordes of goblins into her deathtraps, but could not stem the vermintide. She managed to escape the town in time, only to wake up in the bed she rented at the white stag inn to a festival that should have been ashen confetti on the wind and broken laughter in the streets. On the second run, she focused her efforts on interrogating high-status civilians and bandit captains, but they knew little. Changing who lived and died that week did not prevent the reset, either.

For the third week, Embri was planning to fly far away and cause chaos to whatever simulation or enchantment she was under, but then she saw the rag girl 'walking' the streets in the middle of the festival, and her analysis was promising.

Embri decides on an uplifting tactic: she'll pretend to boisterously make a small bet with the next high-status citizen to berate the 'homeless diseased street rat' that she can turn the ragged girl into a beautiful dancer in time for the final dance of the festival. After leading the girl to her room (and a serious bath), Embri will wear her red gown, give the girl an affectionate touch, and after a few minutes of further bull^&*(, ask relatively politely what the @#$% is going on in this town.
>>

rolled 7, 1, 8, 10, 6, 1, 8, 6, 5, 3, 8, 6, 10, 3, 9, 7, 2, 9, 1, 5, 8, 9, 2, 3, 9, 7, 8, 6, 9, 9 = 185

Sorry for the delay, everyone!

>You all [...] owe a debt of 3 sheep, and a ceremony within my residence. Any number of representatives may be delegated to undertake such a task, as long as at least one is present for the duration.

>"Setting aside any diplomatic repercussions of violating our longstanding policy against swearing fealty to ground-based powers," says the exchequer, "the treasury does not currently contain any living sheep. Even if it did, what exactly are you offering in return, apart from crude threats?"

>While Bridget thinks over how to respond, the exchequer turns toward Lute Silhouette's side of the discussion. What's she pushing for?

Lute Silhouette Speculation answers the exchequer's unspoken invitation with preternatural grace and aplomb, seeking a favorable outcome where Bridget's demands have been satisfied, the manse's bureaucracy was happy to pay, and both sides would be inclined to lend the Sidereal their ears in the future.

"Surely if the treasure's ovine reserves are depleted, it can afford an equivalent toll paid in another currency? Or it can arrange for the purchase and delivery from a third party.

"And to peaceably normalize relations with a foreign power is a far cry from an oath of fealty.

"The castle can afford pay a diplomatic sinecure, and to participate in a ritual of hospitality, and would reap the benefits of peace, goodwill and expedient resolution in return."


Mechanically... rolling for a social attack, or maybe a flurry, since I made several points? I'll roll a bunch of dice in case. Perfection in Life is Instant, so it doesn't commit motes for the scene, right? Assuming that's right, I'd like to use that charm to enhance the attack.

>Embri's antics
Lute was most amused by the portion of the thief's week she glimpsed in the Shard Fallen, before arriving at the meeting.
>>
No. 889812 ID: 2007b6

>>885779
> Or it can arrange for the purchase and delivery from a third party.
There are three groups widely known to travel through the air on a commercial basis. The strongest, Lookshy, is overwhelmingly hostile to Astius due to deeply-held religious convictions - they consider her an "anathema," which all right-thinking people are obligated to resist or if possible destroy. Hiring them isn't a plausible option.

The Haslanti League is friendlier, and numerically superior, but their home territory is more than four thousand miles away and most of their airships can't go even half that far without stopping to refuel. One of the few that can is currently docked, but they're very cautious about situations where those as-yet-irreplaceable magitech engines might be stolen.

Third group is the hawkriders who live on the upper slopes of unscalable Mount Metagalapa. They're the closest, almost neighbors, and they work relatively cheap for almost anyone who can provide refined sugar, but they'd have to deliver sheep one at a time. Also, they've got a bit of a reputation for sacking whole towns and refusing even the most humble apologies when they feel they've been insulted.

Or there's the possibility of some sort of freelancer. An independent sorcerer willing and able to conjure an azure chariot and load it up with livestock, roving sky-pirate, something along those lines.

Which would you recommend, O wise vizier? Sheep need to be acquired, brought up to the castle for inspection (can't very well start diplomacy off on the right foot with a substandard gift), then delivered to Bridget's territory along with an emissary, and of course the emissary needs to be brought back safely afterward.

Last item on the agenda at the budget meeting is structural damage caused by that crash. If nobody steps up to take responsibility for the repair costs, the exchequer says he plans to direct guards to seize the vehicle in question and sell it to the Haslanti as scrap.
>>
No. 889843 ID: d10e29

rolled 3, 6, 4, 9, 8, 2, 9, 3, 5, 5, 10, 2, 10, 2, 9 = 87

>>889812
Bridget will offer her services in the repairs, contingent upon sastifatory results from the ritual. She refuses to work with any creatures of the fey; however, should they be willing to assure her they are not Fair Folk, nor working with them, she will be willing to offer any assistance she can until sheep can be procured. She asks that, should anyone be found guilty of harboring ties to the fair folk, they agree to allow those knowling involved to be executed in a swift and merciful fashion. Otherwise, she will remain on board and simply wait, to ensure that her requirements are being persued in good faith. She has little knowledge of manse repairs or the work required to do such things, but she is a capable craftsman and can assist with re-building structures, or other such things, given proper instruction.

As an assurance of the safe return of any emissaries, she will offer an an oath of a years service for every life lost due to her negligence, or proportional services for proportional injuries.
>>
No. 890431 ID: 4f1cbc

>Which would you recommend, O wise vizier?

>The Haslanti League is friendlier [...] One of the few that can is currently docked, but they're very cautious about situations where those as-yet-irreplaceable magitech engines might be stolen.
That seems an opportunity worth seizing. An attempt should be made to secure their assistance.

Should that fail, more high stakes diplomacy with the hawk riders could be attempted, or in lieu or an independent sorcerer, the crew of the scrap-to-be could be persuaded to fly missions for the manse if their vessel were left intact.
>>
No. 896068 ID: 2007b6

If Ledaal Ji is going to follow through on his promise to fully restore Lt. Malroth's eye and limbs, he'll need a 2-dot or higher Wood or Solar aspected hearthstone. Obvious options for how to make that happen:

*Find a manse generating such a hearthstone (through maps, or your own geomantic survey) and make friends with whoever owns it
*Find manse generating such a hearthstone, kill whoever owns it, do a detailed analysis of the internal essence flows to triangulate the hearthstone's location, then go fetch it
*Find a manse generating such a hearthstone, chase off or kill whoever owns it, damage the manse just enough that the existing hearthstone shatters (wherever it is, hopefully wasn't powering anything else important) and a new one forms inside the manse a month later
*Find an uncapped demesne and build a manse from scratch (expensive, probably takes years)
*Upgrade Bridget's existing 1-dot Wood manse by strengthening the underlying demesne (definitely takes years)
*Head back down the river to Nexus, throw a heap of money at the Guild to rent a suitable power supply (limited selection, but they can probably come up with something)

>>884723
>rolled 2, 5, 2, 3, 1, 1, 9, 7, 1, 2
That's... looking like probably a botch on the mutation resistance. Failure, at the very least. I'm open to suggestions for the specifics, but remember that IC you've got no control over it unless deliberately questing for power and succeeding on the resistance roll.

After three weeks, in addition to whatever horrid distortion of her body, mind, and/or soul just occurred, Embri has finally racked up enough training time to lock in 3 xp and mostly understand the local language. Want to go for that?

>>889843
Problem here is, a lot of the Craft(Fire) work which needs to be done for repairing this particular manse is also going to set off your allergy. Want to pick up some other Craft skill, probably (Wood) for scaffolding, ropes, and cranes, or (Earth) to square off the blocks of cloud-stuff? No training time for caste/favored, just spend the XP and you're up to speed.

As for charms, first of all, any Craft charm applies to every Craft ability, provided you've got enough dots to meet the prerequisite. Craftsman Needs No Tools, for example, lets you operate empty-handed as if you had a basic workshop or tool belt for any Craft you've got 4 or more dots in. It only provides a speed boost for new construction, though. Main Solar Craft charm for repairs is Crack-Mending Technique, which provides the same speed boost and lets you fuse things back together as if they'd never broken in the first place, thereby negating the need for glue or replacement parts - provided you can find all the pieces. That one requires 5 dots in the appropriate Craft skill, though.

>>890431
The Haslanti are having trouble with sky pirates intercepting shipments of food and supplies to Diamond Hearth - though not, oddly enough, the archaeological treasures being hauled back. Combination of Efficient Secretary Technique and background briefings from Madelrada allows Lute to easily recognize the efforts of an Adorjani cult - her allies as part of the larger Yozi Reclamation conspiracy, at least in theory. The mortal Haslanti authorities have no idea, and are offering a generous bounty for capturing any such pirates intact enough for interrogation.

Want to get involved? Arranging a decisive victory for either side would likely earn their gratitude, or keeping outcomes uncertain could provide an excellent training environment for various colleges of sidereal astrology and Kimbery charms, not to mention opportunities for heroic mortal self-actualization under stress.
>>
No. 896072 ID: 2007b6

Embri now has a 2-point positive mutation corresponding to an anatomically implausible hole where her kidneys ought to be, voluminous enough to stash either the Winterbreath Jar by itself, or the Essence Pulse Grenade and several other small items. She also has two points of purely mental negative mutations, including a delusion that the hole has always been there.
>>
No. 896083 ID: 094652

rolled 8, 1, 10, 4, 5, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9 = 55

Embri walks up to the girl in rags, and says something along the lines of "As you've no doubt seen, every week in this town is just the same. So I'm going to leave on a magical flying sword through a hole in the sky, would you like to come along?" Stated so that the mortals around the two think they're doing a comedy skit, but intuitive enough for the ragged girl to realize it's a way out.

Summary: Surprise social attack to convince the girl to come along with her and escape this place.
>>
No. 896086 ID: 2007b6

>Should I add a summary sentence to every character post so you can skip my convoluted roleplay and get a simple action?
One way or another, try to make it clear how the action you're taking engages with the mechanics. >>896083
For example, are you buying any successes on either the roll for surprise, or the social attack itself, using your Second Manipulation Augmentation? Should probably include enough dice to roll for those separately. Might also be able to influence the target's mood using Pheromone Regulation Systems. Limited supply of personal motes (currently only 7 uncommitted) means you risk outing yourself as a supernatural creature via anima flare, though up to three motes peripheral spent in a single scene is subtle enough someone could miss it if they weren't looking closely, so 10 motes all at once can still be reasonably sneaky with at least an hour to cool off afterward. (Notably, powering the windblade costs 10 motes per hour.)
>>
No. 896163 ID: 4f1cbc

>training environment for various colleges of sidereal astrology
Okay, I've looked over the rules for sidereal astrology, and I've got some questions.

Is this something Lute could theoretically do at this moment, or does she need to spend xp and/or training time before she could perform and sidereal astrology?

It seems like setting up destinies is meant to be a strategic action, not a tactical one? You set up what you're going to need to work with in advance when you have room to burn stuff on getting the prayer and effect rolls high enough. Assuming you have a job or mission to complete, you prepare for it by created the false identities you'll need, and stacking Providences on yourself to lower target values on things pertaining to your mission?

It looks like even passing a prayer roll at all would be rather unlikely without a relevant excellency? It's (Charisma(0) + Performance(6)) with difficulty 6. Can get a few more die with extended prayer, but a petition requires resource dots I don't have, and cosignatories seem like a resource you would have to accumulate on a strategic scale?

On the subject of excellencies, what's the difference between 1st / 2nd / 3rd again? Every time one comes up, the books seem to assume you know.

I don't understand which colleges I'm allowed to pull respendencies from. Do I have to buy astrological dots in those colleges in order to use them? I notice these colleges share names with the groups charms are split up into. Does having charms from a college mean I have dots in it for the purposes of sidereal astrology?
>>
No. 896164 ID: 6785a6

rolled 7, 10, 7, 3, 2, 9, 1, 10, 3, 10, 8, 8, 10, 2, 9 = 99

>>896068
>a lot of the Craft(Fire) work which needs to be done for repairing this particular manse is also going to set off your allergy

The mountain endures rain, sleet, and the footfalls of dragons, but does not frown or ask for respite. Likewise, Bridges the Sun and Moon fears no temporary weathering, no passing discomfort. She shys not away from the soulsteel simply because it displeases her. Many things in this world are displeasing, and yet be dealt with they must. And so, Bridges the Sun and Moon commits her considerable prowess to molding the castle back into shape. When she is not working, she will commit herself to the books that managed to escape the fire; Worldly knowledge can bring about a great many things, and Bridget is the type of person who intends to bring things about. Several of the scholars are profoundly interested in her, for one reason or another; those interested in her as a mirror to some of their abyssal colleges, or as both a relic of the past and a herald of the future, as well as a would be suitor who only seems spurred by her disinterest, all vie to assist her in her learning. As such, I'll be spending 16xp to boost my lore from 1 up to 5, (Caste favored so 1-2 needs 1xp, 2-3 needs 3xp, 3-4 needs 5 exp, and 4-5 needs 7xp) as well as purchasing the second lore excellency for 8xp. By my count that's all my xp so I'll be finished training before too long since only the charm takes a notable amount of time. The sun sees all, and remembers it well.

So, craft 4 + what, int 5? For relevant rolls? Probably at least a two dice disadvantage for the allergy. Lets say Bridget is willing to doll out a single use of craftsman needs no tools a day, plus some monkey leaping for convenience sake, as she doesn't totally trust everyone here yet. I'd say my description is a two dice stunt, so just in case I have trouble getting motes and willpower back lets grab 4 motes for my peripheral pool, and roll, uh, 15 dice for extra padding?
>>
No. 896165 ID: 2007b6

>>896163
>Is this something Lute could theoretically do at this moment, or does she need to spend xp and/or training time before she could perform and sidereal astrology?
The latter. She was secured by Madelrada's agents before the Fivescore Fellowship could give her even the most basic training, so she'll need to find some substitute for that training.
>It seems like setting up destinies is meant to be a strategic action, not a tactical one?
Very much so, yes, though it's at least possible to attempt a tactical timescale.
>It looks like even passing a prayer roll at all would be rather unlikely without a relevant excellency? It's (Charisma(0) + Performance(6)) with difficulty 6. Can get a few more die with extended prayer, but a petition requires resource dots I don't have,
When you need something you can't afford to pay cash for, consider alternatives such as: barter, beg, borrow, build from scratch, or steal.
>and cosignatories seem like a resource you would have to accumulate on a strategic scale?
Cosignatories can include a solar exalt and a lunar exalt. A solar is readily available, there might be a lunar nearby, and nothing says they need to actually understand what they're signing off on.
>On the subject of excellencies, what's the difference between 1st / 2nd / 3rd again?
First gives dice, second gives successes, third allows a reroll. There's also some fiddly (but important) details about how many dice or successes you can buy at once, which varies between exalt types.
>I don't understand which colleges I'm allowed to pull respendencies from. Do I have to buy astrological dots in those colleges in order to use them?
Yes. First you learn how a given constellation works, then you weave a resplendent destiny in it, then you use that as fuel for the powers.
>I notice these colleges share names with the groups charms are split up into. Does having charms from a college mean I have dots in it for the purposes of sidereal astrology?
No. The only actual mechanical link between colleges and skills is a discount on Propitious () Alignment, the sidereal equivalent of Infinite () Mastery.
>>
No. 896167 ID: 2007b6

>>896083
The girl hems and haws and bites her lip. "I'd really like to, but... I can't leave this place unless I knew for sure it was about to explode right behind me. It'd be unethical. I'll go with you once I've finished figuring out how to extirpate all the chaotic influences."

In mechanical terms, she was compelled to spend WP to resist because the influence went against her Motivation and/or Urge.
>>
No. 896170 ID: 4f1cbc

>>896165
Is there a penalty to failing prayer rolls besides wasted time and/or resources?

What's the xp cost on buying into astrological colleges, then?

If I'm getting time to do a training montage, First Kimbery Excellency is probably still my first priority. Would I have time to pick that up if I went and got involved in the sky pirate situation?

After that, astrology is probably competing with putting dots in socialize, starting learning martial arts, or Intolerable Burning Truths -> All Things Betray.
>>
No. 896184 ID: 2007b6

>>896170
>Is there a penalty to failing prayer rolls besides wasted time and/or resources?
Nope.
>What's the xp cost on buying into astrological colleges, then?
Listed in the scroll of errata on p.80, superceding the information on MoEP Sidereals p230, though as a houserule I'm also going to give you one "favored" with in-house XP costs and zero training time.
>If I'm getting time to do a training montage, First Kimbery Excellency is probably still my first priority. Would I have time to pick that up if I went and got involved in the sky pirate situation?
Training time for a caste/favored Excellency is eight hours, and even the best Haslanti airships can't cover more than a couple hundred miles in a day, so it shouldn't be much of a schedule conflict at all. More interesting question is what form that training will take, and how you're planning to keep anyone else aboard from noticing your true intent. http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0961.html
>>
No. 896197 ID: 2007b6

>>896164
>15 dice for extra padding?
Nine dice from attribute + skill, up to another nine dice from the First Excellency, two more from the stunt, would be twenty dice before penalties. With fourteen successes on the first fifteen of those dice, you're off to a pretty impressive start. In fact... yeah, inside two days you've got as many bolts and brackets and staples hammered out as this repair job is likely to require, and spares besides. (Still the actual assembly to be done, but that uses Craft skills you don't have yet, and counts as repairs rather than new construction so CNNT won't provide a speed multiplier.) Forge-craft enough to be worth dozens of sheep - or in this case, enough that so far as Lich-Queen Astius is concerned, Bridget has full legal claim to that crashed airship. Any demonic crew still aboard the vessel may disagree with her ruling.
>Several of the scholars
Do any of them have names, or distinguishing features?
>powering through the allergy
Smelling the allergen causes sneezes or coughing. Even brief contact with it induces hives and rashes for a scene, inflicting a -1 internal penalty to all actions. Touching the material for more than two actions (consecutive or within a single scene) deals one level of bashing damage for each subsequent contact.
How are you going to go about recovering that damage?
>>
No. 896208 ID: 6785a6

>>896197
It only takes a few hours for exalted to heal up from bashing out of combat, right? Bridget will simply meditate on wholeness of spirit, and her body will follow suit, assuming it’s rightful form. As long as she’s not incapacitated it can’t take more than a day or two to recover right?

As for the names of the scholars, hm, lets say... Icarus is the potential suitor, and Daedalus is his mentor, similarly interested in her, but as an avenue for research, her being the mirror to some of his abyssal colleges. So, along those themes, Icarus is possessed of a dangerous hubris, and Daedalus is a skilled crafter and artist.
>>
No. 896219 ID: 2007b6

>>896208
Needing to take a three-hour break after carrying a piece of soulsteel for ten seconds, or nine hours after twenty seconds in the same scene, is still a fairly significant snag in the workflow.
>>
No. 896222 ID: 6785a6

>>896219
It's a good thing the castle is designed for art and study then, isn't it? Plenty of tools around to make transporting dangerous and fragile materials safer for her, plus those scholars are more than willing to try and help her circumvent her allergy. Not possibly to totally get around it, but I'd imagine there's enough wiggle room to say she did competent work with time to rest and recover in-between. Could also just say those 2 days of work took place over a longer period of time to give her the chance to adequately recover.

Also, unrelated, but I don't think Bridget is actually qualified to have soul fire Resurgence, since I think you need unbreakable heros body first. Want me to swap it for something else? Go into XP debt and just say that she has the pre-req? Something else, provided its actually a problem at all and I'm not misunderstanding?
>>
No. 896226 ID: 2007b6

>>896222
>I don't think Bridget is actually qualified to have soul fire Resurgence, since I think you need unbreakable heros body first.
No, Soul Fire Resurgence's only prerequisites are Essence 2 and Resistance 2.
>Could also just say those 2 days of work took place over a longer period of time
Let's talk about possible preventative measures before agreeing to slow the whole project down by three orders of magnitude. This creepy stuff is getting under Bridget's skin, figuratively and literally - how much research has she done into what it actually is, where it comes from?
>>
No. 896230 ID: 6785a6

>>896226
Well, craft fire 4 implies knowledge above a professional level for mortal smiths, which in our world normally means you know stuff about carbon content and specific heat points, that sort of thing. So if Bridget is doing her job well, presumably part of her lore research binge involved getting up to speed on the materials she was working with. Knowing what is is and what its made of is certainly unpleasant, but we already have her reaction to that given the allergy. Unless of course theres a way she can free the souls already trapped within, its a bit like throwing away meat someone cooked for you because you don't approve of killing animals for food. Moral position is certainly understandable, but the animal is already dead, might as well leave the food for someone else instead of wasting it completely, even if you don't want to partake. Presumably there's someone on the ship willing to argue for why it's not as bad as it sounds, although lacking the relevant knowledge OOC it would be hard for me to represent that conversation in game. To continue the metaphor, I assume that methods to avoid the material when necessary would be comparable to someone who might get nauseous or off put by skinning and preparing an animal carcass. She doesn't need to be there for the whole process, just long enough to render the meat into a useful form, then she can go puke in a toilet and rest for a few hours while she reads about the history of creation and whatnot. I was imagining it wouldn't be too difficult to take, say, 3 health levels of bashing damage, then sleep them off, right?

Speaking of sleeping things off, when we're doing extended actions like this over a couple days, how should we keep track of motes and WP and stuff? If it's been a couple days, is she relatively close to full? Would she normally be, but other stuff is hampering her recovery?
>>
No. 896256 ID: 094652

rolled 7, 5, 7, 5, 2, 5, 4, 1, 8, 2 = 46

>>896167
Embri walks alongside the girl as she wires the girl's logic
"So you wish to purify this place of whatever chaos plagues it, correct?"
Wait for "yes"
"And you do not care how long it takes you, but the curse of this area must be corrected?"
Wait for "yes"
"And how long have you been here?"
Wait for her to say something.
"Miss, surely you understand that whatever forces infest this place, they will eventually mutate us if we are unable to solve the issue in time - and you know from the severity of the problem that this issue, while solvable, will take MONTHS, if not years. My offer to escape will only last for a short while - should we escape together, you could petition for help from experts with immunity to chaos and work on the problem from the relative safety of real space. I understand your conviction to assist and assure these people, but you cannot say it is in their best interests to methodically turn every stone when the solution or those who could help discover a solution for these people much quicker, could be recorded in a public library. If you retreat, you stand a better chance of discovering a cure, or finding others who would gladly assist you in this quest."

Summary: Manipulation + Second Manipulation Augment 1 Success (2m) to convince the girl that she has a better chance of saving the area if she retreats, does research, recruits other scientists to help her, and comes back prepared.
>>

rolled 9, 9, 8, 3, 2, 5, 1, 1, 9, 7 = 54

>>896164
>repair work
Oh, mind the new essence vents, dear. You'll find them...

>>896068
>Want to get involved?
Yep. Lute accepts, although, OOC, I'm a little interested as to who or what the manse's representatives think they're sending to their allies. Her miraculous repair work didn't draw attention, she hasn't let on that she's an exalt, and her main claim to participate in these proceedings is that she was able to show up at all, and inexplicably has the prince consort for company. (I suppose giving the setting people have learned not to understate mysterious interlopers).

>>896170
>>896184
Okay, so re-prioritizing a little:

After her near-fatal mishap with Astius and her hand mirror, Lute's going to spend the first few days of the voyage learning Intolerable Burning Truths (Trust is Naïve) and All Things Betray.

Once that's done, Lute will stop being a weirdo hanging out in her quarters and will start spending time with the sailors, working to pick up two dots in sail, since this is a good opportunity to learn such a skill, and it will be useful in her current endeavor (then Stone Skipping Spirit, but I don't have the xp for that yet. Plot hook stunting to follow).

>More interesting question is what form that training will take, and how you're planning to keep anyone else aboard from noticing your true intent.
In general, a lot of Kimbery charms seem connected to emotions, bonds and relationships- the kinds of things a Chosen of Serenity would be concerned with anyways. Plus, both Kimbery and Mercury are thematically associated with water.

I think training for Trust is Naïve and All Things Betray could be disguised as a kind of mediation interspersed with composing and contemplating relevant poetry, and perhaps performance of songs of appropriately beautiful tragedy (lost love and betrayal are fairly immortal musical themes). Sort of a double bluff- play the role of a bard or poet, leaving the role as a sidereal to be found if someone went digging, with the Kimbery stuff concealed underneath.

>other stuff
When it's safe to do so, Lute should probably cut off the scrying link to Astius (and make sure she tags the recording as a cognition hazard before making a remote backup) and check what amusing things her pocket thief has been getting up to.
>>

>have learned not to understate mysterious interlopers
*underestimate
>>
No. 897113 ID: 2007b6

>>896256
She agrees to withdraw from the time-looped town, but only after a burglary spree to finance this proposed program of research. It turns out the hole in the sky has either closed, or moved, or is very hard to see from the inside, or possibly only works one-way, but the two of them soon enough manage to find an alternate exit through the basement of the local glassworks.

>>896291
>check what amusing things her pocket thief has been getting up to
No sooner is the Infinite Resplendent Amulet's pocket opened and the chancel's door drawn out than hundreds of pounds of silverware, jewelry, porcelain, candlesticks, fine glasswork, linen tablecloths, silk bedclothes, paintings, and other miscellaneous urban plunder (much of it damaged by rough handling and/or fire) erupts into Lute Silhouette's tiny cabin, followed closely by Embri and Force of Ordered Thought.

The airship's wicker frame creaks in protest, and, off in the bridge, a grizzled old Haslanti pilot begins shouting in Skytongue. Lute recognizes, at minimum, a word for "distance above the ground," and just going by the tone, he doesn't seem at all happy about it. http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20080801

Currently you're about two thousand miles from Astius's castle (or at least, where it was when you left - it moves around), near the headwaters of the Avarice River. Up ahead, wheat fields around a small village seem like they'd be the safest place to land - if not for the fact that the fields in question have apparently been lit on fire as part of a raid, or massacre, either by bandits or some unusually petty and spiteful local military faction. The attackers don't seem to have finished the job and left yet, so you may get the opportunity to rescue a few people - other than the airship's actual crew, that is.

>>896230
>Speaking of sleeping things off, when we're doing extended actions like this over a couple days, how should we keep track of motes and WP and stuff? If it's been a couple days, is she relatively close to full?
Exalts normally respire 8 motes per hour while relaxing or meditating, 4 per hour during light activity, plus any from Cult or hearthstones, so a day's rest should be more than sufficient to refill your mote pool unless you're stuck somewhere that lacks compatible ambient essence, usually meaning the Underworld.

Willpower, on the other hand, can only be recovered in downtime from dreams: roll a dice pool equal to your Conviction for every night of restful sleep, for your own dreams, and then add in any from the Cult background, for those hopes and dreams worshipers have invested in you.
>>
No. 897128 ID: 6785a6

rolled 5, 2, 8, 8, 8, 10, 3, 8, 9, 7, 7, 6, 4, 4, 2 = 91

>>897113
How do you want to resolve the situation with Bridget? I was planning on having her leave with the airship after finding out the horrible truth etc etc. Probably going to have to roll several times for willpower and limit gathering, so I'll go ahead and smack some dice down now to get that started, but let me know how exactly I should handle that and what, if any, moments of uncertainty I need to make important decisions in.
>>
No. 897144 ID: 094652

rolled 5, 7, 10, 9, 4, 2, 3, 7, 7, 2, 10, 4, 8, 6, 10, 2, 1, 7, 2, 10 = 116

"...Well. It appears we are sinking. Unfortunate. Force, help me prioritize dumping items with the highest weight-to-value ratio. Same goes for the rest of you.

My apologies Force, but we won't earn any favors from the local scholars if we sink a refugee ship with our filthy lucre. We can retrieve what we can when we're done saving this ship - ah, and those poor villagers on fire, of course."

Charisma Roll to convince Force to dump a portion of the loot so we STOP SINKING, followed by a Dexterity Roll to quickly dump just enough loot to safely land.
>>
No. 897170 ID: 2007b6

>>897144
Embri emerges from the cabin into the hallway, charred tablecloth full of mostly broken glass slung over her shoulder, to find a young pale-haired man pointing a sword at her and asking agitated questions in Skytongue. She's not on the ship's passenger manifest, so he probably wants to know how she got on board.
>>
No. 897186 ID: 2007b6

>>897128
Three scenes worth of rolling Compassion 4 gets you nine successes, and Solars don't have a convenient way to safely dissipate Limit, so when it's up at nine her righteous outrage is a bomb on a hair trigger. Only ways I can think of to reduce it without a limit break would require learning new charms first.

Let's call that's one scene for the initial research (for some reason I'm particularly thinking of a bit in The Quiet American, finding out about other uses for Diolacton), one for an impassioned but futile argument with the local forge-boss looking for alternatives, and one to flee this accursed place, stumbling around with those nine dice in Perception + Craft (Fire) now revealing screaming children's faces inside every cloud-snaring staple and rivet.

It's been a few days, so the Haslanti airship has already left. Might be possible to catch up with it, but Bridget's too huge and heavy to fit inside there anyway. Question is, will she be grabbing the partially-repaired demon airship, and pressing her Astius-backed salvage claim against the crew thereof? Or just leaving the way she came in?

Also, what's Malice been up to?
>>

rolled 5, 2, 6, 9, 2, 6, 4, 10, 1, 2, 5, 2, 9, 7, 8 = 78

>Currently you're about two thousand miles from Astius's castle
So from the airship's rate of travel, Lute's finished learning Intolerable Burning Truths (Trust is Naïve) and All Things Betray, and is still working on that first dot in Sail.

>Embri and Force of Ordered Thought [erupt] into Lute Silhouette's tiny cabin
>>897144
>>897170
Lute smiles and shakes her head, bemused that once again Embri has fled a shared room without even stopping to acknowledge her. And already run into the crew, by the sound of it. While the thief is so occupied, the akuma turns her attention on her unwitting peer, still off balance by her sudden chance in venue: a hero of the moon and pyrian flame, primed and waiting to be turned against the unsuspecting forces of chaos.

"The vessel is overburdened, the fields below aflame, and the adjacent settlement under assault by lawless brigands. Can I depend on your aid in restoring order in this hour of need?"

Making a surprise social attack, enhanced with Perfection In Life.
>>
No. 897673 ID: 2007b6

>>897203
>a hero of the moon and pyrian flame
Pyrian flame, yes, but a distinctly un-Lunar caste mark flares on the girl's forehead.
>Can I depend on your aid
"I don't take orders from the likes of you," she says, as a titanic crystalline hand with too many fingers curls to engulf the ship, "but you may count on me to bear my own luggage."

In mechanical terms, she's using Mind-Hand Manipulation + Manifest Consciousness Extrusion + a 2-die stunt to apply the equivalent of a 20-dice feat of strength toward holding the airship steady on course despite the excess cargo. Possibly also enhancing her action further with an Excellency, but since that doesn't have the Obvious keyword you wouldn't be able to tell just by looking.
>>
No. 897753 ID: 6785a6

rolled 7, 6, 9, 6, 6, 9, 2, 6, 4, 3, 4, 3, 2, 8, 4 = 79

>>897186

I want to give strngy a chance to reply, but I'm not sure they're around or able to participate right now

>what's Malice been up to?
>pressing her Astius-backed salvage claim against the crew thereof?

Let's make the best of both worlds. Can Bridget get on the ship with Malice and crew, and fly after Lute, see about catching up in time to secure tribute, maybe get her help with the whole soulsteel ship debacle?

I still need to roll to recover will from sleeping, also probably need to roll something to get the crew and malice to agree to fly away with me. Let's say 15D10 since I'm not particularly gifted at persuading people.
>>

rolled 10, 9, 8, 5, 10, 5, 9, 3, 8, 9 = 76

>>897673
Lute Silhouette takes this sudden development with equanimity, as she admires the crystalline sculpture now embracing the hull, the cabin's porthole peeking out just between two of the immense digits.

"Your courtesy is appreciated; I'm sure we are in good hands."

Moving the conversation along, putting up Defense of Shining Joy (since we're still above a battlefield and dealing with an exalt of poorly understood intentions). Also Lute digs crystalline stuff.
>>
No. 898035 ID: 094652

rolled 9, 7, 9, 8, 1, 1, 8, 1, 2, 8 = 54

Embri settles the sack of glass and compliments Force on her skill. Then she tells the sailor to wait outside and NOT disturb her companion, who is busy ensuring the boat has a safe landing. She will explain their intrusion when they are on the ground.
>>
No. 898946 ID: 2007b6

>>897753
>Can Bridget get on the ship with Malice and crew, and fly after Lute, see about catching up in time to secure tribute, maybe get her help with the whole soulsteel ship debacle?
Yeah, alright. If the Haslanti ship is one of the bigger models, the demon-made airship goes about half again as fast and doesn't need fuel thanks to it's omen weather engine. Stayed behind at Astius's castle for about a week, then spent two weeks catching up.
>>
No. 899230 ID: 2007b6

The Haslanti airship's crew has just about settled on the hypothesis that this crystalline hand - which has now split off fractal branches and is conducting minor repairs to the structure - is actually an ice sculpture, and represents a miraculous intervention by the Ennead in general and the Triad of Ice in particular.

Then another airship - the same one that was crashed into the side of Astius's castle, but now with Bridges The Sun And Moon on board - emerges from a hole torn in the sky scant yards away. A beauteous demon-wasp buzzes around, grabs the Haslanti ship from below, taps on a windscreen with one forelimb and makes eye contact with the pilot.

"Hello, yes, excuse me! This is tax collection time!" says the wasp. "Those who do not be fighting will also not be harmed, yes. Thank you and inspection should only take a few minutes."
>>
No. 899234 ID: bb5006

rolled 9 = 9

>>
No. 899239 ID: 2007b6

>>899234
The town doesn't have a name. Or, rather, it's trying very hard not to. Supposedly, if everybody manages to forget the old name and avoid replacing it with a new one, that'll break the curse some ancient asshole sorcerer laid on that perpetually mist-shrouded island in the middle of a nearby lake.
>>
No. 899243 ID: 2007b6

>>899242
Based on previous discussion, should probably have a Resistance specialty in "feigning death." Since all Lunars have Survival favored, you need to start with at least one dot - probably the extra dot left over since you only spent 24 out of 25 on skills. If you're spending BP to raise Martial Arts, it probably makes more sense to go all the way to 5 there.

For charms, please list Excellencies on separate lines, and group the different charms under headers by attribute (possibly with descriptions or page references) instead of listing the attribute in parentheses afterwards.

Please include the full list of your Heart's Blood library, preferably sorted into categories (birds, fish, etc.)
>>
No. 899447 ID: bb5006

Of all the days that she had seen since she was chosen as a Lunar Exalt, even as she had traveled some distance in the north, Light had never seen an airship. Following on as a logical follow up to her never having seen an airship, the concept of an airship crashing was completely beyond her. However, creation didn't see fit to conform to the somewhat feral formal barmaid's perception of reality, and so when she came into town for the first time in weeks, she found that there were two ships in the sky, and one of them seemed to be being held up by a giant crystal hand while they other was coming out of a hole torn in the sky.

Clearly, something was amiss with this situation, and the only way that she was able to figure out what this WAS was to go up there herself. Fortunately, she had the form of a bird that could easily fly that high as she made sure nobody was watching and she hunched over, sprouting feathers from her body as her nose and mouth fused into one hooked beak and her body contorted in seemingly painful ways over the course of a few seconds until she had taken the form of a Vulture (Wyld Taint roll 2 dice -2 from SCC no roll), and so up she flew, searching for an access port or piece of battle damage to the hull that she can use to slip in and turn back to human.
>>
No. 899452 ID: 2007b6

>>899447
Alright, what initially almost appeared to be two wispy seed pods stuck together, gripped by the most beautiful hornet she's ever seen and a life-sized glass sculpture of a disembodied hand, upon closer approach turns out to be some sort of enormous and inexplicably airborne tent structure, almost as big as Lookshy's flagship Skywolf, with cottage-sized wicker baskets hanging underneath. There are people inside, arguing in a foreign language.

Sex addiction kicks in, gimme a roll either for seducing the horse-sized wasp or self-control to avoid doing so.
>>
No. 899453 ID: bb5006

Roll to resist (Temperance -1)
>>
No. 899454 ID: bb5006

Same as above, just not messing it up by putting the notation in subject
>>
No. 899455 ID: bb5006

>>899452
>>
No. 899456 ID: bb5006

rolled 4, 7 = 11

>>
No. 899457 ID: bb5006

Light was definitely intrigued and wanted to get that weird beautiful bug horse into her bed, it was hardly something that couldn't wait, instead, she started to examine the wicker basket structures tied to a strange balloon. She ignored the one that sounded like it had people arguing, since she couldn't speak the language, and she didn't particularly like transforming in front of strangers. So, she started looking for a bridge to land on so she could navigate the alien structure in the form of its intended occupant.
>>
No. 899458 ID: 2007b6

>>899457
Light finds an access hatch on the rear of the smaller basket, but before she can make her way inside, a blood-soaked gorilla with rows of horns down it's back swings a pipe wrench in her general direction, hooting "Geddoff! Mine! Not for vultures!" in perfectly intelligible Rivertongue.
>>
No. 899490 ID: bb5006

rolled 4 = 4

>>899458

As Light found what she was looking for, and quickly found herself being assaulted by a far less beautiful looking blood monkey thing, she flew to a spot just enough away from the creature to avoid being hit with a wrench before she turned back into a human (Wyld Taint +2 for turning into a spirit form, +1 for turning into a true form, 1 dice) into a

"Well if not for Vultures, then how else is anyone supposed to get up here you stupid talking ape? Besides, I probably don't even want whatever it is that you have if a vulture would be interested in it."
>>
No. 899491 ID: 2007b6

>>899490
Light Of The finds a spot atop the balloon out of the ape's reach. Turns out that section can support a vulture's weight just fine, but not a human's. She plummets ten yards, ripping through two layers of silk canopy, to land feet-first ( https://tgchan.org/kusaba/questarch/res/666731.html#667494 ) on the stomach of Bridges The Sun And Moon, who was laying down on an improvised bed in the cargo section.

Jo the spider-demon shrieks in dismay at the prospect of "all the hot air" escaping through those holes, and scrambles to repair the damage.
>>
No. 899501 ID: c8a0f5

Light was glad that she ran into someone a bit more human than the other weird animals that her instincts told her she couldn't become yet. She figured she should PROBABLY get to looking, but someone who hasn't attacked her because she was a bird at the moment, and even if she was pretty ugly she figured she was probably the best bet at asking someone what all of this was, unless the spider stopped frantically going about, or she felt particularly inclined to find that blood ape again.

In Rivertongue she asked, quite plainly she thought, "You're a native to this strange primitive balloon thing, what is it and where did it come from?" As she asked, she also sat down on the, unbeknownst to her, Solar's stomach to be a bit less uncomfortable than if she had kept on standing.
>>

rolled 3, 4, 7, 10, 6, 6, 4, 5, 6, 4, 5, 6, 1, 5, 9 = 81

>>897203
>Lute's finished learning Intolerable Burning Truths (Trust is Naïve) and All Things Betray, and is still working on that first dot in Sail
Correction. Also adding a dot in linguistics for skytongue to that, since it's favored and it really makes more sense for Lute to have been able to communicate with the crew while she was learning sail from them.

>>899230
>"Hello, yes, excuse me! This is tax collection time!" says the wasp. "Those who do not be fighting will also not be harmed, yes. Thank you and inspection should only take a few minutes."
In what language? (So far the wasp has demonstrated capability in rivertongue and old realm, while the sailors have been speaking skytongue).

>>899230
Still facing the porthole, Lute's eyes lower until she is studying the reflection of the other occupant of the cabin. They raise again, to meet the gaze of a jade spider, reflected but not present in the room behind her. A moment of silent communication passes before it scuttles out of frame and another airship appears in the nearby skies.

Mechanically, rolling for read motive on Force of Ordered Thought, and using Efficient Secretary Technique.

EST Questions:
-Who is in my room?
-What did she and Embri get up to inside the chancel?
-Who's onboard the airship that just arrived?
-How large is the military force attacking the town below?

Stuff Lute probably got earlier:
-Various mundane details about the airship crew. At the very least, everyone's name.
-Names of the others she encountered in Astius' castle.
>>
No. 899516 ID: 094652

rolled 5, 3, 10, 5, 3, 5, 10, 8, 2, 4 = 55

Embri quickly deflects Lute's questions with a simple "I don't know what happened, but apparently it was the exit to that tunnel we were in", followed by a quick "is this really the time to annoy us? Force is busy setting us down and I need to don my armor in preparation for the upcoming battle to save the town below". And then she dons armor and stuff.
>>
No. 899520 ID: 4f1cbc

>>899516
Sorry if it wasn't clear, but Lute's asking those questions to her invisible pattern spider wikipedia lookup with the charm Efficient Secretary Technique. Unless I misunderstand how that works, she didn't speak her queries aloud where Embri could hear them.
>>

>>899509
>skytongue
Wait, nevermind, I forgot I already bought that back in >>877611
>>
No. 899549 ID: 6785a6

rolled 1, 6, 9, 5, 4, 3, 2, 9, 8, 8, 7, 3, 10, 2, 5 = 82

>>899230
The solar, upon seeing the burning town and giant crystal hand, shrouded herself in essence, an almost instinctual motion at this point. Her skin, hard as iron, is cast into equally impossible areas of shadow and light as her third eye blazes with the power of the Unconquered Sun. Hardship Surviving Mendicant Spirit is already active, ungraded by Element-Resisting Prana, and she spends 6 motes to active Iron Skin Concentration.

>"Those who do not be fighting will also not be harmed, yes. Thank you and inspection should only take a few minutes."

"Violence is unnecessary. Our destination is elsewhere." Her tone enunciates what she does not: Mistreatment of others shall not be tolerated.

>>899491
>She plummets ten yards, ripping through two layers of silk canopy, to land feet-first [...] on the stomach of Bridges The Sun And Moon
>>899501
>"You're a native to this strange primitive balloon thing, what is it and where did it come from?"

Bridget looks down at the smaller woman, bathing her in a golden light, before issuing a command, backed by the divine providence she was imbued with.
"You are mistaken. Explain yourself." She gestures to Jo, and all her hard work was just destroyed.
>>
No. 899554 ID: bb5006

"Of course, I'm mistaken, like I said I have no idea what this thing is other than it looks like someone tried building a real airship, but only instead of first age craftsmanship and magical golden materials, they used a bunch of sticks, and that's why I'm asking you about it. Besides how was I supposed to know that I would fall through the air bag thing, it's not like it had any kind of warning."

As she was getting frustrated with the fairly ugly golden person, and she responded in turn by flaring up her silvery aura, this time it was shifting from silver to dark purples and blues with a rainbow hidden between the shifting colors, and a silver crescent moon glowing brightly through her hair.
>>
No. 899566 ID: 2007b6

>>899509
>In what language?
Rivertongue.

>EST Questions:
>-Who is in my room?
In your apartment back in Hell, Madelrada's Reflective soul is reading your dream journal and tidying up after ransacking the place.

Right here is Force of Ordered Thought, a Brass Tiger (which is to say, Chosen of Malfeas) and agent of the Reclamation, who has a much nicer residence than you reserved for her in the Coventicle Malfeasant, but hasn't actually been there yet.
>-What did she and Embri get up to inside the chancel?
Entity designate "Embri" not found in any record consistent with specified parameters.

There was a string of burglaries in Sandpoint consistent with sightings of FoOT's anima. Items reported missing would in total be valued at the equivalent of a Resources 3 purchase; a more detailed inventory is available.
>-Who's onboard the airship that just arrived?
An erymanthus, a golden orb-weaver anhule, and a Copper Spider, all of whom you've met previously, and something shaped like a vulture - wait, no, a naked woman - whose true nature is indeterminate but who is widely known to be associated in some way with Mother Bog.
>>
No. 899599 ID: 2007b6

>>899509
>How large is the military force attacking the town below?
One fang (nominally five, plausibly anywhere from three to ten) of light cavalry, and a scale (nominally twenty-five, in this case exactly 30) of archers which fired two volleys of flaming arrows before either withdrawing or establishing some sort of thaumaturgically-enhanced stealth. Everyone else killing each other down there has lived and worked in the town for a year or more.
>>
No. 899701 ID: 4f1cbc

>In your apartment back in Hell, Madelrada's Reflective soul is reading your dream journal and tidying up after ransacking the place.
It's how you know they care!

Probably a pretty impressive journal with all the dice Lute has to throw at penmanship and composition.

>who has a much nicer residence than you reserved for her in the Coventicle Malfeasant, but hasn't actually been there yet.
Oh those Green Sun Princess.

>Force of Ordered Thought, a Brass Tiger (which is to say, Chosen of Malfeas) and agent of the Reclamation
On record as an active agent and not one of the ones who've gone rogue? Good to know.

>An erymanthus, a golden orb-weaver anhule, and a Copper Spider, all of whom you've met previously, and something shaped like a vulture - wait, no, a naked woman - whose true nature is indeterminate but who is widely known to be associated in some way with Mother Bog.
Huh it missed Bridget, interesting.
>>
No. 899752 ID: c33d02

>>899554
“I do not know the history of this ship, save for its occupants, who have ties to those across the endless desert. Prior to our arrival, I sought an ally, but there are more pressing matters. I would that you make amends here, and allow me to rise. If you join me below, I would share my gratitude. It seems only proper to right the wrong of the world alongside Luna’s chosen.”

How many hundred feet are we below the ground, and how easy would it be for Bridget to base jump down there safely?
>>
No. 899974 ID: bb5006

>>899752

"Well, that is something of a wash, but yeah, going and dealing with those raiders again was about the next thing that I was planning on doing regardless, since they haven't generally been half this bold, but I figured they could hold off for a few minutes."

With that, Light would leap from Bridget's stomach, looking for a place she could leap from the ship, either an open port, or a place that she could smash through the walls, fully intending to turn into a bird to stop her fall before she hit the ground.
>>

rolled 5, 2, 8, 3, 8, 3, 3, 3, 7, 6, 10, 6, 4, 7, 7, 9, 1, 10, 4, 1 = 107

>Looks like the Read Motivation was three successes against a difficulty of at most 2, thanks to FoOT's mediocre sense of etiquette and tact.
>We already established that Lute's EST can pull low-security files from the Reclamation's HR department, which might include some sort of basic personality profile or official mission listing for FoOT.

As she turns to face her fellow agent of the Reclamation, Lute Silhouette notes the determined resolve writ in Force of Ordered Thought's face, buoyed by a contempt for those she perceives as agents of chaos. A heartbeat later and the sidereal feels a tickle of unseen legs by her ear, followed by whispered details of an infernal personal file. (Bureaucracy: it's not just for heaven).

Medical records... rendered quadriplegic immediately before accepting exaltation, capable of movement under her own power. Psychological evaluation... stubborn and single minded, prefers direct methods, little patience for subtle action. Maiming due to her own refusal to back down when faced with a dictatorial abuse of power in the hundred kingdoms. Obsession with her own safety and security and the elimination of chaotic forces (societal, social, fae, etc). Largely passive outside the context of obsessions. Receptive to infernal as tool/weapon mindset.

Current assignment... hmm, still on her introductory shakedown mission. Getting a handle on her new powers and resolving personal affairs before reporting to hell.

Well! Handy that there's a distraction in the form village burning forces of chaos to distract from allied village burning forces of chaos!

(Stunting off of >>/questdis/122592 to invent some background to fill in the result of my read motivation roll and EST check).

"I will leave the descent to you then, I must see to the airship that has just arrived. Perhaps afterwards, the vandals burning down the local town should be addressed?"

Lute's off to go liaise between the airship crew and the demon 'tax collectors'. On the way, she casually moves the pale-haired man's sword aside as she passes between him and Embri, and address him by name in skytongue, joking "She's harmless, mostly, assuming so long as you keep her away from libraries."

Rolling for social attacks, I think.
>>
No. 901417 ID: 2007b6

>>899752
>>899974
By the time Bridget and Light are done talking, the airships are within twenty yards of the ground - low enough that anyone with at least five points of natural bashing soak (Bridget has that much normally, Light can use her Stamina Excellency) could jump down onto a muddy field with minimal risk of injury.
>>900352
Lute manages to keep everyone relatively calm, blades sheathed, and the subject of "tax collection" tabled, for the time being.

The bandits don't stick around long once supernatural beings start falling from the sky.

Last night, this town had about a thousand people in it. Now half of them are dead or missing.

Bulk of the bandit infantry seem to be heading due west, most likely toward an old played-out copper mine up in the hills, escorting wagons loaded full of the contents of the town's granary. Without that food, most of these people won't be making it through the winter, or even if they do there'll be no seed corn for the next year's crops.

Cavalry and apparent leadership was seen heading north-northeast, toward Bear Pond. They've got hostages - attendants from a local shrine, who 'carry the hopes and dreams of us all,' and are described as unconventionally beautiful in some way that involves small bits of metal clinking together - and the town of Bear Pond is a notorious hive of scum and villainy.

Many parts of the town are still on fire, and there's no shortage of injuries. The Haslanti airship crew dumped some waste-water ballast on the flames, rigged emergency tie-downs, and is spreading out to help with triage - by way of explanation, Captain Vertanen says they've done business with these people before, and would've needed to stop for the night soon anyway to assess damage from the collision and overloading.

Who's pursuing which group of attackers, who's staying here to assist and/or kick these people while they're down?
>>

rolled 5, 2, 8, 5, 1, 9, 9, 3, 7, 10, 3, 5, 5, 5, 9, 3, 7, 2, 7, 3 = 108

>Who's pursuing which group of attackers, who's staying here to assist and/or kick these people while they're down?
Lute Silhouette will stay. It is the compassionate course of action, aligns with the interests of the airship crew, and seems likely to present her favorably to several of the other chosen present.

A great many people have had the structure of their lives upended, the foundations on which they stand profoundly shaken. Surely this has left some receptive to her particular help? For those not consumed by the flames of tragedy, this is an opportunity to emerge reshaped from the crucible.


Exact approach depends on who sticks around and who pursues the bandits (if anyone), but it seems to me Lute might be well suited to search and rescue (locate trapped people with Efficient Secretary Technique or the Shard Fallen, extricate them with chancel doorways or the Thread-Body Movement Stone, if that allows a passenger). No dots in medicine, but might be able to help with the wounded thanks to high attributes and applying fine manipulation bonuses from the lens arm. Not sure she has a good option for addressing fire directly, except through the Sandpoint Devil (and how to play that depends greatly on which exalts remain).
>>
No. 901816 ID: 2007b6

>>901724
>locate trapped people with Efficient Secretary Technique
"Where is the nearest living human who's been injured more recently than they've received medical attention" works. Might be able to save valuable time and motes by carefully phrasing a question to find more rescuees at once, though.
>extricate them with chancel doorways or
>or the Shard Fallen,
Lute learns that shoving her whole hand through the Shard's display screen in a halfway panicked attempt to yank someone out from under a falling roof-beam causes her to switch places with them, at the cost of five motes. Seems to have a range limit? Further experimentation will be required to establish functional details of the effect.
>the Thread-Body Movement Stone, if that allows a passenger
It does not. Very handy for slipping out through the cracks in a collapsing building, though.
>No dots in medicine, but might be able to help with the wounded thanks to high attributes and applying fine manipulation bonuses from the lens arm.
More than enough for providing useful assistance to the local trauma surgeon/hairstylist. Turns out Destiny-Knitting Entanglement can be used to fetch items which, legally speaking, belong to someone else entirely (such as, in this case, disinfectant-infused bandages hidden away on a high shelf) so long as the other owner doesn't have enlightened essence and you've made a positive impression on the item in question over the course of a scene or two.

Those four dots in Investigation are enough to carry on some useful conversation without too much distraction from the main work at hand. The barber mentions that she studied anatomy at the University of Sijan, both reading meticulously accurate copies of medical reference texts which survived uncensored all through the Shogunate, and hands-on examination of the bodies of those whose funerary practices permit (or even demand) various degrees of dissection.

Ten dice in Perception + Investigation is also enough to note that hardly any of the locals seem to have been wounded in ways consistent with actual intent to kill. Plenty of deliberate crippling and/or disfigurement, but those hurt badly enough they won't likely make it through the night, and damage on corpses, overwhelmingly seems to be either inflicted by folks fighting in self-defense, or the result of burns, smoke, and other impersonal forces rather than battle.

>Surely this has left some receptive to her particular help?
Dozens, if not hundreds, are on the verge of panic, despair, and/or numb shock. Any specific type of person you're seeking out?
>>
No. 901830 ID: 094652

rolled 7, 9, 3, 1, 10, 1, 2, 2, 1, 3 = 39

Embri decides that she and Force should get the food supplies before five hundred people starve to death. The plan is to bring a few soldiers, silently whittle away / zombify the bandits guarding the food, and steal some of the carts back. If they are discovered, the soldiers can grab some food sacks and run for it.

First things first, tracking them down.

If you're wondering why Embri seems to have gone soft, it's a matter of Triage. Since the main problem is mass hunger, she's leaving the wounded and suicidal to bleed out. She's also deprioritizing the local leaders because they have control over the commoners, and leaving them out to dry means Lute and her employers will have an easier time annexing this little town for their own benefits. All of this equates to extra profit and a means of allying with the people she just stole from. Of course, being a good person occasionally is a plus.
>>

rolled 2, 6, 7, 1, 10, 6, 3, 4, 8, 10 = 57

>>901816
>Might be able to save valuable time and motes by carefully phrasing a question to find more rescuees at once, though.
"Where, within this town, are the greatest concentrations of living humans who have been injured more recently than they've received medical attention?"

>hardly any of the locals seem to have been wounded in ways consistent with actual intent to kill
An interesting mercy, to spare one the sword so they might starve instead. Perhaps there is a greater plan here, that requires the town weakened but not destroyed?

>Dozens, if not hundreds, are on the verge of panic, despair, and/or numb shock. Any specific type of person you're seeking out?
Someone with unrealized potential? Who has been one thing, but never realized they could better be another. If you'd like me to dramatic edit in specific npcs to mess with I'll get back to you after some brainstorming.
>>
No. 902658 ID: 2007b6
File 153755592364.png - (59.83KB , 300x280 , dragonfly-jewelry-02-300x280.png )
902658

Art from Dragonflyjewelry.org
A glittering gilded insect alights on Light's shoulder and whispers in her ear, Mother Bog's gurgling voice recognizable through imperfect clockwork recording. "You seem to have fallen in some sort of a pit, my dear. I only have one other warm body in that town, deep cover and not particularly expendable, but I could fetch two dozen heavies with the usual support in... hm, an hour, hour and a half? This lovely trinket can carry your spoken reply, a small item, or both, but don't dawdle. I might think you're in real trouble, and end up making a mess."
>>
No. 902760 ID: 2007b6

>>901830
>grab some food sacks and run for it.
Infeasible. Five wagons drawn by yeddim (a type of domesticated giant ground sloth), loaded with upwards of ten tons of cargo each, guarded by a total of roughly three hundred bandits, in scale armor, many of whom have bows or spears. The road is narrow and deeply rutted, so turning the wagons around halfway won't be quick or easy.

Fortunately that means the trail is easy to follow, and yeddim don't move fast. Local militia you managed to rally and lead all that way is about a dozen guys with torches, clubs, hatchets, and a couple pitchforks. One, Watch-Captain Skorma, has a fine quality short sword, some very fancy boots, remembered to put pants on after getting out of bed to respond to the attack, and thinks he's in charge. The rest wear mostly wooden sandals and tunics or loincloths.

So, your pursuit force is outnumbered roughly thirty to one (though that's gradually improving as stragglers catch up), nowhere near as well armed apart from what you provide personally, and about to collapse from exhaustion. Haven't actually been spotted, though, since they were sloppy about positioning their rearguard and you know pretty much everything there is to know about silently eliminating sentries.

What's the plan? And have you let the friendly locals see you using the Time-Strung Bow, or are you trying to avoid anything that would out you as a supernatural being?

>>901936
>"Where, within this town, are the greatest concentrations of living humans who have been injured more recently than they've received medical attention?"
Waiting in line at the triage tent.
>Someone with unrealized potential?
The barber - doctor, really, at the moment - wonders aloud about that amazing glass arm of yours. She's read extensively about Shogunate-era Prosthetics of Clockwork Elegance, even seen a few in operation, but those are always made of opaque jade-steel, and even the most elaborate didn't have anywhere near that sort of fractal articulation. Like, Ivan's leg there, that was a compound fracture, so you just grabbed the bone fragments and slotted them all together like a jigsaw puzzle. In a few months, he might actually be able to walk well enough to return to work! Where did you get that thing?

Seems like she's always dreamed of being able to wildly modify the human body, in both functional and aesthetic ways... but thus far contented herself with trimming and dying hair and beards, surgery of 'legitimate medical necessity,' and an occasional sideline in piercings or tattoos.
>>
No. 902870 ID: d9acdc

rolled 6, 2, 6, 8, 3, 5, 5, 10, 1, 3, 4, 5, 2, 1, 8 = 69

>>901417
>Many parts of the town are still on fire, and there's no shortage of injuries.

Sounds like the place the compassionate forge troll should be.

Her size, strength, and fire-proof spirit should allow her to rescue locals easily enough. A guide to help her navigate the town and, perhaps equally important, assure the village folk she isn't a monster coming to get them, is in order. Perhaps the nice woman from before ca- ah, where did she go? No matter, she can find her later. For now, she's needed here.

Bridget will follow the people on the ground helping- at least one of the airship crew is likely trying to rescue people from burning buildings. She knows basic first aid, but not much else, maybe she can act as a nurse to the people tending the wounded, and help keep the first respondents from doing anything stupid.
>>
No. 902889 ID: 2007b6

>>902870
Bridget may be fireproof, but the people she's trying to rescue aren't, which presents some challenges. The demonic airship's engineer has to be physically dragged away from eating somebody - a carpentry/roofing guy named Ivan, according to cautiously grateful bystanders - who'd passed out from smoke inhalation. After a moderate number of face-punches, the erymanthus seems to be clear on the concept that "the boss says these folks are not enemies, nor food," but it might still be best to keep him separate from the ongoing rescue efforts. Jo will be busy with gasbag repairs for at least a full day, but the other two demons could be ordered to pursue one of the bandit groups.

A beauteous wasp's nature (to carry riders where they most wish to go) might be highly suitable for hostage extraction, but without any dots in Occult, Bridget doesn't know that. She's also not necessarily aware the blood ape is only following orders because he can smell that she's cultivated higher Essence than him, is a Solar Exalt, and by force of habit since hard thinking about strategy feels like way too much work. If it came to an actual serious fight, or even an arm-wrestling contest, the bridge-troll might be in trouble: he's got a two-dice lead on you in both Strength and Melee, one each in Dexterity and Martial Arts, plus relevant Excellencies.
>>
No. 902921 ID: d9acdc

rolled 5, 2, 6, 4, 3, 3, 6, 8, 5, 4, 6, 7, 1, 8, 10 = 78

>>902889
>The erymanthus seems to be clear on the concept that "the boss says these folks are not enemies, nor food," but it might still be best to keep him separate from the ongoing rescue efforts.

Bridget turns to the Agata and addresses her as an intermediary, given that she still cannot communicate effectively with the others:

"I wish to occupy the crew elsewhere, to prevent anymore harm being done. Direct the Erymanthus to create a suitable location outside the village for the ship to arrive and depart from, and other constructive endeavors if needed. Please refrain from harming others if at all possible; deescalation of conflict is expected of you."

Bridget will then seek out the Haslanti crew- although she is currently unaware of exactly who they are or why they are here, she can see they are mortals who are trying to help. That should serve her purposes nicely.
>>
No. 902925 ID: 094652

rolled 1, 3, 2, 9, 4, 3, 4, 8, 4, 1 = 39

Embri's plan hinges around one simple concept: lower the number of enemy combatants / enemy waves on the upcoming battlefield.

The militia will make their way ahead of the bandits, plan accordingly, and set up ambushes around chokepoints. Embri will personally use her seduction skills to lure small groups of bandits away from the main group, where they will be directly ambushed and butchered / zombified. Any objections made to making zombies will be countered with the looming threat of mass starvation. When the time comes for a direct confrontation, Embri will unleash her time-strung bow, Force will find a way to turn the battlefield into a narrow passage, and the whole militia will bum-rush while Embri continues firing from afar with armor on.

Use of augments will be spread across the mini-campaign.
>>
No. 902988 ID: 2007b6

>>902921
Charisma 5, Presence 0, 2-die stunt, zero successes. The beauteous wasp quietly disregards your proposal and flies off carrying the blood ape engineer toward some other purpose entirely.
>>902925
>the whole militia will bum-rush
>outnumbered 30 to 1
Captain Skorma does not like this plan, and it turns out he actually IS in charge. They don't.
>Embri will personally use her seduction skills to lure small groups of bandits away from the main group, where they will be directly ambushed
Good news/bad news time. Driving some of them mad with lust is successful; arranging for easy one-on-one fights, not so much. Fatigue and the weight of numbers bring her base Dodge DV of 6 down to a level where one lucky bandit manages to lay a hand on her. With Strength 2, Stamina 1, and no dots in Martial Arts, she fares poorly in subsequent wrestling, and is thus captured.

Back to good news: the first bandit who tried to have sex with Embri took a poisoned arrow to the urethra, and is a zombie now. He's carrying the Frozen Heart in it's storage jar, drinking ice marrow when available, rapidly regenerating any damage former comrades have so far managed to inflict, and radiates enough cold to paralyze anyone that grabs him. He seems to obey Embri's verbal orders, to the extent he can understand. (There was, of course, no second attempt, since those obviously lethal consequences would turn lust-pheromone UMI into an unacceptable order.) Embri still has the rest of her equipment with her, other than the green jade essence pulse grenade, but is stuck inside a barrel on one of the cargo wagons. She's managed to overhear that this grain is to be delivered somewhere rather than hoarded for their own use, and that, while it was not the main objective of this particular mission, the recipient is presumed to have an interest in live captives like herself.
>>

rolled 8, 9, 7, 7, 10, 6, 1, 5, 6, 1, 10, 10, 8, 8, 1 = 97

>>"Where, within this town, are the greatest concentrations of living humans who have been injured more recently than they've received medical attention?"
>Waiting in line at the triage tent.
Hmm, was afraid of that. At the very least, that does constrain the scale of other pockets of people in need of rescue. Same question, excluding those inside the triage tent and those waiting in line?

>Seems like she's always dreamed of being able to wildly modify the human body, in both functional and aesthetic ways... but thus far contented herself with trimming and dying hair and beards, surgery of 'legitimate medical necessity,' and an occasional sideline in piercings or tattoos.
Well, that seems worth encouraging! A good first step would be to plant the idea that surgery beyond 'legitimate medical necessity' both possible and capable of beneficial (and wondrous) outcomes. If the good surgeon has been constrained by compassion, or social conventions, what she needs is an example that challenges old assumptions, and might prompt reconsideration. Conveniently, Lute Silhouette provides such an example.

Lute will reveal that the arm was elective surgery- an improvement chosen, not a necessary repair (casually, as if she does not realize this is unusual).

>Where did you get that thing?
Full honesty would likely not be productive at this point. Revealing the arm as a literally priceless artifact might crush the doctor's hope of ever matching such wonders herself, and releaving the connection to hell might forge a negative association, reaffirming her longings as inappropriate or immoral. (Even if there are relevant infernal arts, that's several steps down a path the surgeon is just starting now).

Does Lute have a cover story prepared? She has enough Lore and Occult to make provide a plausible explanation for a source of living glass, I'd think, but my own setting knowledge falls short.
>>
No. 902994 ID: 2007b6

>>902991
Lute Silhouette explains that she got her glass arm somewhere far away, at a clinic on a frozen island in a sea entirely separate from the Great Western Ocean, where the sun is directly overhead when it's the middle of the night in Sijan. She mentions offhandedly the city of Skyport far in the northwest, and by association a great glass shark which patrols the Western Middlemarches, before describing in great detail a grove in the Eastern wyld where arms grow like fruit from trees, then eagerly seek to attach themselves to living bodies. The process of cultivating and installing artificial grafts has a comparable relation to that grove, as tending a garden and then baking a pie does to gathering wild berries before eating them raw. This example may be unusually advanced, but is still far from unique. Food and potable water are often scarce on that island, while gold is cheap as cornhusks, but there's no steel to be had at any price, so the people have found other ways to survive.

No part of that was, in the strict sense, factually false, but the calculated result is to leave an (incorrect) impression that Creation is somehow cylindrical east-to-west like a map rolled up in a scroll-case, and there's some foreign country around the antipode where grafts and genesis tech are more common than blacksmithing.

Next problem, Lute doesn't know nearly enough about how genesis tech really works to teach it to someone herself. Out of the people she's met who DO have those skills, the most accessible is a horse-headed, bat-winged, fire-breathing, soul-devouring monster from beyond conventional reality, whereas the others are demons.
>>
No. 903087 ID: 23b7bd

rolled 3, 1, 1, 6, 7, 5, 8, 8, 2, 1, 5, 4, 1, 9, 4 = 65

>>902988
As is to be expected. How goes the effort to rescue civilians? Has she found a mortal amiable to acting as a less monsterous go-between, or is she simply hauling burning rubble out of the way and hoping for the best?
>>
No. 903562 ID: 2007b6

>>903087
A young man, bald and barefoot, clad in a simple robe of coarse hemp fabric cinched with a red linen belt, steps out of the crowd to approach Bridget. Stiffly, he brandishes a string of polished wooden beads, then stammers "M-monster! Y-you don't b-b-belong in this world!"
>>
No. 903655 ID: d9acdc

rolled 4, 5, 7, 2, 10, 7, 5, 2, 7, 4, 10, 9, 8, 4, 2 = 86

>>903562
Assuming then, that she can understand him, she first lifts a collapsed doorway, creating an entrance through which those trapped within might escape, before addressing the accuser.
"True. This is unexpected. I will not stay long, I have business to attend. My stay will be shortened if you help these people. If you must take action against me, await the end of crisis. I will not risk these folk. I concede to your demands so long as it does not endanger the people."
>>
No. 903668 ID: 094652

rolled 7, 3, 8, 9, 7, 4, 4, 7, 6, 4, 6, 2, 2, 7, 9 = 85

Embri will fill the barrel with pheromones, turning it into a pressurized lust-bomb. She will also use her thousand-fold obscenity gown to secrete red milk and attempt to saturate it into the pheromone-filled air as well. She'll unlock the barrel (or make it easier to burst out of) with her morphing hands as best she can, and use the Dragonfly's Ranging Eye to prepare for the right time to strike. When the time comes, she'll burst out of the barrel, on her windblade with armor on, leaving a gas trail of madness pheromones as she fires more arrows upon the bandits where she saw their patrols before making a hasty exit along with her zombie carrying the winterbreath jar.

Augments for anything necessary to pull this off.
>>
No. 904199 ID: 2007b6

rolled 4, 2, 1, 2, 2, 8, 5 = 24

>>903655
"You are an Anathema, and your p-presence here is itself the greatest crisis this town has ever faced. Are you the 'Syrinx p-Prophet' who turned brother against b-brother to orchestrate this attack, or were you j-just w-waiting like a v-vulture for any sign of w-weakness? M-my duty, every g-good Immaculate's duty, is to resist your schemes to the utmost, n-no matter how sed-d-ductive or b-benign they may at f-first appear."
He grabs a knife from a nearby tool belt, whose owner shouts "What the fuck, Pillar, you can't just..."
>I concede to your demands
"My only demand, demon, is that you return," says the second-coil monk apparently named Pillar, having gathered his courage to a rolling boil, "to your rightful prison beneath the sea!"
Roll Join Battle.

Also, be advised that you'll be facing penalties to dodge so long as your ability to maneuver is limited, and in the current situation cannot parry or attack at all without first explaining how you arranged to get a suitable limb at least temporarily free. If Bridget lets go of the loose roof beam right at this moment, some soot-faced little girl (with a raggedy plush ox-dragon nearly as big as she is) who's currently crawling over the foundation-wall out of a partially collapsed building, will probably be crushed.

>>903668
>Embri will fill the barrel with pheromones, turning it into a pressurized lust-bomb.
The barrel is not airtight enough to be pressurized. You can use pheromones to enhance social attacks against anyone within fifty yards (or up to a hundred, if you warm up the Fourth Appearance Augmentation first) but that doesn't remove the need to communicate through some conventional channel. With an opaque wall in the way, the only really obvious options would be prayer, which has unlimited range but can usually only be heard by spirits, or simple shouting.
>She will also use her thousand-fold obscenity gown to secrete red milk and attempt to saturate it into the pheromone-filled air as well.
The ichor has similar physical properties to milk, or blood, and loses it's psychological potency within seconds of exposure to the air. It's meant to be ingested immediately after - or really, during - production. You could secrete some here, but it would just end up as a sticky puddle on the floor.
>She'll unlock the barrel (or make it easier to burst out of) with her morphing hands as best she can,
Dry oak is easy enough to drill through, while the surrounding barrel-hoops are thin and rusty. With those six sucesses, a quiet disassembly of the barrel, sufficient for escape, is accomplished inside twenty minutes. Given another hour (at most) you could put it all back together so seamlessly, it'd look like you were still inside.
>and use the Dragonfly's Ranging Eye to prepare for the right time to strike.
Once you're out of the barrel, the Dragonfly's Ranging Eye lets you reposition the effective viewpoint of one of your eyes to peek around elsewhere inside the wagon (mostly barrels of dry beans or salted fish, crates of hardtack, and stacked-up sacks of grain), but only to points within clear line-of-sight. Looking around properly outside would require poking a hole, which one of the guards might notice.
Switching to 'Essence Sight' mode provides a lurid false-color overlay, through which the wagon's ironwood walls appear partly transparent. Your zombie minion is still marching along faithfully near the wagon's rear-left corner. The Frozen Heart pumps out another dose of ice marrow, and you see him swallowing, https://xkcd.com/2047/ watch as it circulates around to repair and reinforce. Fortunately, none of the bandits seem to have any innate magic, apart from some sort of intestinal parasite (the strongest of which is inside that guy standing on the roof), nor magical equipment - apart from a scattering of single-use arrows. Blessing on those looks sorta fire-shaped, but it's sickly greenish, which maybe means a wood-aspect thing? You're pretty sure archery is usually wood-aspected. Wagon itself seems to be enchanted somehow, not sure of the exact details (Intelligence + Occult => 2 dice), though it's very weak. Even your Winterbreath Jar is clearly more resilient and impressive.
>>
No. 904250 ID: 23b7bd

rolled 2, 2, 6, 5, 1, 5, 7, 4, 4, 4, 5, 9, 4, 6, 7, 4, 8, 8, 9, 5 = 105

>>904199
Bridget is unconcerned by a mortal blade, her skin is as if iron, and her will stronger still- the blade will break upon her body before she risks harm to the child. With that in mind, she moves to ensure it does not risk chipping or deflecting towards an innocent. She addresses the mortal who’s knife was taken:

“Bullies will not be tolerated. Once this is resolved, inform me of any stolen items or grievances for addressal. You will be cared for to the best of my abilities.”

Iron Skin Concentration should have been activated at the beginning of the scene, but if I forgot it I’ll activate it reflexively upon being attacked. Forge skills should be enough to figure out how to stop the blade from breaking, but I’m probably rolling for more than just join battle so I’ll roll extra just in case. Social attacks happen once every minute, but other dialog is still allowed right? Does any sort of conversation count as social attacks, or just stuff that people don’t want to listen to?
>>
No. 904277 ID: 2007b6

>>904250
Botched Join Battle, so Pillar has six ticks to do as he pleases before Bridget can respond. He reaches up to stab her femoral artery. Against such disproportionate force, she's got a lethal soak of 16, literally twice as hard as an iron-bound fortress gate, so he'd need upwards of ten threshold successes on the attack roll (or a supernatural boost, such as charms from Five-Dragon Style - which, fortunately, he does not have) to inflict more than minimum damage. For 2m, you could use Iron Skin Concentration which seems to be described incorrectly on your google doc char sheet - check the Scroll of Errata to reduce that minimum damage to zero. In those six ticks, he could get at most two flurried attacks with a Speed 4 weapon such as a knife, and one activation of ISC applies to the whole flurry, so you're down a couple motes but otherwise unscathed. The monk known as Pillar would apparently have had an easier time wounding an actual mountain.

Pillar hands the (yet-unbloodied) knife back to the outraged tradesman he filched it from, then runs off to find a sledgehammer, poleaxe, or something else comparably heavy and dangerous.
>>
No. 904290 ID: 23b7bd

rolled 5, 5, 8, 3, 9, 1, 1, 6, 10, 2, 9, 1, 8, 9, 10 = 87

Whoops, not sure where I got that idea from, should have been Iron Kettle Body, the scene long one that increases my soak, that I activated earlier. I’m confused about where you got 16 from though; essence + stamina + resistance is only 13, right?

But yeah, reflexively reducing the damage, if any, of his attacks sounds like a good addition. After the people have been escorted out of the particular house she’s defending, Bridget grabs an iron pole from the crumbling foundation, and heads somewhere easily visible, with fewer people who could be injured by debris from a shattered sledgehammer or what have you. She does not wish to fight, but she worries that this “Pillar” will inadvertently bring harm upon others in a blind fervor. Hopefully she can restrain him and get on with her work.
>>

rolled 4, 6, 7, 6, 1, 2, 5, 4, 5, 8 = 48

>>902994
The good surgeon seems suitably inspired, and has certainly been provided with a positive example of that which she yearns for!

>Next problem, Lute doesn't know nearly enough about how genesis tech really works to teach it to someone herself. Out of the people she's met who DO have those skills, the most accessible is a horse-headed, bat-winged, fire-breathing, soul-devouring monster from beyond conventional reality, whereas the others are demons.
Hmmm, yes, that is something of a complication. Lute isn't prepared for a demon summoning right now, and while she might be able to convince her best frenemy that a mortal wildly modifying bodies as their whims and artistry take them is funny enough to merit support, weeks of training might be a little long to expect him to behave and maintain cover. And if Lute departs with the airship on schedule, he would be left behind rather quickly.

Could try and take the surgeon along, of course, but a war-wounded village seems like it would have many opportunities for a burgeoning flesh-sculptor to ply her art, and better the survivors.

Hmmm. Out of curiosity, who's the nearest person (inside fate) with the skills necessary to teach genesis tech, and how far away are they?

>>904277
Was Pillar's futile struggle against the iron mountain close enough to the triage tent to notice?
>>
No. 904466 ID: 2007b6

>>904408
>Out of curiosity, who's the nearest person (inside fate) with the skills necessary to teach genesis tech, and how far away are they?
If you're asking with Efficient Secretary Technique, that falls under the "inherently esoteric" failure condition.

Based on your own Lore 6 & Occult 6 academic knowledge, best chance for a reasonably local tutor would be one of the raptok - wood-aspected dragon kings. They mostly worked with plants, but also had some shapeshifting capability, and ancestral memories mean they might conceivably have access to any sort of First Age lore.

Crack open the Scroll of Fallen Races, roll up a starting Dragon King character with three steps along the Shimmering Water Path, and I'll say they were here in town all along, until the Shard Fallen pierced their illusory disguise. For best results you'll also want them to have dots in Craft (Water) for basic chemistry, Craft (Wood) for the dynamic structures of skin, bone, muscle, and sinew, Medicine of course, and Craft (Steam) for the actual genesis-tech esoterica.

Comprehensive, arbitrary abiogenesis requires either lost tech comparable to (yet entirely distinct from) a factory-cathedral, or the direct assistance of Gaia or one of the yozis, or some equivalently drastic miracle. However, that's only really strictly necessary for projects like creating an immortal behemoth, or things so bizarre they're effectively without precedent. Variations on existing species, even introducing minor supernatural powers, can be done in a suitably specialized shogunate-style workshop, typically built into a level 3+ manse. Classic example is eight-tailed mole hounds - also worth noting from a cautionary standpoint, since even with the resources of the Shogunate the mole hound biotemplate couldn't be made both combat-effective AND completely controllable, so the ones that got away still pose an occasional threat to parts of the South centuries later.

>Was Pillar's futile struggle against the iron mountain close enough to the triage tent to notice?
Yeah. Even if you didn't hear the altercation directly, people are talking, and Pillar himself is running around trying scrounge up a better weapon, rouse an angry mob, or otherwise prepare for a second attempt. Force of Ordered Thought is probably going to murder that mortal monk shortly after she finds out what happened.
>>

rolled 5, 6, 2, 10, 3, 4, 2, 2, 8, 8 = 50

>Force of Ordered Thought is probably going to murder that mortal monk shortly after she finds out what happened.
Hmm. He's been doing a wonderful job propogandizing the order as foolish, out of touch, and more concerned with its own dictates than the safety of children. Being murdered by an anathema would undercut that by making him a posthumously correct martyr.

Where is the brass tiger anyways? Did she stick around to assist, or did she set off to smite raiders with the righteous fury of hell?
>>
No. 904882 ID: 2007b6

>>/questdis/125819
Lute notices that Edgar, a "retired adventurer" and owner of a local teahouse (quite popular, yet chronically unsuccessful from a financial standpoint) not only has flowers growing out of her left forearm, but is actually a dinosaur in disguise. Physical details are almost flawless, though the acting, ah, has room for improvement.

"Haha, yes, 'Edgar' is a perfectly traditional feminine name for humans in... the... country which I am originally from. Very far away."

She's a decent cook, built the teahouse mostly with her own two hands, and has been more than pulling her weight with rescue and triage. The flowers are a symbiote, allowing dragon kings to heal like exalts, and exalts to recover wounds in a third of the normal time or less. It also provides some benefit to resisting poison and disease, but attuning to it requires either enlightened essence or thaumaturgical support.
>>
No. 905865 ID: 0640da

I've had Leng look over my sheet and approve it. It might need mild adjusting here and there. Without spoiling too much yet...

Morse Song (aka Morse Encoding of Forbidden Lore, Wrapped in Song, aka Song, aka Morse)
Midnight Caste Abyssal
Goal: To write an immortal ballad capable of making all those who listen to it desire to die.

VIRTUES
[Compassion][5][Conviction][2][Temperance][1][Valor][1]

INTIMACIES
[Small Animals] - Morse Song longs to hold small animals and pet them, but whenever she does they die in unusual and horrific ways.
[Rebellion] - Morse Song feels sympathies for anti-government movements, and feels strongly inclined to help them.
[Weak and Infirm] - Morse Song longs to help those who are hurt, but her words only carry death. She acts cold and aloof to warn them away, but she truly wants to help them. Unfortunately for her, these impulses are noted and rewarded with an equally cold punishment.
[Love] - Morse Song longs for a date, or a romantic partner of any kind-- but everyone she longs for dies.
[The Void] - Morse Song has seen the void, and she thinks about it all the time. She'll sing uncontrollably about her longing to be back again, to join her family and those she loved.

ATTRIBUTES
Willpower 7/7
Physical: 4
[1][Strength] [1][Dexterity] [5][Stamina]
Social: 8+1
[4][Charisma] [3][Manipulation] [5][Appearance]
Mental: 6
[4][Perception] [1][Intelligence] [4][Wits]

ABILITIES 25/25
Midnight Abilities: [Integrity 0] [Performance 5] [Presence 4] [Resistance 5] [Survival 1]
Favored: [Socialize 1] [Lore 2] [Occult 3] [Linguistics 3] [Dodge 1]
Specialties: [Performance: Shamisen] [Performance: Singing] [Lore: Tome of the Endless Night] [Occult: Princess Magnificent]

BACKGROUND
Straw Mat Roll - Mundane
Mirror Flag - Artifact 1
A reflective orichalcum player’s mask crafted for her by Shalrina, Daimyo of Faces. The user must commit one mote to activate the mask. When attuned, it can switch at the wearer’s will between a comedy mask, a tragedy mask, an expressionless face and a featureless blank (through which an attuned wearer can still see quite clearly). Wearing it and activating it adds an internal +2 bonus to Mirror Flag’s Performance-based acting rolls. Observers also suffer a -2 external penalty to rolls to determine the wearer’s true identity or motives
The Drowned Shamisen of Sky's Pouring (basically a Dream Projector, per Wonders of the Lost Age, but looks like a Shamisen)
Artifact 4, Repair 3 - Costs 7 motes to attune and 5 more to activate for a scene, range is the user's permanent essence in miles. This device can also be used with any Social Charms that the wearer possesses that are specifically designed for use when communicating with crowds. These Charms can be used normally and will affect everyone who receives the message. Ordinary social Excellencies or other Charms that are not specifically designed to be used for mass communication cannot be used with this item, even if they could normally be used when the wearer was making a speech or telling a story. Charms such as Respect Commanding Attitude or Heart-Compelling Method, however, can be used to great effect in combination with this artifact. Yet, because of the difficulty of combining any Charm with this powerful item, the wearer must spend one Willpower point for every Charm used in this fashion, in addition to any other Willpower or mote costs required by the Charm.
Liege 2 (Princess Magnificent)
Backing 1 (Shining Path)

MISC - 20/18+2 BP - ESSENCE 4 - 2 pips of Artifact - 1 Social Bonus
Derangement: Cannibalism - If Song sees a corpse, she'll need to spend 1 Willpower or just chow down. Yum.
Languages: Old Realm, High Realm, Riverspeak, Native Skytongue

CHARMS - 10/10 Charms -
PERFORMANCE OVERWHELMING - MORBID FASCINATION STYLE - INESCAPABLE MASSACRE TECHNIQUE - HAUNTING APPARITION TRICK - WITHERING PHANTASMAGORIA - ESSENCE ENGORGEMENT TECHNIQUE - SPIRIT-HARDENED FRAME - WALKING CADAVER GROTESQUERIE - INSIDIOUS UNDERTONE TRICK - SCREAMING IN SILENCE

Starter post for Morse Song coming soon! I hope you like death.
>>
No. 905871 ID: 0640da

rolled 5, 2, 10, 9, 6, 10, 8, 3, 4, 3, 5, 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 7, 10, 5, 1, 5, 5, 9, 7, 10, 4, 7, 6, 8, 1 = 172

A lone cloaked figure wearing a long shamisen and a rolled up straw mat on her back looks down at her compass, wiping blood off her mouth and onto her sleeve. While the stop for a crispy snack in the freshly plundered town did wonders for her hunger, the compass seemed to imply she had just missed her quarry. She adjusts her mask to cover her mouth once more, before looking out into the horizon... the trail of a caravan extended onwards for quite some distance. "No matter..." She speaks to herself, wondering if all this is really necessary. "Eventually, they'll all stop. And then I'll be there." She begins to walk, following the caravan trail to their destination-- her destination. That heart would be hers, sooner or later. Even if it took a hundred years to get it, and a hundred more afterwards.

...

After some amount of effort on her part, she manages to reach the caravan-- approaching from the rear-- unaware of Embri's plans on the lot of them. She removes her shamisen and plays a loud note to get the attention of someone aboard... before she spots the icy heart in a bandit's hands. It's unmistakable-- someone is currently carrying her quarry, and her compass points directly at their cold corpse. Someone who looks off to the living corpse. "Beg pardon... is there room on the caravan for a humble bard?" A cool voice speaks up in flawless Riverspeak to those who would hear her as she walks, tuning and strumming her instrument. If possible, a Presence roll? I think Presence is the right one for this. "I seek passage forwards, and can enliven your journey... with sound." She will repeat herself in other languages, if necessary-- but her understanding extends to all three of the common tongues.
>>

rolled 1, 1, 8, 4, 7, 7, 10, 9, 10, 2, 6, 3, 5, 7, 10, 6, 9, 2, 8, 9, 1, 1, 10, 2, 4, 3, 3, 6, 10, 5, 6, 10, 6, 3, 4, 2, 10, 4, 10, 9 = 233

>>904882
A potential tutor located already! How... serendipitous.

>"Haha, yes, 'Edgar' is a perfectly traditional feminine name for humans in... the... country which I am originally from. Very far away."
"And a fine name it is. I love what you've done with those flowers, by the way."
(Assuming the flowers are visible in human guise, and aren't concealed? Implying I can blow his cover might be good for a blackmail or intimidation angle, but doesn't seem conducive if I want to facilitate a long term partnership or mentorship).

Lute will try to feel 'Edgar' out through discussion and observation while continuing triage, trying to get a sense of... 'her' abilities (not every dragon king has the necessary skills to instruct in genesis crafting, after all, though the integrated artifact and assisting with triage are encouraging) and what's motivating her.

Assuming the necessary credentials and compatible interests or motivations are discerned, Lute will arrange an introduction between the mad scientist junior and senior on the triage line. Get them working together and give them both a chance to see that the other is compatible and interested in the same thing.

Rolling a bunch of dice, probably investigation + something for assessing Edgar's capabilities, sense motive for personality, and then I don't know what to facilitate an introduction (performance or socialize + manipulation ?) but I think I'd like to channel compassion to make sure it goes well.
>>
No. 906121 ID: 2007b6

>>905880
Lute's Perception + Investigation is 10 dice, scoring at least 8 successes even before a stunt, resisted by a static value derived from Edgar's Manipulation + Socialize of only 4 dice, meaning the undercover dragon king is all but an open book.

Subject's dominant emotions are concern for the people of this town, but in a sort of detached and pitying way, more like a shepherd for their flock or a particularly ethical scientist for the caged mice in the control group, rather than like a more typical small business proprietor for peers and customers.
> I love what you've done with those flowers, by the way.
"Ah, yes, the medical orchid! Second-greatest treasure of my career as an adventurer. It follows Sithrak Silverfang's original design almost exactly, though of course a few minor compromises and improvisations were necessary due to the poor quality of... wait, a moment."
Edgar looks at the Shard Fallen, then at Lute's face, squints, and finally stares at the orchid, before extending her sleeve (which is in fact an illusion, since the raptok's actual clothing is minimal, serving mostly to support pockets) over the flowers and whispering conspiratorially.
"What else did you see, and how, exactly?"
>>905871
Addressing a crowd is usually Performance, whereas Presence is for tailoring your arguments to a single individual (or a group with a clear collective identity).

Mote pool... huh, looks like I missed that. Per the Errata, if you didn't spend any points on Willpower it starts at 5. Could get the two extra BP necessary to start at seven by upgrading the cannibalism derangement (meaning you can't spend WP to resist the urge, and have no chance to shake it off by rolling without Temperance of at least 3) or taking some other -2 mutation. Maybe a phobia, or delusion, or the inability to digest plant-based foods. Or, you could just start off relatively weak-willed by exalt standards (though still notably stronger in that regard than the average peasant.)

Assuming Willpower 7, Morse has a personal mote pool of 19, a peripheral mote pool of 44, and a secondary peripheral pool with limited recharge options of 10. All of those start out full, though as a Creature of Death she may have some difficulty respiring essence in the living world. You've probably also got 7 peripheral motes committed to your shamisen, 1 to the mask, and... hm. Are you garbed or otherwise surrounded by the ritual and symbolic trappings of death? If not, you're either suffering a -2 internal penalty to all non-reflexive actions due to the discomfort associated with being rejected by Creation's living essence, or you need to commit another 5 motes to ward off that feeling for a day by surrounding yourself in an invisible sheathe of necrotic essence. Think of it as the "failure to dress up like a spooky goth" tax, mostly relevant for attempts to operate undercover in less morbid environments.

Anyway, Manipulation + Performance to convince the bandit caravan to let you join in and provide entertainment. That's 10 dice to begin with, +2 from a stunt (speaking in character and giving a good reason why they might agree, based on previously-established details such as you being unarmed apart from a musical instrument) and you could add up to ten more dice with the first excellency. If you want to play it safe, you could spend 4 personal motes and recover them immediately thanks to the stunt award. If you want to maximize your chances and/or expect an opportunity to feed soon and so feel no need to conserve resources, you could spend a total of 16 motes - ten on the excellency, six more on Insidious Undertone Trick to make the social attack unexpected. That would be most of your personal pool, but still within the range of what can be accomplished without revealing yourself as a supernatural being, assuming nothing else exciting happens before you get a chance to recharge from stunts, feeding, or visiting a shadowland.

Or, you could spend those sixteen motes from your peripheral pool. In that case your anima banner would go fully iconic, and your anima power would activate, reflexively animating any corpses that happen to be available within a ten-yard radius (even, say, birds or insects), one every few seconds at no further cost.

Regardless of the exact details, that roll turned up six successes in the first seven dice, and on an eminently reasonable-sounding request, so now you're walking along with the caravan and they're only moderately suspicious you might be a spy (unless you went full iconic, in which case everyone for miles around knows you're here and can safely assume you're up to something bad, but the bandits are smart enough to avoid starting a pointless fight they might not be able to finish). What next?
>>
No. 906163 ID: 0640da
File 153907265558.jpg - (143.18KB , 468x882 , hiroshige-ghost-of-a-blind-street-musician.jpg )
906163

Morse Song is more firmly based in the mythology of the Yurei, a spirit or demon from Japanese mythology that has lingered for unfinished business. As such, she wears an elegant burial robe, also known as a katabira, emblazoned with sutras written in Skytongue. Her sleeves are long and flowing, running to her knees, and she makes very little attempt to hide her... less than living status. But she's more than content to politely receive what she desires without drawing much attention to herself... plucking a string or two with her long, untrimmed nails and dirty but slender hands, she prepares her first song. A lullaby about the snow, written from the perspective of a weary traveler. Thankfully, an instrumental song... although as she walks, haunting apparitions begin to rise and follow the caravan, blackening the sky and threatening the caravan with an unnatural, illusory snow. From the side, she speaks audibly to the zombie...

"You look rather... cold. Do you know what you're carrying there?" She strums the Shamisen gently now, but she does not sing-- that might be fatal to the weak, and would almost certainly cause an... incident. "You probably don't. And you probably don't know how unusual it is to find a lone zombie among a field of mortals." Her voice lowers, almost to a growl, but she perks her chin up. "Let alone one holding an artifact... I wonder, which Abyssal created thee? What manner of artifact raised you from the earth, to join us once more in this world?" Her tempo is slow, between 40 and 55 beats per minute. "Who makes you hold the frozen heart, that which nips at fingers and... chills bone?"

Song can't help but to approach the necromantic construct, to feel the chill for herself... and frown. "How they expect me to carry this is beyond me... perhaps I should utilize you, hmm?" A bloodstained sleeve lifts to wipe away her drool as the death knight backs off and looks away. -1 WP, from my total of 5. 4/5 Willpower-- what are my new Mote values, again? "That wouldn't work, would it? I would find myself consuming you before we had reached our destination... what do you think, fellow travelers?" She turns her head towards the mortals onboard the caravan, trying to start a conversation. "Perhaps I can talk to the head of the caravan and work something out... your caravan takes jobs, does it not?" Would I need to roll to meet with... I assume the bandit leader is my target?

((Just in case, here's a pile of dice. Literally no reason not to provide it, if she's making a performance roll to meet with him.))
>>
No. 906165 ID: 0640da

rolled 1, 6, 7, 1, 3, 1, 1, 10, 3, 8, 6, 1, 4, 7, 10 = 69

((Uh, still trying to figure out this dice system.))
>>
No. 906166 ID: 094652

rolled 1, 10, 3, 3, 9, 6, 3, 4, 1, 7 = 47

Against her better judgement, Embri has decided to stay in the cart for now.

And turn it into a bomb.

Embri quietly sneaks some of the food sacks out of the cart, neutralizes any guards trying to investigate, and places a small stash of shrapnel, bombs, and lighter fluid at key positions. When the bandit horde finally reaches their destination, she'll detonate this cart (not to mention all the zombie arrows she'll fire when the cart stops) just as the leader comes in to inspect it, zip away on her windblade with armor, grab the winterbreath jar from her zombie, and - well, we'll see what happens.
>>
No. 906174 ID: 2007b6

>>906166
You've got incendiaries designed to be used as traps, alchemical smoke bombs, flash paper, poisoned arrows, and a few eggshells full of knockout gas, any of which could be retrieved for 1 mote per item... but no actual fragment-throwing demolition explosives. Your main "ten-yard kill radius" device was the elemental pulse grenade, which produces poison gas and (due to green jade content) is incompatible with your Elsewhere storage charm. It was confiscated when you were captured. Possible to replace, but not cheap; Oyabun won't be happy if you've lost it.

>>906163
>What manner of artifact raised you from the earth, to join us once more in this world?
Apart from being covered with ice, the dead man holding the jar with the Unmelting Heart looks more like a drunkard than a corpse. He shuffles along with his pants still around his ankles, fletching of an arrow dangling below the skirt of scale armor to about the height of his knees.

When approached, he gurgles angrily at you like a stray dog with pneumonia and shifts the jar in his arms, an unambiguous "all mine, won't share" sort of gesture.

>"Perhaps I can talk to the head of the caravan and work something out... your caravan takes jobs, does it not?"
They're not a trade caravan; this stuff in the wagons is spoils of war. None of them seem to know who's actually in charge. There's a broad sense that they've all recently made some final commitment to an atrocity they were fantasizing about for a long time, and will likely regret once they've had a chance to think about what it really means, but for now they're still mostly riding the wave of transgressive glee, and the relief of long-held secrets shared and accepted among new-found friends.

Your Intelligence + Bureaucracy roll, to apply for a job through official channels, is a botch.
>>
No. 906182 ID: 0640da

rolled 1, 6, 10, 10, 8, 5, 1, 8, 7, 5, 10, 5, 9, 9, 3, 1, 6, 5, 7, 9 = 125

Frustration fills the Death Knight's vessel, the undead becoming fed up with this uncooperative attitude. In times like these, an immortal needs to remind the mortals of their position in life, and where they will go in death... Morse can feel the power vacuum among the loosely affiliated caravan, no bandit able to properly direct her to someone willing to help her. It becomes increasingly clear as their party continues that she will need to more clearly control the mood if she plans to take the heart to her deathlord master. Since nobody is clearly in charge... why not take charge herself?

((I'm going to spend a few motes to channel Morbid Fascination Technique and Inescapable Massacre Technique, in tandem with her artifact's power. This is mildly expensive... 15 motes and 3 willpower, which she can barely afford. She's also rolling Charisma (4), Performance (5) for the effects, plus 4 from her essence. I'm not sure if this is on top of her But if she succeeds, she'll definitely have their attention... Notably, Embri and anyone in a... 4 mile radius of the bandit caravan must pay 4 WP and 3 WP collectively to resist, or they will need a Dodge MDV higher than her successes to escape. .))

Collecting herself, she searches her mind for an appropriate musical styling... and begins to strum her shamisen quickly, letting out a mournful wail. Her voice is like ice as it seeps into the minds of those around her, spoiling their mood and commanding the scene. Using her Haunting Apparitions, she conjures a scene to match her parable, the world around them becoming dry and heated, as if within a desert, as a wretched caravan with a greasy, plump human rolls into view. His teeth are yellow, and his eyes are black like voids...

"Walked to and from with passers by
A merchant rode with a nose high
Oft sought for gold, mortal reward
Dismissed the soul, thought he'd afford

Upon his left rode broken man
Left dying, bleeding on the sand
His wheel was snapped, his eyes were grey
And so he plead with merchant, stay"


The wretched wagon, in front of the bandit caravan, rolls in front of a pleading corpse. His lips are silent, but barely moving... his hand extends, and so does the merchant's... to rub his fingers together, as if asking for more coin.

"Give me passage to my home
I left my wife and child to roam
I sought for gold, but I was robbed
And now I bleed out here to rot

The merchant man, he turned his nose
There's ones who win and lose, suppose
But soon a dark fate did beset...
The man of gold who moves heartless

The bandits rode upon his cart
They cleaved his ox, they pierced his heart
And as he lay down in a ditch
Another cart approached forthwith"


The greasy merchant lay bleeding after a scene of great carnage, one that might fascinate and roil up the bandits. Ghostly knights begin to drag their swords along the ground, slashing at wheels and an emaciated ox and spilling blood all over the desert sands. The scene ends with the bandits loading up, and a new cart rolling past the devastation... a gaunt man holding the reins, and the attention of the audience.

"On that cart's left, lay broken man
Left dying, bleeding on the sand
His wheel was snapped, his eyes were grey
And so he plead for help that day

But man in cart, he turned his nose
There's ones who win and lose, suppose
If it were you, and you were them
Would you have chose to save the man?


This would be the ideal time if Embri wanted to steal the heart, but she might have to make a check or two first.
>>
No. 906183 ID: 2007b6

>>906182
Okay, that's looking like twelve successes on the social attack. Whatever you're trying to convince them of, it almost certainly worked. What was that, exactly, in OOC terms? If it's just "I'm in charge here" most of them are going to assume you're either shadowy mastermind Ebon Rime in yet another disguise, or else the Syrinx Prophet herself, a foreign spirit of smoldering metal, maddening wisdom, and whistling winds, in whose honor much blood has been shed this day.

For everyone else, resisting Morbid Fascination Style only costs 1 wp per five minutes, to a max of 4 total for the scene. Anyone in four miles but out of earshot could instead spend 1 wp to block the dream broadcaster's message entirely.
>>
No. 906216 ID: 0640da

The story itself is a parable similar to that of the 'Good Samaritan' of Christian lore. A man requests help (passage to the place he was born) but is scorned by a man concerned only with wealth, and the one who refuses it soon finds himself in need of help as well.

She's implying, very strongly and very subtly, if they don't help her here they're all going to die. She is the man requesting passage but offering no payment, and the bandits are the rich man who have denied her once. Incidentally, if I look into this, I think Embri would be the bandits in question. That's not really intentional, but that's the case if we extend the metaphor to reality.

While she is not necessarily demanding they make her their leader, she is demanding that they offer her respect and provide aid to her-- or else. Continuing to strum her shamisen, she coolly looks over her audience with a grimace. "Do you understand my words? Or shall we move on to the next verse?"

((Massacre Technique seems to imply if they wish to escape social combat they'll need to pay 3 WP or have an MDV higher than... 10 or 14. Wouldn't resisting the song be attempting to leave or avoid any combat, mass combat or social combat in which the deathknight visibly participates? The visibly might be a problem, but that still accounts for at least 400 yards in every direction.))
>>
No. 906221 ID: 3fbb32

>>906183
I would imagine Bridget is within 4 miles. If she can’t hear what’s being demanded on her, what is she’s obligated to do, should she not pay the cost? Also, if pillar is nearby and affected that may affect how Bridget reacts, not sure if the immaculate monk is visible again yet.
>>

rolled 8, 7, 8, 10, 8, 9, 2, 1, 4, 8, 4, 9, 10, 9, 10, 3, 4, 10, 6, 1, 5, 5, 5, 6, 4, 7, 9, 4, 5, 1 = 182

>>906121
>"What else did you see, and how, exactly?"
Answering circumspection with coyness, Lute replies "I saw enough. You're not the only one with a useful treasure" while turning the Shard fallen over in her hands, allowing a brief flash of scales to play across the surface.

Let's keep the scientist's interest by sharing some information on the Shard Fallen (downplay it as a Illusion-Shattering Mirror, instead of revealing full capabilities), and then try to turn the conversation back to biotech, what he's doing here, and a promising mortal with the potential to be a peer instead of a mere lab rat.

>Edgar looks at the Shard Fallen, then at Lute's face, squints
Hmmmm. Did he just peek under the Universal Precept Shroud and notice something off?

Rolling a bunch of dice (I assume the first part is some kind of manipulation roll, gauging if he saw under the UPS might be investigation or sense motive?) still willing to channel compassion towards facilitating the introduction of Bonesaw and Doctor Dinosaur when we get to that point.
>>
No. 906267 ID: 2007b6

>>906216
Yeah, they're all kneeling and bowing to you and acting generally servile, even the giant sloths to the extent their harnesses allow. The zombie dutifully hands over that Winterbreath Jar with the Unmelting Heart inside. What next?
>>906221
Assuming the caravan with the food hadn't made it more than four miles away from the town yet, Bridget could listen to the story and then go on with her work without needing to pay any WP. If she did, and used Mountain-Crossing Leap to arrive at the caravan quickly enough it might plausibly count as the same scene, she'd be compelled to render assistance to Morse, but otherwise she doesn't necessarily know who Morse even is.

Unless... Gilly, is your character explicitly revealing her identity and current location through the broadcast?
>>
No. 906269 ID: 0640da

((Morse has, quite loudly, announced that there's an abyssal somewhere in the area-- as to where the abyssal is, it should be impossible to tell if the details of the artifact are as we discussed and the sound is non-directional. Everyone within the caravan should be more than aware of who played the music, and although I didn't know about peripheral motes until after making the roll, I assume she'll be expending some soon and definitely announcing her presence. Embri is the only one likely to know who she is and her current position, unless someone I wasn't aware of is also near the caravan.))

Morse immediately hands the Unmelting Heart back to the zombie, afraid to hold onto the heart for too long without taking proper precautions. The cold is inviting and fills her heart with memories of the underworld, but she's not built for it. Unnecessary contact with the heart could make her death suffering as in life... and besides that, she's clearly secured the zombie holding the heart.

She adjusts her position in the caravan train, walking to the front of the caravan and leading the zombie behind her. Taking a seat in the first wagon and sitting the zombie down behind her, she glances expressionlessly at a bandit. "Bring me meat. We've a journey ahead of us... and a hungry spirit is a restless one." She plucks a few strings, beginning a slow tune. "Something... fresh, preferably. With blood still coursing through it." She salivates a little more, but uses the last of her Willpower to resist eating the zombie as she sits them down nice and comfy.

I suppose this is as good a time as any... is there a particular place I'm supposed to deliver this heart? Perhaps to a broken down monstrance, an operating monstrance, bring it to her home? She needs to report her success to her Deathlord.
>>
No. 906280 ID: 2007b6

>>906269
>is there a particular place I'm supposed to deliver this heart?
The Princess Magnificent with Lips of Coral and Robes of Black Feathers is imprisoned in a fortress in the Underworld, roughly seven thousand miles southwest of here. She wants the Unmelting Heart (any one of the original set of sixteen would be fine, actually, this one just happened to be closest), but it's up to you to figure out how to deliver it to her rather than the First And Forsaken Lion who controls the fortress in question. In her last missive she suggested a Sidereal exalt might be able to help, particularly a Chosen of Venus - with Occult 3 you're aware of Venus as both a wandering star (with associated constellations, and their astrological meanings) and a powerful god whose portfolio is serenity, but have yet to independently confirm that "sidereal exalted" even exist, much less any clue how to find one and subvert them to your cause.
>She needs to report her success to her Deathlord.
You also don't seem to have brought along any long-range communication magic, or made contact with any of the Princess's spy networks. Only obvious option would be prayer, which is unreliable.

Alternatively, the High Priest of Oblivion would also like this 'Unmelting Heart of the Tellerauthelot' returned, and he's arguably got more of a legitimate claim, having originally carved the damned thing out of it's namesake behemoth. His base of operations is the Hidden Tabernacle, about four thousand miles away to the west-northwest, but you might be able to get credit just for handing it off to some cultists of the Shining Path around Marama's Fell. You'd still need to cross two major rivers, countless minor ones, and a thousand miles of tundra controlled by a burgeoning Anathema-led empire to get there, or else travel partway by ship.
>>
No. 906288 ID: 0640da

((I'm going to give other players a chance to respond to her recent actions, since she's done quite a bit and needs some others to respond before she can figure out what to do. Until others meet with her, consider her 'resting'?))

Morse rubs her forehead and tries to relax as she redirects the caravan in the general direction of the Lion's fortress, waiting for her meal. Sometimes her deathlord gives her a headache... Sidereal exalted? She's not one to doubt the words of the deathlord who answered her prayers when no Solar would, but she's certainly doubtful of the existence of Sidereal exalt, let alone one of a relatively obscure star god. Finding one of these mythical beings would almost be more trouble than it was worth, especially considering she could probably wander in the courts of Lion relatively unchallenged. Nobody wanted to bring Weeping Raiton into this. But doing so might betray her deathlord in letting the others of the Neverborn know that her patron was gathering power... it was hard enough to gain confirmation from He Who Holds In Thrall with only a proxy to support her cause, let alone avoid notifying the other Neverborn that she was ascending once more.

It had taken all of her efforts to ingratiate herself with the Bishop's court, and even now she dreaded encountering him in person for fear her duplicity would be seen through. She might be a member of his court in name, with astounding levels of knowledge concerning his writing, and she might just be a fan of the old man... she was afraid that dealing with him for too long would only result in the termination of her journey before she could spread her message far and wide, and a betrayal of the one she trusts the most in this world. No, she could not meet with the Bishop, especially not with such a large boon. That may be the last decision she makes... especially as a confidant of the Princess Magnificent.

For now, she can only hope that the power of Fate brings her together with this... Sidereal before she arrives. She would not be surprised. Those pansies were always going on about 'Fate this' and 'Fate that' in every book she had read before this moment.
>>
No. 906306 ID: 094652

rolled 2, 1, 1, 8, 5, 2, 10, 7, 8, 2, 5, 2 = 53

Embri just barely manages to resist that little speech, and upon eavesdropping the oath to take her extremely rare zombie-ice jar and give it to one of the powerful factions in the far corners of the world, decides to don her fine robes, walk right out of the cart, and convince Morse Song to return her jar. Please.

Utilizing all necessary augments for this.
>>
No. 906307 ID: 2007b6

>>906288
>redirects the caravan in the general direction of the Lion's fortress
Problem: due to deep wheel-ruts in the narrow path through forested hills, unless you're abandoning the wagons to march overland, making a new road somehow, or taking some equivalently drastic step, the only way to get this carvan headed in a different direction is to continue toward the abandoned copper mine and use the roundabout there.

Crossing that distance with the current shoddy preparations might take four years or more.
>>
No. 906308 ID: 2007b6

>>906306
Alright, Embri breaks out while everyone's too distracted to notice the alarm, and approaches Morse Song while she's taking a nap. In addition to retrieving all that was yours to begin with, you could steal the Dead Man's Compass and/or the Drowned Shamisen. Not the mask, though, at least not without almost certainly waking her up. Feels like it's stuck on there with glue.
>>
No. 906312 ID: 0640da

>>906306
>Utilizing all necessary augments for this.

If she does decide to go the social route, she should probably wake up Morse Song and speak up to the death knight. Morse is probably willing to at least listen to her story... right?
>>
No. 906338 ID: c8a0f5
File 153920428778.png - (74.76KB , 353x230 , 43594419_10212665385656132_4261306769717854208_n.png )
906338

Light was deep enough in the woods having fled along the path to Bear Pond almost as quickly as she landed on the ground, she could smell (and incidentally see) the path heading this way, and it looked like the lion’s share of people had headed this way. So, she figured she would go there, keep an eye on things for a bit, and go for the throat of the present threat. She considered turning into a wolf to speed along her ‘chase’ and help pick up the trail that much better, but it was a well defined foot path of a decent sized group, and she had been shifting more and more frequently recently, and it was about time to let that cool down for the next few days unless she runs into trouble, although depending on the situation she might try to blend in with the local animals to observe the situation before she strikes.
>>
No. 906434 ID: 2007b6

>>906338
>>902658
Light of the Moon Cleansing the World meets up with Mother Bog's promised reinforcements when they emerge from a muddy ditch at the side of the road. Sixteen hulking 'shamblers,' eight 'daughters' who are less physically strong but far more graceful and can disguise themselves as human, and a sneaky child-sized 'crawler' which knows three spells: Stormwind Rider, Raising the Earth's Bones, and Virtuous Guardian of Flame.

Stormwind Rider can carry the caster and 600 pounds of people or stuff (that'd be Light and three or four Daughters, or maybe two Shamblers) at a hundred miles per hour, or, with a slower casting, a small army in full kit and 600 pounds of cargo (above and beyond what they're all individually carrying) at sixty miles per hour. Very maneuverable, but always hugs the ground, can't jump over obstacles more than thirty feet high or gaps more than fifty feet wide.

Either way, that's far faster than any mundane horse, so it might be possible to circle around and lay an ambush for the kidnappers despite their head start - provided you can anticipate the route they'll be taking. Bear Pond is a week away on foot, at least two days even with a fine horse (that you're not willing to run into the ground), and there's no real guarantee that's even their actual destination.

Good news is, the area is relatively rugged country, narrow strips of flat farmland between boulder-strewn hills like the phalanges of an ancient half-buried fist. Only so many good routes for a horse. Raising the Earth's Bones is five minutes to cast, rearranging local earth and stone into structures three stories high and/or deep and up to sixty yards wide, such as a fortified wall to block a narrow pass. However, the mote cost of that spell is high enough that a creeper can't cast the whole thing from it's own essence pool, so assistance from Mother Bog herself is needed - which produces effects that, like an exalt's anima flare, might become visible from miles away and thereby tip off the people you're trying to ambush.

Virtuous Guardian of Flame creates an automaton that resembles a floating torch, minus the handle. It can extend a flaming sword to protect a single subject (chosen at time of casting) like a Defend Other action with a parry DV of 6 Never takes offensive action, but poking wooden weapons or bare hands into fire has predictable consequences. Possible to have several of them active at once, but no more than one can protect a single subject, there's the same anima-stealth issue due to high mote cost, and they all wink out whenever the sun crosses the horizon.

The crawler currently only has enough temporary willpower to cast three spells total. It could recover a point or two by sleeping for eight hours, or by ritually sacrificing a sapient being to Mother Bog, or possibly by other means.

The town of Bear Pond was originally founded by refugees fleeing the Linowan/Haltan conflict roughly five hundred years ago, when the Fields of Woe first became a shadowland. They settled in the ruins of some old Shogunate industrial facility, repaired or repurposed a few parts of it, scavenged others. Major businesses these days are the sawmill, a shipyard catering to smugglers and pirates, and the 'Temple to Jorst & Plentimon' which is basically just a casino.
>>
No. 906463 ID: bb5006

Perception+Survival to track
>>
No. 906464 ID: bb5006

rolled 1, 1, 1, 7, 5, 5, 4 = 24

>>
No. 906466 ID: 2007b6

>>906464
One success, so it's not a botch at least. Remember to roll more dice than you expect to need, to account for stunts and other bonuses. Speaking of stunts, don't forget that playing off of established details - personal assets, enemy psychology, scenery, whatever - doesn't just provide bonus dice, it also lets you recover willpower or motes, and insert your own new details (provided they don't contradict what's already established).
>>
No. 906476 ID: 2007b6

The cavalry fang isn't making any particular efforts to conceal their trail, but against a pursuing party on foot they gain a free success on each tracking/evasion roll just for relative speed. (Stormwind Rider would flip that speed advantage around, but each casting can only be sustained long enough to apply to one roll.)

They're also damaging the footpath's carefully cultivated mossy surface with hoof-prints, and otherwise making a mess. Light vaguely remembers some lecture on the Immaculate Philosophy about "the Inconsiderate Horseman," the allegorical antithesis of all-compassionate Sextes Jylis.
>>
No. 906533 ID: 094652

rolled 3, 5, 5, 2, 1, 8, 8, 4, 1, 9 = 46

Embri decides to take what she can from this strangely "alluring" girl... and then polish, clean, and place what she stole that was not originally in Embri's possession five feet away from Morse Song on a nice cloth, along with a note saying that the poor girl should take better care of her precious belongings, or at least understand that such thievery will be common when the victim does not show proper respect to the items she owns, let alone the ones she has taken from others. However, Embri is willing to assist the girl in such matters, such as repairs and improvements, if she is willing to enter a partnership of sorts. If not, then Embri will simply escort these stolen food supplies back to their grainless farmers. Meet her near said carts if they wish to discuss matters.

Attempting to manipulate Morse into believing she needs a partner on the road to help her keep her stuff in order. Or at least stay friendly.
>>
No. 906538 ID: 2007b6

>>906533
Written social attack saying basically "you should take better care of your things" with a subtext of "I could be your best friend or worst enemy" would normally be Manipulation + Presence if addressed to a specific person, but it's possible to use Performance instead if you're phrasing as a sort of passive-aggressive 'open letter' that applies to anyone who reads it.

Instead of Appearance, MDV modifiers for written social attacks are based on relative Linguistics representing the importance of things like word choice and paragraph structure when posture and tone of voice are unavailable. You've both got Linguistics 3, though, so no modifier there.

Three successes on the roll, could buy two more with the Manipulation Augmentation and one by spending WP for a total of six.

Assuming Morse reads the note, best applicable DV starts at five. That could be Dodge to ignore the appeal, or Manipulation + Performance to argue against it. MDV may be at a -1 penalty for aligning with an intimacy (if she cares about the Drowned Shamisen enough to count it as such, or if Embri could be interpreted as a potential romantic partner) or -2 for aligning with a Virtue (mercy and generosity to the helpless, extending a figurative hand in friendship when you clearly had other options, does rather seem like something that plays off of Compassion).

Or you could choose not to resist, count it as a scene toward considering Embri a trustworthy prospective partner, and roll for Resonance gain due to the sin of building a positive intimacy toward a living subject.
>>
No. 906555 ID: 0640da

rolled 9, 8, 10, 6, 6, 8, 6, 9, 8, 2, 9, 4, 5, 7, 6, 9, 10, 4, 3, 6, 7, 9, 5, 1, 2, 4, 5, 1, 4, 9 = 182

Morse wakes, the absence of her shamisen from in front of her sleeping body quick to discover-- the abyssal rarely lets her instrument leave her sight, more out of love for the sound of her own music than the instrument itself. It's unclear that she'd complain or notice if her instrument was swapped out for a fake without her knowledge... and when she feels around, her first suspicion turns to the bandits. Her anima banner begins to flare as she feels rage, standing up... before noticing a letter drift to the ground and calming herself down. Slender, soot-stained fingers grip the edges of the paper as she reads and rereads... her eyes trace the paper to look to her side, before she notices a neatly wrapped cloth and another figure... her mouth opens, unsure what to say. She locks eyes with Embri, staring at her through an expressionless mask... she adjusts it nervously, before walking in front of the exalted and sitting down.

Morse grabs her instrument to play some light music as they talk... the paper demanded a partnership, or that she return food to the helpless farmers. This is strongly tugging at her compassion because it targets one of her intimacies-- hopefully my roll for resonance works here. She's also starting to get a feeling that this caravan might be carrying quite a number of ill-gotten goods. There's also going to be a performance roll, but it's just a casual one to attempt to... soothe the atmosphere. Make it less awkward for the two of them.

"...greetings. Thank you for taking care of my artifact." Morse bows deeply. "I will... I will spend less time sleeping in the future, to prevent such an incident from occurring once more." Morse has heard tales of death knights who need no sleep... perhaps she will not need sleep as well, if she tries to learn the skill herself. I mean, she's dead. How hard can it be? Pushing that thought aside for now, she clears her throat. "My name is Morse Encoding of Forbidden Lore, Wrapped in Song... I take it that you mean to curry favor with the Bishop of the Chalcedony Thurible, based on the contents of your letter? I see no reason why someone of your stature would commune with a lowly musician such as I unless it would be to earn his trust."

Morse bites her lower lip. "If you are coming to seek a position among the Abyssals, we're always willing to provide such aid as required... baptism takes place in confidential locations, however, so we would prefer that you commune with a deathlord directly before you attempt your journey to the underworld... but if you are as skilled in repairs as you say, there are many, many necrotechnological laboratories that desire the expertise of ones such as you."

((Morse is not intending to force any thoughts into Embri's mind, but she is presenting the alternative to the girl.))
>>
No. 906558 ID: 2007b6

>>906555
>rolled 9, 8, 10, 6
Okay, now you've got four Resonance. Want to try venting that immediately, or save it?

Incidentally, houserule for the level 3 blight eruption: instead of being abruptly killed outright, non-extra mortals may be infected by the Whispers of Oblivion, or otherwise cursed in some largely incurable way that presents ongoing danger to themselves and others.
>>
No. 906647 ID: 0640da

Morse will hold onto her resonance for now. I'll consider it when it's greater than 4 or dramatically appropriate, though.
>>
No. 907019 ID: 2007b6

It's sundown on saturnday, end of the third week of Descending Wood. Everyone who was injured in the attack has stopped bleeding by now, for better or worse.

Haslanti-supplied ballast-water and quick work by both Bridges The Sun And Moon and Lute Silhouette Speculation In Comets Reflection ensured that the town hall, public library, and archives survived the fire with virtually no damage, despite what seems (in retrospect) like very concerted enemy efforts to the contrary: cartloads of loose hay parked where the wind would scatter them in particular directions, anti-fire wards scuffed out, various crumpled parchment scraps - wads of shed hair - greasy rags - all 'accidentally' piled in out-of-the-way corners or underneath desks inside the building, rain-barrels drained, preventative buckets of sand quietly replaced with lignite pulverized to the size of rice grains. That scheme failed, though, and so one of the things local bureaucrats noticed in the course of tallying up casualties is that, apart from those confirmed dead, exactly 325 people are missing... all of them long-term residents of the town, some married but none with surviving children under eight years, nor any elderly dependents... and every last one of those missing people received at least twenty pounds in parcels from out-of-state, taxed at the rate for compact ferrous-metal goods, over the last seven months or so. Sometimes one big package, in other cases dozens with no single piece larger than a postcard.

Local Immaculate missionaries set up in a rented storefront, with the apartment on the second floor converted to a dojo, and living space for the monks up under the rafters. The building's structurally intact, with relatively minor damage from smoke, but was heavily vandalized by the raiders. Five actual monks initiated at the Cloister of Wisdom on the Blessed Isle, of whom only two, the group's overall leader and their ghost-pummeling exorcist, have ever publicly demonstrated supernatural martial arts techniques. Neither of those is named Pillar, and none of the five are exalted. Another dozen or so locals often study at the chapel or otherwise actively support the mission, but also have secular careers; perhaps a hundred more profess belief and occasionally attend services. Immaculate converts seem to have taken a heavier toll of injuries than average, but none of them were among the 325 missing, nor were the monks ever attacked directly. Bridget followed Pillar back here. A creaky-looking old man wearing the robes of a third-coil Immaculate monk steps outside, leaning heavily on a 'walking stick' with an 'ornamental' jade cap over one end that could function perfectly well as a spearhead.


Meanwhile, halfway to the old abandoned copper mine, the wagons full of stolen food stop for the night after marching hard all day. One of the bandits - the same one who was guarding the top of the wagon Embri was briefly imprisoned inside, and in whom she can still, through the Ranging Eye, clearly see some half-spiritual parasite - explains to Embri and Morse that all 325 of them were originally ordered to bring this food out to the mine, leave most of it (including whichever two of the yeddim seem to be in better shape) at a particular spot inside the tunnels, shout particular words, and ring a bell. After that they're supposed to get out of the tunnels ASAP, butcher the third yeddim, split up into small groups with no more than they can carry on their backs, and make their way toward the rendezvous point near Bear Pond on foot. Doesn't come right out and ask, but seems to be deliberately giving Morse an opportunity to announce whether or not that's still the plan.


Somewhere else again, on the way north toward Bear Pond, Light of the Moon is increasingly struggling to follow the trail of the inconsiderate horsemen. It's getting dark, might rain soon. Nearby village smells like they know how to make good booze. When she knocks on the door of a random house, a portly middle-aged woman opens it up, then squeaks like a startled mouse. There's a flurry of people running back and forth, ransacking cabinets "It's Mother Bog!" "what, here already?" "Bring forth the offering! Can't keep her waiting, you heard what happened to," "Where is it? No, not the ginger root," etc., until she finds herself holding a large wicker basket, staring at a door that's been politely but firmly closed. In the basket is a pile of individually-wrapped baked goods - mostly soft, sweet fist-sized loaves of bread with cranberries embedded in them - and a small yappy dog with long curly hair, pure white in color. Dog seems to be alive and uninjured, but has been tightly swaddled up in homespun cloth such that only it's muzzle and tail are exposed.
>>
No. 907042 ID: 0640da

rolled 4, 3, 8, 4, 2, 6, 5, 1, 2, 9, 2, 5, 6, 2, 10, 8, 10, 1, 3, 1 = 92

Morse raises a blemished finger, and gestures to the woman who rudely interrupted her conversation to be silent. "Do what you please with mortal acquisitions; the Neverborn will welcome your decision to discard earthly desires. You may use my authority, should any get in the way of your caravan-- call upon me only when spiritual matters are involved, or you seek guidance. I am in conversation with a beautiful woman of high stature, and I would like that you respect them and leave us for now. When you are done with your business, convene under me again and we shall depart."

Morse sees nothing fishy with this, but I figure she might as well wonder what kind of strange ritual requires these steps... Occult? She turns her attentions back to Embri... "Where were we... ah, yes. You wish to gain the aid of the Bishop to... become an abyssal?" She's making a pretty large assumption, there.
>>
No. 907045 ID: 094652

rolled 7, 3, 2, 6, 1, 3, 9, 5, 4, 9 = 49

"... Necrotechnology seems like an interesting field. I'll think about it. Pleasure meeting you, but I have a duty to fulfill."

Embri escorts the carts back to the town. Hopefully nothing bad has happened...
>>
No. 907049 ID: 23b7bd

rolled 2, 6, 9, 1, 3, 9, 3, 2, 10, 3, 1, 8, 7, 2, 1, 4, 10, 6, 10, 9, 3, 2, 2, 4, 2, 7, 10, 6, 1, 6 = 149

>>907019
>Bridget followed Pillar back here

So, what exactly occurred then? Had Bridget continued rescue efforts uninterrupted, then followed Pillar? Did the two interact at all? Do Pillar, or any of the others notice or interact with Bridget in a meaningful way?
>>
No. 907081 ID: 0640da

rolled 5, 9, 1, 6, 8, 7, 1, 4, 9, 4, 2, 10, 2, 2, 1, 1, 6, 4, 2, 7, 5, 2, 9, 10, 7, 7, 3, 2, 10, 5 = 151

Morse pauses when Embri turns her offer down, wilting just a little. "You... don't need my services as a member of the cloth? How might I assist you, then... ah, you want these carts? You can have them. The mortals have told me their plan-- to take the food inside to offer to their original employer... and then we are abandoning these inefficient forms of transportation. Perhaps we will secure an airship. You may have the wagons, and take the food if you so desire. They are under no obligation to keep the food safe once they have placed it in position, so I suppose you could see to retrieving it then. I plan to travel with their number to Bear Pond, so these wagons will only slow my movement... and if you reconsider my offer, you may head there as well to join up with me."

She honestly wonders how much they respect her orders over the orders of their original employer as she attempts to disembark with both her zombie and her ice cold heart in a jar. Embri can have the carts, for all she cares.

Perception + (Socialize), as she turns to ask a relatively meek looking bandit a question: "What is your mysterious employer paying you, young one? I have not heard hide nor tail of the offer you all were given, but that you served as unwitting pawns-- not privy to the plot of the one who requested this food in the first place."
>>

rolled 8, 5, 4, 9, 1, 9, 1, 4, 7, 9, 4, 7, 7, 8, 4 = 87

>>907019
>retrospective evidence of attempted sabotage / cover up
>exactly 325 people are missing, with limited ties, and all received a package
Someone it would seem, recruited a portion of the population to turn on the remainder, Lute muses. Somewhat impressive that many people managed to keep the secret as long as they did.

>Immaculate converts seem to have taken a heavier toll of injuries than average, but none of them were among the 325 missing.
An orchestrated attempt to weaken the immaculate cult? Perhaps the gold faction had a hand in this. Or the Reclamation (perhaps that Adoranji cult's influence reaches this far?). Or... well. Sufficient information to speculate, but not enough to draw definite conclusions. Yet.

Hmm. Spider spider in the steeple, what's the current location of the largest group of the 325 'missing' townspeople?

In any event, now that the immediate humanitarian crisis is over, the infernal vizier is free to attend to other matters. Stepping away from the newly quiet triage tent, leaving 'Edgar' and the hairdresser cum surgeon talking quietly between themselves, Lute Silhouette sets out in search of the anathema in town.
Between the rumors of the Mountain's unflinching acceptance of a knive's blow to protect a child and subsequent refusal to retaliate circulating, and the second sun, it's not as if the lawgiver has kept a low profile. Even if the second sun has begun to set alongside the first, she should not be hard to locate.

Mechanically, EST to confirm IC that the treasonous townspeople departed in the direction of the infantry, stunting Dr Dino and Bonesaw into the same room (exact outcome tbd, Lute might need to do more to help that along later, or not) and looking for Bridget (probably not at all hard to find, even if I didn't have EST). Rolling in case dice are needed.
>>

>>907148
With the Shard Fallen tucked back Elsewhere, and wearing her human arm.
>>
No. 907165 ID: 2007b6

>>907148
>Spider spider in the steeple, what's the current location of the largest group of the 325 'missing' townspeople?
Camped out halfway to that old copper mine.
>>907049
>Had Bridget continued rescue efforts uninterrupted, then followed Pillar?
Yeah. If you want to try avoiding the local Immaculates instead, that's possible, but they're going to be seeking you out, and you don't exactly blend into crowds.
>Do Pillar, or any of the others notice or interact with Bridget in a meaningful way?
Most of the people are appropriately grateful for being rescued, but also at least a little bit intimidated and/or suspicious. Majority consensus seems to be that the Immaculates are sort of annoying and preachy, but they mean well, they're doing useful work, and this is the first time any of the monks have used serious violence without overwhelming provocation. Bridget doesn't exactly fit the stories they've been told about anathema, but it's clear something weird is going on. Getting involved seems like it'd be a lot of risk for no clear reward, at the end of what's already a pretty bad day. So, none of the locals are leaping to Bridget's defense, but Pillar didn't have any luck with his half-baked torches-and-pitchforks plan either.

>>907081
>"What is your mysterious employer paying you, young one? I have not heard hide nor tail of the offer you all were given, but that you served as unwitting pawns-- not privy to the plot of the one who requested this food in the first place."
For this first job, they've been paid with the weapons and armor they're wearing - though that arrived in pieces, 'some assembly required,' sometimes little spirits would sneak in and help with the ribbons, or secretly pick up the slack at whatever else they were supposed to be doing so other folks wouldn't notice the distraction.
>The mortals have told me their plan-- to take the food inside to offer to their original employer...
>They are under no obligation to keep the food safe once they have placed it in position, so I suppose you could see to retrieving it then.
Oh, no, whatever's down in the old copper mine isn't who they're actually working for. That's just who they're delivering the food to, to make it harder to follow.
>Perception + (Socialize)
Seems like they're victims of a combination blackmail/pyramid scheme sort of setup. Can't go back to live among the people they betrayed, so the new boss now has a lot of passive power over them. Their only alternative to getting in deeper is to face justice for various crimes they've already committed, or else flee and starve alone in the wilderness. As time goes on, they'll most likely see fewer carrots and more sticks, then be discarded or sacrificed when they have nothing more to contribute.

Bit too short-sighted and brutal to be the Silver Prince's work, too impersonal and not degrading enough for the Lover Clad In Raiment of Tears, but either of them would certainly have the skills. Maybe one of their deathknights, or some other deniable proxy. More likely, the Mask of Winters, or some Realm or Lookshyan covert operation, or Samea's circle, or some ambitious new faction that's almost as competent as they think they are. These bandits don't know much about what they've gotten themselves into, and what they were told is almost certainly heavily salted with lies. They're probably about as vital to the real plan - whatever it may be - as any given speck of slime is to a hagfish.

Those iron scales from which the armor is made have an odd surface texture, almost like coconut husks. Ordinary forge work probably couldn't produce that, at least not by accident; Morse's occult knowledge indicates that this implies demonic contamination. Pretty much rules out Lookshy, since they don't use demon labor if they can possibly avoid it. Realm sorcerers, on the other hand, tend to be much more casual about demonology. Samea of the Blackwater Mammoth Tribe has been known to summon second-circle demons when she's not concerned about collateral damage... and rumor has it she also makes extensive utilitarian use of elementals, which would be consistent with 'minor spirits' the bandits described as helping with setup.
>>
No. 907183 ID: bd8e66

rolled 4, 7, 6, 9, 2, 3, 2, 8, 9, 9, 8, 8, 4, 2, 6, 1, 3, 5, 10, 3, 4, 6, 8, 4, 7, 6, 8, 3, 9, 4 = 168

>>907165
Bridget actually wants two things, sheep, and to find Lute. Both of those are somewhat complicated by the bandit situation, as the villagers likely don’t have any food available for barter, and sticking around in town to find Lute puts others at risk. Easiest way around those problems is to find the food and bring it back to town, so she has more support and can obtain the sheep she needs. No dots in investigation means that it’s likely not trivial for her to track down exactly where the Bandits went, so getting friendly people who are willing to help is probably the next step.

Bridget will activate Monkey Leap Technique for 3 Motes (peripheral) and then head to the hill on the outskirts of town to find a better vantage point with which she might leap and survey the surroundings to find the Airships that brought her and the others here. She drops the metal pole onto the pile of other scrap metal she found- the suit of armor she found is of particular interest, given that she’s never seen a hatching style for metal work.

Assuming this is a 2 dice stunt I’ll recover 1WP

I’m assuming this is a new scene? Important for me to know if IKB is still active or not considering the monks are likely to come after me.
>>
No. 907256 ID: 2007b6

>>907183
Airships are easy to find in the burnt-out fields. The smaller one still has a spider-demon working steadily on repairs.

Local livestock include many pigs, a few cattle and horses, lots and lots of chickens, and two varieties of dog so wildly different they might as well be separate species, but no actual sheep or goats. Closest seems to be yeddim, which are vaguely similar to sheep in overall shape (apart from thick conical tails) and diet, but more sedate in temperament, plodding, with foreclaws like a mole, and overall scaled up to the size of elephants. Out of five yeddim in town, two have severed tendons limiting ability to walk, one has been stabbed in the bowels and will most likely die of infection within the week, one was set on fire in the raid and is now so dehydrated it might not survive until tomorrow morning, and the last is not only of advanced age and general decrepitude, but encrusted with some sort of fungal infestation that smells absolutely awful.

>I’m assuming this is a new scene?
Yeah, different location and/or significant delay.

While you're standing on a little rocky tor, surveying the landscape and drifting into unfamiliar memories, https://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0329.html it occurs to you that it ought to be possible for someone so favored by the Sun to recognize individual faces from at least this far away - with a bit of practice you're sure you could do it. (Mechanically speaking, 2 more dots in Awareness with 6 xp and six weeks, then Keen Sight Technique with 10 xp and ten days, or half those training times with a tutor.) Then, suddenly and with no readily apparent sign of having crossed the intervening distance, Lute Silhouette Speculation is there next to you, asking what you're looking for.
>>
No. 907268 ID: 9646f1

rolled 7, 4, 10, 6, 8, 5, 2, 4, 5, 3, 5, 8, 10, 2, 5, 9, 2, 8, 1, 6, 2, 4, 4, 3, 4, 8, 4, 9, 8, 3 = 159

>>907256
>Local livestock include [...]
Huh, did the bandits not take livestock? That seems like a noteworthy detail.
“I require sheep. I shall search the bandits. They are likely in league with my brother. I fear my wards are in danger now. You stood by me prior, and I may yet call upon you again. I cannot bear to enter that castle once more. You must return in my stead, to ensure the bargain is upheld and a delegation is sent. Are you capable on your own?”

Not making a social attack, mostly because it’s IC dialog and I’d rather it be a player/character choice instead of a “who’s got the best dice!”. Of course, Lute has far better dice, so if she wants to do social combat that seems like her field. I am however, rolling to determine where the bandits went. If I cannot determine myself, I’ll find someone else who knows.

Bridget absentmindedly feels the textured armor, half remembering another life, as she surveys the road and turns to Lute for guidance yet again:
“Those ruts, do they look recently traveled?”
>>
No. 907279 ID: 0640da

rolled 7, 10, 2, 2, 3, 8, 5, 5, 8, 3, 9, 3, 8, 5, 2, 2, 6, 6, 4, 10, 3, 7, 7, 5, 7, 9, 5, 1, 8, 8 = 168

Morse's expression brightens considerably-- if anyone were to have a reliable form of transportation, it would be these... demonologists, whomever they might be. While she has not yet met them, she supposes it wouldn't take too terribly long to arrange a more definite meeting... and then she'll be able to transport this heart at a much faster speed. Speaking of her heart... where is it, at this moment? Embri, would you like to give smuggling it away from her a go?

I'm not sure what I would need to roll to have the presence of mind to remember the artifact Morse came here to retrieve and check on it, but I think she'd like to make that roll now. Should she not still have it, well...

She'll probably be boiling off blighted resonance through a wail of rage, assuming betrayal by one of the two parties that could be responsible. Let's just hope Embri, if she so chooses to steal, isn't singled out by the undead first. I'll hold onto the eruption action until she responds.
>>

rolled 5, 4, 2, 1, 4, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 4, 5, 3, 5, 5 = 66

>Huh, did the bandits not take livestock? That seems like a noteworthy detail.
They maimed that which they could not take, it would seem.

>[Bridget] should not be hard to locate
>Bridget will activate Monkey Leap Technique for 3 Motes (peripheral) and then head to the hill on the outskirts of town
No, not hard at all.

>You must return in my stead, to ensure the bargain is upheld and a delegation is sent. Are you capable on your own?
"I have only just begun my journey to the citadel's allies, that I might offer aid with their difficulties, that they might provide the necessary transportation for the delivery of sheep. To return so soon would be premature, and unproductive. And difficult, as my transportation charts a course in the opposite direction. It remains to be seen if today's events will hasten or delay matters."

> I cannot bear to enter that castle once more
"Did you depart... unfavorably?"

>my brother.
As her efficacious secretary recites the sutra of the four hundred and four forgotten truths, Lute Silhouette quickly realizes that any siblings the twilight might claim are either outside fate, or related by bonds other than blood or parental custodianship.

"Your brother?"

Leaving off the matter of where the bandits went for the moment, so Bridget doesn't go jumping off prematurely. Rolling if needed for social stuff.
>>
No. 907291 ID: 581c0f

>>907290
>To return so soon would be premature

"Agreed. I intend to return with leverage. Transportation may be arranged for you at your request."

>"Your brother?"
"A mirror of myself, hungry for power. Battle awoke him, and defines him. He craves war as a crucible through which strength may be gained. He likely gathers supplies to march against me. I have no doubt my I am needed currently, but I cannot abandon these people to suffer at his hand. I only hope I can return in time to avert total disaster, as e have done.'
>>
No. 907329 ID: afdebc

>>907291
>Transportation may be arranged for you at your request.
A small smile creases Lute's lips. "Thank you. I will let you know if it becomes necessary."

>“Those ruts, do they look recently traveled?”
>determine where the bandits went
Lute will share what she's learned about the bandit forces with Bridget- which way the cavalry and infantry went, their numbers, what prize each is guarding, and how distant the infantry's camp.

"You would give chase? The sun already sets, and it has not been a short day."

Nighttime tracking penalties probably aren't a problem for Bridget if she's lit up and following big grooves and has lots of dots in survival besides, but fatigue might be, as might being outnumbered.
>>
No. 907366 ID: 2007b6

>>907279
>if anyone were to have a reliable form of transportation, it would be these... demonologists, whomever they might be.
If you want to get in touch with the leadership behind the bandits as quickly as possible, there's two obvious options, both of which have some advantages and some risks:

First option is to follow the bandits, then work your way up the chain of command. That's the most direct route for an infiltrator, so, given how much competence and forethought they've displayed already, there'll surely be security precautions. At the very least, aggravating delays calculated to serve as tests of loyalty.

Other option is to follow the money - or rather, the food. Disguise yourself as spoils of war, by simply hiding in a barrel, and they might very well bring you straight to the most secure vault of their secret hideaway. Downside there is, they might also leave you in a warehouse until you die of dehydration... but then again, given a single day and 8 xp you could learn Cadaverous Torpor Technique and never need to personally worry about food, drink, air, or disease again, given the opportunity to rest. Or, with 16 XP and provisions enough to make it through a week, Restless As The Dead => Corpse Needs No Food.

>>907329
>Nighttime tracking penalties probably aren't a problem
If Bridget's going after the infantry, and has access to an accurate-scale map of the area, she could simply assume they're camped out at the old waystation halfway to the abandoned mine. Less than twenty miles away as the crow flies, so getting there is as simple as a single navigation roll and a Mountain-Crossing Leap.
>>
No. 907390 ID: 0640da

>>907366
Subtlety is not Morse's strong suit, despite being a spy herself. She's not going to go through a test of loyalty-- that's demeaning towards herself and her position as an Abyssal, a position of high respect among the dead and the dying-- let alone mortal fools who meddle with the fires of hell. But she is willing to exchange for transportation-- it's only fair that she offer them their insignificant lives as compensation for the care she shall receive and deserves.

...well, when it's phrased like that, Morse sounds like she might go aggro on them at any time. But if they wanted musical accompaniment, she supposes she could arrange that for them as well. She also always has the oldest currency known to mortals to offer... information. She doesn't see any problem with betraying the Neverborn who dared cast aside her Princess, let alone the pitiful Deathlords who squabbled over her possessions. The Lion in particular seemed like he deserved anything coming to him. The only ones she respects are The One Who Holds In Thrall, the Bishop, her Princess, and Oblivion itself. The rest of them can fade into obscurity, like countless before them and after them. Morse hisses inside her mind...

((After Embri has told me her course of action, I'm going to start working on securing that transport, hell or high water.))
>>

rolled 1, 8, 4, 7, 5, 3, 4, 4, 6, 4, 3, 10, 2, 5, 1, 8, 9, 2, 1, 8 = 95

>>907366
>If Bridget's going after the infantry, and has access to an accurate-scale map of the area
Well! It's certainly fortunate that the town hall, public library and archives were spared destruction, isn't it? They must hold a map of the local area. The Haslanti airship would have maps or charts, but probably not at a useful scale for calibrating "short" leaps.

Lute will explain her intentions to Bridget, then set off to find an appropriate map (and snap a copy of it with the Shard Fallen). Avoids the immaculate monks confronting the anethema on the library steps or similar.

I'm assuming Lute's Efficient Secretary can direct her to a specific document in a library? Failing that, I assume it would be an Investigation roll.

>Bridget's Brother
>sutra of the four hundred and four forgotten truths
>>907291
>Perception + Medicine for diagnosing illness, including mental illness
Rollin to see if Lute recognizes Bridget's delusion for what it is.
>>
No. 907426 ID: 094652

rolled 9, 10, 1, 5, 3, 8, 4, 8, 9, 6 = 63

After watching the look on Morse Song's face, Embri decides she needs to get these carts of life-sustaining food as far away from this place as soon as possible.

Embri attempts to strike a deal with Morse: Embri will take some of the bandits and three carts, with as much food as they can carry. Morse should fill the empty spots on the remaining two carts with sacks of grass and dirt, and continue with her plans.
>>
No. 907624 ID: 0640da

rolled 2, 7, 4, 8, 9, 2, 6, 9, 8, 9, 2, 3, 2, 3, 4, 3, 8, 8, 2, 4, 4, 1, 10, 1, 7, 3, 9, 9, 8, 4 = 159

"You desire the food we carry?" Morse looks between the bandits. She has a better idea of what's going on now, and she sees no issue with circumventing the original plan with her own authority. "I care not for mortal trinkets. Take as much as you desire. My servants will see to it that you set off with the bulk of the supplies when we leave... you, and you. Stay behind with this woman and see to it she gets what she desires. The rest of you are reconvene at Bear Pond, as promised."



Morse waves her hand dismissively. "The only thing I care about is the heart. You may have the rest-- zombie. Continue to carry that, and follow me." Morse begins to set off now, leaving Embri to her own devices... she'll begin the trek to Bear Pond, playing her instrument all the way. It's time to meet with the organizers of this plot...

((Survival roll here, I guess?))

As she walks and strums her shamisen, she feels her stomach growl. She looks at her personal posse of bandits, hand picked from those who were most servile towards her... "I hope I do not need to explain what the undead eat. You are to prepare a meal for me when we make camp, or risk becoming it. There's plenty of travelers on the road... I hope I don't need to tell you how to perform that part of your duties as well." Morse pauses, realizing that her demands are more stick than carrot... she softens her tone slightly and continues. "Those of you who do well will be rewarded in death with a prize greater than all those earned in life. Those of you who do not will find the suffering continues long after." Of course, this means she plans to grant the servile oblivion, and leave the defiant to struggle in the afterlife as her ghosts and servants-- but this is her mercy, and all will eventually be released.
>>
No. 907720 ID: 2007b6

>>907424
>diagnosis
You still don't seem to have dots in Medicine, nor Socialize, but two successes on an untrained Perception roll (and maybe some subtle follow-up questions with Investigation) is enough to realize the story doesn't quite hold together - there's something about her sibling that she either isn't sharing honestly, or doesn't even want to admit to herself.
>I'm assuming Lute's Efficient Secretary can direct her to a specific document in a library?
Oh yeah, locating documents that are a matter of public record is no problem. Getting access might be a bit trickier, involving Bureaucracy.

With Efficient Secretary Technique and those craft skills, you can spend, say, an hour to turn some scrap paper and a bit of charcoal into a remarkably precise and detailed map of any specified area in Creation, the sort of item any military strategists, geomancers, or airship captains planning some major activity in or near the area in question might be very interested in acquiring, or keeping away from their rivals. Higher quality materials or spending more time would produce better results, but when you're superhumanly skilled, a quick sketch is usually good enough for normal people to start ranting about sublime masterpieces.
>>
No. 907722 ID: 2007b6

>>907624
Okay, you've convinced the bandits to betray their rumored unholy patron, the Syrinx Prophet Executioner, right at the end of their first real day on the job. They'll work in shifts, through the night, unloading food from the wagons into the basement of the most intact building at the waystation, clumsily disguising sacks of dirt as grain, clay bricks in wooden boxes as hardtack, pea gravel as beans, etc. If they're still leaving two of the yeddim down in the mines as originally planned, bringing the contents of the granary back to town in the remaining usable wagons will take multiple trips, but that shouldn't be much of a problem.

Still a chance Bridget might leap and intercept the group before you reach the mines, so I'll wait for Santova before skipping ahead.
>>
No. 907727 ID: 094652

rolled 1, 9, 5, 10, 5, 9, 6, 9, 3, 3, 4, 7 = 71

After meeting with the farmer militia (who were following the carts but unable to do anything) and giving them reins over the carts (and credit), Embri doubles back to Morse Song. The two guards were ordered to "give her what she desires", so Embri easily seduces them with her robes into becoming her thralls and convinces them to guard the food and its owners for the rest of their short lives.

The pack of bandits leaves an easy trail, and Embri regroups with Morse quickly enough, explaining that she has fulfilled her duties and would like to assist the abysmal in matters of political intrigue and other hellbound things. The promise of necrotechnology in particular. Embri discusses abysmal gossip with Morse.

And in truth, Embri will slowly attempt to take back what is hers, by persuasion, theft, or an outright smash and grab as a last resort. She won't let her most powerful tool be sacrificed to some forgotten god at the edge of the world. But patience is key - perhaps this little diversion will prove useful after all.

Join Debate
>>

rolled 10, 2, 2, 10, 9, 8, 6, 1, 5, 2, 5, 6, 2, 2, 10, 6, 7, 8, 6, 7 = 114

>>907720
>there's something about her sibling that she either isn't sharing honestly, or doesn't even want to admit to herself.
Hmmmmm. Well! Worth keeping an eye on at least.

>just draw a map with Efficient Secretary Technique
Well there's certainly no shortage of charcoal available. All right, feeling a sudden swell of inspiration Lute will scavenge the necessary materials, find a good seat to catch the light of the setting sun, connect to Octupal Earth, and set about drawing a map of the local area.

Throwing 18 banked xp at essence 3, rolling craft(air) + dex, three bonus crafting successes from the arm.
>>
No. 907962 ID: 2007b6

>>907958
Dynamic lenses focus twilight onto a strip of birchbark about as wide as your human-standard hand and as long as one of Bridget's arms. In a single pass, top to bottom, images of a stretch of territory are burned into the bark. Depicted area is centered on the road from the town to the old copper mine, about five miles by fifty miles, all in meticulous detail with annotations in Old Realm. Monochrome, of course, but irregularities in the texture and moisture of the bark were duly taken into account to allow precise shades of brown, like a slice of toast, rather than solely plain white and burnt black.

At auction in a major city, or to a sufficiently wealthy collector of such things, it might bring a price of several talents of silver on art value alone, irrespective of it's accuracy. For local navigational purposes, more than adequate.
>>
No. 908044 ID: 9646f1

rolled 6, 4, 3, 8, 7, 6, 10, 1, 10, 8, 1, 4, 4, 7, 7, 7, 2, 5, 6, 5, 2, 5, 3, 2, 3, 9, 5, 5, 3, 8 = 156

>>907962
While Lute works, Bridget answers some questions she left unattended.
“I was unaware of the pain involved in the castles architecture. My unwitting involvement has caused me much grief and I am on the cusp of losing myself to it. To return would invite disaster.”
She pauses for a moment and hands Lute the unattended armor she found, pointing out the strange metal working involved.

“Unfamiliar construction. Perhaps it is of use to you.”

After witnessing the masterful display of her craft, Bridget regards Lute with a mixture of awe and wonder. Just who is this mysterious consort? Why is she interested in helping me? Questions for another time perhaps.

“I would that you teach me. We may exchange after I protect my home.”

With that, Bridget jumps into the fray and lands amongst the repackaging efforts at the way-station. Her strange voice fills the air as she asserts herself, a iron statue towering over the mortals around her..

“I will not let your neighbors suffer and starve. Explain yourselves.”

Activating mountain crossing leap, spending peripheral motes, and the same goes for IKB for the scene. Total of 16m, 1wp, and the 3 I spent earlier means I’ve spent 19 total this scene with 9 of those being committed. Gonna regain WP so I just stay out at 8/9 rn, 17 free peripheral motes, 21 free personal motes.
>>
No. 908051 ID: 2007b6

>>908044
>Activating mountain crossing leap, spending peripheral motes, and the same goes for IKB for the scene. Total of 16m
Just after the sun has dipped below the horizon, the bandit camp sees a second, lesser sun hurtle through the sky as if racing to catch up. A nine-foot tall mountain troll, blazing like a golden bonfire, crashes down onto the road leading toward the mine and demands...
>“I will not let your neighbors suffer and starve. Explain yourselves.”
...which, fortunately, they have already been provided with a very nearly adequate last-minute excuse for. It's just a trick, you see? Weren't never really going to steal all the food and give it to cave monsters, they're already unloading and replacing it with fake stuff. That crazy lady with glass armor and magical poison arrows up her snatch was going to stay behind, along with Ed and Xi, to tell everybody where to find it.

With no dots in Investigation or Socialize, Bridget may have some difficulty in determining whether they're lying. She can clearly observe that they were already working on unloading the food before she arrived, though, so at the very least it's not something they made up just as they saw her coming.
>>
No. 908061 ID: 29d812

rolled 1, 7, 10, 2, 9, 4, 1, 10, 6, 1, 1, 8, 4, 6, 7, 10, 5, 7, 3, 2, 2, 10, 4, 10, 4, 4, 7, 1, 8, 4 = 158

>>908051
>With no dots in Investigation or Socialize, Bridget may have some difficulty in determining whether they're lying.

Of course. However, there are some facts she’s noted which are somewhat confusing if paired with the current explanation.

>It's just a trick, you see? Weren't never really going to steal all the food and give it to cave monsters, they're already unloading and replacing it with fake stuff.

Great effort went to ensure public buildings would be destroyed, and your fellows have been killed, injured and kidnapped. Who were you meant to trick, and why have innocents suffered unduly for this cause?

>That crazy lady with glass armor and magical poison arrows up her snatch was going to stay behind, along with Ed and Xi, to tell everybody where to find it.

“Where will you go?”

Can Bridget see Embri, or for that matter, Morse?
>>

rolled 10, 3, 1, 1, 3, 1, 8, 8, 5, 5, 9, 4, 8, 1, 3 = 70

As the mountain-troll takes flight, her cartographer leans forward and snatches a single falling hair from the air, displaced and lost by the sudden skyward acceleration. With a gentle winding and a soft click, Lute gains a window into the confrontation at the mine-road waystation.

>She pauses for a moment and hands Lute the unattended armor she found, pointing out the strange metal working involved.
>“Unfamiliar construction. Perhaps it is of use to you.”
While she waits to see how events will unfold, she considers the armor left left by Bridget, and by the bandit-conspirators previously.

Stunting up an arcane focus, scrying with the Shard Fallen, and rolling whatever (investigation or lore probably?) to examine the armor Bridget left behind. If this was a yozi plot, Lute might recognize something in the make of the armor.
>>
No. 908200 ID: 2007b6

>>908061
>Can Bridget see Embri, or for that matter, Morse?
Embri may have taken cover or left when she saw you coming, but Morse is sitting out in the open and has more-or-less assumed a leadership role.
>Great effort went to ensure public buildings would be destroyed, and your fellows have been killed, injured and kidnapped.
None of these folks here were directly involved in any actual arson, kidnapping, or murder, only ordinary property damage, burglarizing the granary, and aggravated assault. Some got highly specific instructions for how to sabotage things which may, in hindsight, have contributed, but the actual fires were lit by a volley of arrows from a separate group outside of town.
>Who were you meant to trick,
Ebon Rime, the schemer who set all this up.
>“Where will you go?”
To the mines, and then toward Bear Pond, to meet up with Ebon Rime and, er, bring him to justice?
>and why have innocents suffered unduly for this cause?
They don't really have a good answer for that one, beyond not being the ones who started it.
>>
No. 908210 ID: 2007b6

>>908082
>With a gentle winding and a soft click, Lute gains a window into the confrontation at the mine-road waystation.
Visibility is limited to a radius around Bridget, and does not extend through opaque walls. Thanks to her anima flare, the inner ten yard radius is brightly lit, with dim illumination out to twenty yards. Beyond twenty out to a fifty-yard radius is dark, but thanks to the Shard Fallen's enchantments, still plainly visible in crisp detail. Beyond that, out to maybe a hundred yards is increasingly blurry.

There's also a slight flickering and sense of strain which Lute recognizes as a sign that Bridget is, if not exactly close to, at least within an order of magnitude of the scrying device's maximum effective range.

>examine the armor
For best results on the technical details, you'd need Craft (Fire), and maybe a consultation with somebody in Madelrada's logistics branch. Two successes on an Intelligence + Bureaucracy roll for evaluating goods identifies it as a cheap knockoff of a user-friendly modular design, originally pioneered by Octavian, the Quarter Prince, but now widely adopted across several layers of the demon city. Military equivalent of an Ikea flat-pack. Three successes might have been enough to identify a specific manufacturer. What you can confidently say, though, is that this means Octavian isn't involved (he would've insisted on the original), and whoever IS behind this conspiracy doesn't have access to any significant industrial base in Creation. If they did, and they were willing and able to bring this much Malfean material across, it'd be both simpler and, ultimately, stealthier to bring something like gold or silver and trade that for iron. Multiple tons of the stuff in a single square mile, above ground, not in sealed containers, for months? It's astonishing there haven't been reported incidents of omen weather just from that, even apart from whatever demons must have been summoned to bring it here.
>>
No. 908216 ID: 094652

rolled 2, 8, 5, 8, 7, 8, 2, 5, 5, 7, 4, 2, 3, 7, 1 = 74

"...I spy with my little eye."

Morse Song is surprisingly focused when she wants to be. Embri hasn't found any means of stealing her heart back without attracting attention, the kind that could get her killed. Even now, as two rivals barge in with a dramatic entrance, when Morse's guard must be lowered, there's enough watch on the heart.

Still, opportunity comes knocking. Embri will simply study the three, eavesdrop, and will take Morse's side over the others. Plans form in her head about what to do next.

She wonders how Force is doing, though. Perhaps Lute might gossip.
>>
No. 908231 ID: 5f3f48

>within an order of magnitude of the scrying device's maximum effective range.
Ah, good, field testing data on the range limit. Don't think Lute had hard numbers on that yet.

>>908216
>as two rivals barge in with a dramatic entrance
>Embri will simply study the [b]three[b]
>Perhaps Lute might gossip.
Lute's not there, Kome. She's spying on Bridget from back near the village with her magic mirror. So that's one dramatic entrance (Bridget) or two PCs for Embri to study (Morse and Bridget).
>>
No. 908248 ID: a02a86

rolled 6, 7, 6, 2, 4, 7, 6, 8, 7, 6, 10, 5, 3, 7, 3, 1, 9, 8, 7, 6, 7, 1, 3, 1, 5, 6, 2, 10, 2, 2 = 157

>>908200
>None of these folks here were directly involved
“What say you to the man who plys their friend with drink, walks with them to house of their enemy, yet claims innocence when caught watching the resulting murder?”

>toward Bear Pond, to meet up with Ebon Rim
Was Bear Pond on the map such that Bridget could jump their accurately?
>>
No. 908263 ID: 0640da

rolled 1, 9, 10, 1, 2, 8, 3, 9, 7, 9, 1, 3, 2, 7, 6, 3, 9, 2, 8, 9, 1, 6, 4, 1, 2, 5, 1, 5, 3, 6 = 143

Morse Song looks up at Embri's prompting, gazing at the new individual interrogating one of her new pawns... her eyes squint beneath her mask, and she continues to play her shamisen.

"A good spying for sure, Lady Embri. I had not been paying attention to my mortal pawns... it would seem they have a guest that would be better served by myself, hmm?"

A lovely voice calls out to Bridget, accompanied by the sounds of strings... she likes their question enough to write a song about it, looking down at her strings to position them.

"What say he to the man who drinks...
Who sips the bitter water
A life lived among those...
Who sink beneath the sea
An ending thus, delivered
Whispered and written in prose...

A package, delivered, from me?"


She strums her instrument a few more times, humming a few bars.

"Your questions bother,
dilly dally,
yet you cannot find the source
There's more to life
and more to death
than you assume of course
and though our violence might earn ire
we were not those to conspire
There's bigger things than you can see

Why don't you sit and listen, to me?"


She looks satisfied so far, trying to lure the attention of the Exalt.

"Rather than talk, rather than speak
Conversing with a mortal fellow?
Come to me, my wayward child
and listen to this damned hag bellow...
The truth of things is not so clear
and though those words may seem quite hollow
A death, perhaps, but one or two
Perhaps even more might... just... follow..."


Her words are cryptic, but her message is clear: she wants to talk to them. And... she might be threatening them? She's smiling in her direction, lips red and her dirty skin a deathly pale. At the same time, a black aura begins to ooze around Morse as she channels Morbid Fascination Style with Peripheral motes. It's hard to look away when the anima banner being displayed is a dark, expressionless, all encompassing goo dripping upwards into the sky, starting from her body... each drip and drop seemingly coming from a dark and empty place, devoid of... devoid of... thingness.

"Oh, and the fellow over there... you should not be spilling secrets while under my guidance. I think a lesson would be sufficient for the rest of you..."

Morse begins to play her strings quickly, but it becomes inaudible to the crowd around her. Her eyes glower as she focuses in on the single bandit, and her mask begins to shift into the form of 'Tragedy'. Her lips open, but no sounds escape... only the bandit who dared to interfere with her abduction of the Heart can hear her punishment. More than likely, his ears will begin to bleed... but there's no need to ears when her music is sinking into your mind directly.

"Betrayal will not be tolerated."

((I'd like to use the single target instant effect of Withering Phantasmagoria, but I don't know how much unsoakable lethal damage mortals can suffer. Let's just spend their entire lethal health pool in motes. I'm also not sure if this should be channeled through her Shamisen, but I'm just going to drop a pile of dice and let what happens happen.))
>>
No. 908284 ID: 2007b6

>>908248
>Was Bear Pond on the map such that Bridget could jump their accurately?
Wrong direction, and well outside single-hop range anyway. Saw some lights on the horizon at the apex of the jump that might have been the town in question; if so, could probably get there in three or four more Mountain-Crossing Leaps, assuming you don't land in anything too unpleasant on the way.
>“What say you to the man who plys their friend with drink, walks with them to house of their enemy, yet claims innocence when caught watching the resulting murder?”
"Well, I guess I'd say..."
>>908263
In mid-sentence, Morse's singing causes blood to spurt out of the bandit spokesman's ears, then he falls down, stone dead. Whoever's watching this happen and considering getting involved should roll Join Battle.
>>

rolled 6, 7, 5, 6, 7, 4, 6, 3, 9, 5 = 58

>>908284
Another deathknight? At least this one is less prepared to counter scrying than the last. Very curious that the armor would be malfean but the convey would have a chosen of the void. Was this some kind of joint venture? Agents of hell or the underworld exploiting the resources of the other? An infiltration? A defection? Opposition?

Rolling join battle. Not sure if Lute will chose to act through the Shard Fallen or let events play out, but she's keeping her options open.
>>
No. 908306 ID: 094652

rolled 10, 6, 9, 4, 5, 9, 3, 10, 4, 10 = 70

Embri litters the battlefield with traps galore, (non-poisoned) arrows included, keeping herself flanked from Bridget and ending her turn within melee-lunge distance of the zombie with her heart.

As Embri explains, it will be up to Morse Song to act as the avatar of Death, the main character in this scene. If this liberal sprinkling of combat multipliers (caltrops, piano wire, arrows, all that stuff which hurts the living) isn't enough to help her wipe the dirt with this upstart, then clearly she isn't worthy of Embri's assistance. [spoiler:Whoops, Embri may have forgotten to mention the hidden incindiary traps along her escape route. Oh well.[/spoiler]
>>
No. 908339 ID: 0640da

rolled 4, 6, 8, 10, 2, 6, 3, 9, 10, 1 = 59

Morse quietly tunes her shamisen, gesturing to a spot in front of her with a free and open palm.

"Please hasten yourself over here. I'm hungry, and could use the conversation to work up my appetite. You have questions, correct? Would you not rather direct them towards the one in charge?"

((Functionally, Morse is joining battle.))
>>
No. 908344 ID: 2007b6

>>908306
>Embri litters the battlefield with traps galore
Retrieving ninja gizmos from your Elsewhere storage costs a mote per item, and even the simplest traps take at least one miscellaneous action to set up. If you're doing this in response to Bridget's arrival, you had at most five minutes warning. Perimeter security for the camp could have been established further in advance, but you've still got a limited mote budget for that.

What traps are you setting up specifically, and where? In particular, are you placing anything that might reasonably interfere with the loading and unloading process, such as caltrops the workers might step on, or any incendiary devices that might ignite the wagons, or the grain being stored in the waystation's basement?

And, are you using enough peripheral essence to flare your anima and garble everyone's memories?
>>
No. 908345 ID: 3130aa

rolled 7, 6, 7, 8, 8, 7, 2, 10, 6, 2, 10, 2, 1, 4, 2, 9, 1, 1, 7, 3, 7, 5, 5, 8, 9, 1, 6, 5, 3, 1 = 153

Is Embri scattering traps from a hidden position? Seems like it might be hard to do, but embri is an exalt so doing things that are hard to do is kinda the whole job description. Regardless, Bridget is armored in the righteousness of the sun- her skin should easily turn away all manner of mundane obstacles. If anything, this might make any still loyal to this lacky of her Brother think twice before intervening. Better this way then, to avoid unnessicary violence.

>>908263
>morbid fascination style
So, Bridget is compelled to stay nearby and listen respectfully, unless she spends 1WP right? How does that work in combat time? If Morse just wants to talk, Bridget will talk, although her wanton murdering people will likely result in conflict. Benifit of the doubt for now though- she’s probably a pawn, just like the rest of the sorry examples of mortality.

Striding forward confidently, Bridget will pick up the weapons and armor of the fallen bandit as she addresses the musician.
“You have been led astray. Cease hostilities and we may discuss as you desire. If you continue to act in this fashion I will not abide it.”
>>
No. 908388 ID: 0640da

((Four willpower, actually. It's more expensive than the Solar version of the charm. If the description on the charm is correct. But just because she's forced to listen doesn't mean she can't kick Morse's ass if necessary.))

"Hostilities? You would consider the way I discipline my new servants to be hostile?" Morse smiles at Bridget. "I suppose next you'll be claiming that your seizing of his property is noble, yes? And not just theft from the deceased... Solars are all very confident in who is right and who is wrong, hmm? Do you have no respect for the dead?"
>>
No. 908427 ID: 3130aa

rolled 10, 5, 2, 6, 7, 4, 2, 6, 4, 5, 5, 5, 8, 4, 9, 3, 4, 4, 9, 1, 7, 3, 1, 10, 1, 5, 3, 6, 1, 3 = 143

>>908388
>If the extra successes exceed a given target’s MDV, that target suffers a compulsion to stay in the Exalt’s company and respectfully observe the performance. Resisting this compulsion for five minutes costs one Willpower, up to a maximum of three Willpower per scene, and such resistance allows the target to leave, heckle or even forcibly silence the character.
>Unlike its Solar Mirror, all listeners subjected to this Charm understand that a supernaturally terrifying orator addresses them. The maximum number of Willpower points required to resist this Charm for a scene, however, is four rather than three.

As I understand it’s 1WP at a time, not 4 all at once. Spending 1 provides 5 minutes of respite; if you need to keep resisting, the solar charm only requires you spend 3 WP (one every 5 minutes) before you are immune, but the abyssal charm requires you spend 4 (again, 1 at a time, every 5 minutes). I also don’t think kicking ass counts as listening respectfully, unless it’s some sort of mutual sparing session or something like that.

“Your hollow attempts at manipulation are as transparent as your leader. You kill your wards without warning, and think I will be ashamed of my own actions? The sun does not shy away from its path, and the mountain regrets not its peaks. Do you intend to continue you your wanton killing, or will you help me ease the suffering of the people you have wronged?”
>>
No. 908428 ID: 0640da

>>908427
I'm sure JL knows the details of it, the Abyssal charms on the whole are sketchy variants of the Solar charms with most of the details removed.

"You expect me to give more? I'm already returning these precious supplies at the behest of miss Embri... do you expect me to tell my men to arrest themselves next? Hog tie themselves and present their heads to the guards? Perhaps I should just kill myself, while we're at it. Would that satisfy you, oh most Holy High in the Heaven's Sky Can't Use Reason Or I'll Die? Look around you. My band is causing you no quarrel, and yet you seek it out intentionally."

Morse's expressionless mouth does not move much, except to speak, but the tone of her voice is especially sardonic.
>>
No. 908459 ID: 2007b6

If you're throwing paragraphs rather than punches at each other, that means this would be social combat rather than physical. Morse rolled 6 successes for Morbid Fascination Style against Bridget's dodge MDV, which has a base value of 7, +2 for a stunt, -3 for relative Appearance. Bridget's disrespectful reply means she spent 1 WP to resist for five minutes, which means gaining a point of limit from resisting UMI, which triggers Red Rage of Compassion, so we're back to the more physical sort of conflict.
>>
No. 908600 ID: bfe88e

rolled 4, 2, 1 = 7

>>908427
>Do you intend to continue you your wanton killing
>>908428
>You expect me to give more?
>at the behest of miss Embri

“Do you consider staying your hand and returning the goods you stole a gift? . Who is Embri? Grah, have you no sense or compassion? Spinning lies seems to be your forte and yet you cannot see you are being misled!”

>>908459
>she spent 1 WP to resist for five minutes, which means gaining a point of limit from resisting UMI, which triggers Red Rage of Compassion

Oh I didn’t realize that was a thing, but I think we can roll with it.

“The atrocity of soulsteel, brother killing brother, and now this? Enough! No more! Your taint spreads NO FURTHER KARROD

Punctuating the increase in volume and the decrease in composure, two hands clasped together throw themselves towards Morse, a solar haymaker plotting its course towards her head. Rolling join battle and an attack, right? Or are we going to do the actual combat in discord?
>>
No. 908601 ID: bfe88e

rolled 8, 6, 2, 1, 5, 1, 2, 1, 9, 4, 4, 3, 6, 1, 8, 1, 4, 7, 10, 5, 2, 1, 5, 3, 8, 10, 4, 4, 9, 7 = 141

>>908600
Whoops, old habit, sorry.
>>
No. 908606 ID: 0640da

rolled 2, 3, 6, 8, 4, 10, 6, 10, 9, 6, 3, 1, 1, 5, 1, 1, 3, 6, 5, 6, 9, 9, 5, 9, 4, 10, 7, 3, 2, 7 = 161

Morse's neck pops when her jaw connects with Bridget's haymaker, making a loud cracking sound as it twists and turns 480 degrees. She falls to the ground limply, oozing a black aura and drooling out a pool of blackened blood from the edges of her lips.

"Oh, no. It looks like you killed me. I guess I have to surrender." Morse's voice is dry and monotone. She rolls her eyes now, her neck bent at an unnatural angle. "Please do not use violence against this one, or a taint may actually spread. The food is in proximity, and since you have beaten me you have made me powerless to resist your theft of my gift to Miss Embri. Good job, hero. You've defeated the big bad defenseless woman. Your mother must be proud of you."

Morse raises her arms in surrender, and seems to imply the other bandits should do the same. As for what Embri does, well. She's not in charge of her.

((Morse uses Walking Cadaver Grotesquerie with... I think I have more than enough motes to take zero damage, unless that post-soak pool is really, REALLY big. There's a fear intimacy counterattack that I'm pretty sure Bridget makes by default, unless I end up soaking 8 dice of post-soak damage.))

((I don't know how to surrender herself mechanically, but Morse is doing that. She may have to roll compassion if she's actively thinking about not spoiling the food, but I think she's safely removed from that decision enough the Neverborn won't give a damn. If I'm wrong, well. That's what the dice pool is for.))
>>
No. 908609 ID: 2007b6

>>908606
>I don't know how to surrender herself mechanically, but Morse is doing that.
You can choose not to defend, but even partially controlled, Bridget's limit break compels her to continue attacking anyone she knows to be an oppressor of innocents. Only way to survive is to either win the fight, run far enough away that it counts as a separate scene, or otherwise break the context of the situation such as by convincing her you're already dead (which will be tricky, since the 2.5e twilight caste anima power provides resistance to deception and illusions).

If you've spent enough peripheral motes to flare your anima up to the bonfire level, though, that means the Midnight-caste anima power is going to be spontaneously reanimating any corpses that happen to be within range.
>>
No. 908617 ID: 094652

rolled 3, 1, 10, 3, 6, 7, 3, 10, 9, 4 = 56

Embri was busy laying some conventional traps, only to realize the fight is already over. Awkward. Embri sadly realizes she's out of her depth and makes simple requests.

"... Sooo... I guess we work for you now. I'm going to take my things and bring these carts of grain back to the town they were stolen from. We can talk more there. I hope you're not going to execute Morse Song, she's very merciful for a reaper. Really? Great."

Then Embri goes to the zombie holding the Winterbreath Jar and fondly takes it back.

"Oh and Morse? This is mine."

This has been an exhausting week.
>>

rolled 8, 3, 2, 6, 7, 4, 1, 4, 1, 7, 3, 8, 4, 8, 6, 9, 9, 5, 1, 4 = 100

Lute watches as Bridget, Embri and the masked deathknight begin to exchange words... and she fails to hear any of them. Hmmm. Does the Shard Fallen cover sound...?

>Gimme an Intelligence + Lore roll for figuring that out.
Rollin.
>>
No. 908680 ID: 2007b6

>>908678
Four successes is enough to figure out how to turn on subtitles. Scrolling back through previous recordings, any speech that would have been intelligible is now rendered as translucent text, color-coded based on the speaker.
>>
No. 908705 ID: 2007b6

Okay, per negotiation in the Discord chat, Morse Song has been savagely pummeled by Bridget, and now has a level of lethal damage in her -0 and first -1 health levels, and bashing damage in all her other health levels except the 'dying' track. Assuming nothing else goes wrong, she'll regain consciousness about an hour past midnight, then require another 12 hours of rest to recover the remaining bashing damage. The -1 level of lethal damage needs two days of rest or four of normal activity to heal, and then the -0 can be recovered in about half a day.

Bridget has gained an intimacy of fear toward Morse Song, but is otherwise feeling much better after that cathartic experience, with limit back down to zero and temporary willpower at thirteen out of nine.

About half of the bandits at the waystation have been injured seriously enough they can no longer be counted on to walk without assistance. Forty managed to gouge out at least one of their own eyes, another eighty or so have foot or lower-leg injuries (some from Embri's traps, others simply a result of panicked flight over uneven ground in the dark), the rest mostly have a mix of burns, smoke inhalation, and friendly-fire incidents due to insufficient training in safe melee weapon use. Most of these wounds are survivable, or even have good prospects for full recovery... assuming they're allowed to rest with adequate food and water, and don't succumb to infection. Obviously there's more than enough food on hand, but they only brought enough water to last two or three more days.

Nearly all the food has been safely stashed in the waystation basement. Wagons seem to be structurally intact, though visibly scorched in places. None of the yeddim were seriously hurt. Turning the wagons around without going out to the mine and back will require heavy lifting and / or clever engineering, and might end up being an all-day job; the ruts in the dirt road are so deep and hard-packed, it effectively works more like a train on rails than a modern car on pavement. The waystation used to have a crane to simplify that maneuver (plus axle repairs, and measuring weight) but it was dismantled and the more expensive parts hauled away years ago when the mine shut down. Nothing left but foundation stones and a few heavy upright timbers.

>>908617
Two zombies now, and by the time Morse wakes up they may both be fully charged with ice marrow, assuming willingness to share. Still not very clever, though, so Embri can filch the jar with the Unmelting Heart inside away from them easily enough. They still obey whoever is holding it, but thanks to Morse's anima power, are no longer rapidly consuming ice marrow just to maintain their animated state. Should be able to go more than a week between recharges.

Is Embri sticking around and talking to Bridget after she's calmed down? With everybody else severely distracted, you could zip ahead to scout out the mine, or back to town to keep local authorities appraised of the unexpected developments... or even both, though that'd likely put at least two hours of wear and tear on the windblade. Might want to keep it in peak condition, conserve maintenance supplies you've got on hand, in order to save high speed flight for the trip back home to report to your Oyabun.
>>
No. 909003 ID: 3737e4

rolled 10, 5, 9, 10, 3, 3, 7, 10, 5, 5, 10, 6, 2, 3, 7, 7, 8, 8, 4, 7, 5, 6, 3, 6, 10, 8, 2, 9, 3, 9 = 190

>>908705
>intimacy of fear towards Morse
Right, well, the best thing to do then is restrain her and escape somewhere she can’t follow.

Turning to the crowd Bridget proclaims her intentions, whilst effortlessly encasing Morse Song in a solid metal sarcophagus made from discarded weapons and armor.

“Children of the Sun, you have been misled, pitted against each other, in a vile attempt to destroy this place and the lives that dwelled within. I will seal away one agent of this plot, but there are more, and I cannot persue them here. Tend to your wounded, and I will see to it steps are taken to right this wrong. For those of you who have no where else to go, there is a plantation, full of hard working, decent people. There I shall meditate on how best to uplift and protect them. All who need shelter are welcome, and all who need protection shall have it. It will be a long journey, but those of you who make shall be assure my deepest care and compassion.”

With that, Bridget finishes encasing Morse and promptly leaves, wanting to get as far away as possible.

I feel like I’ve stunted enough without counting rewards accurately, but I think 16 notes, or four stunts at the two dice level since I last counted my resources would probably be close enough
Mechanically, Bridget is using craftsman needs no tools + first (craft fire) excellency to restrain Morse by fully encasing her in metal, then mountain crossing leap to return to the last place she saw Lute. Spent a total of 26 motes (7 + 9 + 10) and 2 WP, leaving me at 7 peripheral, 21 personal, and 11 WP. New scene, right?
>>
No. 909005 ID: 0640da

rolled 9, 4, 4, 6, 4, 7, 3, 6, 6, 5, 7, 8, 5, 9, 8, 9, 8, 7, 5, 3, 3, 2, 9, 6, 7 = 150

When Morse comes to inside the iron sarcophagus and presses her palms against the walls of her coffin, she realizes that struggling, for all intents and purposes, is futile. The only thing she can rely on is being let out of this device by some unscrupulous fellow looking for gold... her stomach growls. She never got that feast of flesh she asked for, and it doesn't look like she'll be getting one for a while now...

...this is a good a time as any to figure out how the other Abyssals avoid meat and drink when kept inside tight, confined spaces. Morse calms herself down and truly looks inwards at herself, trying to figure out which of her organs she actually needs... and how long she can sustain herself with an empty stomach and a long lasting thirst.

Morse tirelessly focuses inside the sarcophagus, steadily losing sleep... but somehow, when she's this focused, she doesn't even seem to notice her lack of it. She even starts to feel more awake than when she slept last. Maybe her vital essence has a sort of... nourishing effect? No, that's not right. It's more like... her organs are reacting in such a way that she's actually requiring less and less nourishment as time goes on. The essence seeps into her cells and... kills them, in a somewhat garish fashion. Her red insides flush grey, before seeming to bounce back with a new and endless source of energy... her anima banner, once used to revive corpses, is now reviving her organs as they're killed off, little by little.

Her whole body seems to become more comfortable with her hunger, especially as a new hunger seems to settle in... a hunger for essence, for blood. Her new cells are more voracious than before, filled with the hunger and longing of the dead... her new intestines optimized not for survival, but for storing motes. This craving steadily drives Morse mad as she's confined inside of her tiny box, until the last moment... it vanishes. She doesn't feel anything anymore. No pain, no hunger, no cravings. Not even sleep. The only thing she feels now...

...is silence.

((OOC notes: I'm training Restless as the Dead for 8 XP, then taking Corpse Needs No Food for 12 XP as a taint. Functionally, Morse still needs to spend motes to avoid sleeping, but she can go for 10 days at a time without rest if she wants to spend the three motes. She'll remain in this sarcophagus until someone feels the need to release her-- it sounded like Lute was going to meander for her coffin in the discord, so don't jump on it too quickly JL. Also, -3 motes for Restless as the Dead, right out. She is going to keep her guard up for as long as possible this time-- she's learned her lesson, and wants time to get comfortable with her new training method.))
>>
No. 909008 ID: 2007b6

>>909003
Fourteen successes on the roll, and the equivalent of almost a full 40-hour week's worth of work if you're stopping when Morse regains consciousness, is enough for an extensive and exceptionally well-fitted set of restraints. With Lore, and maybe a bit more Medicine, you could even rig up a system of chains, levers, and camshafts such that it tightens painfully in response to struggle or other escape attempts, but remains comfortable and ergonomic otherwise.
>>
No. 909152 ID: 9646f1

rolled 3, 3, 10, 2, 1, 3, 10, 10, 5, 3, 8, 5, 1, 4, 9, 8, 6, 4, 1, 8, 8, 6, 6, 2, 3, 5, 4, 4, 6, 7 = 155

>>909008
Alrighty then, can we say I upgraded Medicine to 3? 1XP for 1-2, then 3XP for 2-3, for a total of 4XP right? Not specifically looking for a pain inducer, that runs a little too close to torture for Bridget’s comfort, but adding extra protection and restrains with applied mathematics and biology sounds like a good idea. Also, per the chat in the dis thread I’m adding 26 motes, for a total of 33/21/11 in my peripheral/personal/WP reserves.

As Bridget lands near the hill she departed from some hours ago, she addresses Lute. magnet hasn’t mentioned Lute moving yet although I assume there’s been chat in the discord? Since it’s not in the thread I’m assuming it hasn’t happened yet.

“I feel I have spent more time on this trip than is wise. I plan to return posthaste to my home. I have dealt with one agent of chaos, sealing them away. I would be wary, to turn the hearts and minds of so many is a terrifying power. In her anger at defeat she urged her wards to gouge out their eyes and flee. I worry for those leftover, as they are in poor health and have been misled. They should be brought water and care. The food is stored in the waystation, and some rouge lurks near by, one... Embri I believe. I know not their agenda. Should the townsfolk find their lives here unsatisfactory, they are welcome to make the trek to my lands, where they will be cared for and protected. I still look to you for aid, and hope to gain your company for more casual matters when possible. What need you of me?”
>>
No. 909158 ID: 094652

rolled 7, 9, 1, 2, 4, 1, 4, 7, 10, 9 = 54

Embri has decided that her oath to bring the rations safely back trumps her fear of this angry woman she just insulted or a chance to adventure in a dank, scary cave. She'll get started on that, regardless of Bridget's opinion.
>>
No. 909183 ID: 0640da

((Non XP, book-keeping post: I noticed an error with Morse's sheet that had her Linguistics below the required for Insidious Undertone Trick. It has been exchanged on the discord for Scathing Cynic Attitude. Sorry for the inconvenience.))
>>
No. 909184 ID: 2007b6

>>909158
>get started on that
With Strength 2, Stamina 1, Athletics 3, and Resistance 0, you might be able to lift a few hundred pounds, but not for very long. If you're planning to haul all the food on your own back, on foot, along twenty miles of dirt road, that's going to take a pretty long time. There are various assets you could use to speed it up, but none of them are ideally suited to the task, and most are in some degree of disarray.

What's the plan, in terms of specific concrete actions you're taking?

>>909152
>Alrighty then, can we say I upgraded Medicine to 3? 1XP for 1-2, then 3XP for 2-3, for a total of 4XP right?
Yep. Another charm to consider, for leading refugees on a long journey over rough terrain, is Flying Faith Legion. I think I mentioned it before. It's not actually statted out properly anywhere, but the explanation of it is in Thousand Correct Actions on p 88. With Athletics favored, training time would only be three days.
>>
No. 909186 ID: bb5006

rolled 9, 1, 6 = 16

Alright, working to engage as opposed to trying to push myself to make everything worthy of a stunt at all times, which honestly might be a bit to do with my procrastination.

>The frightened villagers give me a basket with some bread and cranberries baked in.
Light is going to take half of one of the loaves and tosses the rest, with the dog included, to one of the Shamblers.

>The creeper has access to the Cirrus Skiff spell
I'm going to have it cast the spell, at the low to the ground high weight capacity version so everyone can get onboard and, as the creeper does that, Light turns into an owl so that something so loud as a gathering of humans will be easy to track at night, with sharp enough eyes to follow the trail they so politely left for me. (3 dice shift roll) and perch on the cloud when it's ready, and head off
>>
No. 909194 ID: 2007b6

>>909186
You should definitely be rolling more than three dice. It's an extended action. You rolled once for tracking through the afternoon, this is the roll for overnight. Seven dice just from your base Perception + Survival pool, before bonuses from stunts or acute senses. When in doubt, roll too many dice and let me worry about how many of them should be counted.
>Cirrus Skiff
No, Stormwind Rider. https://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0010.html
>>

rolled 6, 3, 6, 7, 1, 6, 5, 8, 5, 8, 8, 1, 8, 9, 2, 7, 9, 7, 7, 3 = 116

Gazing upon the watches the verbal exchange between Morse Song and Bridget... which rather quickly becomes physical. Well, perhaps more a physical soliloquy than exchange- it is rather one way. Embri's apparent betrayal earns a smile.

Well, entertaining and informative as these events are, Lute isn't going to watch the entire 4-hour limit break or 3-hour crafting session in real time. The highlights are enough. She will, of course, rendezvous with Bridget when the solar returns.

In the meanwhile, Lute will return to the village, to speak with those whose fear and anxiety keeps them awake in spite of the day's exhaustion. In a perverse act of kindness, she seeks to aid the mortals in their time of need, and provide a boon towards her own ally. Kindness and reassurance will be offered when possible, blame will be laid at the hooves of a monster, and possible solutions and defenses to prevent future distastes will be suggested. Storytelling such that mortals are comforted by a narrative, and a monster is fed on unintended prayer.

Mechanically, working on morale around town, exploiting what have to be emotional and exhaustion MDV penalties (and probably depleted wp), and laying the groundwork for an antagonistic cult for the Sandpoint Demon by telling stories about him, and how one might avoid his style of town-destroying arson, and giving the mortals a narrative towards which to direct their anger, grief, hate, blame, etc. Making use of Perfection In Life (plenty of time to regain motes)- both binding people to what I talk them into, and restoring wp, which is probably rather depleted for many people. I'm assuming manipulative storytelling is performance + manipulation (telling true stories about a raksha... even if he wasn't actually the one responsible), but we'll see how it goes.

>>909152
>They should be brought water and care
"I do not believe it is within the village's capabilities to deliver sufficient care and water, even if they were so inclined. They have been sorely taxed, the lack transportation, and even if their fellows were misled, such a betrayal is not easily forgiven.

"Relief and transport on such a scale lies outside my own means, as well." Not sure on the range limits of the chancel, or if I can shorten effect travel distance for an army, but I'm pretty sure the majority of them would end up mutated or dead or soul-eaten in the attempt anyways.

>they are welcome to make the trek to my lands
"A kind offer, but a destination even farther afield."

>I have dealt with one agent of chaos, sealing them away
>crafted a sarcophagus around Morse
"Do her fetters include a lock that might be released, or is she bound till another smith unmakes her tomb?" (Given that Bridget build Morse's bonds around her, I'm not sure if releasing her is even option or not).
>>
No. 909203 ID: 094652

rolled 5, 3, 5, 9, 8, 7, 5, 5, 1, 4, 3, 3 = 58

>>909184
Now that Morse is locked in a coffin and guarded by an angry monk, Embri will simply "Convince" the former bandits with her gown to take all the food they can carry. She'll even pay them! (not that it will help in the long run, though)

Embri also 'requisitions' as many carts as she can, as she had intended in the first place.

Add some charisma modding to the diplomacy roll.
>>
No. 909209 ID: bb5006

Sorry, that was for my avoiding mutation roll, I got one, and I've only gotten 1 success as opposed to the 7 mdv, so still no more mutations.

But, I'm assuming that it went through.

With her whole backup army mounted on the Stormwind Rider behind her as she commands them if need be, Light tunes her senses to the natural world, and her massive unmoving eyes on the path of destruction left in the wake of the large trail of horses, her senses keeping up with her as she zooms along, wind rustling through her feathers, mentally going through Mother Bog to stop the high speed cloud cart when she could hear the sounds of humans with her "Hear a mouse's heart at 100 feet away" ears, as she takes to the sky to get a better understanding of their situation.
>>
No. 909210 ID: bb5006

rolled 10, 1, 3, 9, 6, 9, 3, 9, 2, 5 = 57

>>
No. 909213 ID: 2007b6

>>909209
You're riding a mini tornado, not a cloud. Wind noise drowns out any mouse heartbeats, but hoofprints are visible enough, leading to a ruined fortification atop a low hill. What initially appeared to be a campfire resolves into a protective hemisphere of some unfamiliar magic, like a yurt-sized bubble of predawn glow.

Eight horses within the crumbled walls but outside the radiant ward, two human sentries standing watch. You can almost certainly see them from further away than they can see you. Even if they did notice your approach, Stormwind Rider easily deflects arrows or sling stones. On the other hand, rather than charging straight in you could circle around to observe further, or lay a trap along the path they'll likely take in the morning.
>>
No. 909222 ID: 9646f1

>>909197
>I do not believe it is within the village's capabilities to deliver sufficient care and water, even if they were so inclined. They have been sorely taxed, the lack transportation, and even if their fellows were misled, such a betrayal is not easily forgiven.

Friend, they are the village. With so many lost, they must come together or perish against the dark forces arrayed against them. The yeddim yet live, and the carts are serviceable. With proper rest, a party of carpenters and engineers may be arrayed to turn the carts so that the villagers may eat once more. Those who feel this town cannot thrive in the wake of this disaster are welcome to make new lives under my care; I cannot provide for all presently. One might shape the steel with two hammers, use the food and carts to charter a trip.

>Do her fetters include a lock that might be released, or is she bound till another smith unmakes her tomb?

“I was once held down by the weight of the sea. I do not believe I have captured her soul to the same degree, but she should not find release.”

Bridget is visibly uncomfortable at that question, but it is clear there is no intentional seam or release mechanism. I figure with an intimacy of fear, Bridget wants to ensure that evil is sealed such that it can’t threaten her or others, as opposed to more mundane restraints she might have applied. Sorry Gilly, Morse got all scary and Bridget had to put her in time out!
>>
No. 909321 ID: afdebc

>downplaying the difficulty of reconciling a betrayal
>said the solar to the Yozi worshiper
>said the solar to the sidereal
>to one of Kimeby's chosen
>ALL THINGS BETRAY
"...betrayal is not a thing so easily forgiven."

Bridget seems to be making light of the logistical challenge for the betrayed to mount any kind of relief effort and/or for the betrayers to making their way back after their maiming, to say nothing of reconciling the two sides, but I suppose that's her prerogative.
>>
No. 909379 ID: a02a86

>>909321
“I spoke not to the difficult of the task, but the way forward. Should they choose not to rise up and meet the challenge head on, they might better spend time digging graves. Those who’s trust has been broken too thoroughly are not at fault, nor are those led astray. All play some part, but we must accept ourselves without hate to grow towards the light. I do not judge or condemn those who are unable to work with their betrayers, as they are my siblings like no others. Their fate was sealed when neighbor was forced to turn against neighbor, the blade was simply hidden from plain view. Yet, if any can heal, grow past this, and see the path ahead, they may yet draw breath.”

She sighs.

“It is a difficult thing, this business. But there is little time for weariness or sorrow. Even now I suspect forces move against my wards. There is yet more tragedy to forestall. If I might expect your vist, that would gladden my heart.”
>>
No. 909804 ID: bb5006

Leaving the stormwind rider behind and taking to the skies at a much slower, but far more weightless and natural feel, she flies over the camp, looking to gather information that seems pertinent, like how many people there are, and how many of them have a heartbeat, and how many of them look to be there against their will.

After that, she flies ahead to see what all kinds of paths they even could take before even narrowing it down to which one they would probably take.
>>
No. 909805 ID: 2007b6

Where did Bridget leave Morse's equipment, notably the Drowned Shamisen?

What are Bridget and Lute going to do during the remaining hours before dawn on Moonday, 23 Descending Wood?
>>
No. 909806 ID: bb5006

rolled 8, 3, 4, 10, 5, 8, 3, 1, 10, 4, 9, 3, 5, 2, 7, 8, 5, 3, 7, 9, 4, 4, 7, 9, 1, 10, 3, 1, 5, 7 = 165

>>
No. 909826 ID: 2007b6

>>909806
>>909804
>observe camp as an owl
Cavalrymen mostly look like they might be Haltan, with tall lanky builds and close-cropped moss-green hair - which, if true, means the horses are probably smarter than they look. Six of them (two sentries, three resting, one prepping a meal) have exceptional-quality buff jackets and curved slashing swords. The apparent leader, however, is shorter and barrel-chested, with facial features that suggest ancestry on the Blessed Isle. He's wearing a tar-encrusted suit of articulated plate - the sort of armor that absolutely always needs to be custom-fitted, which hardly anyone outside the Realm or Lookshy knows how to do - and seemingly armed only with a length of chain.

Meal prep at one point involves putting a small sausage on a skewer and cautiously poking it into that glowing dome, with a momentary but distinctive noise of boiling fat. Apparently that thing is an actual damage-dealing magical trap, not just a harmless light source or alarm or something.

The ruined fort is about 14 yards in diameter, and the highest remaining sections of wall (where the sentries are standing) are about ten yards above the grassy hillside - just outside range for a shambler's Creeper Vine Reach. Climbing a little way up the wall, or one standing on another's shoulders, they could probably do reasonably silent takedowns - either grab ankles and yank (reliable, but messy) or tricky stuff involving taps on shoulders and hands over mouths (more impressive, easier to capture intact for interrogation, less risk of a thump or scream alerting the whole camp, but closer approach means more risk of detection up front). Only approach that doesn't involve climbing a stone wall with nothing but weathered crevices and arrow-slits for handholds is an exposed staircase up to a relatively intact door, which has been barred shut and rigged with a crude noisemaker. (Can't have been easy getting the horses up there - must have dismounted and walked them in single file.)

The sunset-colored dome is two yards in radius and puts out about as much light as a bonfire: clear illumination within ten yards (including the entire interior of the fort), murky out to twenty. Fortunately, the light doesn't reach ground level very well, since the walls of the fort get in the way. Waning half-moon, moderate cloud cover, a few fireflies here and there... unless they've got superhuman darkvision, there's absolutely no way those sentries are going to notice an approaching intruder from less than 25 yards away on the ground, 50 yards in the air, unless said intruder is noisy, or carrying their own light source - something brighter than a candle. From as little as 5 yards away, and outside the dome's glow (e.g. clinging to the outside wall of the fort), there's enough concealment just from ambient darkness that you could attempt to re-establish surprise against someone with human-level vision, even without cover.

There are a few small trees, and lots of waist-high grass, but not much else available for cover within a couple hundred yards of the fort. Reasonably mature forest outside that radius, though, which suggests someone was putting in work to keep sight-lines clear within the past year or three, though there's no obvious sign of such recent repairs or maintenance on the fort itself, beyond what the kidnappers presumably did in the course of setting up their camp.

Solitary feral hog wandering nearby, rooting around for food. Doesn't seem to be much else dangerous or tasty, at least not close enough or active enough to be tactically significant.

It's very difficult to see what's going on inside the dome's two-yard radius. Owls have superb night vision, of course, but seeing something that's not glowing, directly behind something that is, isn't easy for anybody. There's a fist-sized crystalline item at the exact center - presumably the source of the dome - and four possible human figures, two sitting on the floor, knees-to-chest, two prone. One of the prone figures is shorter, maybe a child around ten years old, with convex-curved hair ornaments that catch the light - bells, maybe? The other three seem to be wearing long-sleeved robes, and have a scattering of small shiny bits on their faces which seem too distinct and asymmetrical to be ordinary tears.

>she flies ahead to see what all kinds of paths they even could take
Less than a mile away from the fort, there's a long rocky ridge, through which some Shogunate-era civil engineer (centuries ago) carved an artificial box canyon. Valley beyond was always relatively cold and dry, and wasn't ever re-colonized in any significant way after the Contagion due to excessive haunting, but Mother Bog knows it's not an actual shadowland, just ordinary pine barrens - or, currently (and after any sufficiently intense wildfire), charred-stump-and-glacial-moraine barrens.
>Wits 4 + War 2 + 1 Specialty (Geurilla Tactics) + 2nd Excellency => 6 successes
Judging by the path taken so far, they're almost certainly planning to continue through there. Best place for an ambush might be a cluster of surviving trees clinging to the ridge wall just beyond that scenic overlook at the far end of the canyon. The obvious place would be inside the canyon itself, but this way a lone scout sent ahead who makes it to the overlook, and doesn't notice anything out of place on a visual scan of the cliffside road ahead and the valley below, will probably turn right around and report that the path is clear. That way, you can catch the whole group at once. If they realize there's a trap before entering the canyon, taking the long way around wouldn't cost them more than a couple of days; they might even change plans entirely. They've been taking less-traveled roads, but haven't otherwise acted much like they're expecting to be pursued.

With your other Wits charm, The Spider's Trap Door, you could conceal an ambush party so perfectly, no mere mortal would have the slightest chance of noticing. If you keep the motes committed, even folks with divinely perfect senses might miss it, unless they also have adequate MDVs or illusion-keyword defenses.
>>
No. 909845 ID: afdebc

>If I might expect your vist, that would gladden my heart.
"You may. Whatever else transpires in this business, I will seek you out at it's conclusion."

A solar who listens to her consul, and who she feels curiously familiar working with? No question, really.

>What are Bridget and Lute going to do during the remaining hours before dawn on Moonday, 23 Descending Wood?
Unless anything else happens, or Bridget has other ideas, Lute should probably get some sleep.
>>
No. 909874 ID: 0640da

rolled 1, 8, 3, 5, 8, 5, 4, 1, 2, 2 = 39

Every night that week, Morse tainted her body to the point of exhaustion. The hunger would subside for while, and her rationality would return to her... inside her box, restrained and cold, she was made to stand in silence. Shackles prevented her from moving too far inside her prison, from reaching high or low... and her hands were pressed against the metal coffin, feeling the cold iron against her fingertips. Sensation had not completely left her body yet... she jerked her arm to the right. No give. She tried to wiggle a leg, and found her ankles securely fastened. Her neck was clamped down, too-- tightly enough to make breathing difficult, but not impossible. To prevent her from crying out for help, her mouth was bound as well, a bit fastened between her teeth... Fool probably didn't know I could speak without using my mouth... Morse thinks to herself. These bonds were strong, but she had seen worse. She had been in worse. Physical bonds... physical bonds were child's play.

The worst kind of bond is the bond you owe to others. The duty of protection. A psychological bond. Well, a physical bond helps with establishing that, too... Morse thought back to the last cage she was held in... the last time she felt anything at all, beyond a dull rage and a hollow, echoing feeling in her chest. Morse closes her eyes and tries to remember that night...

...

Inside her cage, a bird sings a song of sorrow and mourning for her. The little bird shined with brilliant eyes and a raven black skull cover. The bird was pale, as if made from white jade, and she hang from a bar sitting far overhead... her wings red and ruddy from their binding shackles, and her naked body for the nobles to cackle. Tonight was a brief reprieve-- from the suffering of the last five months she'd seen... as the bird swung from her side to that side, that bird could feel nothing inside.

In the window, an unusual bird sat and ogled at her as she sung. Of her sorrows, her woes and the family that left her advancing forth-- going with the sun. Each bar of her song was met by a head tilt, and each verse met with a scratch and a peck. The bird in the cage had a clear voice, a longing... a longing for escape, to be free. And yet... the bird in the cage made no purchase to struggle or flee. She wanted so desperately to leave her cage, and yet she realized the futility. It had been five months now, and they had her spirit... a once vibrant, smiling soul, now a set piece.

The gods were not there to help her, the bird sang to the bird in the window. The gods had left her to die. All of the law could not save her, the bird sang to bird in the window. The law had hung her to dry. Since there was no god, and there was no law, perhaps a demon would do. But even the Yozi refused to touch her-- who could she possibly beg to?

The bird came back with a feather-- a feather from a bird to a bird. The bird only needed to wish on this feather, and then all her pleas would be heard.

So she wished on the feather and her mouth filled with gruel-- and it poured from her beak and her eyes. And just for a moment, she could glimpse all creation, and could watch as the star she's on dies. And a song rang out, a wail with her voice, and her soul slipped out of her feathered facade. And just for a moment, though it really was something, she could hear the faint voice of god...

'I grant to thee a gift;
But it is part one of three
Abandon your morals
And your shining center
And bring yourself to me

For the gift that I offer
Is greater than gold
And the power I hold
Will shatter your fetters
And you'll see reality

There's no sense of longing
When nobody lingers
A sense of belonging
In the place you shall see
So prepare yourself
and cut off your ties

And go to the underworld's sea`

The bird was gone, but her chains were unfettered... no more manacles on her wings. A new sort of breath had entered her body, along with a colder feeling. And so she knew what she had to do next-- there was still yet one unresolved thing.

...

...good times. Not exactly how I remember it happening... I think I had a name, then. Less line dancers in the background, too... Morse tries her best to avoid thinking about her old name, her thoughts returning to her deathlord. Morse let out a muffled sigh. Princess... how are you doing right now? Are you well? Oh, me? I'm not doing so great. I've been locked in a box... I've failed my mission to you. I wish I could see you again...
>>
No. 909903 ID: c8a0f5

While she isn't particularly smart, even Light would find it absolutely impossible to miss all of the clues that these people aren't just some random bunch of raiders. Her personal guess, going by the fact that the supposed ring leader looked like typical Realm stock, was that either the Realm or the Guild wanted something in this village badly, and they were wearing them down.

Internally, she debated shaping back into a human, and cutting them down 1 at a time in the way that a Lunar might well do in one of the Immaculate Morality Plays, or letting them carry on as normal and just set up a Kill zone to take all of them out at once.

After flying round to the other side of the fort to get a full lay of everything she couldn't see because of the glowing dome of hot light, and watching to see if anything dramatically changes from conversations or something that she could hear before deciding.
>>
No. 909917 ID: 094652

rolled 2, 3, 6, 7, 6, 8, 2, 2, 4, 2 = 42

Embri directs her new 'employees' to unload the carts, get the giant yaks connected to the carts, push the cards out, then put the food back in. She also quickly asks Bridget for assistance. And then apologizes soon after.
>>
No. 909927 ID: 2007b6

>>909903
Roll to resist the urge to get sidetracked by hunting that wild boar to add it to your form library - or, if you're not inclined to resist, roll for bringing the hunt to it's conclusion quickly rather than wasting five or six hours. Slaying the boar may also present difficulties, given your personal lack of ranged weaponry or offensive magic, and the fact that it currently outweighs you by approximately a factor of 100.
>>
No. 909928 ID: bb5006

I already have a Wild Boar in my Heartblood Library. 27th in the list of Mammals on both the original post and the Character Sheet.
>>
No. 909931 ID: a02a86

rolled 6, 9, 8, 5, 4, 5, 1, 8, 8, 10, 4, 5, 3, 9, 8, 3, 3, 3, 6, 5, 1, 3, 3, 7, 10, 3, 5, 2, 10, 9 = 166

>>909805
Morse is buried, and her equipment with her. After restraining her in a bed of metal, Bridget found the heaviest, most difficult to maneuver rock in the area and reapectfully put her Brothers twisted leuitenant to rest along side her things. They were too dangerous to be left out, and had to be physically secured in case of prying eyes, but she couldn’t risk an angry spirit haunting he town. Luckily everyone in the area was preoccupied with their wounds. Afterwards she helped embri turn the carts before returning to Lute, not realizing her actions had been observed and recorded.

Her next task is to find the airships; either one would do. Of course, Lute might have more luck navigating social affairs.

“What became of the Lunar, Cavalry, and Bear Pond? Are the kidnapped returned? Further, where might I find the airships?”
>>
No. 909979 ID: afdebc

>>909931
>“What became of the Lunar, Cavalry, and Bear Pond? Are the kidnapped returned? Further, where might I find the airships?”
Directing Bridget towards the airships is easy enough.

The kidnapped have not been returned, and I have not observed the lunar since the two of you arrived.

Let's see if Efficient Secretary Technique can return the location of the cavalry? (Less than 100 people involved, and the information may count as actively concealed, so maybe not). Failing that, Lute can point out which way they left.
>>
No. 909991 ID: 2007b6

>>909917
Yeddim are giant sloths, http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2017/03/28/paleoburrows-south-america/ not yaks.
>>909931
Bridget can fabricate metal or ceramic parts quickly and without need of tools, but lacks dots in Craft (Earth) for scaffolding or Craft (Wood) for the actual wagon rebuild, so her charms can't be effectively applied to those tasks. Main contribution might be heavy lifting. Even with the cooperation of the bandits (far from a sure thing), there's only one qualified engineer, so the job's clearly going to take several hours, maybe even all day and into tomorrow. How long will Bridget stick around?

>>909928
Sorry about that. Hm... and the fireflies are too small.

>conversations or something that she could hear
Not much idle chatter. The cook says something to the smallest figure inside the dome in Old Realm, and receives a reply in the same language - from context, almost certainly "Want some sausage?" "Yeah, gimme." The black knight receives reports from sentries in Rivertongue. He speaks with a Marukani accent and uses phrases that might have been drilled in during training as a janissary - a foreigner who signed up with the Seventh Legion to escape their past.

>>909979
>Let's see if Efficient Secretary Technique can return the location of the cavalry?
Not with certainty, but given their last known direction and rate of travel, and viable paths through the area, a short list of plausible campsites can be compiled. A few of those sites currently have visible campfires, and only one has something that could be mistaken for a campfire, particularly at a distance, but is in fact a dome of concentrated sunlight, stored, processed, and re-extruded through Dragon King crystal tech. Details of how it works are too esoteric for EST, but that 'executive summary' is common enough knowledge among mortal savants.

Working all that out required many questions; as of one hour after midnight, Lute Silhouette's personal essence pool is empty.
>>
No. 909998 ID: a02a86

>>909991
>Main contribution might be heavy lifting
Ah, I thought her strength might be enough to allow her to lift and turn the wagons, but if not then she’s not going to spend several hours trying to apply skills she doesn’t have. Out of interest, would an athletics excellency let her do heavier lifting and pulling, to the point that she could have lifted the wagons by herself? Or is there something more substantial that makes them hard to pick up and maneuver outside of super strength.

>>909979
>The kidnapped have not been returned, and I have not observed the lunar since the two of you arrived.
“Further Tragedy.”

Since Lute was kind enough to direct Bridget towards the airship crew, Bridget will seek them out.

How close is she to needing to roll for fatigue?
>>
No. 910015 ID: bb5006

rolled 7, 5, 8, 7 = 27

Mysterious people talking in Old Realm who were obviously way better equipped than Bandits and weren't even native to the area was definitely enough to tie this curious event back to the Realm in Light's mind, and she definitely wanted to 'talk' to one of them.

Since she couldn't be terribly sure that they wouldn't be able to use magic to spot an ambush now that she knew they spoke the sorcerer's tongue, she resolved to put caution in the wind as it were, and traveled back to the Stormwind Rider and turned back into a human to explain the situation to the Bog Soldiers, and how the present plan was to silently drag people off into the dead of night without any of their wizard friends seeing, and if possible, silently slaughter their horses to leave them stuck foot slogging it. Her thought process behind all this being that since these weren't normal bandits, they obviously had a reason and a plan for kidnapping these specific people, and they wouldn't risk them getting hurt, and while it would be a bleeding shame and an outcome she would greatly prefer to avoid, she had centuries to get over a few humans dying if she was wrong. So, steeling herself, she got into a position where it would be almost impossible for a normal human to see her, Shamblers heading to a similar position around the horses and the Daughters taking up their own position, and waited for the opportunity to put her hand around someone's mouth and pull them into the darkness unobserved.
>>
No. 910016 ID: afdebc

>>909991
Well, Lute will share the information with Bridget, pointing out the cavalry's likely location on the map created earlier, and then she's off to catch some sleep.
>>
No. 910018 ID: 2007b6

>>909998
>Out of interest, would an athletics excellency let her do heavier lifting and pulling, to the point that she could have lifted the wagons by herself?
Corebook p.127 lists "tipping over a loaded wagon" as requiring a strength+athletics total of 18. Lifting a fully loaded wagon all the way off the ground, maneuvering it through a 180-degree turn, and setting it back down gently enough to avoid breaking the axles, would be at least a little bit more difficult than Bridget can manage, even with an athletics excellency. Might be attainable with stunting and/or virtue channels, but there's more than one wagon to move, and she's already facing penalties from fatigue.
>>
No. 910175 ID: 2007b6

>>910015
So, you're attacking the camp in the ruined fort, before dawn? First critical decision in an ambush like this is whose job it is to hit what.

Assets:
-Light of the Moon Cleansing the World
-six "daughters" limbering up for the dance of death, extruding splintery claws from their pallid fingertips
-twelve "shamblers"
-one "creeper" (child-sized, stealthy, sorcerer capable of two more spells today)
-remote access to Mother Bog's main essence pool (excessive use will announce your presence and her involvement, similar to an anima banner but in increments of 10 motes rather than 4)

Targets:
-two sentries in light armor
-three guys lying down, also in light armor
-one unarmored guy doing chores around the camp
-apparently leader, in heavy armor
-eight horses
-four humanoid silhouettes inside the dome, presumably hostages

So far their plan is to, first, have four of the shamblers climb halfway up the wall as quietly as possible and root themselves in place. Then they grab the sentries, pull them down, hoist Daughters up, one of them for each of the remaining riders. Other eight shamblers climb under their own power and grab the horses, intending to wrestle them into submission. They don't have any good anti-armor weapons, so that leaves you and the creeper to deal with the black knight and whatever's in the dome. Rooted shamblers would also be functioning somewhat as a reserve force, available to step in and deal with the unexpected.

Of course, you're the boss here, and most of them literally have mud for brains, so the plan is wide open for revision.

If you captured somebody alive (say, one of the sentries) and then spent ten minutes drowning 'em in a mud puddle as a ritual sacrifice, that'd be a handy option for recharging the willpower that creeper needs to cast more spells. Much quicker than getting a full night's sleep.

Might be possible to cast Virtuous Guardian of Flame from a concealed position at the base of the fort. It's transferable, but only once per casting. Question is, should the protection be handed off to Light herself, saved for one of the hostages (transfer requires a touch), or retained to protect the creeper itself?

If a quick-cast Stormwind Rider starts to look like the best option for extraction, what's the priority order on who to pick up?
>>
No. 910177 ID: bb5006

The present plan that I had was less start an open conflict, and try to silently grab a sentry when nobody is looking so I'll have a hot moment to interrogate him before the actual fighting happens to get a better idea as to what their purpose is for all this, since I may not know much, but I'm pretty sure magic is a fickle beast.

While that doesn't change the overall plan all that much, it does give it a longer time table, and if things like like they are going FUBAR, the order of the Stormwind Rider to pick everyone up is the Child first, since they would naturally be closest from casting the spell, then the hostages, then the daughters, then the shamblers, and lastly me, since I'm an Exalt, and I should be able to survive an assault for at least that long.

Plus, on top of her confidence that she'd be able to survive with tooth and claw, if things get loud enough to warrant a full attack, she would have a flame guardian put on her to help cover her while she's drawing fire for everyone getting on the escape vehicle.
>>
No. 910239 ID: 2007b6

>>910177
Okay, so who's going up to the base of the stubby tower to grab the sentry? The more you bring, the better your odds of success on the grab (five attackers per target being the usual point of diminishing returns), but more pairs of feet trying to be sneaky means more chances to step on a dry twig (or whatever), get noticed. Daughters are no good at stealth on their own; for the strike plan, idea was to have shamblers carry 'em most of the way.
>>
No. 910245 ID: 2007b6

>>909998
>Since Lute was kind enough to direct Bridget towards the airship crew, Bridget will seek them out.
They've mostly settled down for the night. Unpacked a lot of tents for folks whose houses burned down. One guard, armed with a spear (the tip of which glows ice-blue, bright as a torch, and leaves a trail of mist when she gestures with it) is engaged in a philosophical debate with Jo the anhule, mostly on the subject of trade secrets and national security. When the guard spots Bridget, she says "Hey! You're this spider monster's boss, right, you and that vulture lady? Did'e really used to buy and sell misbehaving children, or is that a load of loxie-plops?"

>How close is she to needing to roll for fatigue?
Safe range for fatigue is a number of hours equal to your stamina + resistance + applicable specialties. Assuming that specialty applies to inflicting disproportionate force as well as receiving it, that'd be nine hours. Four hours of limit break, three assembling that armored coffin, and I want to say four more as part of the rescue efforts in town, puts Bridget currently at a -2 internal penalty from fatigue. Fatigue can be shed with rest (one per three hours), sleep (per hour), or shaken off with Willpower or Conviction channels. Total fatigue penalties exceeding your stamina + resistance is the point where you collapse from exhaustion. Never involves an actual roll.
>>
No. 910259 ID: bb5006

At the moment, Light is the only one going to secretly snatch a sentry, mostly because of the whole "More you bring, more noisy you are" thing. The actual plan will be set up afterwards, since depending on the information they get from the victim, the details could easily change.
>>
No. 910266 ID: 2007b6

>>910259
So, if you're going to go ahead and do that without further preparation, you need to roll for it.
>>
No. 910284 ID: 9646f1

rolled 10, 8, 7, 7, 8, 6, 4, 10, 8, 3, 1, 3, 6, 10, 7, 3, 4, 10, 9, 7, 3, 10, 9, 7, 5, 10, 9, 8, 6, 9 = 207

>>910245
“There has been no child slavery while I was present, which has been brief. Now, I wish to charter a voyage, payment to be made in smithing. I can provide for you in a day what others might make in a week, or, given a week, I can provide work of volume and quality that mortals would took over for a month. I will accept whichever offer leaves soonest.”
>>
No. 910293 ID: 2007b6

>>910284
Guard wakes up the captain, who has a lot of pointed questions about weight and direction and making it back home before winter. They'll be ready to leave in two days (that is, on the morning of the 25th; Haslanti calendar says the week goes sunday-monday-mercsday-vensday-marsday-jovesday-saturnday, which is confusing since past-life memories say the days used to be in a different order and didn't have crunched-up names). If Bridget can forge an exceptional-quality sword before then, using only "slightly irregular" (substandard, possibly cobalt-contaminated) feathersteel bar stock, the captain figures that's proof enough those skills are worth the risk involved. For a normal person, with adequate tools and materials, that would require three weeks of work per attempt at difficulty 3, or two weeks at difficulty 7. Such a tight time limit more or less forces the latter option, and substandard materials impose an external penalty, so you'll need at least eight successes on the roll. If you're willing to spend some XP, a fifth dot of Craft (Fire) would improve the odds, and then five days of training for Crack-Mending Technique would allow in-flight repairs, enabling the airship to travel faster by making fewer stops while taking greater risks with high-altitude currents and overclocked engines.

Jo the genderless spider-demon, meanwhile, says their airship could be ready to go in a matter of minutes, as soon as the wasp and Legbreaker get back from wherever it was they ran off to, and has no serious commitment to a schedule. The smaller airship is also significantly faster.
>>
No. 910306 ID: b8257f

>>910293
Bridget thanks the captain for their consideration of her offer, and boards the smaller ship- how are she and Jo communicating? Bridget still hasn’t picked up any dots in linguistics.
>>
No. 910320 ID: bb5006

rolled 3, 6, 9, 7, 10, 6, 8 = 49

Alright, I thought that was what the 30 something dice were for earlier, so that something like this could be pulled from that until I ran out.
>>
No. 910331 ID: 2007b6

>>910320
You need to roll a new bucket full of dice every time, both because a single declared action might involve several separate rolls (in this case, stealth, climbing/jumping, Join Battle, a grapple attack, climbing back down/falling safely, and reestablishing stealth) and so you can't judge OOC how much of a risk to take by knowing how your next action's dice will land.

In this case, you've got decent dice pools for all that, so Light gets a running start, scrambles up the wall, grabs the sentry by the mouth, twists around, and lands at the base of the wall, flat on her back, captive in front of her. One hand stopping him from screaming, other on his wrist to prevent readying a weapon. His buff jacket feels like it's been discreetly reinforced with rigid plates of something nonmetallic - maybe ironwood - and it's cool to the touch, suggesting some sort of enchantment, though Light doesn't have enough Lore or Occult to be sure of the details (and blind guessing would go against Temperance).

Only sound was a momentary squeak and a dull thud; nobody else in the camp was looking in the right direction at the right moment, as far as you can tell. If they noticed, it probably seems like the sentry just slipped and fell off the wall.

What's the next step? Planning to do the interrogation right here, or carry 'im further away from his friends first?
>>
No. 910333 ID: 2007b6

>>910306
Jo natively speaks only Old Realm, but can attain temporary conversational fluency in other languages thanks to the Mimic Of Tongues charm. However, lack of grammatical finesse makes it difficult to present a persuasive argument in either direction through the filter of magical translation - in mechanical terms, a +3 "cover" bonus to MDVs against spoken social attacks. The charm doesn't help with writing at all.

As previously noted, the small airship can't set off until the other two crewmembers are found and returned, or adequate replacements are recruited. Legbreaker and the agata navigator were last seen heading north-northeast, toward the town of Bear Pond, along with Force of Ordered Thought.

If you were looking to recruit replacements, both of them would need, at minimum, two dots in Sail and one in Lore, the navigator would also benefit from Awareness, and for longer-term operation the engineer would need either Lore 4, Occult 3, Craft (Vitriol) 3 or the equivalent in specialties applicable to omen weather engines.
>>
No. 910344 ID: 4888b8

>>910333
Ah, that’s “could be” not “would be”, a misunderstanding then. Well, it seems her best path forward would be in bear pond, or at least that direction.

“Any notion of how far ahead or to what aims their trip is part of?”
>>
No. 910423 ID: 3e9bb0

rolled 7, 10, 8, 3, 6, 2, 9, 5, 1, 9, 2, 5, 5, 6, 5, 8, 5, 2, 2, 1, 7, 8, 2, 4, 2, 7, 9, 10, 8, 5 = 163

I’m planning on dragging him back to where the Bog Creatures are, which is far enough that he would need to make a solid yell to get attention.

When Light is comfortable that she’s far enough, she’ll hand the job of keeping him restrained and immobile to 5 of the Shamblers, keeping her hand covering his mouth.

“You have two options, either you’re going to tell me everything you know about why you’re here and kidnapping those people, or I’m going to show you first hand why we’re are called Anathema.”

She allowed her caste mark to shine momentarily, just long enough to let this person know she wasn’t bluffing about her status as she moved her hand down to his throat, ready to kill him in an instant if he tried to signal for help, or try to attack.
>>
No. 910432 ID: 2007b6

>>910344
"Rescuing some stolen princesses or priestesses or something, before they could be auctioned off as slaves?" Jo makes a pedipalp gesture which could be interpreted as a shrug. "Something like that. Sounded like fun, but I still had work to do, and they were in a wild hurry, and somebody has to keep an eye on the ship."

>>910016
>the cavalry's likely location on the map created earlier,

Okay, if the map created earlier was the hour hand of a clock, with the nameless town/airship crash site being the pivot, and noon on the clock face being due west, the kidnapper cavalry fang would be roughly 40 miles away as the crow flies, at the far end of the minute hand when the clock face shows 12:20.

>>910423
Okay, you manage to tie his elbows behind his back using his own belt, stuff a sock in his mouth, then drag him by the feet, down the hill and behind a fallen log, all without making anywhere near enough noise to attract attention.

Back at the fort, someone shouts "Hey, wake up! Istvan's missing!"
>She allowed her caste mark to shine momentarily
"...and there was a flash of light, over there by the trees! Definitely not just fireflies this time, sir!"

Underneath your hand, you can feel Istvan the sentry's bruised and grass-stained face quirk into a smug smile.
>>
No. 910446 ID: c8a0f5

rolled 4, 9, 5, 2, 4, 2, 10, 1, 2, 4, 2, 5, 3, 6, 6, 8, 4, 1, 5, 7, 1, 6, 4, 1, 10, 10, 2, 6, 9, 1 = 140

If her query was able to hear the voices of his compatriots, clearly she hadn't gone far enough, but this was fine enough to her plans, even if she needed to get a bit more messy this way.

She looked to see if the man, apparently Istvan, had a knife, and if he didn't she used her sharp and seasoned hands and teeth to quickly kill him, and dress up the scene as a violently bloody mess with the man's throat ripped out and his guts torn open under his armor and his eyes smashed, having the bog soldiers disappear into the underbrush and trees while she bolted up the trees before they happened to catch sight of her, hiding herself in her trap door.
>>
No. 910653 ID: 9646f1

rolled 8, 9, 3, 6, 2, 8, 7, 1, 10, 3, 3, 3, 1, 7, 7, 5, 2, 3, 10, 3, 7, 3, 8, 5, 1, 4, 7, 7, 8, 8 = 159

>>910432
>I still had work to do, and they were in a wild hurry, and somebody has to keep an eye on the ship

“Dedication is admirable. I will attempt to retrieve them.”

Now, since I don’t have exact quardinates, and I’ll have to make at least two jumps, what are my margins for error here? Do I need to roll some sort of intelligence lore check to get the guessing right? The intention is to activate IKB for the scene, then MCL twice to cross those 40~ miles and try to find the crew. Hopefully she’ll alert them to her presence- them, and anything else nearby. Her mind drifts back for a moment, thinking over the restraints and burial she preformed. The symbols of the Unconquored Sun would hopefully provide the restraints some measure of protection from anyone who might try to dig that... thing... up and recover it for her brother. Had she adaquitly appeased it, such that no po spirit would terrorize the land? Had anyone been watching her secretly, waiting for the right moment? Could Embri be trusted to help? Or would she awaken the beast from its metal prison?

Shaking her head, she cleared distracting thoughts away. No time to dwell on what she could not fix. Those she could not help were innumerable, better then to focus upon the task at hand, that more might be salvaged. And focus she would. It would not do to have her body flagging at a time like this, not when there was still work to be done

So IKB + MCLx2 is a total of 2WP and 26m, then I stunt to regain motes and spend a WP point to negate fatigue for the scene. That should leave me with 11/21/8 in my perf/pers/WP pools.
>>
No. 910674 ID: 2007b6

>>910653
Spending WP negates fatigue for just one action, not an entire scene, thought it also reduces the total fatigue penalty by 1. Channeling Conviction suppresses fatigue for a full minute and then reduces the penalty by a number of points equal to your Conviction.

Navigation over land is based on the Survival skill. Looks like you got at least two successes, which seems like it should be enough to allow two steps in a straight line toward a bright light, even if they happen to be very long steps.

Bridget crashes feet-first into the center of the kidnappers' camp. Passing through the solar-powered force field deals five dice of lethal damage which is enough of a 'deliberate attack' to bypass Element-Resisting Prana and enough of an environmental effect to ignore armor, but natural soak still works. Clearly a new scene, so re-activating Iron Kettle Body?

>>910446
Light peels away the reinforced long coat, draws the raider's sword, and prepares to eviscerate him with it, but in the back of her mind, Mother Bog gurgles "Dibs!" Not actual words, of course, but a visceral empathic claim of precedence in distribution of spoils, the growl of a dog whose supper is about to be taken away half-finished.

Two Shamblers, a Daughter, the Creeper, and the still-living prisoner have left in the general direction of Mother Bog's main body, aboard a hundred-mile-an-hour sorcerous stormwind. The sword and reinforced buff jacket (which, presumably due to enchantment, only weighs about a fifth of what it should) were left behind, along with the remainder of the platoon.

New hiding spots are soon found. Then, a blazing golden comet crashes into the kidnappers' camp.
>>
No. 910685 ID: 9646f1

>>910674
>Clearly a new scene, so re-activating Iron Kettle Body?
Yep, that’s what I meant by “IKB”.

Does Hardship Surviving Medicant Spirit negate internal penalties to navigation, like fatigue? Also, does fatigue affect my static defense values since they’re dice pools? If so can I spend another WP to put myself at no penalty right, since I will have spent two WP bringing the total penalty to 0?

Bridget is surprised there’s only three guards with the hostages- perhaps they already encountered the Leg Breaker and escaped, or even bested it? Or maybe they split up, and there’s more hostages elsewhere? She thought the fang was supposed to be larger, but if they’re not all here that could mean trouble.

stunting to implying that 3 of the guards have left, presumably in the direction of Clensing Light Of The Moon to investigate the disturbance
>>
No. 910693 ID: c8a0f5

rolled 7, 1, 9, 8, 8, 10, 5, 6, 1, 3, 6, 8, 5, 10, 6, 5, 5, 7, 2, 1, 4, 10, 2, 8, 10, 5, 2, 8, 10, 3 = 175

'Fine, be like that and take just 1 living tribute as opposed to a different living tribute and a heap of corpses you cantankerous old bog. Take all the fun out of hunting mortals like in the old plays.' While she was obviously 'talking' to Mother Bog, light wasn't particularly sending her thoughts to said cantankerous old bog.

Instead, she focused on her targets. It looked like only a few of the guards had actually gave pursuit, which suited her just fine. She was, after all, more than capable of taking them in a straight fight.

So, seeing who among the group of people looked the most able to defend themselves, she shot through the air like a flash of moonsilver, teeth and 'claws' bared as she went straight for the throat, letting her anima baner flare to fulfill her Anathema quota of terror, since clearly a gold flash of light falling like a meteor from the sky meant that something like a golden Anathema was over there, and she wasn't going to let herself be left completely at the gates.
>>
No. 910707 ID: 2007b6

>>910693
>Does Hardship Surviving Medicant Spirit negate internal penalties to navigation, like fatigue?
No.
>Also, does fatigue affect my static defense values since they’re dice pools?
Yes.
>If so can I spend another WP to put myself at no penalty right, since I will have spent two WP bringing the total penalty to 0?
Yes, if you've got enough willpower keeping fatigue penalties under control isn't too hard. In the longer term (mechanically speaking, to get that stamina + resistance 'safe zone' fully recharged), you'll need twice as much time resting as you spent in vigorous exertion.

>Bridget is surprised there’s only three guards with the hostages
Three guards and four horses outside the wall of sunfire. Inside, cowering in terror after having almost been stepped on, three shrine maidens and a small child. Kid's maybe ten years old, coal-black skin and reddish hair in cornrows braided with dozens of little bells. Other three look like they might be sisters, ranging from 14 years old to mid-20s, probably from some aristocratic Calinti family - they look just like younger versions of the middle-managers on that plantation Bridget liberated, apart from wearing ceremonial robes (now shamefully torn and travel-stained) and having hundreds, maybe thousands of piercings. Little steel rings with dangling tags, each embossed or engraved with a word or short phrase in Old Realm. Enough to maybe function as light armor.

The one sensible exit to the old fort, a door leading to stairs down the outside, is still barricaded shut.

>>910693
Two of the other Haltans and the black knight are coming down the hill toward you on horseback. (How'd they get the horses out of there so quickly?) Knight swings that chain at you, you catch it and run past, yanking him out of the saddle. Attempting to rip his throat out with your teeth runs into some problems: you've only got wimpy flat human teeth at the moment, his throat's wrapped in tempered steel, and the steel is covered in icky-tasting tar. Still, he's flat on his back and seems to be stunned.

The other two were a ways behind, and are now catching up. They've got swords, and the high-ground bonus from being on horseback. If they catch up to you while you're still standing next to the guy in plate armor, you'll be surrounded, which makes it harder to dodge or flee and means you need to pick someone to turn your back on, giving them free unexpected attacks.
>>
No. 910710 ID: c8a0f5

rolled 8, 4, 2, 9, 2, 1, 7, 4, 4, 9, 1, 5, 10, 3, 10, 9, 3, 2, 6, 7, 5, 6, 7, 3, 2, 6, 8, 9, 3, 4 = 159

The fact that her target had armor around their neck, and she hadn't trained her jaw muscles to be able to rip clean through plate armor while she was in her mundane form was annoying. So, she did what was most likely going to be one of her last transformations for the week as she turned into what was arguably one of her most terrifying forms. A fully grown, 1500 pound bull moose, half of that weight being on the black rider. More as she consciously tried to put as much weight on the rider's head to crush it like an overripe watermelon.

As soon as she was confident enough, or they were starting to get a bit uncomfortably close, she would use the fact that she was a fair deal larger than a horse to try and go after the mounts and rob most skilled looking rider of the two of their substantially diminished height advantage.
>>
No. 911338 ID: d9acdc

rolled 5, 7, 2, 4, 9, 5, 2, 2, 10, 1, 5, 2, 5, 6, 9, 3, 7, 8, 8, 8, 2, 6, 9, 3, 10, 9, 1, 8, 5, 1 = 162

>>910707
Bridget attempts to comfort the young as best she can given her appearance. Instinct tells her to embrace them, groom them, and reassure them that they can overcome such hardship. Experience of course informs her actions more appropriately- rarely do others find reassurance in the presence of a wyld-tainted. Gingerly she folds their sleeping furs and clasps them shut, chagrin rising somewhat as she notes the Guild symbols engraved in the metalwork. Returning them she prompts action somewhat gruffly, using her full golden stature to command authority when fear prevents trust:

"We return to the village, if you wish. Anything of import should be gathered promptly. Inform me of relevant details so we might make the best of things. And know that should life here prove too difficult, the Unconquered Sun will provide for you, through me."

With that, Bridget turns to the captors.
"Let us leave in peace and bother the innocent no more. Those who repent may find new life as my wards. Repeated offences are intolerable."

Her last brief message should be clear enough as a threat to those who would move against her designs.

Assuming she doesn't gauge them to be an immediate threat outside the firewall, she will examine the device projecting it. Surly they have some remote means of activating and de-activating, or are immune to it's effects somehow. Otherwise, this is their destination, or they have time to waste or one of these downtrodden captives is actually one of the captors? Perplexing.
>>
No. 911356 ID: 0640da

rolled 4, 3, 10, 4, 7, 4, 9, 2, 6, 6, 1, 7, 4, 5, 1, 4, 3, 10, 1, 2, 4, 5, 2, 7, 3, 5, 1, 2, 4, 1 = 127

Morse itches. Her whole body feels wrecked by flecks of death, growing inside her and overtaking her previous form. She feels sick to the bottom of her stomach, too. Or is it that the bottom of her stomach is sick? How can something be sick if it is dead? The philosophical questions build and build, coming to a head as she continues to train her body. The transformation, the taint... it feels like torture to Morse. But there's a certain... bliss in that torture. Something that excites a part of her... eyes close, and she starts to relax a little more inside this nightmarish coffin.

"Come to think of it..." Morse mumbles to herself. "I haven't eaten in days." The statement she utters speaks to nobody in particular-- after being alone long enough, she'd taken to talking to herself. Sometimes, when she focused... when she paid attention, she could even hear a small voice speaking back. "I had a meal when I left the Noss Fens. A full meal... enough meat to fill my belly. Did I have a meal since then?"

Animals did not hold fear of her... she wished they would. "Staying close is the worst mistake an animal could make..." The rations she was given were salted, jerked meat. It was gone within a week. It barely sated her need for flesh... nor did the crocodile corpse she peeled from the surface of the water, or the dead fish floating among the fetid swamp. Those meals gave her a stomachache-- not as powerful as the one she was experiencing now, but... the deadly bog water had seeped into their scales and bones. She had to sip from the waters around the Well of Udr to survive as she paddled her boat across the open bog... then, when she reached a tributary leading to the river, there was the rabbit.

The bunny stared at her, as soon as she arrived... and she stared back. No movements were made as she reached for the animal-- tried to touch its silky fur, to remind her of something warm again, after weeks of suffering in the cold, nasty swamp. But a voice resounded in her head... 'NO', it said. The land around her blackened, and the rabbit squealed-- and then, fell over. Dead. Morse trembled and held the rabbit in her hands, setting off again in the boat she took for the journey. The rabbit's dead eyes stared back at her as she floated forward, pushing with a paddle. She had no expression as she stared back at the rabbit, but she felt a tinge of remorse. It died because of her. She knew it was in a better place, but... something felt wrong about it. Like it was calm. Like it knew what was coming from here on... and it had accepted it.

Her need for flesh sated, she would sail for weeks. Her ship wobbled at times, threatening to capsize in the river. She would drink from the water, but more often than not she would float, entrusting her passage to the Neverborn. She knew they would never let her down... they had never let her down before. But her arrival on the shores closest to her target were nothing short of a miracle.

"I could have eaten fish, along the way. I could have had my fill. I didn't need to ration the rabbit... I could have eaten. Eaten every day. Maybe I wouldn't be hungry now. Maybe I wouldn't be thirsty... urgh..."

There was the body she picked up from that village... mangled as it was by bandits. "But it was burnt and dead. Not fresh." When she asked the bandits for meal, they stalled-- and when help arrived, there was not a meal to be found. Those bandits truly took more than she gave to them... but revenge will be filled in kind. As she starved literally, they too would starve spiritually... never able to reach the level of self-actualization she would have given them, had they been loyal-- had they stayed.

"Fresh, meat..." She'd wanted it for a long while now. When was the last time Morse had... truly fresh meat? Not something roasted, not an animal, but something really... rare. Bloody. Morse smacked her lips. "I can almost taste it... fresh human. That's strange. I don't remember how long it's been. Was it... mm. Was there anything fresh since I reached the Tabernacle?"

Morse thought back to the Tabernacle. The desire to bite down into the nape of another acolyte passed through her mind more than once. More than twice. Nearly every day, she'd resist the urge to sink her teeth into their flesh... more than a few times, she lost herself and ate outside of the feeding times. But they didn't mistreat her. Every week, just for her, a pound of flesh at her doorstep-- not always recognizable. Sometimes, even human. Importantly, it was rare... bloody. Delicious. Yes... they knew her tastes. They cared for her, there.

...out here, nobody cared. Nobody valued food. Nobody understood her needs. Even when she requested it, they would stall for time... "...I should have eaten a few of those bandits. I didn't push them hard enough to listen to me... and now I suffer for my kindness. Truly a lesson from the Deathlords to this unfilial servant." The abyssal drools, wondering about their taste... and it would only be a wonder, for they were long gone by now. And yet, here she was... inside this box. Hungry, and alone. "A message taught in parable, as I would teach, would be preferable to experience... but perhaps this is the growth you desire for this one, my lords."

Morse sighed. This box was so very, very lonely... really, at this point, she just wanted someone to talk to. Anybody would do... truly. Even voices in her head would be preferable to this dull, dull silence...
>>
No. 911460 ID: 2007b6

rolled 10, 1, 5, 4, 5 = 25

>>910710
Light of the Moose parries a sword-strike with her antlers and headbutts the assailant. In the wake of that crushing blow, his horse is down with a broken leg, rider pinned underneath.

The black knight's fighting chain is still wrapped around Light's foreleg. He whips the other end around so it catches on the barbs of her collar, uses leverage from her own movement to pull himself up off the ground and onto her back. In mechanical terms, a two-action flurry of rising from prone and an attack to grapple. He seems to be better at that sort of stunt than you'd expect from even an elite mortal soldier, but didn't use any obviously supernatural power. Could be a god-blood with a relevant Excellency, or a student of some supernatural martial art... or any number of types of actual gods, demons, exalts, anathema, etc., in disguise and trying to keep a low profile.

The only kidnapper still on horseback seizes on that momentary distraction to land a slash at Light's flank: seven dice of raw damage, reduced by her natural lethal soak of two. Rolling for that.

All this has happened in the first few seconds. Some of the daughters and shamblers have broken cover and are charging in to assist, others haven't quite mentally switched gears away from the 'ambush' plan yet.

>>911338
All four of the folks inside the dome nod their assent; they're entirely willing to be taken back to the town where they were yesterday, and prefer not to be separated from each other.
>examine the device
It's a fist-sized translucent crystal statuette of a smiling tyrant lizard, with some artistic liberties to fit it into a compact shape. No moving parts, no response to gestures or speech. Seems to be fully self-contained, no sign of a remote control dongle. There's an essence-conductive spot on the nose, where a fingertip could be placed to charge it, but cautious pokes with your anima suggest it's already been fully charged and will simply continue to "wind down" like ephemeral clockwork without further input.
>>
No. 911461 ID: 2007b6

>>911460
>rolled 10, 1, 5, 4, 5
Light of the Moon Cleansing the World has taken a single level of lethal damage, filling her -0 health box. Six hours of rest or twelve of moderate activity will allow it to heal. Normal people would need to worry about bleeding and infection, but the Second Stamina Excellency (along with a solid mundane Stamina + Resistance pool, and standard exalt resilience) means she can essentially ignore such risks under normal circumstances, and has little cause to fear them even if somehow supernaturally intensified.
>>
No. 911468 ID: bb5006

rolled 2, 3, 8, 6, 5, 7, 6, 4, 5, 8, 8, 1, 3, 3, 7, 5, 8, 6, 10, 5 = 110

>>911460

Light was more shocked by the Black Rider's continued survival after having his head stepped on by a Moose more than she was by them being surprisingly adept at mounting a rampaging animal in record time, though those did form a clearer picture of exactly what she was dealing with. Of course, she had an idea for how to respond to the more annoying than expected soldier. Using her essence fueled muscles that were bigger than this puny person, Light flings the rider off right into the body of the other rider and his horse.

While she wasn't directly in control of them, she did do her best to communicate a desire to capture the rider alive for 'information gathering' but at this point she was pretty sure she would just leave his corpse near the edge of town to freak some people out, or maybe keeping him mostly dead as a weird traveling companion or something. It looked like this whole thing was going to be a miserable failure on every level but at least she didn't invest all that time and energy into trying to set up an ambush since if she had, the other Anathema would still have come by and would have ruined her work anyway.
>>
No. 911486 ID: 23b7bd

rolled 3, 2, 7, 1, 5, 4, 9, 3, 6, 6, 2, 7, 3, 1, 9, 2, 3, 2, 9, 8, 5, 2, 4, 6, 8, 3, 9, 5, 1, 10 = 145

>>911460
Bridget addresses the captives “If there is nothing to keep us here, then we leave. Stay together for the duration.”

Bridget then fashions the furs into a makeshift bindle tied across her chest, the young ones safely nestled within like babes swaddled for a long journey. The leftover clasps are easily reformed with a swift breath of air and a firm grip to help keep everything in place. After everyone is secured it’s a trivial matter to return- just two long steps in the right direction.

Oh right, mustn’t forget to bring the sunshield, don’t want the passengers DOA.

Mechanically, that’s Craftsman needs no tools to supplement her fashioning an assistive device to secure and ease the task of carrying everyone, followed by two uses of Mountain Crossing Leap, for a total of 27m and 3WP.

I think I’ve made 3 posts since my last count, so if we assume 2 dice stunts, then I’ll choose to recover 8m and 1WP. I spent one WP inbetween counts to negate fatigue earlier, so that evens out. I’ll spend 7 then from my peripheral on CMNNT, and 20 from my personal on the two MCL, then restore 8 to my personal leaving me at 1/9/5 for peripheral, personal, and temporary willpower reserves.

Bridget will probably need to sleep soon.
>>
No. 911531 ID: bb5006

I am bored, so I am going to write a thing.

Light… To say she woke up would be doing a disservice to the state she had been in. Came to would perhaps be a better word for it, or freed from her mind. She was on her hands and knees completely naked in a brackish swamp trying to evacuate the foul liquid from her lungs so she could breath. As soon as her life wasn’t in any kind of immediate seeming danger, she started to notice things, first and most deafening was the fact that she was starving. Not for food, but for something else that she could feel beating in the back of her head like the marching drums that played behind the Legion when they marched. The next thing that she noticed was that there was a strange power in the air, water, and life all around her that she didn’t really understand, but she was a tiny part of this power, and it felt like a voice in the back of her head, compelling her not so subtly to go after a certain person who’s face she could see. As soon as she tried to think back to how she got here, she was met with a wave of intense physical pain as she remembered her bones glowing through her skin and melting through her body in places, which explained her lack of clothes at the moment save a single choker, an issue she would need to remedy as soon as she got to town.

Then, she noticed that she had a new set of ears and a tail that she didn’t remember getting, and at the very least the ‘how she isn’t a melted corpse’ part of the equation came clicking together in her head. “I’m an Anathema.” She wasn’t talking to anyone, there not exactly being anyone around that she could sense, but something like that wasn’t just something someone thought to themselves. She didn’t even really know how this could have happened, after all, Anathema were supposed to be demons that possessed those that turned their backs on the Immaculate Philosophy, and while she was always a bit looser with who she shared her bed with than the priests particularly liked, she couldn’t really think of any decisive moment where she betrayed the faith. Maybe murdering that Dynast, but she could hardly be blamed for that, he was being a monster and terrorizing everyone she cared about. Regardless, heading directly into town seemed like a dumb idea with that bit of knowledge. So, rather than doing that, she fought the orders in the back of her mind, and went about slaking this thirst for a particular doe that appeared in her mind’s eye as a laser focus.
>>
No. 911539 ID: bb5006

After having slaked her thirst for Heartblood for the first time, Light found it to be one of the best feelings that she’d ever personally experienced, and she spent the better part of the next week locked in an almost perpetual cycle of hunting some new animal she wandered across and roaming through the woods in stolen skins, and for the most part, it helped. With time, the raw shock of becoming aware as a foul demon inhabiting the once ruined body of a (moderately) righteous woman and making it whole again faded over time as she explored her new strengths and skills like a child playing with their new toys during Calibration to help keep the spirits at bay. Either fortunately or unfortunately depending on who’s point of view you want to take, she was so caught up in experiencing all of everything she could with this new found keen senses and perspective, that she missed the subtle voice of her ‘owner’ in her subconscious playing as just another piece of her instincts slowly herding her towards a village to slaughter them wholesale. The bog needed a fair force for some unknown gambit or plan that she was keeping deliberately hidden, and Light had no particular interest in. However, the ploy was foiled by Light first coming across a woodsman’s house in the form of a squirrel before she came to the village, and they caught her attention far more than slaughter.

For a time, she lived in their roof as a squirrel, watching from afar as she watched them, almost fascinated by the mundanity of these people’s lives. She watched their drama unfold as the Woodsman’s wife, Fire Blossom of the White Orchids, suspected her husband, Might of the 1000 Year Oak, of sleeping around in the nearby town with tavern wenches. She suspected she should just leave it alone and maybe find a Tavern Wench considering she had spent the better part of her adult life doing such and she would be down to sleep with someone like herself if she came in, but then it hit her. That was how a normal person was supposed to think, and she’s not a normal person anymore, she’s a demon that’s supposed to ruin the lives of those of impure faith. So, she plotted and thought over the plot of as many plays as she could remember watching ever since her host was a child.

Then, in a moment of clarity, she remembered the tale of “Spilt Tears of Blood and the Cursed Lover” where a woman was in a similar predicament that the woodsman was in where she was cheating on her wife, and then she was courted by an Anathema, and her heart was consumed as the Anathema stole her form and seduced the faithful wife and served as a festering blight in the community until the children of the dragon came and purged them for their corruption, and saved the faithful who fought against the rot in their midst. Clearly, she had something to work off.

Starting the next day, as soon as the Woodsman headed deeper into the woods, she followed him, and a fair enough distance from his house, she shifted back into her true form and seduced the woodsman, the fact that his love wasn’t enough to rebuke her advances was proof enough of his impure faith so far as she was concerned, and moments before he could finish, she ripped open his rib cage, staring him dead in his pain wracked eyes as she bit down on his heart to drink as much blood as she could like the story said before eating his heart. This was where she ran into the first complication in her plan, unlike animals, she had no idea how to acquire the skin of a human. Not exactly one to give up at the first sign of impossibility, Light took the knife that the man had on him, and skinned him as best she could, and draped his skin over her and she prayed, almost to the dragons before she realized how unbelievably stupid praying to the thing she was supposed to be opposed to was, that it would be enough.

Predictably, it wasn’t, so as soon as she went to enact phase 2 of her brilliant plan, the wife ran off into town alerting them to the presence of a monster in the woods that killed her husband, and the whole town went on guard while Light congratulated herself on a mission success, since she played the part of the Anathema as well as she could, and while it didn’t follow the original story, she got the entire town on guard against corruption and stuff that left them open to Anathema, and that was part of what she guessed she was supposed to be doing as she headed moose northward
>>
No. 911540 ID: 2007b6

>>911486
>rolled 3, 2, 7, 1, 5, 4
Wits + Survival roll for navigating back to the town is unsuccessful. You've discovered a key disadvantage of running around in seven-league boots: when the terrain is hilly or forested (and this area is a little of both), one or two steps off the path can land you beyond the horizon. Enough stars are visible that Bridget can easily orient herself relative to the poles, but it's nighttime, and even if local landmarks were visible they wouldn't be all that useful because she's so new to the area.

More specifically, Bridget has landed in a murky chest-deep pond. One shore is a sheer cliff with a lot of crumbly-looking sandstone, probably not safe to climb. The other side is a smooth slope, reeds growing from a type of clay that'd be very useful for certain kinds of pottery - and a momma ox-dragon, aiming her horns at the shiny unexpected arrival and making startled "gronk" noises, while two calves huddle behind her.

Ox-dragons are comparable in size to yeddim (taller at the shoulder than Bridget herself, and over twenty feet from nose to tail), but much less frequently domesticated. There's a number of reasons for that: their diet leans more toward grass, roots, and tubers, rather than avocados and other fruit, and they're less drought-tolerant, so it's harder to bring enough fodder and water for them on long trips through unfavorable terrain. By temperament, metabolism, and leg geometry, they're more suited to short sprints rather than all-day plodding along. Most of all, they're irrepressibly aggressive in defense of their young, so attempts at selective breeding tend to end in trampling or impalement.

>>911468
You manage to throw off the guy in plate armor, knocking the remaining rider off his horse in the process. He keeps a hand on that chain, which is still tangled with your collar, and manages to inflict another level of bashing damage by nearly strangling you.

Two unattended horses continue toward the treeline at a walking pace, and are very surprised when the vine-limbs of ambushing shamblers manage to lift them all the way off the ground.

Five of Mother Bog's Daughters in full battle fury, and the remainder of the shamblers, pile on to the dismounted bandits, quickly disarming and restraining them. Looks like you won.

With The Spider's Trap Door, you could cover your tracks and make it seem like the three who rode out just completely disappeared, or ask them questions (you can't speak Rivertongue all that well as a moose, but Mother Bog and her children always understand what you mean, so a Daughter could serve as an interpreter), or do any manner violence upon them, as you prefer.
>>
No. 911541 ID: bb5006

rolled 8, 3, 1, 5, 3, 6, 3, 9, 10, 6, 2, 9, 10, 9, 1, 8, 8, 9, 9, 7 = 126

>>911540
Appearing to have won in an almost surprise even to herself, Light transforms back to her more talkative form as the last transformation she'll likely need for a good number of days and finally uses the sensation of limbs once again to unhook that stupid chain from her collar as she hid the tracks to prevent anyone from interrupting her THIS time.

"Alright, I'm not sure how much it particularly matters at this point since it looks like the hostages have left the compound, BUT since I marched out here for half a day to try and reenact an Immaculate Morality Play and a certain someone got in the way-" She emphasized the last part to Mother Bog, even though she was still going to follow through on what she had originally planned and just give her most of the soldiers that she got, even if she was mad it would be poor form to not do that, "I'm kind of curious as to the why go out of your way to kidnap a few shrine maidens for the Realm? Also, anyone that tries to give me any lip for breaking the script or tries to claim innocence in any of this is dying." She gestures for the creatures to constrict a bit harder for good measure to show that she wasn't bluffing.
>>
No. 911559 ID: bb5006

It was hard to know what was going on in Light’s mind when she came across the second village after she set the first village on high alarm for ‘something’ out in the woods, a result she still considered a success, but she couldn’t exactly stay around there since she was terrible at lying. But with the second village, she took a subtler approach and snuck into the town in the dead of night to steal some bland clothes that didn’t stick out, and she decided she’d try to reclaim her old life. After all, she had a life before she had become an Anathema, and while it wasn’t Lookshy, a nice quite village tucked in the middle of nowhere, it wasn’t particularly hard for a beautiful woman to get a job serving patrons at a bar. And indeed, it wasn’t, she just walked on in, and charmed the whole bar like it was nothing, and got to work a few minutes later. But, there was one tiny issue with this whole thing.

Everything about it felt hollow and wrong to her.

Starting from minute one her clothes felt less like a fun expression throughout the day, and more like an itchy and confining prison. The job that she had slowed pace from fast paced and difficult to keep up with at times had become something she could almost do in her sleep, and the things the people talked about just felt so hollow now, but on some level, she knew that she was the only thing that had changed.

But, she had time now, so she downed another mug of ale, and for the first time that she could ever really imagine, she tried to empathize with the other Anathema. How many of them were like she was now, alone in a crowd of people with the only instructions being their own guts and the stories that they had heard about themselves. She had been planning on continuing her train of thought when she realized she was starting to gather a crowd when she realized she had just downed her 10th drink in half an hour and she wasn’t even failing to pretend to be drunk. Not wanting to particularly be bothered by the group of impressed onlookers, she slipped out the front door, and like a shadow she was gone. It didn’t take long before she got to the edge of town before she realized she had a few choices she could make. Either she could stay here and practically torture herself by embracing the mundanity of her old life against her screaming instincts or embrace the isolation from people. The thought had barely formed in her head before she found herself tearing her clothes from her body and stashing the remains near enough to the town that someone would probably find them. She had only borrowed them for about 6 hours though, so she wasn’t super worried.

But after that, she was faced with a more philosophical question that she didn’t really think she was prepared to handle. Should she try and follow a more personal moral compass or try and stick to the narrative that she was a monster of uncountable proportions who should destroy that town she was just in by her very presence, and to be entirely honest she kind of didn’t want to do that. As she reached a nice place to sleep for the night, she started to really think about it, and she realized, the 7th legion, the Realm, probably these little towns all the way out here had some kind of protection against bandits and other more terrible things, but there always seemed to be more, and they were rarely enough to avoid tragedy as a whole. So, she thought about trying to start a crusade to clean up the bandits of the world, but then she realized that would be stupid. The 7th legion, for as much as they train, use the bandit attacks on the village to train and prepare for an active Realm invasion too, so it would be kind of dumb to get rid of all the threats. She could easily have come to some real decision, but until she came up with something better, she was going to play out the plays she’d seen for years and years and be a force of bloody reckoning against the people who were a serious threat that she came across, but she’d leave some disorganized force to be a nuisance for years to come if they couldn’t dig them from their ground.

As soon as she was about to go to sleep, content with the decision she had already made, she realized she had been at this conundrum for the larger part of the night, since it was less than an hour before sunrise. Not letting that particularly get to her, she went to sleep anyway.
>>
No. 911570 ID: 2007b6

>>911541
>for the Realm?
The black knight laughs. "Fuck the Realm! To hell with the usurper Empress and every last one of her decadent bastard spawn." He's got just a trace of a Marukani accent.

That guy he got slammed into seems to be wide-eyed and paralyzed with terror. The other one, who was pinned under the crippled horse, is clutching a charm made from brass and twisted hair and muttering a prayer, something about 'may her four-jointed fingers guide me.'
>>
No. 911577 ID: bb5006

"Oh, so you're more from Lookshy huh. I guess that's only a few hundred miles away, but I guess that means you aren't exactly a Wyld hunt and are closer to normal bandits, so I can play this out like a confrontation between bandits and an Anathema is supposed to play out."

As she talked, she walked over to the bandit who was muttering the prayer, and ripped his heart out through his throat before taking a bite out of it.

"Actually, you know, I'm from Lookshy, and you don't sound anything like a native. Plus, I don't think I remember anything about any four jointed fingers in any of the parables I was taught growing up. Also the boss guy in the camp was pretty obviously from the Realm. Are you sure that this is all normal banditry that just so happened to kill half a town in a day?"
>>
No. 911581 ID: 23b7bd

rolled 3, 6, 2, 2, 3, 3, 10, 7, 6, 1, 4, 7, 10, 1, 10, 4, 4, 4, 5, 3, 4, 7, 4, 9, 9, 2, 8, 3, 2, 3 = 146

>>911540
Ah, well, this is less than ideal. Bridget is unsure if this creature will respect the natural order of things, but will find out soon enough she imagines. Slogging towards firmer ground, slowed but not halted by the deep mud, she puts her back to a large stone, forcing the creature to risk injuring itself if it chooses to charge. A hand extends, palm out, with her golden caste mark clearly shining through her third eye, a warning of what exactly stands before them.

Mechanically I’m trying to stop the creature from attacking to reduce risk of harm to Bridget’s current wards. Spending a mote to make anima flare to the 8 point level (also she has the permenant caste mark, so does that flow all the time?)
>>
No. 911600 ID: 2007b6

>>911577
>ripped his heart out through his throat
This has several anatomical implausibilities, but given that it's just a matter of killing an extra who's already been rendered helpless I'm inclined to allow it as the benefit of a 1-die stunt. If you want to get good information out of these guys, though, you'll need to roll something, probably involving Investigation.

Also, now that you've got his helmet off, the black knight turns out to have Appearance 3, so one of your derangements activates accordingly.
>>
No. 911619 ID: 3e9bb0

rolled 6, 5, 3, 2, 4, 10, 4, 6, 10, 3, 3, 2, 1, 7, 3, 2, 8, 2, 8, 2 = 91

Light finished eating The henchmen’s heart, and she started off looking to see if anyone would talk (wits+investigation, 4 dice, Sexond Wits Excellency 4 motes for 2 automatic successes)

If nobody answered the question well enough, she had a good idea, at the hand. “Now come on, we’re all in the wrong here. I mean, I’m a savage demon who’s supposed to kill indiscriminately and represent everything that the dragons represent, and you decided to kidnap people and from random chance I happened to think this way was more important than the corn that you guys stole. Plus, we both fucking hate the Realm, so we have at least that much in common.” Light’s still stained arm and face with the blood of their ally probably didn’t help the situation. (Charisma + Socialize, 6 dice)
>>
No. 911638 ID: afdebc

Lute Silhouette dreams.

Glassy cords innumerable wind around each other, twisting and turning and knotting- frozen in a complex pattern, hinting at some greater order or pattern, just out of reach. Stars flicker, not in the distant sky, but trapped within the threads themselves, as insects caught in amber. A design more complex than any constellation in creation's sky, the captive stars move and whirl and dance, riding their crystal rails. Not randomly, but with a clear (if inscrutable) purchase- meaning contained within motion.

The dreamer's presence stirs at the center of the web of crystal and light. Responding to her will, the stars shift in their latices, and new patterns image. Images, words, thoughts, sounds, smells- ideas and experiences reviewed and recorded and sorted- flow back and forth.

No real progress here, just a fluff piece trying to establish some more details on Lute's manse. Sort of an architectural scaling up of a fiber optic dream catcher. Archives + Sympathetic Dream Link + Gumela bound + thematic fun.
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No. 911705 ID: 2007b6

>>911581
Three successes, and no sudden or otherwise threatening movements, is enough to de-escalate the situation, at least for the moment. Those four people you just rescued from the figurative frying pan https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2011-07-22 are soaking wet and starting to shiver.

Given how much peripheral essence she's already been burning, Bridget's anima banner is going to take some time to cool down to the 8-mote level.

Permanent caste mark means you've got some cosmetic feature that's unmistakably associated with the anathema. When your anima isn't actually flaring, though, it could be passed off as an ominous birthmark or blasphemous tattoo rather than instant proof of supernatural power, and appropriate clothes, heavy makeup, or other mundane techniques might be able to conceal it.

>>911619
The "black knight," who's the same man that was ordering the watch schedules back at the camp in the ruined fort, explains that he looks a lot like a well-bred patrician of the Realm (apart from his large, flat nose) because his mother was a scion of House Cynis who visited Marukan on some diplomatic pretext in order to seduce their patron god, Hiparkes. She avoided scandal by summoning a demon courtesan and ordering it to perform blasphemous chicanery, transferring the resultant pregnancy to a mare for the last few months. He was raised by a blackmailer and a priest. If you're interested in joining up with the Cult of the Syrinx Prophet Executioner and helping them work toward the Realm's downfall, well, he's not exactly part of the inner circle himself, but he knows how to get in touch with them, and could arrange a meeting in exchange for sparing his miserable life. They'd surely be glad to accept aid from such a mighty Anathema.
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No. 911706 ID: bb5006

rolled 9, 1, 11, 19, 10, 1, 19, 14, 11, 1, 18, 13, 13, 11, 2, 19, 6, 15, 13, 1 = 207

"Neat, a cult. Well, I won't kill you, but..." She went ahead and started ripping the clothes off of the extras, and tied up the people, she knew that it wouldn't exactly hold anything much stronger than a child, but it should help with what she was hoping for.

"Well, walk with me," she obviously wasn't talking to the prisoners, but the Shablers and Daughters keeping them held in place, "since I've got some questions about this whole deal before I make any hasty decisions. First, you never REALLY explained what you were doing with the hostages you took out, and if you're trying to go against the Realm, why exactly are you attacking a random no-name town in the middle of nowhere? How many people are there, that sort of thing. Who knows, if you answer well enough, there might even be a bit of an extra reward, and I might even take off those ties."
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No. 911731 ID: a0618b

rolled 1, 6, 10, 6, 8, 6, 6, 10, 6, 9, 1, 2, 3, 10, 2, 3, 10, 5, 6, 8 = 118

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No. 911736 ID: 2007b6

>>911706
>what you were doing with the hostages
Bringing them to Bear Pond to be auctioned off as slaves. Pretty sure there's more to it than that, wheels within wheels, but the kid with the bells was the one in charge of that deeper plan.
> why exactly are you attacking a random no-name town in the middle of nowhere?
Cover for a recruitment drive. Distract and discredit some Immaculate missionaries. Possibly other plans. The Syrinx Prophet Executioner knows of many things yet to come, and uses that knowledge to orchestrate multilayered plots so subtle, none but the mad and the soulless will hear her storm approaching until it's too late.
>How many people are there,
He's got plenty of grandiose speculation, but you rolled enough successes to be pretty sure it's almost all bullshit. A cell-structured insurgency setup has successfully prevented these low-level agents you're interrogating from obtaining any useful information about their own organization's size or disposition, beyond direct points of contact and other need-to-know.
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No. 911737 ID: 2007b6

>>911706
>ripping the clothes off
>bindings
No need for that! They've got actual rope in the saddlebags, and even a set of adjustable shackles.
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No. 911746 ID: bb5006

Alright, so possibly the last post for some time, since this is a short time skip for Light setting a path for the next 5 days when she is training a new charm, and how she intends to act for that time unless something stops her.

But with the new found and somewhat bogus information, she was 80% sure she had to kill this cult, and there were two directions she could have gone in. Towards Bear Pond, or along the path the Corn was being stolen.

Since only one of those was entirely confirmed to have something to do with the cult, she decided to start the slow march back into town, which would take 50 miles by foot while the Shamblers and Co. carry the tied up with actual bonds (and still stripped naked) prisoners of war, and it would have been about 4 days if she were handling it normally, but she wasn't going to handle this normally. She wanted to make an advance, so she was going to recreate some of the more brutal training conditions she had to go through for her mandatory military training like any citizen of Lookshy, but since she wasn't actually training the prisoners, she was going easy on them.

She was pushing through 10 hours of marching at whatever tempo that the shamblers could keep up without dropping the prisoners, but the standard military tempo is ~3.5 miles an hour for prolonged marches like this. While the prisoners were allowed to rest, she spent 8 hours of combat training with a daughter and asking Mother Bog for assistance in learning how to manipulate her own essence to try and practice infusing her limbs with her essence for a more decidedly lethal attack that armor wouldn't stop, 5 hours sleeping, and the other 1 hour hunting for food and water to keep everyone from suffering while she was doing this.

When they would have arrived at town on the 4th hour of marching on the second day, they stayed a few miles outside of its borders and rested up for the extra 6 hours.

On the third day, she threw a blanket of illusion over the group to keep them hidden from non-anathema eyes (and possibly Anathema, if they manage to have a Dodge MDV of less than 3 like most extras) and marched out through the town on the path that the Corn was taken down, avoiding the caravans running back if there were any still running at that point, and stopping to rest near the waypoint as Light assumed it was a bandit hole up, and wanted to surveil it for a time, so they set up camp with a shambler who wasn't holding one of the prisoners (they had grappled a horse that had either been left behind or eaten)to come and get her if anyone entered or left so they could get the drop on the messenger.

If nobody came, she would finish her training before she went on in to search under the cover of Spider's Trap Door to try and slaughter the bandits to a man, not that she'd know there weren't any bandits there.

With help from Mother Bog and the Daughters, that should count as a trainer, even if Mother Bog doesn't know the specific charm, she knows about essence, and she is fighting clawed opponents like she wants to emulate, so with the mentorship, that should be 5 days of training for Claws of the Silver Moon or 10 if that's decided that it doesn't count (Strength 3, Essence 2, not a favored attribute) and 12 exp. Because it is incidental time, she increases her survival from 3-4 (5 exp) and from 4-5 (7 exp)for a total of 24 exp spent.
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No. 911879 ID: 2d86b4

Waking up from a dream was always something that Arberus hated. The dream world was perfect for him, free of restrictions and judgements. Waking up and realizing who he was was always the worst part of the day.

He wasn’t stuck in any normal dream. Past the nightmares and mad thoughts that consumed his dreams Arberus slowly managed to drag himself back to the waking world, his mind still foggy and dazed. Green light flowed around him like cracks in an egg and urgent need to get out struck him.

Reaching out Arberus gripped the newly formed cracks of the Chrysalis Grotesque. With a wet pop he emerged, his former cocoon oozing a foul clear liquid. Gasping and sputtering on the ground he had no time to collect himself before the remnants of the Chrysalis Grotesque shattered, releasing a blinding green light and choking cloud of fine emerald-colored dust.

Mere moments passed before the dust and liquid surged forth to coat Arberus’ body in its entirety, carrying with it large chunks of his former resting place. Too tired and still stuck in a half-dream fog Arberus could do nothing but writhe on the ground as whatever was happening worked its way to completion.

Then, after a few minutes, the fog lifted. Pulling himself off the ground Arberus looked over his body and the results of whatever the hell that was. It was armor. He felt connected to it in a way that was hard to explain with words. More importantly, he somehow knew what it could do.

He knew what he could do.

And at that moment he smiled. He took a deep breath and let his new-found powers take him. He needed to kill someone. He wanted to kill someone. No anger, rage or fear but an Urge as deep and essential as breathing. It felt good. Certainty felt good.

‘So I guess I’ll just find someone. Maybe some temple nearby has… someone. I bet… I can make people watch and they won’t even care. How do I know that? How very odd.”

With that thought Arberus activates Innocent Petal Assumption for three motes. On response to his anima banner flaring.

‘That’s a thing that happens. I’ll have to keep it in mind. I wonder how long it will last for…”

When his flaring banner finally fades Arberus makes his way to the nearest temple, figuring that there would be a worthwhile snack there. He trusts his Innocent Petal Assumption to protect him on his way there. He’s playing it by ear at the moment.
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No. 911917 ID: bb5006

>I’m sorry if this isn’t particularly long, but I need some time to practice writing about an entirely alien perspective I hadn't really gotten the number of before

Conscious life. The concept seems so married to the idea of humans in this day and age, where mankind has become so overgrown and the dominant force in its ecosystem, that so many forget that mankind was not the first, and it is doubtful that they will be the last, even if you don’t include such forces of the infinite expanse of the Wyld or the endless legion of demons in Malfeas or the Celestial Incarnae who will presumably survive any test of time or trials. However, even the first creatures to be aware of their own drawing of breath and give name to themselves to worship the Primordials were like infants compared to what had existed since at least as recently as the Primordials rending creation from the Wyld and has witnessed almost all of the history that has been long since forgotten.

However, the acquisition of this life system’s new most powerful champion is the focus of this entry. It started, some few months ago as a number of the Dragon Blooded marched around the perimeter of her murky body and began preparing for something, she kept an eye on them the same as any swamp would given the circumstances, and by nightfall she learned what it was they were there for as she felt, for the first time since the Tribe cut off all contact with her centuries ago, the essence of a Celestial Exalt. She watched as the men rained devastation on the body of what she already decided was to be her newest ‘child’, amazed that they hadn’t died as they were left entombed right alongside a cache of some other valuable treasures she had collected over the eons.

And from there, the bog dragged the tomb into a deep part of her body where she had the majority of her bodies waiting to be reborn as her children, and rather turned it into a rocky womb where the vines and roots of the swamp broke through to repair the child’s broken body while the music of a forgotten time filled the waters, both comforting and ensnaring the human soul until slowly and inevitably it was worked into the system of Mother Bogs incomprehensible body, doomed to return to her murky depths on death rather than seeking out Lethe or the Abyss, and before the child was ready to emerge as a new servant, an emerald was placed against her, and any memories she had of her time being nursed back to health were stolen.

It gave the child a brief direction, aware that this one was more willful than her siblings, so the bog didn’t interject as she felt the new child fail at her first orders, only to succeed at collecting a decent number of bodies for siblings from a nearby bandit encampment. It continued like this, until it decided to stop giving overt missions unless there was something that it needed, death and sacrifices flowed from where this child tread, all that needed to be done for sure was to keep a number of shamblers behind to retrieve the bodies. She had offered to allow them the use of a few of the trinkets it had around its body, but she had refused at the time in favor of taking a more naturalistic approach.
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No. 912012 ID: 2d86b4

Here's my character sheet.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1muwZ_UcbVbCvRfyO4EgNJ8tNkpSCSp7MyTiEIXMHlyY/edit?usp=sharing

References Sheet:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17IR1GVwCmT3yze1xQe9yaZZmSz5xy2Ulka9BzvackYQ/edit?usp=sharing

Should be pretty decent.
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No. 912035 ID: 2007b6

>>911746
>She was pushing through 10 hours of marching at whatever tempo that the shamblers could keep up without dropping the prisoners, but the standard military tempo is ~3.5 miles an hour for prolonged marches like this.
You've got five human prisoners, and seven intact horses. One of the Daughters is interrogating the horses separately; they seem to know some things their riders didn't. Sundown of the first day after leaving the fort, a glorious azure chariot comes careening down out of the sky. From the rapidly dissolving wreckage tumble three barrels and the charioteer, who resembles a crude imitation of a human toddler sculpted out of mostly twigs, mushrooms, tar, and a chihuahua skull.

First barrel, the heaviest and noisiest, contains axes, various other hand tools that might plausibly serve as weapons, and cast-iron cookwear, all of good solid construction originally but ill-maintained and encrusted with dirt, along with... leather goods? That bundle may have originally included waterskins and/or backpacks, but all of it long since decayed to the point of being structurally unsound, and the whole mess smells absolutely terrible.

Second barrel contains a tightly packed bundle of thin yet sturdy white cloth, red cords anchoring it to complex feathersteel struts, which unfolds into a large tent and associated camp furniture (similar to the stuff in the background here: https://mangabat.com/chapter-serie/1088887170/chap_63.2 ) The whole set is eleven thousand years old. It was originally commissioned by Ahlat during his departure from the North, offered by him as a celebratory gift to Oa-Tē (inventor of the Ghost-Eating Technique) one year and nine days after that charm's first successful use against the White Ram, enchanted to be self-repairing during The War, eventually left in a museum in Meru as a historical curiosity, lost when the Mask broke, presumably spent the Shogunate in some private collection. Bagrash Köl lived in it for the decade before he had an empire; after the Eye of Autocthon turned against him, the bundle ended up as flotsam on the White Sea, in a barrel the same size but much fancier, which was plucked out of the River of Tears in a fisherman's net, joined a scavenger lord's caravan on the way to Nexus, and was intercepted by brigands. Then, while the brigands were fleeing a losing battle with the Seventh Legion, Mother Bog ate them and took their worldly goods for her own. Humans need things like map tables and tents to shelter sprouting battle-thoughts, yes? Mother bog has seen or heard of many, many battles over the eons, and whichever side had at least one of the same sort of being as Light Of The Moon Cleansing The World - apparently they're called "anathema" these days - in a tall enough plan-growing tent, would pretty much always win.

Third barrel has wheels of wax-coated hard cheese at both ends. Between is a jumble of trail-ration-grade bread, random assorted fruits and vegetables (damaged in the crash but otherwise fresh), loose raw cotton fiber (seeds and all, meant as padding or tinder), and a dozen very fancy boots with earthenware jars of salt tucked inside. Eleven of the jars are intact, one shattered. With salt to preserve the remaining horseflesh, plus bread, cheese, and greens for the Haltan expatriates (they'd rather starve than take a single bite of any of the available meat, and one actually vomited when he saw Light wolfing some of it down during the initial butchery, but for whatever reason all four of them eagerly regard carrots and other root vegetables almost like some rare, exotic delicacy) you won't need to slow down to forage for at least a week or two. The horses can probably survive at least that long just by grazing, so long as they don't need to run or carry any significant weight.

Those fancy boots, Mother Bog took from Seventh Legion patrol chasing the same brigands who brought her the tent. Once attuned, they'll let you and five Daughters, or four and the black knight (but not the Haltans, they lack control of essence) march ten mph, a hundred miles a day, as easy as breathing. Self-adjusting, incredibly comfortable, but wholly unsuitable for a shambler's tireless tree-trunk legs, and somewhat too large for a creeper. Speaking of which, the new arrival knows two other spells besides Conjuring the Azure Chariot: Sorcerer's Irresistible Puppetry which (once you scrounge up some minimal ritual supplies, mostly incense and paper) can be used to permanently secure the 'loyalty' of almost anyone you can 'persuade' to hold still for an hour, and Unstoppable Fountain of the Depths which can be used for demolition, fire suppression, short-term area denial (a line about twenty yards long for ten minutes, plus subsequent flooding), or simply as a source of clean water.
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No. 912044 ID: bb5006

rolled 8, 5, 4, 5, 7, 4, 8, 1, 9, 8, 6, 6, 8, 2, 7, 1, 6, 5, 6, 5, 5, 6, 10, 7, 4, 10, 1, 8, 5, 7 = 174

The first thing that Light felt, as she saw the chariot was hope that this wasn't one containing a more direct mission, since she already had found one for herself, and she hardly needed another one to distract her. Following the immediate sigh of relief when it was supplies for the less hardy in her train and a chance to live it up pretending to be human in a more personally friendly way, she went over the contents.

The first thing that really caught her eye was the cooking pots, she'd need to clean them up a bit, but otherwise, this was remarkably similar to what she had been using in Lookshy, followed by the boots, which she had never gotten to wear, but they unmistakably reminded her of home. The last things she noticed were the weapons, since she guessed that a creeper would be able to use those in a fight, but she was only able to use specialty weapons following the Tent, which she couldn't even begin to guess the historical context of, but was an extremely nice tent nonetheless, triply so for someone who tends to sleep naked in trees and abandoned animal warrens.

Regardless, the first thing she did after putting on the boots for that nice comforting feeling of home, she asked first how much weight that the Chariot could carry, when that didn't matter since there were 17 people not including the Haltans here and that it could only hold 4, she had to ask the Shamblers how fast they could keep up carrying the humans, or how fast they could keep up if 1 of the daughters and enough of them to escort the minor haltans back to mother bog on foot while the rest helped carry the cargo.
>>

rolled 7, 5, 3, 10, 8, 5, 8, 6, 8, 1, 2, 1, 8, 4, 6, 1, 10, 3, 5, 2 = 103

All right, a new day in the nameless village. The traitor daystar is shining, and Lute Silhouette has things to do.

She's got two days before her ride leaves (unless she finds a reason to part ways and interrupt her voyage and training in sail).

For local concerns, does the situation with Edgar and the surgeon require further attention to ensure they live up to their potential? Does Lute's attempt to seed a cult for the Sandpoint Devil seem to be working, or does it require further reinforcement?

If she's looking into whatever happened here, a good lead seems like going to question that death knight Bridges the Sun and Moon entombed while she remains helpless. What are my options for traveling out there? Walking seems like it might be tight on the departure deadline, and along hike wthou dots in survival may be a bad idea. I'm not sure if the chancel can be used to shorten the distance meaningfully, and Bridget isn't back to play mountain leaping ferry (and her presence at an interrogation might complicate matters besides).

Rolling for information gathering and such, so probably investigation, possibly supplemented by EST as needed (conservatively, not willing to blow my whole personal pool playing 20 questions right now).
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No. 912123 ID: 9646f1

rolled 7, 6, 1, 8, 7, 5, 10, 1, 4, 7, 8, 4, 10, 1, 6, 1, 7, 6, 1, 3, 10, 9, 8, 9, 2, 6, 8, 7, 2, 8 = 172

>>911705
Lost in the swamp. Mortals are wet, which isn't good for them usually. Dangerous fauna and swamp ground mean there's no safe place to stop here, but if they stay cold and wet they risk hypothermia, maybe disease. Increased elevation should help with navigation, might be enough of an edge to get them back to the village in one leap or, failing that, somewhere safer to stay the night.

"Apologies for your discomfort" Bridget states to her wards, "My error has misplaced us. If any are skilled navigators, speak now. Regardless, I search for safety. Please remain in your sling for now."

By the time her speech is finished, Bridget has reached the top of this "outcropping", which turns out to be little more than a stray boulder, seemingly at least somewhat for this inconvient wet divit. Firm enough at least to gain purchase and look above the trees.

Mechanically, activating Monkey Leap (the scene long one) for 4 motes, Bridget crests the treetops and tries to get her bearings to find the village or somewhere less soggy and dangerous to make camp.
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No. 912170 ID: 0640da

rolled 6, 9, 8, 4, 5, 5, 8, 6, 6, 7, 2, 8, 4, 10, 10, 4, 8, 5, 6, 4, 5, 4, 4, 8, 3, 10, 9, 6, 7, 8 = 189

The silence was starting to get to Morse. No, well, it had gotten to her-- past tense. She could swear that she was hearing voices again... whispers in a low tone. They sounded familiar-- was someone out there, coming for her? A ghost of the Princess, or perhaps a gullible mortal child?

"Hello?" The abyssal called out, and the whispers became altogether silent. Her brows furrowed, and her lips sealed shut again. Nobody was out there-- and if they were, they weren't talking to her. She remained wrapped in her prison of iron, before the subtle whispers of a faraway place made hushed sounds once again...

"Hello?" The abyssal called out again, half-wondering if she was going mad-- and the whispers became silent once more. "I can hear you, you know..." Morse whimpers softly. There's a long pause. "Are you just going to watch? I want out..."

There's something of a groan in the next whisper. She heard that for sure. "Hello? Anybody? Respond to me, please! I just want to hear a voice... any voice!" This box was stuffy. It felt like it was closing in on her, like she was suffocating. "Please! Talk to me!"

And with that yell, Morse's voice quiets down, and her body becomes less stiff... she feels comfortable now, a rare thing to experience when you are in the most confining cage you have been in for your entire life. She feels relaxed and at ease... because this time, when she asks for someone to talk to... something talks back.

((I'd like to purchase a point of Whispers (3XP?) and pray to the Neverborn for guidance to a location where they would most like Morse to be right now. Not a full 'break open this cage', but Morse wants someone to talk to. I say we give it to her. The roll should cover the relevant prayer... and I'll channel Conviction, if possible. Morse wants to reinforce her beliefs subconsciously.))
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No. 912233 ID: 2d86b4

Leaving his house Arberus was stunned by what he saw around him. The hell happened here? This wasn't his doing, he was rather sure of that. The idea was upsetting, like showing up to a game after everyone was finished playing.

On the other hand, this might be salvageable. Although his neighbors might be dead (Who cares? He's seen people die a thousand times in his dreams. He'll see thousands more die. Maybe. Thinking about it too much ruins the fun.)

'No, no, nooo. I don't know what happened here but I am not taking the blame for this. I wanted, for... ugh!'

Like breathing, like blinking, Arberus becomes the Scented Skinless Serpent. His withering skin and new bright colors didn't frighten him, but it did confuse him. 'I'm... not really sure what my limits are. How wonderful. And I'm glowing. I could read a book any time I want. How amazing. Now, what was I doing?'

Arberus makes his way around time, ignoring most people or giving them a quick wave as he tries to find someone who might be worth fighting. A monk, or a spirit of some kind. He's lived here his whole life, he should recognize someone. Hopefully the glowing and alien-form will help attract the attention of a decent adversary.

He really, really, wanted to tackle someone.

(Spending another 10 motes and 1 wp for Scented Skinless Serpent Shintai. Glowing bright enough for people to read. Spent 13 wp total. If these posts count as +2 stunts then I've spent a total of 9.)
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No. 912461 ID: 2007b6

During the middle of the day, the sky turns black. Not clouds, nor an eclipse, just the sun deciding to shine everywhere else but here.

South of town, just beyond where the airships landed, an arc twists and chars, a curved line drawn by some cosmic surveyor's compass across the actual ground instead of a mere map. Blind doves erupt and fly from the border, shrieking like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Silvery sand begins to trickle down, quiet like snow. It accumulates on every exposed surface to a depth of approximately half an inch, over the course of - depending on how you measure it - slightly more than one minute, or 7/8ths of an eternity, or exactly five days.

>>912170
Training time for Restless as the Dead, Corpse Needs No Food, and one dot of Whispers is complete. A woman wearing nothing but feathersteel boots and a necklace of barbed silver chain (with no clasp, how did she get it on? There aren't even any signs of the individual links being welded shut) rips the cage apart with her bare hands. The Neverborn want you to lead her west, uphill, to the mine, and give you words to say which will make that happen. Most of the speech is very nearly true.

>>912044
Training time for Claws of the Silver Moon is complete. You've tracked the stolen granary contents to an abandoned copper mine out in the hills to the west; a solid majority of the bandits who were escorting the wagons are now dead or dying, from an astonishing variety of causes. Infighting, wild animals, self-inflicted sword up the nose (all the way to the hilt), unnaturally accelerated leprosy, frostbite (it hasn't been that cold, even at night), poison gas...

Inside the entrance to the mine, something vaguely humanoid, with violet eyes as big as mangos and floppy skin like too-large clothing, says in Old Realm "This is not what we agreed to transport. This is not what we agreed to be paid. Where is the remainder?"

>>911879
A young man clad in spike-studded ivory armor emerges from the basement of a collapsed poultry-butcher's shop. When he announces that he's a terrible demon come to kill them all, the crowd scarcely notices. A passing bricklayer casually suggests he visit the Immaculate missionaries to "get that sorted out," as if homicidal mania were an embarrassing type of rash for which monks dispense the proper salve. Some small child asks whether he's the one who did all that funny stuff to the sky, which is currently flat black around the horizon, with a gradually increasing number of lurid, sickly-green sparkles directly overhead.
>>912233
At the mission's rented storefront, the abbot - an elderly man with a jade-tipped spear, clad in the undyed linen robes of a third-coil monk - has much the same question. Seems to be mostly rhetorical, though, since he moves right along into gestures thanking the earth, sky, and sea, as part of assuming Five-Dragon Form. He, and five second-coil disciples, form a loose ring around the armored... being... that they cannot firmly identify as anything but Anathema.

Deep, vegetal instinct tells the newly-minted Green Sun Prince that they all expect him to make some deeply tempting offer before the fight begins in earnest. The one with the red belt and the axe imagines you offering to spare whichever two of them betray the other four; the one with the pale blue bandolier of knives imagines a prestigious position as your herald and lieutenant; the one with the white belt and the sledgehammer imagines a promise of endless luxury, particularly chocolate-covered strawberries; the nun with the green belt imagines being offered one of the others as a personal slave (and seems to take it as a given the red-belted one would volunteer); black belt and seven-section staff imagines being kept in a gilded cage like one of the Guild's comm-sorcerers, spoon-fed terrible occult knowledge; the abbot expects you to whip out a tub of ambrosial icecream laced with some alchemical formula that'll cure the ache in his left knee. All six intend to righteously refuse such temptations, but there's some twinge of doubt whether they actually could. Certainly, none of them expect more than one or two of the others to accept, or for any of the faithful to tolerate blatant apostasy and treason, so violence is clearly imminent.

>>909917
Embri makes it back to town with about half the stolen grain, three live yeddim - a male and two females - and 50 reasonably intact troops behind her. Right in the middle of the market square, some weirdo in heavy armor is trying to argue philosophy with the Immaculate missionaries - unless you spend 3 wp to realize he's actually starting a very physical fight. Vines (or vine-shaped things, the color and texture of which more resembles bare bloodless muscle and sinew) are growing fast enough to tear up cobblestones, but nobody seems to pay much attention to that, either.

On a related note, anyone on the scene with dodge MDV 3 or less (quite a few of the nonheroic bystanders, but no monks or exalts) is struck by Scented Skinless Serpent Shintai's servitude effect. If Arberus announces that he needs something, there may well be a riot as all those people rush to provide it.
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No. 912467 ID: 0640da

rolled 5, 7, 10, 4, 2, 5, 2, 8, 9, 5, 9, 9, 4, 5, 8, 9, 7, 2, 6, 5, 3, 2, 6, 2, 9, 4, 8, 9, 7, 7 = 178

Morse feels... liberated, but uncomfortable as she stands next to the woman who freed her from her prison. The neverborn were right, but what could it mean? What compelled them to ask her to say those words... Morse shakes her head. It's the first time she's been asked by crazy gods in her head to ask a stranger 'Do you love me?', and she hopes and prays this will be her last. She feels uncomfortable, knowing that her savior will be an unfortunate casualty of her curse... and that's just what the Neverborn desire. She thinks back to how it all went down...

---

THERE WILL BE AN ABOMINATION. THESE ARE THE WORDS YOU MUST SAY TO TEMPT HER HEART TO SERVE YOU.

Morse isn't quite sure this is exactly what they said-- she can't be sure of anything. She could have been in there months, weeks. She did not sleep, or drink, or eat-- everything was vague. Even after the... abomination arrived, she could not tell the voice of it apart from the voice of madness. Still, her parched lips parted...

"Do you... love me?" She mumbled, her voice hoarse. Something must have possessed the abomination-- in moments, it seemed like, she was tearing the cage open with her terrible claws. She was exactly as the Neverborn described and more-- she hadn't expected them to be so... so... real...

Vulnerable, and still bound, Morse's face was visible for Light to see. And it was both relieved, and scared... scared of what?

"...I don't know you, but... I think you were sent to help me. Please. Set me free, savior of mine."

---

Well, now Morse was doing the good duties the Neverborn asked her to-- taking this woman to the mines, as they asked, and dealing with the Violet-Eyed Fellow. Morse speaks in Old Realm herself, being a learned woman fluent in multiple languages. "Your delivery was waylaid by a solar-- its goods stolen by a common thief. My emissaries sent me to protect it, but their power was too great and I was far too late-- it is clear that your precautions, flimsy as they are, were inadequate." Morse gives a bow of politeness. "I seek to receive compensation for that mistake... would you deny the courtesy of an emissary of my dark lords? If it be willing, I can always tell the Bishop that our aid has been refused and any hope of an alliance is lost... I'm sure he would be more than willing to let me advance to the backup plan, if it must be so. Let me just say... I love the backup plan." Morse's smile widens, her mask retrieved and her expression as inscrutable as ever.

This is Manipulation, yes?
>>
No. 912470 ID: bb5006

rolled 6, 8, 3, 4, 5, 9, 1, 5, 1, 7, 2, 5, 6, 1, 6, 3, 4, 1, 6, 9, 8, 8, 1, 4, 7, 7, 1, 1, 7, 8 = 144

"Do you love me?"

Light wasn't entirely sure what she was feeling as her essence enhanced claws ripped through the Tomb that she felt like she ignored for too long, like there was a huge build up, and this was the payoff to something she wasn't aware of as she was asked that simple question, but something about either the question itself, or the person asking, but it felt like it cut deeper than anything she'd had been asked before, and like there wasn't any defense she could have had against it. So, she did the only logical thing she could possibly have done, and pulled Morse out of the tomb into as tight a hug as she could muster.

"Of course I love you, I never stopped loving you. I just didn't know where you were all this time." Her words definitely sounded true, but they didn't feel like they were coming from herself.

--------

Light wasn't particularly well schooled, a fact she was well aware of. The fact that she recognized Old Realm at all was only because everyone knew that wizards talked in that tongue all the time, since it was magically significant or something. But fortunately, the violet eyed person wasn't JUST talking in Old Realm as she monitored everything from his posture to what she imagined his tone of voice was sounding like to see if he had any particular aggression towards them and if she needed to initiate preemptive violence.
>>
No. 912472 ID: 0640da

= Hours Ago =
"...you do?" Morse squirms uncomfortably in the tight hug... she doesn't feel any resonance building. This is unusual-- usually, the Neverborn notice when she's even thinking about other people and give her a hit of their fury... the touch of another body is not something she's felt since, since...

Morse pushes Light away and escapes her embrace, falling down on the dirt floor behind her. She scrambles to her feet, and scrutinizes the abomination. "If you've been looking for me, then why didn't you rescue me? Those years I was trapped in that vile Lord's carnal cage... did you just put it off? Leave me there to suffer?"

It's difficult to tell, but... it looks like Morse is angry. Ruh roh. "Don't lie to me. I'll know if you are lying..." 3 motes to channel Scathing Cynic's Attitude, which more or less overdubs her words with those of the Neverborn if she does lie to Morse.
>>
No. 912474 ID: bb5006

"I don't know, alright. I wasn't looking for your tomb, I just stumbled onto you by accident and I wanted to help you because I know what it's like to be left for dead in a coffin like that. But the second I saw you I felt something. Something that, deep down, a piece of me has missed for longer than I can imagine, which I guess helps support to my guess that Anathema reincarnate like a virtuous enough person."

She sank to the floor herself, the obvious rejection cutting deep, even if she was going to try and fix this as soon as she could. "So I don't know what you mean by 'Carnal cage' but I'm sorry I couldn't have been there to save you any sooner."

For what it was worth, not a single thing she said rang as insincere or even a half lie.
>>

rolled 4, 4, 8, 3, 5, 2, 4, 8, 5, 10, 10, 8, 2, 10, 3, 5, 3, 3, 1, 7 = 105

>>912461
Wha- Liger? Daystay, I know I was just calling you a traitor but that wasn't an invitation to run away! *Grumble* very first mission to creation and somehow back in Malfeas before even getting the chance to get homesick.

>Given that Lute and Bridget have exotic mobility options, and time and space just got glitched out pretty badly, I'd be willing to say they can be anywhere in the area when it arrives in Hell, and get a week's worth of training or other downtime activity done on the way.
I'll spend the 1 week training jump and 2 xp on my second dot in sail. If possible, I'll also use the downtime to have Lute duck back into her workshop in the chancel, and craft glass ammunition (shuriken, knives, arrows) to have stored elsewhere for future use. Rolling for that, plus using the appropriate arm for crafting successes.

Post having Lute pop out into the action pending, probably going to be aiming for Light and Morse.

>>912047
The transportation question is less relevant now, but I am still interested in if Edgar took Bonesaw on as a student or assistant, and if the cult seeding attempt is working or not, since that informs if I'll be following up on those.
>>
No. 912476 ID: 2007b6

>>912467
>I can always tell the Bishop that our aid has been refused and any hope of an alliance is lost...
"Before we determine who must pay the blood price for this breach-of-pact between us, I ask to clarify: your master, the apheliotrope Ebon Rime, wielder of the bow Expiring Vigilance and high priest of the Syrinx Prophet Executioner, has successfully claimed theological authority across some broad region of the burning lands? Far-off temples submit their doctrinal disputes to his arbitration?"
>>
No. 912477 ID: 0640da

She's telling the truth-- well, sort of. That beginning bit sounded like a lie-- she didn't need the Neverborn to tell her that she opened the coffin because Morse spoke the words she was told in a dream. Clearly, she's unwilling to admit something, but... it won't cause harm to her. More important, now, is to digest this information and make it something useful again.

Morse thinks about this for a bit, looking her over... "Raksha? No. Tail and human form, but not so inhuman as to 'boggle the mind'... that would make you a Lunar Exalt. Chosen of Luna, prone to change and corruption of their form... the closest of the creation-born to rejecting itself as the true children of the Primordials have chosen to do." Morse pauses, pawing for her mask before clutching and adjusting it to fit. "Perhaps the best and the worst of the celestial family. You supported the Solar's corrupt agenda when they were fat and lazy off their ill-gotten goods... and vanished without punishment as you betrayed them without second thought. Karma must have stepped in where the laws of deities and man could not... you smell of the Wyld, and look the part of a Raksha's pet creature too. Undoubtedly, your current source of power must stem from something outside creation... which would be more upsetting if all the whole of uncreation was not soon to be for naught in oblivion. I figured the rumors of the Lunar's return would be true, I just didn't expect to meet one-- ah."

Morse breathes deep, as if she's pieced together a puzzle. "So that's where you come in. You would be... the other half of a two part set, a joyous union split in twain by the vagaries of man and their wretched schemes. Please, do speak up where my assumptions strike ill-- the path to knowing, to knowledge is to have both stupid sides of a story and then to laugh at their discrepancies. Are we designed to come together, as rust and iron or wood and rot?"

You know, this rather SOUNDS like her Solar Mate. But this is definitely not a Solar. A solar would not look this distressingly corpse-like-- even Morse's eyes are faded. Also, she sounds more like she's picking a fight with Light than questioning her...
>>
No. 912486 ID: bb5006

"I have no idea what you're talking about with any of this Exalt stuff, but I know I'm not a prince of the earth, I'm an Anathema and a former barwench and soldier of Lookshy." As she talked, her spirit stoked by the spirit of this adversity, she rose back up from the ground, and put Morse into a tighter more restrictive hug.

"You're maybe the second other person like myself that I've ever met, and if we're supposed to go together as a pair like I guessed and you said, you'll need a lot more than some disparaging words to try and keep me from loving you."
>>
No. 912487 ID: bb5006

rolled 2, 3, 1, 9, 3, 10, 8, 8, 4 = 48

>>
No. 912488 ID: 2d86b4

>>912461

Arberus thanks the bricklayer and admits to the child that he’s just as confused about the whole thing as the kid is. He admits that it’s possible the Heaven’s are shaking in fear for the violence he was going to inflict upon this town, but he honestly doubts it.

“Oh, by the way. The people I plan on killing should have some nice things on them. You might want to loot there still bleeding corpses when I’m still around. After I leave I imagine it’s going to be a lot harder to take what you want.”

The fact that he was telling this to a child didn’t bother him in the slightest. The fact that he was telling a kid to loot a dead monks body did amuse him greatly.

“Also, there may be some collateral damage. So you might want to head home until the screaming stops.”

---

The one thing that did surprise him was just how normal and expected this all seemed to him. Of course this was going to lead to violence. He knew that, wanted that, when he left his house. He still did. But he was after a mindless type of violence. A comedic form of gore and splatter.

There had to be a way to make that possible. He would make that possible.

There was a more pressing matter at hand, however. An odd thought that buzzed in his mind with ear-ringing irrelevance. And so Arberus spoke and asked his question honestly.

His words were tinged with magic. A curious type of rebellious subtext. ‘Why?’ and ‘Why not?’ bled into them, demanding that those who heard them question for themselves. The intent was simple: To inspire desire for that which was denied to them. Not because Arberus cared, or wanted to control them, but because… it was fun.

“Old man, why does your knee ache? Right now, I was going to kill you. And these people who surround me so. I was going to let these streets run red with blood and use those around me as a shield against your aggression. But then I looked at you. And your knee aches.”

Arberus pauses, looking over each of the six men. Did he know them? Maybe. He never left the house much. He doubted he could kill all of them, even if he used the peasants as a distraction. Maybe one, before he was forced to flee? At the moment none of that really mattered to him. His mind was focused on more important things.

“So what’s up with that? Can I help with that, or shall we get to why I’m here? This town painted red, or my help fixing that knee of yours?” He tilts his head, a blank expression on his face. He sucks air through his teeth. “Well. I. We’re all here. I’m here. And I’m here. So what are we going to do while I’m still here? It’s time to use me, don’t you think? I want to use me. So let’s make up our minds. Let me know how your knee is doing? Or should things die? Maybe I’ll die, for certain others will. Or your knee? Why put up with that damn thing, anyways? Is it worth it, to die, when this can go so many other ways? I’m not judging, I just want to be Me.”

----

Using Stoke the Flames to inspire thoughts of rebellion. Something to make dealing with an Anathema not seem so bad. Trying to see if this old guy has a better idea for where I can express my violence. I imagine there should be someone who I can kill to help this old dudes knee.
>>
No. 912491 ID: 0640da

rolled 2, 4, 6, 3, 4, 6, 3, 7, 6, 4, 3, 9, 9, 7, 2, 7, 10, 8, 3, 5, 10, 10, 4, 9, 7, 7, 2, 7, 3, 3 = 170

>>912476
"Naturally, although I say this with reservation as I think you have misunderstood as to the nature of my statement. All temples, in part, end their disputes in the place where all ends, and where the jurisdiction of one begins it connects through cycles to others. My master, my Bishop, would not be pleased for your confusion of him for another, but would merely like a lowly apostle as I to aid in the resolution of disputes which chiefly concern him-- that is to say, those which involve powerful artifacts that belong to and are created by one party, but through trickery and elaborate ruses find their way into the hands of another. There is a life that flows through magic, good sir, and that life can create or... extinguish just as easily." Morse snaps her fingers-- an illusory blue flame flickers to life, before she ceases its existence and extinguishes it. "Now, you ask me as to what concern my master has for this petty dispute among smaller sects and covens and cults, I would say to you that you owe us one for the possession of this artifact and are now going to resolve this with our help, and as allies, or find yourself crushed beneath the weight of the tomes of greater gods than you or I. As a woman who defines herself as not being prone to violence but yet finds herself in the position of oppressor quite frequently, I would much rather prefer we resolve this together than work at ends. We can resolve this simply, and with little bloodshed. But we--" Morse gestures at her entourage. "--need a full account as to what your original, poorly constructed plan was-- and more importantly, to where yours and mine goods have both gone."

Morse is earnest in teasing the information out of his lips, but her words are riddled with more confusion and deceit than a high-school yearbook. She is, in very uncertain terms, offering to help complete the deal in exchange for an artifact that, apparently, he was supposed to have possession of. I'm actually not totally sure what a lying roll is, even though there are many half-truths. Have a pile of dice?
>>
No. 912493 ID: 0640da

>>912486

Morse doesn't open her lips to mention her past life. It isn't hers anymore-- it is the life of someone who has died. She won't talk about her days as a barmaid, singing songs to customers and plating food on tables-- because those weren't her days. That wasn't her life. But hearing it from the lips of another... it makes it hard to resist the lull of temptation. The desire to ask more about her... to learn about her. And then she does it again... the hug. The tight squeeze.

"...then you will die as a result of your infatuation. All things betray, and love and life are no exception-- they blacken and blister as anything else. Doubly so when the object of your affections is cursed, born under the wrong star as you were born under a wrong sky. There's no other excuse as to why you would be matched to this one, as lowly as I am and terrible as my deeds are and will become. I recommend you discard th-this childish notion." Oh, god. Morse bit her tongue.

"...now, unhand me. For your own safety. You are my savior, as holy and wretched as you are, and I have a task I am indebted to perform for you. Your perishment would sadden me greatly, for no other reason but that I would like to repay the favor in the way my lords tell me how." Morse tries to struggle out, but her strength is insignificant. Her shamisen still sits, not far away... "To be clear, I desire you to let me go not out of love, but shallow, cruel, unkind respect. Please. Let mine arms be as free as they ought to be after my length of imprisonment, and do not extend it further..."
>>
No. 912499 ID: 2007b6

>>912491
>an illusory blue flame flickers
>rolled 2, 4, 6, 3, 4, 6, 3, 7, 6, 4, 3
The brief flame reveals a pale, noseless face, a hand curled below the shapeless wrinkly chin with one finger extended up to the tiny lipless mouth. After an awkward pause the finger twists bonelessly to point forward, accusing.

"You are lying to me. You know almost nothing about this fellow Ebon Rime, not even the proper name of his weapon."

Another pause.

"This is good!"

A grisly approximation of a smile.

"It likely means neither of you will need to be paying with your own blood, at least not for this particular breach, and, since I have thus been deceived, it is permissible - by the exact letter of the nondisclosure clause - for you to discover certain facts through my actions, or lack of actions. Not for free, of course, now that I have seen through you. Jade would be an acceptable bribe - particularly red jade - or a few thick logs of cedar or teak or black ash or any other rot-resistant wood, or perhaps a large quantity of water-or-meat of sufficient purity."
>>
No. 912509 ID: bb5006

Light still wasn't able to understand the Old Man, but she recognized that he moved into the opposite direction of violence in his voice, but she also suspected she was going to have to carry something fairly heavy in the immediate future, and then she really noticed it.

"Not to point out the Anathema in the room, but do either of you know why the sky is black with a Green Sun as opposed to the normal sky?"

-------

"Well you know, I don't particularly care about that. After all, sometimes you just have to do what you know you know is right, even if it means death and pain. Besides, what could you possibly have done that could make you unworthy of at least one person's love."

As if in utter defiance of the warnings, Light planted a single kiss on Morse's forehead, squeezed tighter for a moment, and let her go, since it would have been really terrible for her to keep her locked up so shortly after freeing her, even if it was in a softer and nicer prison.
>>
No. 912512 ID: 2007b6

>>912475
>I am still interested in if Edgar took Bonesaw on as a student or assistant,
Nothing formalized yet. Lot of other work to do, and they're still getting to know each other.
>and if the cult seeding attempt is working or not,
Second- and third-generation rumors are already circulating; the idea has settled in to local culture like maggots into an untreated wound. Whoever's supposed to be in charge of guarding hearts and minds is apparently asleep on the job. Question now is: do you want to stir it up into a frenzy, maximizing short-term payout? Or try to build a more enduring institution?
>>
No. 912518 ID: 9646f1

rolled 5, 1, 6, 10, 10, 6, 3, 2, 8, 9, 4, 9, 4, 7, 3, 10, 10, 1, 2, 1, 8, 8, 7, 1, 2, 2, 8, 1, 9, 6 = 163

The gears in Bridget's mind slowly whirred and clicked, steadily creeping towards a conclusion most onlookers likely shared: This Probably Isn't Good.

Unpacking her wards, Bridget made preparations for the journey. They would need food, and rest before they set off. To her small group, huddled on the boulder she makes a statement, back turned to the sliver sands baring the way home:

"Unknown occurrences halt progress. If prior any worked for your captors, they are unlikely to receive compensation anymore. Consider working with me to return to the village. I will provide tonight.

Bridget sets about gathering provisions for the night- wood, food, something to recover their strength. After they awake, the long journey across the sands begins.

It's going to be a while before she gets home, isn't it?

Mechanically, Bridget activates Craftsman Needs No Tools to help her start a fire, and then meditates for the evening. If fatigue is cleared by not working, rather than sleep, can she just turn inward rather than totally shutting off for the night? If she really does have to sleep, four hours should suffice for more recovery- will she still get WP recovery for that?

On the trip across the endless desert, Bridget first trains the second survival Excellency. Then, she trains Food-Gathering Exercise. Finally, she trains another lore Excellency, the First Lore Excellency (I think that's the one I need). If it only takes a few days to train the first two, hopefully she can keep her wards fed while crossing the desert. Otherwise, we just hope they can keep up.

Budget accounting: made two posts since my last check in, and I've spent 4 motes (since JamesLeng said I didn't need to spend anything to flair to the 8 more level I wasnt going to count that)
If I recover motes from both posts, and WP from this one, minus the cost of CNNT that leaves me at
1/5/5 I think. Also spent 24xp just now.
>>

rolled 3, 6, 5, 10, 1, 3, 1, 6, 9, 6, 9, 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 8, 8, 2, 8 = 105

>>912512
Sounds like it's too soon to do any further pushing with those two then. Let's wait and see how things develop naturally and then if they need course correction.

>stir it up into a frenzy, maximizing short-term payout? Or try to build a more enduring institution?
Enduring seems like the more strategically useful option. Although this is of course assuming the mortal expatriates manage to survive, if Lute were writing them off, the short term payout would be a lot more expedient.

>>912493
>>912509
Morse Song and Light's touching moment is interrupted by an appreciative (and sincere) "D'awwwww."

An interloper stands nearby (where both are reasonably sure no one stood before) wearing fine robes, unmarred by the stains or dust from travel.

"You devotion in the face of adversity is quite touching, but you needed worry your pretty little ears. If it were within her dead gods' power to deny such bonds of love, they almost certainly would have already."

I'm assuming with high lore and occult, and with Kimbery and her other akuma being involved in the deal to capture and trade solar sparks, that Lute has some idea how solar-lunar links are normally supposed to go, at a least a very broad idea how the solar-abyssal flip was supposed to have gone, and is making an informed guess filled in with a little direct observation just now.

>>912509
>"Not to point out the Anathema in the room, but do either of you know why the sky is black with a Green Sun as opposed to the normal sky?"
"Why, we're in hell, of course!" Lute answers cheekily in the same tongue (as if this were the most natural thing in the world), from where she had been leaning against the wall, off to the side of the mine entrance and (formerly) out of the creature's line of sight.

Can I roll a lore check to see if Lute recognizes what that is?
>>
No. 912564 ID: 0640da

rolled 1, 5, 4, 8, 9, 7, 5, 2, 1, 7, 9, 1, 2, 6, 8, 2, 7, 6, 5, 2, 6, 1, 10, 10, 2, 9, 10, 6, 2, 4 = 157

>>912499
Morse turns to Lute and Light, expressionlessly puffing out her chest and clarifying the terms of the deal to them in Rivertongue. "I have successfully convinced our friend here to strike a deal with us. Lute, Light, please present him with a quantity of red jade, rot-resistant wood surfacing or meal and water equivalent to the price which I have haggled for with my superior linguistic arrangements."

Completing her self-aggrandizing lie, Morse coughs lightly and speaks again to the violet mango-eyed fellow. "I probably should mention that it is not a lie, friend, that I work for a Bishop who would be very pleased with your arrangement. The artifact that has been stolen by this caravan is of particular interest to the Tabernacle. We shall secure what you desire at once."

Morse hears that they're in hell, and doesn't seem to comment on that-- she already assumed as much from the change of scenery. If she wasn't immune to thirst, she'd be parched.

= Hours Ago=
>>912549
>>912509

"And what, pray tell... do you know of my 'dead gods', stranger?" Morse hisses. "Know that their words ring among their followers even now... you only have to listen to hear an answer to your prayers. The less could be said for mortal gods-- their communication hinges on false hope and lying tongues. Perhaps you may not know as much about them as you claim to-- a fact I will rectify over the course of your insignificant existence."

Morse retrieves her shamisen from the ground next to her coffin, and plays a few notes... she needs to re-attune herself, which costs a few motes. Her anima flares-- a deep ooze drips out of a third eye, as she expends 8 motes (and a scene or 20 minutes) to slowly re-attune herself to her artifacts. During this time, they are not effective on her-- Read Motivation should be as normal.

"...I think the more important question is who the both of you are, and what business you have in this place. I thought for sure that arrogant solar had planned my imprisonment for a decade or more." Morse makes a few strums on her shamisen, nodding. "For know that she feared me for my name and my power-- I am a preservationist of history that operates in darkness. Morse Encoding of Forbidden Lore, Wrapped in Song-- at your service."

Morse makes a deep bow to both of them-- she assumes they are together, after all. When she bows down, more anima-ooze drips onto the floor beneath her, forming a vantablack pool of void-stuff devoid of color... this is not how animas are supposed to look. They should be... shiny. At the very least, she should have an aura... this is more like she's, she's leaking...
>>
No. 912583 ID: bb5006

"Well, I have an idea on how we can get a lot of water extremely fast, and I guess I could try and scavange for some grain, but we would need a mill to turn it into meal. But... How much of a price did you negotiate for?

"Also, what? How is that a 'normal' sentence, last I heard people don't just randomly go to Hell." Light was clearly more worried about the fact that they wound up in Hell than about the price Morse had negotiated, since she wasn't entirely even aware of what she was negotiating for.

-----

"Well, I found this place and thought that it looked like a pretty obvious watchpost for this cult I had found, so I took a few days to rest and finish training my body into a solid weapon before I really took them on since I had just marched almost 80 miles in the last few days. There obviously weren't any bandits or cultists to kill, but I found you and I decided I would free you, and right before I started to tear it open you asked if I loved you, I said yes, and we got into this conversation."

Light was starting to burn up as she leaned up against one of the walls of the basement they were in, half trying to hide the fact that she half desperately wanted to sleep with everyone in the room to help clear her head, especially since there didn't seem to be any real opening to bring it up without being rude like if she were in a bar, and half trying to broadcast it to them both to hope that an opening would come up.
>>
No. 912604 ID: 2007b6

>>912509
>"Not to point out the Anathema in the room, but do either of you know why the sky is black with a Green Sun as opposed to the normal sky?"
The cave-thing responds in crisp, formal Rivertongue, like an uncanny impression of some professor from Lookshy's own Academy of Sorcery, "My field of study is mercantile dealings with foreigners. Any 'weather' phenomena that may occur are your own problem to deal with."
>>
No. 912704 ID: 2d86b4

A thought crosses Arberuses’ mind. Using words to make others take actions and forcing them to speak had an odd surrealism to it. ’Repeat after me, “You may not speak”.’ A temporary amusement. This random desire would no doubt pass quickly enough, replaced by some urge to walk someplace or eat a sandwich. But the simple fact that he could, and hadn’t, made it all the important to him that he did.

“You know,” Arberus speaks his thoughts aloud. “ ‘Why’ Is just as good as ‘Why not’. To me, at least. For now. So how about I add some clarity to this matter of…” He doesn’t finish, and instead looks around him at those peasants so magically enthralled by him. Peasants? People. Peasants were boring to kill but people? Those were fun.

“Hey everyone!” Arberus waves his right hand in the air, trying to draw attention to himself.

“Do what I say for a moment, will you? Who am I!?” The answer he was hoping for was ”I/we don’t know!”

“Neat, huh? Neat neat neat… Everyone, ask this Monk here who I have to kill to help fix his knee! Keep yourselves at the ready, if he doesn’t tell us we’re going to eat his face. That sound alright with everyone? Don’t worry, I’ll help.”

He smiles a bit at himself and looks the old Monk over again, ignoring the five others that surround him.

“There, that was nice wasn’t it? I suggest your idea be a good one. I’m killing something. The question is, is your knee going to feel better afterwards? Or are you just… going to be… uh. Dead?”
>>
No. 912718 ID: 2007b6

>>912488
>Using Stoke the Flames to inspire thoughts of rebellion.
You need to specify how many people you're targeting, and roll for the actual social attack.
>>
No. 912719 ID: afdebc

>>912564
>>912583
>"And what, pray tell... do you know of my 'dead gods', stranger?"
Lute responds with a grin. "Am I wrong, deathknight?"

>I think the more important question is who the both of you are, and what business you have in this place.
>I found this place and thought that it looked like a pretty obvious watchpost for this cult I had found
"Lute Silhouette Speculation in Comet's Reflection.

"My own business here is rather similar- investigating the recent bandit assault of a nearby village, and the cult that had a hand in the orchestration. I have questions about your involvement, Morse Song, and the infantry force you lead before your subsequent defeat and interment."

>>912583
>"Also, what? How is that a 'normal' sentence, last I heard people don't just randomly go to Hell."
"Oh yes, it's quite extraordinary. Demons are far more likely to fall out of cracks in their prison than others are to fall in. And miles of creation's landscape crossing over is practically unheard of!"

Perhaps unsettling, Lute seems more enthused and intrigued by this inexplicable turn of events than concerned.
>>
No. 912747 ID: 2d86b4

>>912718

Just the monks right in front of me. The weaker peasants should already be under my control. Should be three motes total.

Temperance 1 means 1 automatic success.
>>
No. 912748 ID: 2d86b4

rolled 7 = 7

---this one should work---
>>
No. 912770 ID: 0640da

rolled 2, 5, 10, 6, 9, 9, 1, 2, 6, 5, 9, 4, 10, 2, 2, 4, 2, 3, 8, 4, 3, 2, 1, 5, 9, 1, 3, 4, 2, 2 = 135

>>912583
>>912719
= Hours Ago =
"You are not entirely incorrect, given my lord's disdain for procreation, but you err in assuming too much. I'm going to pre-empt that this is a running theme for you. There are many permitted forms of sexual bonds under the Neverborn, with the conditions that it furthers the cause of this Creation's demise. There are many... lesser Deathlords that find themselves pre-occupied with these sorts of tawdry behaviors... much to the dismay of those who work beneath them." Morse snorts, and expends 3 motes analyzing Lute's statement... she sees no lie.

"Fine. Sit with the Lunar who refuses to introduce themselves, and I shall tell you of my goals. They are very simple-- enough that an egg could understand it, let alone two presumably competent adults-- but, for your listening pleasure... I shall sing them in verse." Morse gestures in front of her, and begins to sing a song, playing a currently mundane instrument...

Tabernacle northern
underneath a frozen star
A simple priestess studies
until she is sent afar
A mission of importance
will keep her and it apart
She was sent out to find a tool--
a cold unmelting heart.


"So, I suppose you have questions. I can answer all of them... and I hope you like music, because I prefer to respond with the medium I am most comfortable with. Ask away-- and make it clear what you want to know."

= Present Moment =
"Why are you two acting like this is a big deal? Simple laws of entropy. Creation will break down and become more simple, and worse, over time." Morse makes a light dig at Malfeas. "My heart is still here, and my compass still points true towards that... backstabber, Embri. The town should have come with it, since my destination did as well."
>>
No. 912773 ID: bb5006

"It's not that I'm refusing to introduce myself, I just haven't introduced myself to another Anathema, so I'm not sure if I should use my Anathema name I use to scare mortals before I kill them, or my actual name that I was born with. Like, is there any formal procedure to this stuff? Also, there are plenty of tales of Anathema sleeping with hapless victims, so of course it would make sense that you'd be allowed to have sex."

But, beyond her lack of knowledge which name to use, and understandably doubting that she should introduce herself as 'Light of the Moon Cleansing the World', she let herself hear the music, half humming along to the music like any proud citizen of Lookshy.

"Alright, I have a few questions. What's the Tabernackle, and what's this Unmelting Heart?"

---------------

"Well... If we have no idea what's happening, other than we're apparently in Hell, is there anything we need to know to avoid dying? I mean, this isn't something that basic training can prepare you for."

She had gone from instantly worried to thinking in tactical possibilities of what could possibly coming to attack and how they could make the field as asymmetrical in their favor as possible.
>>
No. 912774 ID: 2d86b4

rolled 8, 1, 1, 8, 6, 2, 5, 5, 1, 3 = 40

>>
No. 912801 ID: afdebc

>>912770
Lute had meant to reference the lunar bond, not sex, but the way Morse's comments make Light squirm are certainly amusing.

>Ask away-- and make it clear what you want to know.
Lute's going to ask about Morse's mission, and her involvement with the bandit / cultist plot against the nameless village (and if Morse is honest, Lute is going to very quickly find out Morse had nothing to do with that plot and is head chasing something completely different).

>>912773
>is there anything we need to know to avoid dying [in Malfeas]?
"Oh yes," Lute responds, and begins counting out hazards on her fingers.

"The Silent Wind is perhaps the most universal danger. Adorjan slays all in her passage, but detests noise and song. For this reason there cannot be silence without death, and throughout the demon realm, music and song is played in an attempt to keep the Silent Wind away. Our companion should be a great help, here.

"If darkness should fall, do not listen to Erembour's horn, lest you wish to spend the remainder of your life underground, hiding from the light.

"Malfeas' very air is a poison that will kill mortals in a week, but we of course are not mortal. I suspect a portion of Creation's air may have traveled with us, though.

"Clean food and water is also much harder to come across in Malfeas, although for the moment we enjoy the bounty of our displaced piece of Creation.

"...of course the local area is also something of a danger, as every curious or interested demon nearby will be drawn by the appearance of this Creation-born bounty, seeking to claim or exploit it. This is going to be a problem for the local mortals, unless they are placed under the protection of a suitably powerful patron.

"There are of course, other dangers, but that depends a great deal where we are in hell. Malfeas is vast, and contains many layers."
>>
No. 912812 ID: 0640da

rolled 8, 4, 7, 10, 7, 2, 2, 9, 2, 3, 2, 2, 8, 8, 1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 8, 3, 5, 1, 4, 2, 2, 1, 9, 10, 5 = 145

>>912773
>>912801
"I suppose you'd like me to drown out the noise for everyone in this part of creation... which I can, in fact, do. I can prevent everyone from listening, but... what's in it for the Neverborn? What reason do you have to use my powers to preserve the lives of mere mortals, marching towards death at a sluggish pace?" Morse is listening to the insinuation that she'd help with an undisguised disgust. "I only seek my artifact. The lives of those who got in my way are forfeit. Of course, I'm not going to stop them from listening to the music of death, if they so please to each dawn."

What can Morse (and by extension, Oblivion) get out of this deal that could possibly tempt her? Lute will need to think about this, if she wants the blanket of Morse's protection.

= Hours Earlier =

"Is that all? Well..." Morse plucks her shamisen, and the world plunges into darkness around the two exalts. In the distance, wrapped in a regal robe, a regal looking old man wearing what appears to be an ancient tapestry looks over an arid steppe. The ground is cold, and it sends a shiver to the two listeners...

The Bishop of the
Chalcedony Thurible
Listen to his words.

For us sinners he has
written a great bible
Listen to his words

Geomantically unstable
The Hidden Tabernacle is
not just an old fable
It is real

As real as you or I
Or this damned ugly blue sky...


The Bishop waves his hand, and the sky darkens...

But not for long...

The lands around him begin to dry up and blacken, and the spire of a terrible steeple begins to crack through the earth, tearing into the sky. This-- this is the true form of the Hidden Tabernacle, and as the steeple rises the rest of the dark cathedral follows.

Yes, not for long...

Creation's days are numbered
It's charted in the stars
We live we die we eat we breathe
We sing out our dull song

But he sees the truth, he sees the way
He sees beyond the scars
He knows us in our deepest hearts
And he knows who we are

The Tome of Endless Night
is his most infamous book of light


The bishop lies at his study, scrawling out scrolls that extend like ribbons in all directions, scrawled with almost illegible Skytongue. If Lute or Light knew how to read it, they'd be reading Morse's memories of the contents of the tomes themselves.

But the thing you may not know is
That it's not his only work
For his motto is obedience
(a task he has not shirked)
To the Neverborn below
and though they find creation vile
When he designed all these tools
They let his mistakes slide a while
Each one is packed with power
Each one is filled with death
Some make you melt your fingers
But this one gives you cold breath
And if given to a zombie
it reinforces flesh
And the jar it is contained in
can resist that wintry touch
But compared to what's inside
that jar doesn't matter much...


Several visions of artifacts the Bishop has created flash by, but Morse grabs them and throws them to the side-- she clears the table with her hands and sets down a jar. The jar contains a frozen heart, and ice crystals begin to form on the table below... before the scene fades to darkness, and the Bishop can be seen again-- facing a great demonic creature. It appears to be a demon amphibian of some sort-- a massive beast, surrounded by clutches of eggs and crooning. The Bishop, for his part, looks different-- Morse has taken great care to present his corpse-like war form, a black and ugly beast, in this moment of fighting. She refuses to color history any other way.

The Unmelting Heart of Tellerauthelot...

At the start, there was a great battle
A test between two faiths
Tellerauthelot prayed to demons of weakness
And the Neverborn he praised

But as fights wore on...
His blades found no purchase
And though he dealt damage
It'd regenerate

And so the Bishop had a moment of grace
He fell to his knees and he started to pray
And though the beast's poison
withered him away
He had an epiphany
That I'll share today

He realized that this beast was hurting inside
That though it had lived long
sustained on its pride
That it really quite truly
had wanted to die
In its deepest of hearts
and yet not its mind

And so the bishop called out, he cried...


The Bishop, nearly defeated, extends out a hand... and the beast stops its violent attack, staring back at the Bishop.

"There is a place after this one
A place where we are all equal
Where no more shall suffer
and there is no more light
you'll be with your family--
they'll be at your side
And we'll all be together
And there will be no war
for there will be nothing
out here left fighting for
To find this solution
You should listen and pray
It'll change all your hearts
if you do this today..."


"And the Bishop..." Morse interrupts. "Then spoke five words of truth. The first was forgiveness, the second was death. The third was winter, the fourth was breath. And the fifth was beauty-- and well, it would seem, that the terrible beast then began to scream..."

The beast trembles, and shakes... and snarls. In old tongue, it curses and insults the Bishop... notably, Morse's lips are not moving as it groans, and freaks out. The beast bounds around the room, banging into walls. The room, and their environs, seemingly shakes as this ethereal projection of a beast bounces around-- of course, the room is still perfectly still when the beast collapses, and turns translucent.

Sixteen red hearts
Did beat in its chest
And one by one
a decision was made
That beautiful crimson
then began to fade
Replaced by a chill blue stream.

Sixteen blue hearts
now froze in his chest
And expression had froze on his face
For in his cold mind a new ice age set in...
And his hearts had taken his place.


The beast, and all her illusions, vanish. The world is bright again.

"So, that's what I'm here for, and I had-- before that bitch, Embri, got her grimy paws on my heart again. The bandits had it before her, and I took them as a consolation prize. Too bad ill gotten gains are short held in one's hands..."

((Post so long Preview broke, uh oh. Hope it turns out fine.))
>>
No. 912820 ID: bb5006

Light took a few moments after the song finished to really digest, clearly the gears turning in her mind as she tried to keep focus on the actual meaning. "Okay, I think I get it. The Tabernacle is a church dedicated to a more powerful servant to your gods called the Bishop who, much like you, want to see all of the world dead. He created a lot of artifacts, but the only one that's relevant are these 16 frozen hearts, one of which was either stolen or lost and you were sent out to find this one."

As she tried summing up the song in plain language, she stood up and stretched as modestly as she could, and crossed the room, sitting down next to Morse before she could start up another song, weaseling her head and shoulder under her arms in such a way that she was as out of the way as she possibly could have been and wrapping her arms around Morse's waist, clearly not abandoning her stated goal of loving her regardless of any dangers to her health.

"So, while I was originally headed towards the copper mine at the end of this trail, going after this 'Embri' person sounds like a good next step. After that, then where are we going?"

------------------------

"Well, I can think of a fairly good reason for you to be the person who plays music, since otherwise you'd have to listen to me trying to sing old military tunes as loud as I can possibly manage, and I don't think anyone can honestly say they want to hear that. Besides, if this Silent Wind kills Embri, then who knows if corpse disposal is going to just toss your artifact in the garbage, or the incinerator or, or mass grave. We wouldn't know from here, and it might become that much more secluded and harder to find than you would have been if I hadn't found you.”

As Light gave her reasoning, she started heading back to the village at a snail’s pace compared to what she was able to with these boots on, gesturing to come on as she hoped everyone would get the message.

“Besides, I have a number of servants that should be getting close enough to a hidden building in the village that I would really prefer them surviving, since they have collectively the ability to travel at several hundreds of miles an hour, a point to point transportation faster than that, the ability to create food, water, and soldiers, and send messages to anyone that particular creeper has met, create a flaming sword that guards people, move earth, and brainwash people, and about 30 untiring soldiers, and 15 infiltrators who can hold their own on the battlefield easily, and I’d greatly prefer that they not die until we get out of here, we might need them for personal protection even if we let the town die to whatever forces attack it for being a piece of creation.”
>>
No. 912864 ID: 5f3f48

>>912812
>Skytongue. If Lute or Light knew how to read it
Linguistics 2 (Native: Old Realm, Others: Rivertongue, Skytongue)

Granted, Morse has only heard Lute using Rivertongue so far.

>What's in it for me
*Eyeroll* "Your life, the life of your companion, and any hope of surviving long enough to accomplish your mission? I did not ask you to protect the mortals. If you would prefer useless to minstreldom, you may hand me your instrument to play, or lend it to one of Light's servants."
>>
No. 912888 ID: 0640da

rolled 5, 4, 10, 8, 3, 6, 2, 9, 5, 6, 3, 1, 2, 1, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 4, 3, 9, 3, 5, 5, 1, 9, 8, 7, 3 = 159

>>912864
>>912820

"...fine. I'll provide your... musical cover. But I require that we schedule sermons for the Neverborn at dawn and dusk." Morse relents, after imagining the torture her Lunar mate was about to put her through. "I also want raw flesh or blood to drink. Endless music is thirsty work." Morse begins to play the Drowned Shamisen, plucking at the strings and... eugh. Never stopping for more than a few seconds.

"That just leaves the matter of payment for this fellow as my concern. As an expert with, dare I say, Akuma-like levels of knowledge, you ought to know what kinds of rot-resistant trees grow in this hellscape. Sources of pure, clean water-- perhaps a stream of some sort we could fill barrels up with, meat from humans... trade should not be difficult to achieve. Although my goal is to get the Unmelting Heart, the Neverborn have tasked me with this as well."

= Hours Earlier =

"...do not get too close. The stench of the Wyld is overwhelming." Morse covers her face and turns away... that sounds like an excuse as any to hide her red face. "But you are correct. The Neverborn have told me that my most effective move is to lead you to the copper mine. After that, I suppose we'll know from there..." Morse's musical instrument stops for a few moments as she struggles to adjust to the nuzzle and hug... she's not really capable of escaping the grapple of the opossum at this time.

"But the Neverborn never said anything about you, Lute. What, in fact, are you planning to do? You have heard my tale, and my goals. Do you wish to stand in my way, or are you going to bend as the willows do and aid my cause of retrieval? I assure you that I do not renege on a debt of gratitude, and my mercy shall be reserved for those who aid me."
>>
No. 912892 ID: c8a0f5

"I'm not going to make any promises about not getting as close as possible. Of course, I could think of a few ways to get closer, but I guess that can wait until we're alone, and I can definitely wait until you're comfortable with whatever the Wyld smells like."

Not one to give up, Light pressed as much of herself against Morse as she could without getting in the way, hoping to leave what she was under the impression was a distinct smell on her clothes. After all, the best way to get used to something like that is constant exposure. Either that or Morse would ditch her clothes like herself, she'd count either outcome as a win on her side.

"But that's neat, if you know about this copper mine, do you also know what's there? My guess is the base of this cult."

--- In the present ---

"Alright, I'm actually kind of curious about this religion of yours. As for the fresh blood and meat, just for clarification, what kind of ratio of human to animal would you be satisfied with, also, would you mind if I ate at least the Heart with you?

"Anyway, like I said, I have a 'servant' under my control that can summon a fairly large source of water that can run for days. It might be a tad bit of work to try and barrel it, and we'd probably need a wagon to carry enough, but that shouldn't be terribly hard. The only issue is that they should still be in town with the rest of my small army."
>>
No. 912937 ID: 0640da

rolled 2, 7, 5, 4, 9, 1, 4, 4, 9, 9, 10, 4, 4, 1, 6, 8, 1, 10, 6, 2, 4, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 7, 1, 1, 1 = 152

>>912892
=Hours Ago=
"Ech. You're staining my good robes. Just because I don't have an attachment to physical things does not mean I feel a need to strip to my flesh... why don't you take a long bath before trying to cuddle me with your terrible scent?" Morse's face is slowly becoming more impossible to discern as her artifacts finish attuning to her. She presses a palm against Light's face and tries to push it away, but ends up pushing Light into a lap-pillow. Grumbling, Morse acquiesces to her circumstances.

"Cult? There's a cult? I don't remember hearing anything about that. If they were hired by a cult, their employer had a base down near Bear Lake. The mine is where a deal was to be made, one most important to the employers. As to whether Bear Lake came with us, we shall soon find out-- but let us attend to the closer location first."

= Present =

"...I'm finding you more appetizing the longer I spend time with you, Light. Yes, we may eat the humans together." Morse plays an ancient folk tune as she talks, mindless and not paying attention. "And, I don't know about his particular tastes, but I rather prefer 100% human to any ratio of human and meat. Not that I need to eat... but it is pleasurable to me, to consume flesh. I can barely resist myself when I see a corpse as it is."
>>
No. 913020 ID: bb5006

"I might be getting them a tad dirty, but there's a lot more to life than being trapped in anything so restrictive. But fine," Light finally acquiesced to Morse's desire to NOT have her clothes stained with road dust any more than they were already. As she got up, however, she took advantage of the fact that she was substantially faster and still comparatively an 'unknown' variable to steal a kiss from Morse before pivoting on her heel to sit down next to her. "If you wan't me to take a bath, there's a small stream near enough here that I've been getting water from the last few days I was training, but you have to join me to make sure I get clean enough for you.

"Beyond that, there's definitely a cult. Something dedicated to someone they called 'the Syrinx Prophet Executioner'. They had taken some slaves from the nearby town for sale, but there was a bigger plan in Bear's Pond. I had a few agents captured, most of them Haltan, like you would expect given the region and the people, it was a cell based organization, so they couldn't point me anywhere useful. I had planned on finding the cult base out here since the hypermajority of the bunch went out this way, but even if it isn't their HQ then I guess it still wasn't a waste of time, since I met you, and the other most beautiful person I've ever met." She felt almost like she appended that last statement, but the only things she'd really gathered about the so called Lute is that she was probably either an Anathema, a terribly trained Dragon Blooded, or otherwise not a threat level essence user in direct combat, and she seemed to want her to follow her heart, which in retrospect wasn't exactly a trifling amount, but still was hardly enough to really strike up a conversation.

"Anyway, I still don't know the 'rules' of this, but you should call me by my actual name. Hundred Flowing Sweet Rivers, or just Rivers. I mean, I normally call myself Light of the Moon to people before I kill them, if I let them know I'm there, but that's not really who I am. Plus, how confusing would that be to have a Light and a Lute." She gave Lute a smile, trying to lighten up tensions a tad and give Lute a more natural entry into the conversation without hostilities.

---- Present time ----

"Well, the main reason I ask about any Animal-Human ratio is because the town lost a lot of people in the town either went missing or dead, so the actual people should probably be killed as more of a delicacy. Beyond that, there's doubtless an Immaculate Presence in the town, and they probably would harass us to no end if they found out about that. On the other hand, fresh blood and meat is extremely easy to find in a big enough quantity keep either of us from going thirsty if you're half as good a hunter as I am.

"Again though, we don't really need to worry about the cave dweller's demands, all we need are some barrels and a cart to pull them in, and we can just use magic to handle that." Rivers was starting to get a tad bit annoyed, since she had brought up the fact that she already had the answer to the cave person's price three times, and while the whole 'not dying from being too quiet' thing was probably more important, it didn't seem to be getting through to everyone. "Besides, why would we pay him with people, that would just be awkward."
>>
No. 913390 ID: 2007b6

>>912488
>>912704
>>913346
>Waiting for the Monk to respond. If he doesn't offer me a target that placates the Cup
If you're not yourself proposing a deal the False Grail is interested in, that clash of wills means you spend 1 wp (which puts you at 9/10) and gain one limit (which puts you at 4/10 thanks to Greater Curse) and your action - attempting to establish surprise/roll Join Debate prior to social combat - automatically botches.

Arberus spends several minutes rambling incoherently, getting into a loud argument with an outwardly unresponsive cup he's holding in his off-hand, and generally making it look like he's out of touch with reality to the point of being a danger to himself and others. The crowd finds this all clownishly amusing, and the spiked armor squeezably cute; monks take the opportunity to warn everyone that he's clearly possessed by something malevolent, and that civilians should stay back.

>rolled 7, 8, 1, 1, 8, 6
Social attack on the monks, enhanced with Stoke The Flame for 3m, a two-die stunt, and a +3 bonus from monologue-based aiming, also fails... mostly due to a -3 external penalty from conflict with the False Grail's Urge, and Arberus's total lack of expertise at public speaking, but the fact that the monks have decent Integrity and correspondingly solid Dodge MDVs could have also contributed. MDV penalty from relative Appearance is canceled out by bonuses from going against Motivation, since you're basically asking them to betray the very principles they've dedicated their lives to upholding. That would further mean, even if the social attack did succeed, they'd be forced to resist it even if they were out of willpower, unless they'd been psychologically broken by (willpower + essence) consecutive days of unrelenting misery and despair, or correspondingly nasty mental magic.

>rolled 5, 2, 1, 3, 1, 1, 6
That's another botch, on what should have been an easy Dex + Athletics roll to avoid tripping over some meaty root that heaved up the cobblestones while you were speaking. Arberus will be starting off the battle lying prone.

> I'm not ordering the civilians to attack;
Scented Skinless Serpent Shintai's Servitude effect drives them to give you what they think you really want, not necessarily to follow your exact tactical directions.

Since Arberus already mentioned out loud an interest in having everyone here collectively eat the elderly monk's face, that UMI is driving an angry mob to attack the monks with lethal force. Each of the color-coded second-coil monks has Arberus in front and teammates to either side, so there's room for two peasants to attack each of them from behind. Let's say one grappling, the other with a knife. Up to the monk in question which of those gets an automatic unexpected attack; the other can roll dexterity + stealth vs. the monk's wits + awareness, which is at a -2 internal penalty since they're distracted by the more obvious threat of Arberus himself.

Sifu is under attack by five peasants, but gets a +1 bonus to his wits + awareness rolls since he was watching the crowd and has enough applied theology to know that Anathema can subvert the weak-minded with alarming ease. He's also standing on a wooden crate (which happens to be full of individually wrapped cakes of soap) for a +1 high ground bonus to DV. Anyone trying to stick a knife in the old man's kidneys would be further hampered by an exceptional chain shirt enchanted with the Elemental Benediction of Earth (6L/4B soak, no mobility or fatigue) under his robes, plus natural soak bonuses from Five-Dragon Form and, when necessary, Five-Dragon Fortitude.
>>
No. 913446 ID: afdebc

--Past--
>"But the Neverborn never said anything about you, Lute. What, in fact, are you planning to do? You have heard my tale, and my goals. Do you wish to stand in my way, or are you going to bend as the willows do and aid my cause of retrieval? I assure you that I do not renege on a debt of gratitude, and my mercy shall be reserved for those who aid me."
"Well, my previous journey, investigation into piracy, and diplomatic mission have all been effectively put on hold with this unexpected sojourn hell-wards.

"For now, I would accompany you investigating this cult's activities, later I may seek to protect this exiled land by delivering it to the protection of a demon lord, rather than let it be wasted by the squabbling and warring of lesser demons over its bounty."

Morse obviously has no reason to care for this region, but she might be tempted by the rewards of a demon lord's favor. And as for Rivers, well, deals with the devil are part of the story of anathema, no?

>out to steal the heart from Embri
A thief, to steal from the Thief? Most amusing indeed!

Lute will decline to take sides in this conflict for now, as she has met the Lady Embri previously. She might perhaps be able to negotiate a compromise, if Morse is willing to consider such a resolution.

--Present--
>you ought to know what kinds of rot-resistant trees grow in this hellscape. Sources of pure, clean water
Lute raises one eyebrow and reminds Morse that hell is a vast and varied landscape, and it's not as if she has encyclopedic familiarity with all of it.

That said, the most readily accessible source of those materials is likely to be, well, here, in the banished area. Malfean plants are usually metal, and water is less common than dust or acid. The stuff of creation is rare and valuable in hell.

>"Besides, why would we pay him with people, that would just be awkward."
Not to mention logistically difficult, and almost certainly overpaying (given the rarity of mortals in hell), and a terrible waste of potential.

Lute will support River's proposal for bribing the creature (although I'm still waiting on the results of my roll to see if I can recognize what it is >>912549 which might factor into how we handle it).

Okay I really struggled with this one for whatever reason, and cheapen out not writing proper dialog for half of it, but at least we can move on now.
>>
No. 913886 ID: 0640da

rolled 5, 10, 4, 8, 5, 7, 10, 10, 4, 2, 7, 9, 3, 4, 7, 3, 1, 4, 3, 5, 5, 2, 8, 10, 6, 8, 6, 4, 6, 3 = 169

>>913446
"As far as I can tell, the 'rot-resistant' explicitly requests we prepare him something suitable for water and food storage or construction." Morse shakes her head. "You wouldn't need rot-resistant wood if you were just making a table. He's not just trying to find something mortals would ascribe value to... hmm. I know you mentioned not having encyclopedic knowledge of Malfeas, but surely you must know what holds value in the eyes of demons. Perhaps we can sell him the soil of Creation, or maybe a few frogs from a nearby demense."

Morse plays them out all the way back to the town-- it's quite a trip for them, so she won't be making it back with her group anytime soon-- unless Lute or River has something to say about it.

"Earlier, you mentioned making a deal with... demons. Which demon in particular are we dealing with...? I typically don't go out of my way to summon in things that could make my mission a failure, let alone strong enough to lock me in a cage." Morse has read how these books go before-- you summon in a powerful demon, then you're getting kicked into the sun or come down with a case of demon worship. It almost never goes well for you-- otherwise, why would a demon bother to bargain with the idiot who summoned them knowing that they'd lose in the deal? If Morse were a demon, she'd get tired of being called in for petty things like plumbing and pickle jars rather quickly. "I see no reason why asking a demon to help us wouldn't end up with half of us on fire and the other half of us content with the fire we are now on."
>>
No. 913956 ID: 2007b6

>>913886
>rolled 5, 10, 4, 8, 5, 7, 10, 10, 4
I'm going to treat that as a Wits-based Academic Knowledge roll, to which your specialty is applicable (not that it actually mattered in this case). The Tome of Endless Night does mention, in the course of it's sweeping cosmic narrative, certain living creatures banished underground long before the first humans were created. This particular species is known to be native to the tunnels around the City of the Mountain Gateway, right on the other side of the Blackcrag Mountains from the Bishop's domain, which could easily be misconstrued as evidence that you're only a few hundred miles from home.

With six net successes, a comprehensive diagram of the Underpeople's entire domestic economy, mostly derived from first principles, coheres in Morse's mind in a single moment of blazing clarity. No roll will be needed for appropriate follow-up questions... so long as they're quick enough to be plausibly within the span of IC short-term memory, or you figure out some way to write it all down, and then still have those notes available for reference.

The violet-eyed underpeople want red jade as raw material with which to construct an industrial heat source, because air supply and smoke disposal for more conventional flames are a very serious problem with no routine access to the sky. They want water because it doesn't rain down there, and any natural watercourses would have long since either been tightly secured or become the subject of blood feuds, and defensive strategies probably depend heavily on control of choke points, so even a relatively small additional reserve might allow disproportionate strategic gains. Protein-rich food, likewise. Lumber, however, would almost certainly be primarily a prestige good, like gold foil and non-essence-conducting semiprecious stones are on the surface, or possibly a form of currency like the Guild uses silver. Trees don't grow in caves, so it would have to be imported, and down in the cold and damp, rot would be a constant concern no matter what it was being used for.

The one you're speaking with is not a demon (or at least, has shown no actual sign of being one; some sort of possession, or impersonation by, say, a Neomah or Gethin can't yet be ruled out, if you're feeling particularly paranoid), and does not seem to be aware of the surrounding region's transit to the Demon Realm, dismissing the associated omens (to the extent they were noticed at all) as a meteorological oddity relevant only to surface-dwellers.
>>
No. 914526 ID: 8d924c

>>913956
Roughly how many people are currently active in this? Is there any room for anyone else?
>>
No. 914585 ID: afdebc

>>914526
7 players and a GM, currently. Pretty sure there's still room if you wanna join in.
>>
No. 914586 ID: 2007b6

>>912549
>lore check to see if Lute recognizes what that is
>5 successes
One of the more stable breeds of underfolk. They live in tunnels all across the North (a separate ethnicity in the South has green eyes), sunlight burns them, and their most notable cultural quirk is assuming the penalty for breach of any contract is death unless (sometimes even if) specified otherwise. Like a lot of early primordial races, such as the dragon kings, mountain folk, or pelagials, all of them have enlightened essence as adults, and they tend to think of non-essence-users as dumb animals. Lot of other stuff you might plausibly know but that's the off-the-cuff highlights.
>>912475
Lute's had a pretty busy week: eight hours a day helping the Haslanti airship crew with repairs, eight hours sleeping, doing research and home-office politics, and keeping the local geomancy from tearing apart (it's a bit like the finesse involved in flipping a pancake), eight hours managing the glassworks. Productive, though. That bushbot arm finalized some fine repairs the captain thought would need to wait for drydock over the winter, and you're on pace to stock enough tempered-glass ammunition to keep a mid-sized company of archers or skirmishers supplied through a full year of low-intensity conflict or training, or a couple months of bloody siege.

Problem, though: the Sandpoint Devil sent a crew of hobgoblin workers to help run the glassworks. They're competent enough at the actual crafting, and follow your instructions to the letter (and usually also in spirit) within the scope of that job, but seem to have no regard for their own safety, or anyone else's. In fact, a major way they entertain themselves during time off is capturing townsfolk and splashing or drizzling molten glass onto them, as a form of art.

Putting up with that would mean suppressing Compassion and gaining Limit - quite frequently, too, if you let them do it within shouting distance of where you're working. Quashing the goblins' self-expression entirely would mean going against your Urge, which also results in limit gain. Talking them into only making glass statues out of each other and the occasional volunteers, rather than innocents, might be possible, but their boss would get upset with you for damaging his minions - and prospective minions, since gradually warping people into willingly collaborating with the goblins is part of a way to make more goblins.
>>
No. 914588 ID: 2007b6

>>914585
This is correct. A lot of the activity happens in the discord channel lately (there's a link to it on the wiki https://tgchan.org/wiki/RNG_XALT.qst ), but you'll get a chunk of easy starting XP for doing your character-creation work right here.

What sort of superpowered god-king are you interested in playing? Since Tunic quietly dropped out, dragon-blooded exalts have been underrepresented. They're less powerful in some ways, though, so that's sort of like playing the game on hard mode. Lot of nifty elemental stuff and teamwork-themed capabilities, though.

Nightmare mode, of course, would be trying to compete with a party of celestial exalts as a heroic mortal whose only access to magic is a few low-end artifacts, thaumaturgy, or - at terrible cost - the weakest tiers of martial arts, necromancy, or sorcery. Also, all the PCs and a big chunk of surrounding landscape just recently got dumped into the demon realm by a bizarre cataclysm, so any mere mortal going on adventures outside that area would need a plan for how to survive random demon encounters, and some sort of protection from the deadly miasma.
>>
No. 914605 ID: 5f3f48

>>913886
>"Earlier, you mentioned making a deal with... demons. Which demon in particular are we dealing with...? I typically don't go out of my way to summon in things that could make my mission a failure, let alone strong enough to lock me in a cage."
"We're already in the cage, as it were. No summoning necessary! And if you want to have nice things in hell," Lute says, sweeping her hand towards the landscape around them, "it helps to have the authority to keep the serfs and petty warlords in line, and save you from dealing with all of them."

"To answer your question, I would suggest Madelrada, She Who Wears Down Mountains. Very much a strategic long term planner who could find a use for an island of Creation within Malfeas."

>"I see no reason why asking a demon to help us wouldn't end up with half of us on fire and the other half of us content with the fire we are now on."
"Don't be silly, why would one of Kimbery's souls use fire?"

>>914586
>enough tempered-glass ammunition to keep a mid-sized company of archers or skirmishers supplied through a full year of low-intensity conflict or training, or a couple months of bloody siege.
Sounds like more than enough for Lute’s needs! I'll kept some in the Infinite Resplendence Amulet, and excess in the chancel.

>Problem
Fathomless Poison Haven and beloved status would clear that molten glass hazard right up, but sadly Lute has yet to master that particular mystery of Kimbery's.

Are the goblins messing with real mortals, or the mostly-fake inhabitants of Sandstone? (If it's the former, they shouldn't be outside her workshop. If it's the latter, why would they merit compassion?)

Assuming we're talking about the mortals of the nameless village, how about Lute teaches them a ritual or rite to ward off hobgolbin attacks (doesn't even need to be real thaumaturgy, just something the gobos argee to honor as part of their game). Means the only people getting attacked are those who accept it, or who choose not to better themselves. And any decrease in recruitment is offset by rites reinforcing the nascent cult.
>>
No. 914627 ID: 3b4d6e

Idve been asked to present a summary of Malice's actions during my ooc absence. So here we go!

It's a shame that the flying fortress was a bust. Malice is positive that place was full of goodies. Maybe she could make a return trip eventually, after things cool down.

Seems like something even more interesting is happening though. There are anathema everywhere! Best thing to do is observe them all, try to figure out what's going on before I reveal myself.

So some observations, notes, and working plans...

1. Don't get into a confrontation with Bridges the Sun and Moon. Might be able to get into her good graces. Maybe turn her against Jacint?
2. Embri has some nice artifacts to steal. Keep a close eye on her
3. Don't think I want Lute even knowing I exist

So mostly observing, planning, and tormenting sifu whenever I'm not busy with any of the above.

>Arberus
Until Arberus shows up. He seems aimless and destructive. Help him beat these monks, and maybe I can direct all that energy to something useful!
>>
No. 914646 ID: 8d924c

>>914588
Running a Dragon-Blooded character among Solaroids sounds rough. Infernals are kind of my favorites, although I'm not exactly an expert on the system. Looks like both other Infernals are already dipping into the best Yozi charmset, though(it's Metagaos those are great.)

It looks like most of the group are primarily fighting or stealthy sorts?
>>
No. 914651 ID: 2007b6

When Bridget, Lute, Morse, and Rivers return to the nameless town with the improvised airship dock, the first thing they all notice - from miles away, even - is an overwhelming flow of twisted Wood essence, a powerful new uncapped demesne. The second obvious change is that it has been conquered. A new god arrived, it's body (according to garbled, exuberant reports) comprised entirely of oversized teeth bound together into the shape of a man by blood-red creeper vines. It holds court beneath a cluster of gnarled, ancient-looking olive trees and seamlessly interlocking basalt arches, where less than a day ago there was only the wreck of a butcher's shop. Anyone nearby is frantic to serve the mad tyrant's every whim, but no two people can come to a lasting consensus on what it wants more specifically than "food."

Oil from those olives is thick, cloudy, and vile-tasting, like pus from a popped zit, but it burns well and smells pleasant enough, and new olives sprout and ripen faster than the previous crop can be picked. Over a hundred gallons are being extracted per hour, despite people constantly tripping over each other, and working with crude or improvised tools. Majority of the oil so far is going to refuel the Haslanti airship, in payment for the ballast-water they dumped which prevented the Hall of Records from burning down, and sundry other emergency services. The barber and undercover-lizard bartender are cuddled up together in a kitchen-cum-alchemy-lab, having passed out from exhaustion during initial experiments in making the olives more palatable with various combinations of other unnaturally-accelerated plant life.

All the Immaculate missionaries have been brutalized, but none of them are yet confirmed dead. Disciple of Mela is missing. Disciple of Sextes Jylis seems to be in the best shape, with only a few scratches and bruises, and is tending to the Disciple of Hesiesh, who's burning up with fever from an infected gut wound with actual mushrooms growing out of it, some of them big as a child's fist; she says all that mundane medicine can do for him at this point is delay the inevitable, survival and recovery would probably require a miracle. The Disciple of Pasiap has several broken fingers and is more or less cowering in a greenhouse on the outskirts of town, weeping bitter tears over fresh strawberries which now taste like slightly rancid pork. Disciple of Danaa'd caught a knife to the eye and a chain 'round the neck in the riot, then was force-fed blood from the god's magic chalice, which seems to have fully repaired her physical wounds, but she has yet to regain consciousness.

The abbot personally wrestled that bizarre tooth-monster, and at one point stabbed it in the crotch with a perfectly executed Five-Dragon Style spear kata that would have turned any ordinary god into a hotdog-on-a-stick, but seemingly achieved nothing by doing so, and was badly wounded in the process. Numerous puncture wounds, and his entire nose was bitten off. He accepted that same chalice, but rather than drinking from it, grabbed a chisel and a big jar of salt and fled, barricading himself inside the local immaculate temple/dojo. There have been thumping and scratching noises from the upper floor, like an angry wood-carving project.
>>
No. 914653 ID: 2007b6

>>914646
Arberus, the most combat-focused character, as yet has no step 2 perfects, no surprise-negator, nor even any excellencies with a solar-tier dice cap, and only one dot in Dexterity. I think a reasonably optimized terrestrial could have something useful to contribute on that front.

Also, current situation involves being stuck in Malfeas with hundreds or possibly thousands of unprepared mortals, so the various DB teamwork buffs that can bring ordinary soldiers up to the level where they pose a credible threat to demons might be very useful in the near future.
>>
No. 914654 ID: d9acdc

rolled 3, 3, 7, 4, 4, 6, 4, 8, 4, 7, 4, 2, 4, 4, 7, 6, 1, 6, 6, 9, 3, 8, 5, 2, 9, 2, 3, 5, 8, 5 = 149

"Your hopes and dreams, returned." Bridget announces apon arriving at the scene of the fight. She returns the young ones, tired, but at least appropriately fed over the last few days of the journey.

"It sorrows me that violence still continues despite the tragedy of recent events. I will tend to your wounded. I ask that none assault me, but if it is necessary, then let it be done now so as not to interfere."

Hardly moving her head, Bridget cast her gaze downward to survey the immaculate before her, judging the condition. How long can the inevitable be delayed? And how much can she contribute, assuming she can procure tools and medicine?

Assuming that's a medicine + int roll to check someones condition, then that's 9 dice, + extra for padding.
>>
No. 914655 ID: 8d924c

>>914653
Huh. Any sorcerers? I like Dragonblooded, I'm just reluctant to try and match up to Solar types because that only really gets more and more difficult as they grow more experienced.
>>
No. 914656 ID: afdebc

>>914655
No sorcerer PCs yet, though at least one character planning to initiate eventually. Some allied terrestrial sorcerer npcs (The lunar works for Mother Bog and has some of the behemoth's minions at her disposal).
>>
No. 914660 ID: 8d924c

>>914656
I'd be interested in rolling up a Fiend sorcerer, maybe, but I'm having trouble finding a way to fit any of the Ebon Dragon charms in, given how much more immediately useful Cecelyne's charms are to a sorcerer. Most first circle demons don't hit Essence 4, and Cecelyne's sorcerous initiation(which makes the most important spell for a sorcerer out of character creation cheaper) requires Cecelyne's excellency.

Should I try and catch up with what's actually going on, or is it better I arrive unaware?
>>
No. 914665 ID: 2007b6

>>914660
Go ahead and roll up a Malefactor. Seven BP for E3, First Cecelyne Excellency x3, Sorcerous Initiation, Slave-Spawn Summons, five slots free for unfavored charms. One fine day you were walking along in the Endless Desert, minding your own business, when suddenly a 50-mile-wide chunk of Creation smacked you upside the head, plummeting toward the Demon City like the exact opposite of a bat out of hell.
>>
No. 914672 ID: 2007b6

>>914654
Perception + Medicine for diagnosis, actually. Same number of dice in your case. Two or three successes should be enough to figure out any reasonably common disease. Looks like this is a more or less normal infected wound, accelerated by the demesne's abundant wood essence... but there could be more to it than that. Want to spend eight hours and 8 XP to learn Flawless Diagnosis Technique, thereby removing all doubt?
>>
No. 914673 ID: 2007b6

>>914654
With Food-Gathering Exercise you could make the olive-harvesting operation dramatically more efficient, and/or scrounge up some appropriate herbs for treating the Disciple of Hesiesh's infection, but to do so you'd first need to persuade people to follow your instructions, which requires some social skills.
>>
No. 914683 ID: 8d924c

Going with the Fiend sorcerer idea, my current thoughts on charms and spells look something like this-

Cecelyne(Favored) Charms:
First Cecelyne Excellency x 3
Sorcerous Enlightenment of Cecelyne(Emerald)
Transcendent Desert Creature

SWLIHN Charms:
Factual Determination Analysis
Essence Dissecting Stare
Cosmic Transcendence of Conviction

Spells:

Death of Obsidian Butterflies
Slave Spawn Summons

7 BP for Essence 3
1 BP for Conviction 5
5 BP for Willpower 10 because that's just good for every conceivable thing.

Not sure yet on anything beyond that, and I'm not an expert on the rules, but that's at least a framework.
>>
No. 914684 ID: e4aa95

>Bats start flying in the dark.
>"Hey, are you out there?! ..."
If there aren't any other anathema around, Malice goes ahead and drops Hidden Predator Camouflage. Hanging upside-down from an olive branch just out of reach. She makes a high-pitched squeak to announce her presence.
>>
No. 914690 ID: e4aa95

rolled 2, 2, 10, 9, 3, 10, 1, 10, 9, 5 = 61

Malice has no idea what this monstrosity is saying, but he's cute. She'll give another squeak and then fly down to help Arberus sample his meat. She will poof if any of the other PCs show up though. I'll go ahead and roll for that contingency?
>>
No. 914703 ID: 2007b6

>>914683
Looks reasonable so far. That leaves you 5 BP unspent, enough for, say, three thaumaturgy procedures and upgrading a 3-dot background to 5-dot. Could get up to 10 more BP through various flaws, but being the relatively sane one in the group also has it's advantages.

Essence 3, Willpower 10, Compassion 2, Conviction 5, Temperance 2, Valor 1?

Bureaucracy 1, Craft (Air) 2, Craft (Fire) 2, Craft (Lightning) 5, Lore 5, Occult 5 (Art of Enchantment +2) (Art of Geomancy +2), and a dot each in five Favored skills representing hobbies you're enthusiastic about but never had a chance to pursue seriously because of all-consuming sorcerous academy gifted-child grad student burnout?

That would just leave Motivation, Urge (including which yozi archetype, which affects Unwoven Coadjutor options), Attributes, Backgrounds, and Intimacies.
>>
No. 914717 ID: 8d924c

>>914703
Motivation: To mend the broken Primordials and turn them to the service of Creation.

Sure, it's probably some sort of heresy, and the Yozi wouldn't like it much if they were digging through his head, but he considers himself loyal. He just thinks he knows better than they do. Which is probably far worse in most of their eyes.

I'm thinking a Cecelynian Urge, but I'm kinda blanking on what.

Attributes something like

Strength 1 Dexterity 4 Stamina 2
Charisma 3 Manipulation 4 Appearance 2
Perception 3 Intelligence 5 Wits 3

Five favored abilities: Presence, Integrity, Stealth, Medicine, and Survival?

Backgrounds:
Default Infernal stuff so
Cult 1 Backing 1 Influence 1
Artifact 1 x 2 for a copy of The White Treatise and The Black Treatise, having a basic guide to sorcerous initiation and a handful of spells seems good.
Demonic Familiar 1 x 2 for an Agata and a Sesseljae familiar who I've earned the loyalty of.
Possibly Manse 5 for a place somewhere here in Malfeas/Cecelyne.

Intimacies would most likely be to my familiars and my manse.
>>
No. 914729 ID: 2007b6

>>914717
For attributes, mostly looks good, but how about shifting that to Perception 4 and Wits 2? Optimized for crafting a bit better that way, and fits the training-accident backstory.

If you're taking a high-rated manse, the Black and White Treatises of Sorcery could just occupy a slot each as part of the Archive power rather than needing to be bought separately. That frees up two background dots for Resources, so you can start out with a steady job and reasonable mundane equipment, instead of being flat broke and homeless apart from the manse - or one dot in resources and a hearthstone amulet, so you can actually use that 5-dot hearthstone's power.

Speaking of which, what are you looking for in a manse? A decent library, of course, and probably some spaces and accessories suitable for entertaining guests if you're going to be an infernal diplomat, but what else? Hellstrider assembly workshop, specialty summoning circles, doom cannon turret on the roof? What sort of hearthstone power? Throw together a wish list and we can work backwards to figure out an appropriate aspect.
>>
No. 914733 ID: 2007b6

>>914683
Actually, if you're taking Cecelyne favored, how about Ego-Infused Pattern Primacy or Unshattered Tongue Perfection in place of Transcendent Desert Creature?
>>
No. 914737 ID: 8d924c

>>914729
Swapping out Transcendent Desert Creature for Ego-Infused Pattern Primacy makes sense, you're right. Attribute change is fine also.

Summoning circle I believe there's just the one in Dreams of the First Age, which is a good power to have. Can't use it without Sapphire sorcery but it saves a lot of effort. That, and then primarily library or utility/comfort options, I'd think.

As for hearthstone power, I was looking at Third Hand Orb, as something that would start useful and possibly improve with more abilities.
>>
No. 914744 ID: 0640da

rolled 10, 3, 6, 5, 9, 5, 8, 8, 4, 3, 10, 3, 1, 7, 4, 4, 6, 3, 2, 3, 6, 3, 1, 3, 6, 6, 6, 9, 3, 4 = 151

"I assume you intended to summon the demons before creatures made of teeth took over." Morse plucks at strings, rolling her eyes at Lute. "Oh, great. The bright and sunny one is here too. Well, I know what we'll offer the Underperson now, assuming I can't bargain you for the flesh of the solar." Morse's voice is acrid as her pale eyes follow Bridget into town...

Morse hums a tune, trying to feel out the discord... All of these people are just too damn hopeful, she thinks to herself. They're so obsessed with this small setback they seem to have lost sight of their greater demise... perhaps I should remind them. She glances at Bridget, and restrains herself, before speaking up. "Miss High and Mighty-- go do some dentistry for me. You know, to pay me back for smacking me around. I've a sermon to hold at dawn and I can't be bothered to play to self-proclaimed gods and kings. Rough him up a little. Remind him he's a maggot." She's mighty presumptuous for someone who-- wait. How did she get out of her box.

Morse isn't happy someone has waltzed in and declared themselves ruler of anything. This is definitely playing to her rebellious tendencies... she would need very little pushing to join a fight to 'seize back control the town butchery', even if it isn't her current objective. She's got a general feeling of unease about dealing with Madelrada as well.
>>
No. 914751 ID: e4aa95

rolled 4, 5, 8, 8, 7, 6, 7, 1, 7, 2, 7, 1, 6, 6, 5, 3, 3, 6, 1, 1 = 94

>"The Old Monk with the bad knee ..."
Malice squeaks cheerfully at all of Arberus' words, of which I assume there are many.

>If the enthralled cooks are an unwanted element
Malice is clearly very shy.

Alright so all these exalts are showing up and kicking around like they own the place. Not sure how to resolve this, but I'm going to try to stalk them best I can while remaining undetected. I'll dump the full ten motes from excellency into making sure they don't notice me. That's 20 dice total in addition to the awareness penalties from my charms. If you want justification for how the excellency applies, Malice has plans that involve Arberus and she doesn't want any interference.
>>
No. 914813 ID: 2007b6

>>914737
So, we're probably going for least one Archive, a Host-Binding Circle, and Integrated Utility Artifacts (Crucible of Tarim and... maybe a Wondrous Globe Of Precious Stability? Or a Ring of Vanishing Escape? Something entirely new?). Even with no drawbacks, that leaves a few points unspent. Rainbow Tabernacle for an all-purpose sorcery boost? Some sprawling shogunate-style workshop? Ultra-deadly traps? Or maybe just a hologram projector and an assortment of minor magical luxuries.

What are you picturing for the manse's more cosmetic design features? What's the immediate environment around it?
>>

rolled 8, 3, 9, 10, 7, 8, 4, 3, 6, 8, 2, 2, 10, 6, 10, 7, 1, 9, 6, 1 = 120

>>914651
Well! More excitement. I suppose with all that's going on, the appearance of spooky and the nudist isn't going to draw much attention.

In the event Rivers does want to keep a low profile, Lute would be willing to give a pet-possum a ride.

>The barber and undercover-lizard bartender are cuddled up together in a kitchen-cum-alchemy-lab, having passed out from exhaustion during initial experiments in making the olives more palatable with various combinations of other unnaturally-accelerated plant life.
Awwww. Lute drapes a blanket over the cuddle pile.

Then takes a picture with the Shard Fallen.

>>914744
>I assume you intended to summon the demons before creatures made of teeth took over.
Lute shrugs expressively. "Before lesser demons squander the entire area fighting over it, at least. The dental deity does seem fairly benign so far as supernatural conquers go. No deaths, or injuries outside the Immaculate Order, who he showed mercy to!"

Lute quickly decides it would be prudent to learn what she can about this new local god. She quickly determines he is outside fate when Efficient Secretary Technique returns null (hardly surprising in hell) and sets out to gather information the old fashioned way.

Rolling investigation (I assume) to try and gather better details from townspeople, or from the scene of combat where the toothy titan triumphed.
>>
No. 914820 ID: 8d924c

>>914813
Powers like Glorious Halo of Hesiesh, Central Control, or Mela's Sweet Whisper seem appropriate. As for the integrated utilities, possibly a Celestial Phoenix Cauldron? Maybe also a 1 dot Cargo Preservation Spindle?

As for cosmetic appearance, I think for the most part that'd fall to the Yozi it was dedicated to. Would this be somewhere in Malfeas or in Cecelyne?
>>
No. 914834 ID: 2007b6

>>914816
>She quickly determines he is outside fate when Efficient Secretary Technique returns
According to Madelrada's personnel files, he's named Arberus, formerly worked as an apprentice poultry butcher, was approached for recruitment by the Cult of the Syrinx Prophet Executioner but never responded, and is the new incarnation of the essence of Force of Ordered Thought, who died fighting the lesser elemental dragon Joyous Youth Juritsu (and an unidentified individual capable of breaking terrestrial circle sorcery) inside a burning casino, never having made it to her new-hire orientation briefing at the Conventicle Malfeasant.

Madelrada notes that Arberus's armor is highly anomalous, and she'd like a chance to examine it directly. His unwoven coadjutor was a blood ape airship engineer who had not yet attained citizenship.
>Rolling investigation (I assume) to try and gather better details from townspeople, or from the scene of combat where the toothy titan triumphed.
The Shard Fallen provides a bonus on examining the physical scene, reveals some otherwise imperceptible details such as essence traces and microscopic marks on the cobblestones, and even helps the people you're interviewing overcome distorted perceptions and memories. The fight happened outdoors, in a busy marketplace, while a powerful demesne was still stabilizing, so you're not going to be able to pin it all down to blow-by-blow choreography, but it's clear enough generally what happened.
>>
No. 914835 ID: 2007b6

>>914820
If you're going to get a Cargo Preservation Spindle as an integrated utility artifact, it needs to be at least a 2-dot model, for the equivalent of a small commercial walk-in fridge. The 1-dot model can only be applied to a single sealed container. Similarly, I'm not inclined to allow an integrated Celestial Phoenix Cauldron when you could just get a proper atelier-manse feature for mass producing alchemical items.
> Would this be somewhere in Malfeas or in Cecelyne?
That's up to you. Could even be some other realm entirely, one of the other yozi landscapes or a stable island way out in the Wyld, or a pocket dimension created by Pressed Beyond The Veil Of Time, or... just about anything, really.
>As for cosmetic appearance, I think for the most part that'd fall to the Yozi it was dedicated to.
This is profoundly unhelpful. Think up specific, tangible architectural or environmental details, whether fantastical or prosaic. Given an unlimited special effects budget, what sort of place would you want to live and work in?
>>
No. 914867 ID: bb5006

>>914816

As a quick response on that front, River has no intention on taking a low profile. She wouldn't object to being carried around, but that would take Lute and Morse working together to pick her up. Although, if they wanted, River is more than willing to carry everyone.
>>
No. 914895 ID: d9acdc

>>Discord
>The disciple of Sextes Jylis is not acting hostile towards Bridget, and is greatful to have the children returned

>>914744
>"Miss High and Mighty-- go do some dentistry for me. You know, to pay me back for smacking me around. I've a sermon to hold at dawn and I can't be bothered to play to self-proclaimed gods and kings. Rough him up a little. Remind him he's a maggot." She's mighty presumptuous for someone who-- wait. How did she get out of her box.

Bridget steps forward to block line of sight between Morse and the wounded, addressing the monk behind her:
"Take the children and your friend to safety, Oblivion approaches."

Then, frame crouched, ready to jump, Bridget addresses Morse.
"I require the help of your traveling companions."

For anyone with the wits or skills to read emotions/intent, most likely Lute, Bridget intends to grab Rivers and Lute, and jump away, to remain safe from Morse
>>
No. 914899 ID: bb5006

>>914895

"You know, if you want my help, I'm more than happy to give it to you, but running away probably isn't a great idea and we should all probably sit down to have a nice long discussion about appropriate responses after we figure out what this tooth monster is. Also, I would appreciate not taking the children away, since I have some rather pointed questions I want to ask the 'kid with bells' among the would be slaves, since I got word straight from the slaver's mouths that she was in charge of something deeper than the low level goons transporting the kidnapped people to Bear Pond knew any details about, and I want to learn more about this 'Cult of the Syrinx Prophet Executioner' that this is all tied back to and she's my best lead."

River, regardless of if Morse was letting her carry her, held on fairly tightly to the Abyssal. "Plus, we're kind of inseparable. So if you want my help, I'm dragging her along."
>>
No. 914922 ID: 8d924c

Here is what I have so far for my character

Seven Broken Wings of Red and Gold
Green Sun Prince (Cecelyne Favored)
Fiend Caste

Motivation: Mend the broken Primordials and turn them to the betterment of Creation.
Urge: Force Halta and the Linowan to ally with each other against a greater threat.

Intimacies:
Attachment to my Manse
Fondness and affection for my Agata and Sesseljae familiars
Sorrow for the Neverborn
Regrets for my past with the Seventh Legion

Virtues:
Compassion 2
Conviction 5
Temperance 2
Valor 1

Attributes:
Strength 1 Dexterity 4 Stamina 2
Charisma 3 Manipulation 4 Appearance 2
Perception 4 Intelligence 5 Wits 2

Essence: 3
Willpower: 10

Personal Pool: 19
Peripheral Pool: 40

Cecelyne Charms:
First Cecelyne Excellency x 3
Sorcerous Enlightenment of Cecelyne(Emerald)

SWLIHN Charms:
Essence Dissecting Stare
Factual Determination Analysis
Cosmic Transcendence of Conviction
Counter-Conceptual Interposition

Spells:
Death of Obsidian Butterflies
Slave Spawn Summons

Thaumaturgy Arts:
Adept Geomancy
Adept Enchantment

Thaumaturgy Procedures:
Essential River Channeling
Essence Enlightening Sutra
Scrying

Backgrounds:
Cult 1(Ebon Dragon)
Backing 1(Reclamation)
Influence 1(Reclamation)
Demonic Familiar 1(Agata)
Demonic Familiar 1(Sesseljae)
Manse 5(See below)
Resources 1
Artifact 1(Hearthstone Amulet)


Manse 5(Elloge): No drawbacks, Free Password Activation, Archive, Central Control, Host-Binding Circle, Integrated Utility Artifacts (Cargo Preservation Spindle, Omniscient Literary Advisor, Crucible of Tarim), Magical Conveniences, Mela's Sweet Whisper
Conveniences: But I'd be willing to say you can get a system which lets you put a recently-slain animal in one end, and receive ready-to-eat meals, parchment (with or without printed words), and bones (polished, optionally engraved) out the other, as well as disposing of waste and providing clean water, hot and cold on demand even in an arid climate, with all that counting as just two of the Magical Conveniences. One for the butchering and kitchen, one for the waste disposal and plumbing.
Lighting would then be a third.
Archive: Black and White Treatise, Mastery of Alchemy, 2 Sapphire Circle Spells: Ivory Orchid Pavilion and Raise The Puissant Sanctum.

Hearthstone: Home's Hearth

7 BP for Essence 3
1 BP for Conviction 5
5 BP for Willpower 10
4 BP for Manse 5
1 BP for three Procedures
>>
No. 914927 ID: 2007b6

>>914922
It's silly to have two different essence enlightening procedures. Take the procedure for making Aegis-Inset Amulets instead, that fits better for a former Lookshyan sorcerer-technician. Also, you don't seem to have any skills listed.
>>
No. 914931 ID: 8d924c

>>914927
Yeah, made the post then immediately realized I forgot the Abilities.

Adjusted:

Seven Broken Wings of Red and Gold
Green Sun Prince (Cecelyne Favored)
Fiend Caste

Motivation: Mend the broken Primordials and turn them to the betterment of Creation.
Urge: Force Halta and the Linowan to ally with each other against a greater threat.

Intimacies:
Attachment to my Manse
Fondness and affection for my Agata and Sesseljae familiars
Sorrow for the Neverborn
Regrets for my past with the Seventh Legion

Virtues:
Compassion 2
Conviction 5
Temperance 2
Valor 1

Attributes:
Strength 1 Dexterity 4 Stamina 2
Charisma 3 Manipulation 4 Appearance 2
Perception 4 Intelligence 5 Wits 2

Abilities:
*Bureaucracy 1
*Linguistics
*Ride
*Sail
*Socialize
Craft (Air) 2
Craft (Fire) 2
Craft (Lightning) 5
Lore 5
Occult 5 (Art of Enchantment +2) (Art of Geomancy +2)
*Presence 1
*Integrity 1
*Medicine 1
*Resistance 1
*War 1

Essence: 3
Willpower: 10

Personal Pool: 19
Peripheral Pool: 40

Cecelyne Charms:
First Cecelyne Excellency x 3
Sorcerous Enlightenment of Cecelyne(Emerald)

SWLIHN Charms:
Essence Dissecting Stare
Factual Determination Analysis
Cosmic Transcendence of Conviction
Counter-Conceptual Interposition

Spells:
Death of Obsidian Butterflies
Slave Spawn Summons

Thaumaturgy Arts:
Adept Geomancy
Adept Enchantment

Thaumaturgy Procedures:
Essential River Channeling
Aegis-Inset Amulets
Scrying

Backgrounds:
Cult 1(Ebon Dragon)
Backing 1(Reclamation)
Influence 1(Reclamation)
Demonic Familiar 1(Agata)
Demonic Familiar 1(Sesseljae)
Manse 5(See below)
Resources 1
Artifact 1(Hearthstone Amulet)


Manse 5(Elloge): No drawbacks, Free Password Activation, Archive, Central Control, Host-Binding Circle, Integrated Utility Artifacts (Cargo Preservation Spindle, Omniscient Literary Advisor, Crucible of Tarim), Magical Conveniences, Mela's Sweet Whisper
Conveniences: But I'd be willing to say you can get a system which lets you put a recently-slain animal in one end, and receive ready-to-eat meals, parchment (with or without printed words), and bones (polished, optionally engraved) out the other, as well as disposing of waste and providing clean water, hot and cold on demand even in an arid climate, with all that counting as just two of the Magical Conveniences. One for the butchering and kitchen, one for the waste disposal and plumbing.
Lighting would then be a third.
Archive: Black and White Treatise, Mastery of Alchemy, 2 Sapphire Circle Spells: Ivory Orchid Pavilion and Raise The Puissant Sanctum.

Hearthstone: Home's Hearth



7 BP for Essence 3
1 BP for Conviction 5
5 BP for Willpower 10
4 BP for Manse 5
1 BP for three Procedures
>>
No. 914940 ID: 2007b6

>>914931
So, one day you're walking along in the Endless Desert, then something weird happened and you're suddenly standing on a charred-looking border ( https://tgchan.org/kusaba/questarch/res/678842.html ) between the musky bronze trees of Hrotsvitha, the Spawning Forest on one side and an inexplicably transplanted chunk of Creation on the other - judging by the variety of plants and insects visible at a glance (and your Lore 5), it's from the Northeast, probably near the Avarice River. There's a very powerful Wood-aspect demesne just a few hundred yards from the border, corresponding to a small town, from which has just been launched a young woman dressed as a second-coil Immaculate monk. She lands high in a tree right on the other side of the border, and drops a throwing knife which lands at your feet. Looks like feathersteel, and a weak "lucky rock" auto-return enchantment.
>>
No. 914942 ID: 8d924c

>>914940
Oh good. A free knife? Guess that's mine now. Feathersteel should be able to make some noise and maybe wake up the monk. Bronze makes pleasant sounds. Make the tree ring out. Strike it with the knife.

"Hello up there? Are you dead? What's going on here?"

Wings of Red and Gold checks the color of the Immaculate's robe, while trying to wake them. There certainly shouldn't be any members of the Immaculate Order here, but there shouldn't be large chunks of Creation transplanted here either.
>>

rolled 8, 3, 3, 1, 1, 3, 7, 5, 4, 8 = 43

>>914867
It's a date. Rain check? If only because it's difficult to investigate a crime scene / site of battle while being carried!

>>914834
A silent prayer is offered for a fallen comrade and fellow agent of the Reclamation, still new to her position, only briefly known and cut down too soon. Rest in Peace, Force of Ordered Thought. May your next incarnation keep the green torch burning longer than the last.

Getting Arberus' armor to Madelrada for a personal investigation will take some arranging, but in the meanwhile, Lute Silhouette should be able to conduct a preliminary inspection herself.

Wrapping up her investigation, Lute addresses her companions. "Good news! The Benevolent Bicuspid isn't a god. He's exalted, (or anathema, per immaculate terminology)," she clarifies for River's sake "with a very interesting set of armor."

With a conspiratorial grin, the vizier addresses the licentious lunar directly "Would you be interested in getting him out of his armor and distracted so I might get a good look at it?"

>confrontation between Morse, Light and Bridget
Lute feels sympathy for Bridges the Sun and Moon- her intention was to head home, but the precipitation of the local area into Malfeas has delayed this. Still, it's good to see her friend again, and that she was able to rescue the hostages!


Rolling a (probably unneeded) prayer roll, if Brigdet commits to grabbing people and attempting surprise we'll probably need several rolls for that.
>>
No. 914976 ID: 0640da

rolled 1, 9, 2, 3, 1, 8, 4, 9, 5, 4, 6, 3, 7, 3, 8, 3, 3, 7, 5, 9 = 100

>>914959
>>914899
>>914895
Morse Song shows initial resistance when she's scooped up, but seems to have relaxed and gone limp in River's arms. There's no use fighting your death, and little in fighting your life. As Bridget comes to pry her off and separate Light from her, Morse speaks up to prevent that separation.

"I wouldn't do that, if I were you. This music I play is the only thing preventing us all from meeting an untimely demise... and I don't mind killing the mortals around you until you listen to my demands."

When Lute stops for a moment and reports that their newest target is an Exalted, Morse rolls her eyes. "Of course he's Exalted. Only Exalted and arrogant monsters would claim to be gods. I bet he still bleeds."
>>
No. 915004 ID: e4aa95

rolled 10, 8, 10, 4 = 32

>checks the color of the Immaculate's robe
Simple hempen robe cinched up with a blue linen belt.

The monk's head turns to face Wings of Red and Gold, with a large fuzzy insect clinging to her face. She makes a horrified show of pulling it off, and retches for a few minutes before replying. "I'm a missionary of the Immaculate Order. What is this place?"

She'll try to position herself more comfortably on the tree branch and try to dress her knife wounds. I'm guessing that's Intelligence (3) + Medicine (1) so four dice.
>>
No. 915006 ID: 70903e

>>914976
>As Bridget comes to pry her off and separate Light from her, Morse speaks up to prevent that separation.

>>914959
>if Brigdet commits to grabbing people and attempting surprise

Bridget, as mentioned, is some distance away, crouched in a defensive position, ready to jump. Her intention was to entice Lute and Rivers to approach her so she could "rescue" them, by scooping them into her arms and jumping away from Morse. It doesn't sound like anyone is approaching, and Bridget is not going to come try and wrestle anyone, so currently no one should be worried about, or acting as if, Bridget is trying to manhandle people.

>>914899
>Plus, we're kind of inseparable. So if you want my help, I'm dragging her along

Bridget remains at the ready, prepared to jump at a moments notice.
"She tasked me humble the "God". I cannot do so alone. If she wishes to attend to it, she may. Your decisions are your own."

I hope she mutters silently, an internal prayer that things are not too far gone.
>>
No. 915007 ID: 8d924c

>>915004
"Oh dear. I'm afraid you've unexpectedly arrived to visit Hrotsvitha, the Spawning Forest, ninth soul of the Black Boar that Twists the Skies. Not really a place mortals do well in. Especially not when they're already wounded."

Wings of Red and Gold pauses to make sure nothing has snuck up on him in the meantime, brushing invisible dust from his robes.

"I would highly recommend that you make your way back to the people you're meant to be protecting. I don't think they'll be very well prepared for what is going to happen once those here start to realize what has happened."
>>
No. 915008 ID: bb5006

>"Would you be interested in getting him out of his armor and distracted so I might get a good look at it?"

"Well, I guess I can't promise anything, but I CAN give it the old soldier's effort. But you have to hold onto Morse. You know she gets cranky, and I don't want us to get split up again so badly, since we've finally gotten where all of the action is going to happen. Also, I don't think I actually got your name when we met, but you don't have to do what she asks you to." She kissed Morse on the head and tried to hand her off to Lute to look around for the so called king/exalt of this town so she could introduce herself.

> Arberus makes his way to the temple some time during the day and knocks on the main temple door. He knocks hard.

Only to realize that he was standing about 10 feet away and right there. "Well, I've got to go deal with this, I'll leave knowing how to help smooth things out to your specialties, but nobody is fighting anyone or I'll have to come over there and punch whoever started it. Also no steel coffins, that just isn't right."

With her warnings out of the way, she walked over to Arberus at the door and draped herself over his armor. "Now what could you possibly want with a wrinkly old prune like an old man? Why don't you come around to the back of this church for some nice innocent fun?"

(Should we roleplay, or should I just drop dice at him?)
>>
No. 915009 ID: e4aa95

>I'm afraid you've unexpectedly arrived to visit Hrotsvitha, the Spawning Forest, ninth soul of the Black Boar that Twists the Skies.
The monk seems pretty shocked in general, but doesn't seem to know how to react to this particular revelation.

>I would highly recommend that you make your way back to the people you're meant to be protecting.
"They've all become like savage animals. Some...thing arrived, beautiful and beguiling, it commanded the villagers to attack me and my fellow monks. Tainted the land with grotesque growths..."

She pauses for a breather.

"I will return, though I think it will be my death in doing so. I don't know who you are, but thank you for your guidance."
>>
No. 915011 ID: afdebc

>But you have to hold onto Morse.
Lute salutes, and locks elbows with Morse.

>I don't think I actually got your name when we met, but you don't have to do what she asks you to.
"Ah! Formal introductions." Gesturing to each in turn, "May I present Bridges The Sun and Moon (Bridget), Light of the Moon Cleansing the World (Rivers to her friends), Morse Encoding of Forbidden Lore, Wrapped in Song (or more casually Morse Song) and", placing her hand on her chest, "Lute Silhouette Speculation in Comet's Reflection".

>"She tasked me humble the "God". I cannot do so alone. If she wishes to attend to it, she may. Your decisions are your own."
Lute proposes that perhaps we ought to leave Rivers free to attempt to "humble" him before resorting to violence. It'll be a chance to learn more about him before anything drastic. Perhaps Bridget would be willing to join Lute in investigating his unusual armor should Rivers get him out of it?
>>
No. 915014 ID: bb5006

"You know, I think I'm the one who should be asking 'huh'. Although, I guess having a cup for a friend probably isn't the weirdest possible thing. Plus, I'm more a fan of hearts than faces, but I guess there's hardly anything for that. And no, I'm NOT from around here, I can see you're smart too."

Like a snake flowing through the grass, River circled around so that she was in front of him, and holding herself up in the air, mimicking being held bridal style with her body in hopes that he would hold her.

"But, I have no idea what help you think I could give, and on the cold hard ground in a city with someone handsome like yourself would be a fairly big step up in grandeur from in the middle of the woods with a neat looking wolf pack or something."

As if to emphasize her point, she got as close to Arberus's face as she could with her own.
>>
No. 915022 ID: 2007b6

>>915004
Five successes out of a required three, even though you forgot to include a stunt for the bandaging. Blood loss has been stanched. Still some risk of re-opening the wound if you exert yourself, so be careful about climbing down the tree.
>>
No. 915034 ID: 8d924c

>>915009
"Already? That was much faster than I would have expected. Maybe I should start moving before whatever is left of this place becomes integrated into Malfeas without trace. Doesn't give me very much time to come up with anything. Tell me, Immaculate, what do you believe I should do?"

Wings of Red and Gold smiles faintly up at the Disciple of Mela, waiting for a response.
>>
No. 915036 ID: bb5006

"Well, you can call me River, and I don't know exactly what kind of things you're talking about doing, but as long as I'm one of them that's plenty fine by me."

Even if she wasn't smart, River was fairly sly, and worked on finding an easy enough way to take off Arberus's armor. After all, it's hard to accomplish much of anything when someone's wrapped up in a suit of metal and apparently teeth.
>>
No. 915038 ID: bb5006

"Alright, so you want this to be a bit more grand than my usual affairs. Alright, I think this might be the right way to go with this."

Less than a second after she started talking, she had sprung from Arberus's body, kicking off of the heavy door with enough force that it dented under her foot, a masterful palm strike wrapped in enough silver essence to enlarge her hand to as large as the unprotected face she was punching through.

((Combat carrying over to discord, summary coming soon))
>>
No. 915040 ID: e4aa95

Malice hangs silently, watching this seduction attempt with calculating precision, poised to swoop down and slap the shit out of somebody.
>>
No. 915045 ID: 0640da

rolled 10, 2, 10, 2, 1, 6, 9, 4, 5, 6, 2, 7, 9, 1, 6, 2, 7, 6, 8, 5, 8, 9, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 5, 6 = 176

((Someone else do the summary, I didn't even get to participate before the combat was over. :P))

Morse looks at Lute, tilting her head... she recognizes that symbol from somewhere, but she can't exactly remember what. Lore roll on it, or Occult as necessary to recognize a Sidereal of Venus.

It's about time we talked. Lute's mind is assaulted by some unknown, black and dreary force... there's a spine-chilling ooze attempting to worm its way inside, a low scream heard at an impossible frequency. Morse is trying to establish a mental communication channel through Screaming in Silence-- will Lute resist? She expends 5 peripheral motes doing so. Stop resisting. Your efforts to block communication will only cause you pain. I wish only to speak with you... alone.
>>
No. 915046 ID: 2007b6

>>915045
Four successes and basic training in Occult is enough to conclude that the sign of Venus glowing on somebody's forehead means they're some sort of Anathema, and guess that their powers probably have something to do with the stars in general and more specifically the constellations of the Ewer, the Lovers, the Musician, the Peacock, and/or the Pillar. Also, enough to recite the thematic associations of those constellations in considerable detail. Not quite enough to deduce the exact effects of individual charms, though.
>>
No. 915105 ID: bb5006

Alright, so summary time.

River started off the fight, kind of, by getting punched into the ground by Malice with a sneak attack, and Lute joined in by flaring her caste mark to try and find Malice.

Arberus grew to giant size and tried to grapple River, who covered herself in mud and used it to launch herself 20 feet into the air, where she punched Arberus as best as possible against his defenses.

A Luminata showed up and asked to eat some people, Arberus decided to go chase that, causing Malice to go after him, and River was about to give chases, but stayed back so Lute could get a magical lock on her.

As soon as Arberus caught up with the Luminata and Malice with Arberus, the Luminata used social fu to make Malice think that Arberus wanted to make out, so she did, and then the Luminata ran away.
>>
No. 915107 ID: bb5006

rolled 3, 10, 5, 2, 3, 8, 9, 2, 9 = 51

Arberus dancing and Malice making out with him was the scene that River came to when she finally caught up through the air, landing on Arberus's shoulder and turning back into a human before grabbing onto his ear and twisting.

"You know, it's rude to abandon someone who's going out of their way to try and get you in the mood, and it's almost as rude to try and bail out of a fight like a coward at the very start unless you know the other side is that much better than you. Now I'm not in the mood for fighting, so strip down. You can join too."

And before Malice could fly off again, she leaned over and planted a kiss on the side of the bat girl's face, given that her mouth was rather occupied.
>>
No. 915120 ID: 12e022

Suddenly it strikes Malice how crazy this whole situation is. She draws back and touches her cheek with a folded up wing, twists her face up in a fanged snarl, and flutters to the ground and storms off, squeeking angrily to herself.
>>
No. 915124 ID: bb5006

"Welll. If there's one thing I'm good at, it's getting people out of their clothes. Plus, it's pretty easy to get someone out of armor if you're willing to give it a minute."

As she talked, she let go of the Ear, clearly she wasn't going to have to push any further, and it was a lot easier than him cutting his ear off. After all, who does that. Actually, Morse might do that. She should try and get back to her after this.

And as Arberus went to try and give her a kiss, which at his size was rather awkward, but she would be taller than him if he wasn't giant, so she understood, and she reached around to where the latches tended to be in the closest armor she had seen to the armor he was wearing.
>>
No. 915125 ID: afdebc

>>915045
Lute accepts the telepathic communication with little no hesitation, apparently unflapped (or amused) by the accompanying spooky theatrics, and answers flirtatiously.

Trying to give me chills by whispering sweet nothings in my ear, are you?~

While not-speaking, the joybringer continues to not-watch the invisible batgirl in her magic mirror, in case it becomes necessary to intervene on River's behalf, and queries her Efficient Secretary for information on the girl.

>And before Malice could fly off again, [Rivers] leaned over and planted a kiss on the side of the bat girl's face, given that her mouth was rather occupied.
Hmm. Your girlfriend might be getting another threesome out of this. Looks like she her technique was on the money after all!
>>
No. 915126 ID: 12e022

rolled 1, 10, 10, 9, 10, 3, 6, 5, 5 = 59

"Afraid I can't...offer any counsel. I know nothing of the events that have transpired."

Dex 5 + athletics 2 to get down from the tree. Nothing fancy for the "stunt", she just carefully grabs each branch and lowers her feet down to the next one, taking care not to exert herself.
>>
No. 915127 ID: 0640da

rolled 6, 8, 7, 8, 3, 8, 2, 10, 7, 9, 3, 3, 8, 9, 1, 10, 5, 4, 1, 6, 7, 4, 5, 5, 10, 3, 5, 9, 5, 7 = 178

>>915125

Morse rolls her eyes internally, and Lute can feel her sarcasm... Child of Venus. I have some questions for you. Morse slowly circles Lute as she plays her instrument to keep the danger at bay.

I suppose you wouldn't know this, but my master predicted your arrival. She claimed that you would provide assistance to me-- that I would require your services to access her. I thought she was driven mad by the whispers of my dark gods-- talk of strange beings, manipulating events and belonging to the sky. Some kind of 'celestial' force. But now my eyes are unclouded, and my vision clear. You exist. And more exist in kind. Morse points a finger at Lute, the dried blood on her nails forming a kind of polish. Venus. What other stars exist, and how have you remained hidden for so long? Why do only the dead speak tales of your kin, of your kind? Is this some new Yozi ploy against us, to fool us and divide our attention on more fronts, chasing dreams and butterflies?

Morse's eyes darken, and Lute can feel some amount of animosity. You are the key to a secret I know not the question for. But secrets are only valuable if kept to one's self. If shared, they lose their power-- perhaps you should speak, before I share the secret with all and expose you for who you are... what you are, Child of Venus.
>>
No. 915128 ID: 0640da

>>915127
Forgot the charm: Scathing Cynic Attitude is being cast for 3 motes.
(Spam post, no EXP)
>>
No. 915139 ID: 2da101

rolled 8, 9, 4, 1, 1, 1, 2, 10, 2, 2, 4, 7, 5, 1, 1, 2, 9, 10, 7, 10, 1, 1, 6, 9, 4, 2, 7, 6, 10, 8 = 150

I'm gonna sneak back and steal Arberus' armor while he's having sex. Malice uses her (reclaimed) cloak like a makeshift bag to hold it all. Stealing his boots too, and anything else I can get my grimy claws on. Including Lute's fancy hand mirror if she stops paying attention to it for a minute. Dumping all the motes for my excellency into this. Dex 5 larceny 5 stealth 5. I'll just roll a ton of dice.
>>
No. 915140 ID: 2da101

Also spending the willpower to resist scented skinless serpent shintai, though I think I had to do that already.
>>
No. 915141 ID: 2007b6

>>915126
You descent the tree with about as much elegant, effortless grace as you have ever managed in any physical action in your life to date, and start to think that maybe this place isn't so bad.
>>
No. 915148 ID: afdebc

>my master predicted your arrival. She claimed that you would provide assistance to me-- that I would require your services to access her.
Well! Isn't that interesting? Lute responds, clearly intrigued across the mental link. I wonder how she knew we would cross paths, much less that I would be inclined to help with you.

>Some kind of 'celestial' force.
>What other stars exist, and how have you remained hidden for so long? Why do only the dead speak tales of your kin, of your kind?
A tickling of amusement answers this demand. And lo, did the celestial demand to know what she was! What secrets have the dead kept from you, Morse Song, if you know not your own history?

Okay, I'm really not sure how to address Morse's questions without vomiting a few source books worth of material here, which I don't really want to narrate in-character. Lute's probably willing to tell Morse about the history of the exalted, but that lesson would probably take more than a scene.
>>
No. 915153 ID: 0640da

rolled 6, 6, 10, 1, 8, 8, 7, 8, 8, 9, 3, 4, 2, 9, 9, 6, 10, 3, 5, 4, 8, 7, 2, 3, 5, 1, 4, 5, 6, 1 = 168

>>915148
My history is inconsequential-- the shorn skin of a life I have died in, and a perpetual cycle of grief I cut down at the source. I know of the many who betrayed the Primordials-- and my masters and gods only sought to do what was right before they were cut down by heretics and mortals. My history may have previously been with those who would do my masters and lords wrong, but I have redeemed myself in Oblivion and become anew, as all Abyssals do. There is no more history, for me. I ended it with my own two hands. Morse hisses. But do not think I can be tricked a second time by your attempt at deflection. You are not like the Solars, or the Lunars. You are not abyssal, and you are most certainly not a creation of a higher power. You undoubtedly hold a spark, some powerful element within you, that does not match any thing that I know or will know. You are an anomaly, a mistake, some aberration that did not exist before this moment. So, tell me-- what in Creation are you?

More Scathing Cynic Attitude! As long as this counts as stunting, I think I can maintain this indefinitely.
>>
No. 915166 ID: e4aa95

rolled 4, 5, 1, 8, 2, 6, 2 = 28

>>915141
>maybe this place isn't so bad.
Pretty awful by most standards.

"This is where our paths diverge. Goodbye." She tries to release the Mayfly Mask, but it scurries back up her arm and glomps onto her face again. She starts trekking back to the village.

Intelligence 3 + Survival 2. The Disciple of Mela navigates by the landmarks that she saw while she was soaring through the air, moving cautiously. Throwing in some extra dice for stunt.
>>
No. 915171 ID: 2007b6

>>915166
One success is enough to avoid getting lost, but not enough to escape attention. Some hideous little spider-cricket thing - recognized from training as strictly a support type of demon, potent Essence but minimal physical threat, could probably recall the name and details if you weren't dizzy from blood loss - hops up from the moss it was nibbling on, tries to mess with your bandages, then hisses like a startled cat and skitters away. Any part of it's carapace that touched you was discolored and smoldering, as if your flesh burned it like acid.

A few hours later, after several wrong turns and a (mercifully uneventful) encounter with a lake in the shape an enormous pig's hoof-print full of what looked like cheap beer, you make it back to town. At least, you think it's been a few hours. The sun is still directly overhead, and it's light is a harsh, sickly green.
>>
No. 915210 ID: bb5006

rolled 4, 7, 10, 6, 3, 7, 3, 5, 7, 9, 2, 10, 10, 5, 10 = 98

"Honestly, it's probably for the best. I mean, as much as I'm down for going again, if I were a gambling girl, I'd wager that your armor was taken by that adorable bat girl, and I actually did want to find her again. After all, she looked tense."

River, hardly fazed by any of this, stood up herself and started examining where the armor had been to see if she could find any semblance of a trail to track her down on. After all, that armor didn't weigh nothing, so she probably couldn't take off through the air.

Even if there wasn't much there, the second she locked onto the trail, with the oddly hand-like foot prints and more frequently damaged grass and leaves, she started heading after her like a bloodhound. (Perception+Survival plus stunting)
>>
No. 915218 ID: 8d924c

rolled 5, 2, 10, 6, 4, 6, 6, 8, 10, 8, 3, 9, 4, 10, 2, 4, 4, 10, 4, 10, 6, 10, 10, 9, 4, 9 = 173

>>915166
Seven Broken Wings of Red and Gold watches the Disciple as she makes her way back towards the town, waiting for her to create enough distance that what he did next would not be obvious.

Once she has, he defines a circle with a foot, setting frequently used pathways of essence crackling as he begins murmuring a binding under the laws of Cecelyne. Silvery grains of sand creep in on a sudden wind at the use of Yozi Sorcery.

>Attempting to bind a Marotte with Slave Spawn Summons. Channeling Conviction, with Cosmic Transcendence of Conviction and 5 dots that's 5 extra successes so should be bound pretty fast unless it gets really lucky. Spending only personal essence so only -1 to the Marotte's pool. Making the first two rolls, 13 dice each.
-15 motes, 2 WP points
>>
No. 915223 ID: e4aa95

rolled 5, 7, 3, 4, 9, 8, 5, 2, 1 = 44

Well that was a terrifying ordeal. I'll try to stealthily make my way to the mission building. If any of my fellow monks are still alive, they'll probably be in there.

Disciple of Mela grabs a cloak from the smith's shop on the edge of town and wears it over her robe, trying to look like the rest of the townsfolk. Walks casually, but takes the back ways to avoid being seen, and gently taps on the mission door.

Dex 5 Stealth 2. 7 dice before stunt
>>
No. 915246 ID: 2007b6

rolled 6, 4, 1, 9, 7, 4, 1, 9, 4, 1 = 46

>>915218
Alright, hopping puppeteer is going to need 7 successes on this roll for any outcome other than "immediately bound." If you're going for Abscissic, which plate? If a task, what would that task be?
>>
No. 915249 ID: 2007b6

>>915223
Front door is closed and locked, with an 'out to lunch' sign in place that hadn't seen use since the lease was finalized. The temple made a point of keeping someone awake and on-duty at all times; "some secular bank or bakery might be able to get away with telling customers to come back at a more convenient hour, but that's no way to treat somebody facing a spiritual crisis," or so Sifu usually said when any of the local volunteers complained about other implications of such a rigorous duty roster.

His voice is audible upstairs, over the eerie string music which seems to have no physical source.
>>
No. 915253 ID: 8d924c

>>915246
No need for an Abscissic binding, since I intend to keep it very busy. I'll need the flexibility of a time limited binding as well, although I may bind other demons to tasks later.

I'm going to set it to constructing a temple of Cecelyne in the bit of Creation here. If some of the locals think this area is already claimed, they may be less active about eating all the mortals. Won't stop the determined ones, but Cecelyne is good at spooking the masses.
>>
No. 915263 ID: afdebc

>So, tell me-- what in Creation are you?
Lute casually tells Morse her astrological sign.

Followed after a beat by the sensation of rolled eyeballs at Morse's mounting frustration.

You seem quite anxious for me to confirm what should already be apparent. The celestial host comprises the chosen of the celestial bodies- the sun, the moon, and yes the stars if the mark upon my brow were not proof enough. And stranger things besides- dark suns swallowed by the specter of death (and still tied to your moon, despite what your masters might wish), green suns ablaze in Liger's image, and whatever our friend Embri might be.

A fuller accounting for the history of the sidereals and the exalted (which is not terribly distant from a history of the world) will have to wait. We have company.

Lute Silhouette, thus far silent to the outside world, looks up from the mirror she had been studying- and starts directly at an invisible bat girl approaching, grins, and addresses her in old realm.

"Greetings, Malice, Princess of the Green Sun. As an apology for striking my friend, would you be willing to let me examine your friend's armor?"
>>
No. 915267 ID: 2007b6

>>915253
Abscissic Binding IS the flexible, time-limited type, as opposed to Task Binding. Which plate? Known options would be the Horror, the Hunter, the Killer, the Sufferer, or the Warden.
>>
No. 915270 ID: 8d924c

>>915267
The Hunter, then. Since that's roughly aligned with how I'm going to be utilizing it.
>>
No. 915272 ID: e4aa95

>"Greetings, Malice, Princess of the Green Sun. As an apology for striking my friend, would you be willing to let me examine your friend's armor?"

"Damn! You're a lot sharper than the rest, aren't you?

...I'll give you the armor without any trouble, but you have to tell me who you are, how you saw me, and how you know my name. No lies! I'll be able to tell!"
>>
No. 915275 ID: 2007b6

>>915270
In the span of ten seconds, you've successfully called forth a fist-sized ball of bile-soaked hair and bound it utterly to your will. What sort of construction and/or landscaping do you want?
>>
No. 915279 ID: e4aa95

rolled 3, 6, 5, 7, 3, 7, 10, 7, 3 = 51

>'out to lunch' sign
Have to stop for a moment and admire the humor of putting up a sign during the end times.

>His voice is audible upstairs
And control the feeling of rising hope. Sifu's still alive?

Going to try to avoid the wood essence that's covering one side of the building. Instead I'll step up onto a ground floor window frame, pull myself on top of the big door frame, and then climb up to the second story window from there.

Dex 5 Athletics 2 (Str 2 if you'd rather use that)
>>
No. 915284 ID: 8d924c

>>915275
I'd like it to begin the process of building a temple to Cecelyne, not far from the border where this bit of Creation meets Spawning Forest. It's not a quick task, since it'll have to source appropriate materials like sandstone, but given it's a demon it's probably quite qualified for the task. Nothing too large, just something noticeable, for local demons to pick up on. Meanwhile I'm going to set up camp near my selected construction site, and wait for someone to come to me. Patience is a virtue.
>>
No. 915285 ID: 2007b6

>>915279
Soon enough, you're hanging from a protruding roof-beam by one hand, trying to figure out how to unlatch a second-story window with a long thin blade in the other. There's blood dripping down your leg, off your sandal and onto the weed-choked cobblestones eight feet below - really ought to have an actual doctor take a look at that, stitch it up properly, preferably without too much more delay or exertion.

Sifu is inside. He's pushed as much clutter as possible off into the corners, rolled back the padded mats used to cushion falls when sparring, and laid out a tablecloth-sized sheet of rice paper on the floor. Pattern atop it, in salt and tokens of jade and silver is a Class II(a) Pentacle (Injunctive/Interrogative), with extra blood-contaminant precautions - probably the strongest such measures possible without supplies which would need to be shipped all the way from the Blessed Isle. He's crawling on hands and knees, in the process of painstakingly adding a supplementary mandala to the diagram's perimeter, one grain of colorful sand at a time. At the center of the whole thing is that same unholy chalice the Anathema was holding during the fight - but it was empty then, whereas now it's full to the brim with dark red liquid.

The wooden shutter creaks as you move it aside, and he sits up, startled, yelps "This isn't what it looks...! Oh, it's just you." then collapses in a coughing fit - fortunately retaining enough presence of mind to fall away from the fragile, incomplete thaumaturgical diagram.
>>
No. 915287 ID: e4aa95

rolled 9, 8, 1, 5, 5, 5, 7 = 40

>>915285
I'll wait for him to regain his composure a bit. "I have failed you, Sifu. I returned as fast as I could. Are the others still alive? Can I do anything to help?"

Int 3 + Occult 4 to try to figure out what he's trying to do at a glance? Might as well.
>>
No. 915288 ID: 2007b6

>>915284
The hopping puppeteer plucks a dozen broad brass leaves from the Spawning Forest and dives into a steady rotation of grinding their edges against each other (in a surprisingly catchy marching cadence), while shoveling heavy clay soil with the sharper leaves until they become dull. As the digging proceeds, a spare tendril sculpts tailings into crude models, eagerly inquiring which variations are more consistent with your personal style, feelings toward Cecelyne, and any longer-term plans. It turns out the bedrock underneath this former segment of Creation is suitably sedimentary, so how about something a little bit like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Saint_George,_Lalibela with as much of the removed stone as possible going into obelisks spaced out all along the rest of the perimeter - plated over with some sort of metal in case of Pellegrina of course - covered with a description of your victory in letters of inlaid glass? Ooh, and maybe some of those tin orchids, they're very fashionable lately. That glow is SO convenient for navigation through catacombs, or during any sort of unexpected nightfall, too.
>>
No. 915289 ID: 2007b6

>>915287
Sifu doesn't respond. Seems to be unconscious. Climbing in through the window and poking at him with any sort of medical intent reveals that he's much more seriously injured than you are. Image that springs to mind is a gruesomely vivid illustration from a medical textbook of someone who'd tried to suplex what turned out to be a porcupine-totem Frenzied Anathema - and survived, more or less, but only by the grace of a wood-aspect exalt's swift intervention.

>Int 3 + Occult 4 to try to figure out what he's trying to do
He thinks there's a malignant spirit within that cup, and laid groundwork to extract information he expects it won't want to share, likely about it's own greatest weaknesses. The equivalent of heating branding irons and oiling thumbscrews, all inside a military grade NBC glove-box.
>>
No. 915320 ID: 8d924c

>>915288
That looks positively delightful. Red and Gold informs the puppeteer that his longer term plans involve this temple being mostly intended for mortals, and mortals are squeamish. Any relevant imagery or wording regarding torments, terrible prices, or the like should be minimized. Unless it's about the torment inflicted on the Yozi by the gods and Exalted. That goes through unaltered.

There should be a suitable facility for a small library as well as a room for performing summonings and sorcerous workings without everyone looking on. Descriptions of Cecelyne should magnify her benevolence and the many boons she offers those who seek her out.
>>

rolled 7, 1, 9, 5, 6, 10, 3, 4, 10, 2, 5, 3, 3, 2, 5, 4, 4, 4, 2, 8, 5, 1, 2, 7, 10, 10, 5, 6, 2, 9, 9, 7, 5, 2, 3, 4, 6, 2, 3, 5 = 200

>>915272
>...I'll give you the armor without any trouble, but you have to tell me who you are, how you saw me, and how you know my name. No lies! I'll be able to tell!"
Lute Silhouette introduces herself, offering a hand to shake (unsure if she would receive a wing, foot, or tongue in return, but prepare to accept all with equanimity).

She'll happy introduce Morse Song and Bridget too, since they're both nearby.

She then explains that she saw the Princess coming in her magic mirror (accompanied by a demonstration that might be disquieting for someone unfamiliar with video- Malice's image in a mirror, not looking back at her, but from some invisible vantage point to the side) and looked up her name in her personal file.

>armor
As soon as she has access to Arberus' armor, Lute's right arm dissolves into a mass of glassy tentacles, and she eagerly sets about performing what analysis she can on the armor, right now. Rolling craft, lore, occult, whatever is needed (probably more than one roll, depending on how long we have before Rivers and Arberus finish and he comes looking for it)- making full use of her craft arm, and using the Shard Fallen both as tool and to log and record results. Morse Song and Bridget are both invited to examine the armor as well, and provide what insights their specialties offer.
>>
No. 915329 ID: bb5006

rolled 6, 1, 2, 4, 10, 3, 1, 10, 7, 4, 9, 6, 8, 5, 1 = 77

"Okay, so you can summon your armor back, and we can't find the cute bat girl that way. Alright, I want you to go into town, and find someone who's name is Lute. Tell her that I'm nearby, but waiting, and I'd like her to translate into the sorcerer's tongue for us, since she can do that, and that was what she talked in. Don't forget, I'll be watching you, so don't go fuck off."

With that out of the way, since Arberus was so certain that Malice would be coming to visit him, she climbed into the trees and hid herself among the wood essence that covered the town, activating Spider's Trap Door to hide evidence of her existence from observing eyes so that Malice wouldn't be aware of her existence, and with the eyes of a jungle cat, she watched the bait.
>>
No. 915330 ID: 35995e

>Lute Silhouette introduces herself, offering a hand to shake
Lute's hand receives a thorough tongue slorping.

Malice stares at the mirror in shocked curiosity. "How does it do that? Personal file? ...Can I hold it?"

"I should get going before the spikey goofball comes looking for me. I'll be back, though."
>>
No. 915334 ID: 35995e

rolled 1, 4, 9, 2, 1, 6 = 23

How long would it take to finish what he's started? Regardless, I'll roll out some mats and move him so he's more comfortable.

Other than that, first thing to do is round up the rest of the missionaries. Priority is disciple of Sextes Jylis so we can get properly stiched up. I'll check the bunks downstairs to see if any of the other monks are hanging out in the building, get a clean sheet to cut up for bandages, and try to apply first aid to Sifu and redress my own wounds.

Int 3 Medicine 1
>>
No. 915336 ID: afdebc

>>915330
Lute's willing to indulge Malice's curiosity of her mirror, but she does want to use it to help examine the unusual armor.

Careful, don't poke yourself in the mirror, or you'll get poked!
>>
No. 915383 ID: afdebc

>>915337
No sidereal worth her salt would believe this to be coincidence, but neither is Lute willing to pass up that line.

"Oh, in need of a lute? Whatever do you intend to do when you find one?"
>>
No. 915442 ID: 2007b6

>>915334
>How long would it take to finish what he's started?
Three or four hours, at least. Cross-checking to make sure none of his existing work got misaligned or smudged by the interruption could easily stretch to multiple days, let alone correcting any such flaws without introducing others, and even if you could make it all work, no real idea what questions he was planning to ask.
>check the bunks downstairs
Empty, partially disassembled, wedging some heavy barrels in place to jam the doors shut. Chore scheduling board lists yourself as MIA and the Disciple of Hesiesh as bedridden, but hasn't otherwise been updated since you last saw it, so the other three were at least nearby, alive, and functional when Sifu locked himself in here.
>get a clean sheet to cut up for bandages, and try to apply first aid to Sifu and redress my own wounds.
Temple's got a great big cabinet of medical supplies. Can't very well trust some barbarian witch to patch your students up after every little training accident, and a policy of having enough to share with the wider community in times of need is both spiritually meritorious and politically cost-effective. Stocks were badly depleted even before that fight with the Anathema, but there's still a couple rolls of gauze for proper bandages, thread for sutures, needles for stitching or acupuncture, a full jar of concentrated Sijanese embalming fluid that can serve adequately as both an alchemical disinfectant and coagulant (if your kidneys are in good enough shape beforehand, and you don't drink alcohol, or use qat, or care too much about short-term pain or long-term scarring or... merciful dragons that AWFUL stench), and some herbs - mostly meant for athsma - which might help clear up whatever's making that gurgly noise in Sifu's lungs, alongside other things less immediately relevant.

>>915320
>Any relevant imagery or wording regarding torments, terrible prices, or the like should be minimized. Unless it's about the torment inflicted on the Yozi by the gods and Exalted.
Seems kinda soft, almost defeatist, but okay.
>Descriptions of Cecelyne should magnify her benevolence and the many boons she offers those who seek her out.
Emphasis on the riches, power, advantageous mutations, law and order, delicious locusts, not so much the brutal unending servitude. Got it.
>There should be a suitable facility for a small library
Shelves, chairs, desks, study-suitable acoustics, no problem. Want to scrounge up some books, too, or have you got a source for those already?
>as well as a room for performing summonings and sorcerous workings without everyone looking on.
This one could weave some enchanted privacy curtains easily enough, if essence-charged silk is available, and supposedly there's a shop on the Street Of Weights And Measures from which anti-spying wind chimes can be acquired in exchange for a sufficient quantity of your new servant's exoplasm.

Overall, looking like this construction project might just barely be complete before Calibration, with enough additional workers. That's fifteen thousand tons of stone you want moved, it hasn't even been cut into convenient-sized blocks yet, and it'll have to be out of the way before the finer detail work can properly get started.

>>915327
There are surprisingly few contiguous rigid plates, mostly around the head and joints. Instead, many of the smaller, flatter teeth interlock so as to reinforce each other on impact, while remaining otherise flexible, for a relatively wide range of motion. Inside, rather than conventional straps and rivets, it seems to be held together with a sinewy material covered in tiny barbules, on the same scale as a water-striding insect's feet, or gecko setae, or jellyfish stingers.

The arming doublet's padding is a complex sandwiched composite, at least one of the layers of which seems to be gelatinous. You'd really like to extract some pure samples of that, but can't figure out any plausible way to cut the binding material open cleanly in less than a week with the tools at hand. Parts of it clearly function as hydrostatic musculature: on a stone or earthen floor, the suit can not only be stood up while empty and manually posed, like a ball-jointed mannequin, it even gets back on it's feet and resumes the same pose when carelessly disturbed. On wooden floors or carpet, it gradually 'deflates,' and stays down if knocked over, but still shifts to comfortable looking positions rather than remaining ragdoll-jumbled.

And all that's just the relatively superficial physical features! In terms of the deeper structure of Essence, it feels almost like this thing's half-asleep spirit is sizing you up with equally as much interest. If you started by learning everything about biotech that Dr. Dinosaur knows how to teach, and somehow attained a similar level of proficiency with Malfean alchemy, and the charm Excellent Implementation Of Objectives (among the first four lines of the Scripture Of Lover And Maiden), you could then spend at least six months giving this suit of armor your undivided attention before research began to hit diminishing returns.
>>
No. 915510 ID: 8d924c

>>915442
>Scrounging up books.
Well, if the Marotte happens to come across any, certainly keep them somewhere safe until the library is ready. It's not as if it'll be finished in an hour, and who knows what we might come across while sourcing materials.

Does the puppeteer have an estimate of how many additional laborers they'd require? Other puppeteers, erymanthoi, heranhal, metody? We're in short supply of the ordinary mortal kind at the moment, especially since there's not much guarantee the locals will have any real skill at it.

Wings of Red and Gold is waiting to recharge before he summons anything else, since there's no telling what else arrived with this bit of Creation. Sure, Yozi sorcery is a lot faster than the normal Exalted sort at this, but it still has costs. Can't burn everything we've got with potentially unknown enemies to deal with.

And just how long is it until Calibration, again?
>>
No. 915528 ID: 2007b6

>>915510
>Does the puppeteer have an estimate of how many additional laborers they'd require? Other puppeteers, erymanthoi, heranhal, metody?
The puppeteer's got Intelligence 1, Bureaucracy 0, Lore 0, Occult 0, and accordingly should not be trusted with many strategic decisions. From your own expertise, though, one of them could do all the major work solo, that would just take longer. A dozen hopping puppeteers is about the limit of how many can work the rock face at once without tripping over each other. For support, demjen paired with a heranhal might be helpful by providing proper tools, other metalwork, and vital background music. Maybe a neomah, stop the heranhal from getting distracted, and an Aalu or Naneke or some other intellectual-oriented demon for finer details, occult harmonies, and keeping track of paperwork so workers stay coordinated.
>We're in short supply of the ordinary mortal kind at the moment, especially since there's not much guarantee the locals will have any real skill at it.
Hundreds of mortals in that town right over there, where the basis of the local economy just got kicked in the face and then eviscerated, so at least a few of them will probably be looking for work soon, particularly if you can automate away the labor involved in extracting food from that bizarre demesne and/or offer a decent wage.
>how long is it until Calibration, again?
Three months, plus or minus two or three screams of the tomescu.
>>
No. 915558 ID: 0640da

rolled 7, 10, 5, 8, 2, 6, 7, 9, 7, 3, 8, 10, 6, 9, 10, 5, 7, 5, 8, 3, 9, 3, 6, 8, 3, 2, 5, 4, 3, 6 = 184

>>915263
Morse greets Malice properly, giving a deep bow and a show of respect. "I am Morse Encoding of Forbidden Lore, Wrapped in Song. You may refer to me as Morse Song. I find meeting you all to be less of a displeasure than usual."

Politeness is a virtue, even to those who would object to your existence.

"It's about time for my sermon. Too many competing voices in the morning. I'll leave you two be, unless you have further questions... and Lute, you should meet me for a heart-to-heart within a week. I will find you, if you run. You can count on this." Morse detaches herself from the group, and heads for the public square... she sits down, and tunes her instrument a bit more before her big performance... much like Red and Gold, she's going to be competing for death cultists. Morse isn't establishing them as her personal cultists, but she is going to deliver the key notes of the Bishop's doctrine to this little patch of Creation and all her surroundings. She first establishes 5 motes for Morbid Fascination Style, so she can ensure everyone listens for a while. Applying a Perfomance roll to this next one-- don't need a fancy temple to preach death.

Death will one day come to all
And Oblivion opens its maw
Your death can be a painful one
As when you break Creation's law
But your death can be a peaceful thing
You can enter her embrace
You can fight and scream and struggle still
Or your demise you can face
Acknowledging mortality
Is the first step you should take
Whether it be slitting both of your wrists
Or drowning in a lake
You could hang yourself
from a sturdy tree
If you crack your skull
Then you can be free
You can jump a cliff
And believe you'll fly
You could sleep with belladona
You could muffle their cries
With a pillow pressed against
As you sing a lullaby
You can kill all your children
Kill all your wives
You can take all your husbands
You can take all their lives
But whichever option you choose today
You should take with smiles
You should laugh and pray
For death is nothing
It is just as you
It's another phase
Of life you go through
You can do it yourself
You can pick up a knife
You can plunge it deep through you
You can take your life--
You're always in control
Of your own mortal soul
So don't listen to me
Or the tales of old
You should never follow
And do what you're told
But you are in control
And this is your last breath...
So if I were you...


Morse's strumming intensifies, briefly.

I'd get over your death.

And with that, her song of futility, rebellion and control over one's own mortality ends. Incidentally, it might be seen as encouragement to go nuts with the knives tonight. She's going to go back to regular music as soon as her... 'sermon' is over. A few dozen more rounds of brainwashing and she might be able to get at least one cultist out of it by the next Calibration. Who knows-- maybe demons can be swayed to work against Creation too. Morse isn't particularly hiding, so anyone who wants to find her for the next few scenes probably could track her down.
>>
No. 915559 ID: bb5006

Shortly after Morse finished her song, River showed up, stalking invisibly from the wood essence. She had of course heard the song, and was going to take it both literally, and as a personal challenge. Not only would she never kill the people she loved, but she also would never die. And she'd make sure Morse never died either. Everyone else would be a lot harder, but she would look into it. Either way, speaking of people that she loved, her eyes locked onto Malice, and she silently lept from the treetops, and only dropped her charm as she wrapped her arms around her.

"I was telling Arberus to find you Lute so that you could translate to this adorable Bat-Girl that I think she's adorable and want to go on a date with her, and in general just cuddle up to her by the fire.

"Also, I'm accepting your challenge Morse, I'm going to live forever."
>>
No. 915571 ID: e4aa95

>Careful, don't poke yourself in the mirror, or you'll get poked!
Malice seems perturbed at this revelation.

>Morse greets Malice properly, giving a deep bow and a show of respect.
Malice's discomfort seems to grow. She returns the bow and Lute gets a name out of her.

>Either way, speaking of people that she loved, her eyes locked onto Malice, and she silently lept from the treetops, and only dropped her charm as she wrapped her arms around her.
Malice shrieks in sheer terror before she realizes that River is just trying to hug her.

>translate to this adorable Bat-Girl that I think she's adorable and want to go on a date with her, and in general just cuddle up to her by the fire.
"Adorable? Really? ...what kind of date?"

>If she’d like to go grab something to eat with me tonight? Tell her I enjoyed myself last night.
"Uhh. Okay."
>>
No. 915606 ID: afdebc

>>915442
Fascinating! Looks as if this will be an extended project then, or that Lute will have to ensure the armor is made available to Madelrada for examination before they leave hell if it is to be completed sooner.

>>915558
Hmm. Well that's going to put Morse in competition with the Sandpoint Devil (and Arberus). Hard to do cult-behavior to ward off arson and serve the local Dental-Deity if you're also embracing your own death (the first two practices are far more compatible). How may cults can one small village maintain?

I wonder if that's going to attract any fae "pranks" in retribution?

>>915384
With an exaggeration examination of her clothing, Lute replies "A monk? I should hope I do not appear as if I adhere to vows of poverty or celibacy."

>>915564
>>915564
>>915571
Lute is more than happy to offer translation between Old Realm and Rivertongue to facilitate communication between Malice, Arberus and Rivers. (Honestly, for the moment. No reason to distort anything yet). She passes on River's offer for a date with something approaching enthusiastic glee.
>>
No. 915623 ID: 2007b6

>>915606
>How may cults can one small village maintain?
"Small village," with the sort of organization you see in https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047478/ only applies up to about 150 people. From a few hundred up to at most seven thousand (with crude Second Age recordkeeping tech) there are too many interpersonal relationships to be tracked on an instinctive reputational basis, but not so many that they can't be managed by a single central repository of official records - taxes, contracts, land ownership, inheritance, crimes, all that sort of thing requires an institutional memory or it's wide open for abuse. Popular-media examples of that organizational scale show up in many episodes of https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1158671/ A town is big enough to have some overlapping village-sized subunits, class stratification: laborers end up mostly friends with other laborers, or the merchants they deal with most regularly, skilled tradesmen make friends among other related trades or relevant professional administrators - a typical village probably wouldn't even have room for a career accountant, excepting the periodic visits of a tax collector from whatever overarching authority. When a single records office would be so big as to be unmanageable, the community (now an actual city) ends up segmented into at least three town-sized districts. Moving between districts or otherwise forcing different branches of the bureaucracy to interact involves enough hassles that districts end up culturally and economically distinct.

In this case, there are two notable oddities. The Immaculate Monks have been operating out of a rented storefront down in the lower circle of town, with the fried-bread sellers and rooms for rent and other services for traveling merchants, rather than up by the rich peoples' houses and government offices and defensive garrison.

Those three girls, meanwhile, were back at work soon enough propitiating various small gods in the main local shrine (consider where Rei and her grandfather live in https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103369/ and you won't go far wrong) which IS up in the higher circle, but no longer has it's own lineage of supernatural martial arts - but the second oddity is, nobody seems to know what to do with that fourth kid. Doesn't seem to have any family in town, and presumably they'd be easy to recognize, what with the coal-black skin and dawn-pink hair. A Southerner with similar complexion passed through, peddling corrective spectacles and other fine glasswork - this was about six years ago, just before the eclipse - but his hair was more of a dark cherry red, short and curly, and he quite emphatically didn't have any children. Came as far north as he could stand in order to distance himself from his extended family, in fact, and may have been a eunuch - accounts vary somewhat on that point, but he certainly didn't bring any patronage to the local blue-light district, a detail which they're still bitter about when the subject comes up, since he clearly had cash to spare. Anyway, the new kid hasn't said a word since Bridget dropped them off, and has barely eaten.
>>
No. 915647 ID: 8d924c

>>915623
>How many cults...
The Immaculates have a pretty good system for this, actually. I mean, it's pointed the wrong way, but an organization whose purpose is 'keep the correct figures worshipped to a certain level using a calendar of worship days/index of said figures' works out fine, because the only thing worshipping multiple things doesn't allow is priesthood. If you're a big enough deal you probably have your own cult anyways, even with the Immaculates trying to stamp those things out.

And that said, it's probably time to visit the local Immaculates, along with the village. Wings of Red and Gold orders the puppeteer to continue its work while he's gone before calling his Agata. He'll arrive to the village in style.
>>
No. 915702 ID: 5ddb70

rolled 1, 6, 5, 2, 7, 1, 6, 5, 6, 10, 4, 5, 7, 10, 5, 5, 8, 1, 3, 8, 2, 7, 5, 3, 7, 9, 3, 8, 1, 7 = 157

Morse looks up from her instrument, and decides to go for a walk. She sends out a brief message over her universal messaging system-- "Light, I am going to the wilderness to hunt. Feel free to provide your company."

Morse is going to visit that new demense to gather food for the Underperson. It's Survival to scavenge and hunt, right? I'd increase it, but I'm not sure how much experience I have.
>>
No. 915856 ID: 2007b6

>>915702
Arberus, are you going to block Morse from attuning to your demesne?
>>
No. 915876 ID: 0640da

rolled 9, 1, 7, 9, 9, 2, 2, 4, 3, 7, 5, 4, 10, 4, 3, 4, 2, 3, 9, 10, 7, 3, 10, 1, 3, 10, 10, 4, 3, 3 = 161

The Neverborn don't like her course of action. Hunting for another being is not the way of the underworld-- and if a trade should be made, a sacrifice, too. Morse finds herself suffering the effects of Branding 3 as a resonance eruption... which shaves off some of her building resonance, but also hinders her current activities. Satisfied with this small punishment, they reserve the bulk of their punishment for later... this should keep her resonance down while she works. She's also going to be very, very easy to track as the source of the disturbance-- spectral-effect internal penalties.

--

Morse has walked for a long while and has yet to see a single animal-- not even a stray housecat or a small, but meaty, mouse. She hears the clanking of cowbells from cattle and screams of their handlers, but when she arrived on the scene there was only a broken fence and two badly battered shepherds. Morse reaches for one and lifts them by the lapel, staring at them longingly before opening her parched lips.

"Where did your cattle go?"

In a panic, he points at the demolished fencing and Morse sighs. "Useless. I already knew that. If this is the extent of a shepherd's usefulness, they should all just kill themselves."

She continues to track the domesticated animals, who are undoubtedly fleeing from her with unprecedented accuracy... wherever she walks, they've gone in the same direction-- but never stopped running. Market stalls made of charcoal are demolished by the stampede, old ladies scared back into their homes, and rocks trampled into dust. Well, except that last part.

No matter how long these particular beasts run, Morse does not stop following them. She has the determination of a deathknight, and it's only getting easier to predict their movements... follow them to their eventual grave, and then distribute them to the Underperson for a feast and his information. Such is the way of the soon-to-be hunter...

((In order: hunting (Survival+Stamina-2? Otherwise Survival-2, which is a -1 dice penalty) roll, resonance gain roll, any other rolls I need to make.))
>>
No. 915877 ID: 0640da

((Spam Post (Do not count for XP): Morse is purchasing up to Survival 4 with 9 XP. Discussed in the discord.))
>>
No. 915940 ID: 2007b6

>>915876
Tracking is Perception + Survival, maintaining speed over long distances is based on Stamina + Resistance. More importantly, every domestic animal in town (radius is 400 yards or 1200 feet, town's only about 1500 feet in diameter) has either fled the area or been injured in the course of trying to do so, unless someone highly skilled was available to calm them back down.

There aren't actually all that many cattle nearby. No single farmer seems to own more than two or three. After a few hours you do catch up to a pig collapsed from exhaustion, though.
>>
No. 916027 ID: d9acdc

>>915940
With Morse away and distracted, Bridget lets down her guard a bit, and addresses Lute.

"So much has happened. I sought to enforce tradition, but I have been away for weeks. I must return, with crop to make up for my absence. You must know, this Morse- she is a danger. She is involved with the division of the town. Kills dozens on a whim, maims even more. She cannot be stopped, and her voice twists minds. You, Light and I must travel somewhere safe, plan to remove her. Then, I will seek to teach the villagers to survive better, while we plot a solution to... This."

"Know that the fourth child is likely also involved in the kidnapping. In my spare time I will help you with your needs- investigating this contraption, forging new bonds, local transport should you need it."
>>
No. 916113 ID: bb5006

>"Adorable? Really? ...what kind of date?"

"Well, I was thinking that it would be kind of like finding a big barrel of booze, drinking it and going to explore the town a bit before we wind up in a bed together."

>"Light, I am going to the wilderness to hunt. Feel free to provide your company."

"Unfortunately, I have a bit of business to attend to first, but I'll make sure you have plenty of room by the fire to sit and cuddle up by me."

>>916027

"Actually, I stayed behind and 'convinced' the kidnappers to explain as much as they could. While they didn't know much since they were low level grunts in a bigger machine, they definitely didn't mention Morse, and they seemed thrilled at the prospect of an Anathema joining their ranks, and since they knew that the child with the bells was the ringleader of the slavery part at least of the plan, I'm pretty sure they would know about someone like Morse in their ranks. Mostly, I think she was at the right place at the right time for you to think that she was a part of the bandits.

"Also, we're all three Anathema, so I'm pretty sure our job is to leave massive piles of corpses in our wake and tempt the virtuous to sin against the dragons. After all, if we weren't supposed to do that, why would there be an entire religion about it? And, on a more personal note, I love Morse. She said something about a fated bond or something, but I don't really know anything about that. I also wouldn't wish being locked in a box with no way out on my worst enemies. Needless to say, I'm a bit hesitant to ask what you're proposed method of 'removing' her is."
>>
No. 916183 ID: 0640da

rolled 10, 1, 2, 2, 6, 5, 7, 6, 6, 9, 10, 10, 8, 3, 3, 9, 3, 4, 9, 2, 7, 7, 8, 5, 2, 8, 4, 7, 2, 4 = 169

>>915940
Morse kneels down and, seeing the exhausted and weak animal, feels a tinge of regret and compassion for it...

"May you find rest in Oblivion." She decides to offer a prayer before her teeth sharpen and elongate into points... she leans down and bites into the pig's neck, holding on while it offers whatever struggle it may. Morse tries to channel her compassion to make it a quick and painless death, but the Neverborn will no doubt take note of her regret. She wants to bloodlet the meat... into her body, making something easy to prepare as jerky by someone who actually knows how to cook. Of course, the meat will be drained of essence... but that's a small price to pay for tasty and fresh meat.

"...mm. This is actually pretty good." Morse mumbles as she drinks, with her mouth full of pork. "Tastier than normal."
>>
No. 916188 ID: afdebc

>>915629
>A foreigner from some place?
"Indeed. I arrived with the Haslanti airship last week."

>Do you have any idea what the hell is going on here?
"An unwitting apropos turn of phase. Hell is exactly what is going on. Leagues of Creation drawn within the Demon City, and yourself, newly awoken to the blessing of the Green Sun."

>>916087
>... The hell is a Morse?
"A kind of ornamental clasp or brooch, part of a certain style of religious dress." Lute explains, unhelpfully.

>>916027
>>916113
"My own investigation support's River's claims. Morse Song was an opportunist here, a (blood) red herring, not the instigator."

>I must return [...] travel
>plan keep the village safe
"If you would bide, in the coming days, I to protect the mortal airship, that they might safely sail the Demon City's poison skies, and chart a return across the endless desert."

"Teaching the villagers to fend for themselves is a worthy effort, but not sufficient in and of itself. I plan to contact one of Lords of the Demon realm, so the Unquestionable might claim this region and in doing so provide protection. Servitude and patronage is a far kinder fate than drowning before a rising tide."
>>
No. 916204 ID: 2007b6

>>916183
The pig's piteous squealing almost sounds like words, but it passes on peacefully enough. Four resonance before coming to town, vented three, gained eight in the course of gathering plants and attempting to attune to the demesne (turns out somebody owned it already and wasn't looking for competition), so that compassion channel puts it over the top.

Some mortal back in town, miles away, whoever Morse felt most positively toward, is touched by the Whispers of Oblivion, and will probably go violently insane over the next few days.

All metallic Malfean plant life in a 400-yard radius shrivels up and dies, and a nearby hoof-shaped pond freezes over. Fires in that radius are extinguished, including the pinkish-violet bonfire at which a team of lumberjacks (mostly blood apes) and their decanthrope supervisor were celebrating the end of a productive day's work by disposing of off-cuts and roasting the other pigs which they caught. All religious symbols and previously potable foodstuffs in the area are rotted away with unnatural speed and/or rapidly reduced to slag and cinders by ghostly flame, including raw pork, so the lumberjacks' party has been fouled, some of their sodality's valuable thaumaturgical equipment was ruined, and they'll be looking for someone to blame.

Morse is going to be at a -8 internal penalty to evade tracking for the next four days, on top of wound penalties, IF she can flee to some area that was already barren of plant life. Here in an actual forest, it's simply impossible.

Storm-clouds gather. Starting within the hour, and continuing for at least a day across a four-mile radius from Morse's current position (an area which mercifully does not include any part of the excised area of Creation, and is in fact downhill from it), it's gonna be raining impure vitriol. Anyone out there in the open, roll Stamina + Resistance every five minutes. Up to four successes means you take a die of lethal damage, five to nine reduces that to bashing damage, ten or more negates it entirely. With supernatural clothing or armor, including most worn artifacts or a poncho made from a demon's flayed skin, that's reduced to 3 successes for bashing damage, or 6 for total safety. Mundane items will be scoured or ruined according to the guidelines for terrestrial anima flux at the 8-mote level. Where the rain pools, it'll count as an acid bath, dealing damage much faster.

Morse also takes four levels of lethal damage directly from the resonance eruption, and her right leg shrivels to uselessness. Fortunately the Drowned Shamisen is long and sturdy enough to serve as a crutch, or alternatively, the pig's skeleton could be reanimated by her anima power and directed to carry her on it's back.

The Neverborn encourage her to blame the pig for all this. Her intimacy toward small animals now has an emotional context of hatred.

On the up side, gained ten motes from drinking blood, and you've got a crude cloth backpack full of all the (oddly meat-flavored) fresh fruit and garden vegetables you could carry.
>>
No. 916205 ID: 0640da

rolled 1, 8, 9, 5, 6, 5, 7, 7, 2, 4, 10, 8, 2, 8, 6, 3, 10, 1, 7, 5, 9, 4, 8, 1, 3, 3, 5, 7, 10, 4 = 168

Morse Song stares at the now rotted and fetid husk of the pig in front of her as acidic rain pours down from the sky. She stops playing for a brief moment, and her music ceases unnaturally... which is notable to everyone in a 4 mile radius. She groans with frustration and tries to move, but her leg gives out and she trips on the skeletal carcass. She rolls on her back, examining the damage... it looks bad. She won't be able to walk, in this condition. She could use her instrument as a crutch, but... she also has to keep making noise to keep the Silent Wind away.

Drip, drop-- the rain stings. Great, it looks like the sky opened up to a terrible day as well... Morse will just use her natural talents to bitch about this to anyone who can hear her.

This next song is called 'Ow, My Fucking Legs Are Melting Off. Someone Get Over Here Now.'

Morse adjusts her instrument, before throwing the concept of 'stealth' out the window and screaming in anguish.

Fuck the Neverborn!
Fuck the Neverborn!
I really fucking hate
when they ruin my life

Fuck the Neverborn!
Fuck the Neverborn!
I'm doing your bidding
Why do you forsake me?

Why can't you just die?
Just go fucking die!

Fuck the pigs!
Fuck the pigs!
I'm really really really really
sick of their shit!

Fuck the pigs
Fuck the pigs
You broke my leg
I broke your neck!

Why can't everything die?
Why can't everything die?

I hate my legs
I hate the pain
Oh gods, oh fuck
I'm in so much pain
It's fucking seared
It's rotted flesh
If I can't move
I'll burn to death

I hate my gods
I hate my life
My gods are mad
What is my life?
My existence is
a cursed toy
For those mad asshats
to enjoy

I hate the sky
I hate the rain
Who told Malfeas
to make acid rain?
You want to die
get off the ride
Don't bring me in
to your suicide

You're fucking tools
I hate you all
Fuck, my leg
ow

unconquered

ow

fucking malf

ow

my fucking

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA


Morse screams for a while, but she calms down after a nice, long scream and maybe a few more verses of expletives.

Ahem. Sorry, everyone. Now back to your regularly scheduled death hymns for the damned.

Morse calms down and thinks about this carefully... she's hoping someone helps out soon, but for now she'll keep herself knitted together with essence. She's going to use Walking Cadaver Grotesquerie to soak up some of that lethal damage coming her way-- a mote for each dose, so about a mote every five minutes. She's on a very short time limit, seeing as she's going to start flaring anima pretty hard and raising a lot of dead animals not totally under her control in maybe 40 minutes, and in about 4-5 hours she's going to start dying. Order of other rolls: survival against the pain rain, then performance (if required).

Oh, and the mortal she's... 'closest' to, for lack of a better word, is the bandit who talked to her when she took over the caravan.
>>
No. 916206 ID: bb5006

rolled 4, 7, 4, 7, 9, 9, 4, 7, 6, 1, 10, 10, 10, 2, 1, 3, 1, 6, 2, 2, 4, 9, 4, 9, 3, 3, 8, 10, 6, 5 = 166

As River was starting to try convincing Bridget about how they shouldn't get rid of Morse, mostly on the grounds that she loved the Abyssal, something felt wrong, like pinpricks on the back of her neck, felt by the acute awareness of the smell of rot, and considering what little she knew about Morse, she could put two and two together fairly easily.

"But, as much as I would love to continue this conversation, something tells me Morse has found trouble, so I should go deal with that."

River turned and fell into a jog. After all, she didn't think that Morse was particularly an expert at hiding herself, and she wanted speed over everything else. Fortunately for her, not only did she have a general direction to go on, but Morse's hunting method left a lot of broken branches and obvious footsteps for the Lunar to follow (4 wits+5 survival, 1 automatic success for being, 4 motes spent on Second Wits Excellency for 2 more automatic successes)

As soon as her tracking led her to the zone of destruction, it was pretty obvious that it was going to rain soon, and she didn't know how bad that would be, or how long it would last, but she tried to guestimate based on how long normal rainstorms were. (Perception 4+Survival 5 Predict Weather action)
>>
No. 916207 ID: bb5006

That is perception+survival for tracking, so ignore the extra 2 successes from second wits excellency.
>>
No. 916209 ID: 2007b6

>>916206
Okay, at an all-out sprint you reach Morse just as the rain's starting to come down. Now the two of you are caught between, on the one side, a recently frozen pond (not likely to stay frozen for long, since the air is oppressively warm) and on the other, two dozen angry blood apes, clad in brown (?) jade reinforced buff jackets and armed with various axes, hammers, saws, and other heavy tools. Behind the blood apes are a row of ten pale-skinned humans with long dark hair, unnervingly synchronized and slacken-faced, but still more than pretty enough to set off the lunar anathema's sex addiction. They're wearing dull green silk robes with silver edges, optic-orange Devo hats, and seem to be unarmed.

On the far bank of the pond - maybe 150 yards away, not visible now due to rain, but you both saw it clearly enough before - there's a gravel beach leading up to a short rocky cliffside, overhung by tangled brass roots. Small windows were set into the cliffside, stained glass in a seven-angled shape sacred to Cecelyne, shattered by the Blight of course. Between them, however, is a black iron hatch, perhaps a coal chute, less than two feet square. Might be a good choke point, or at least a better position than fighting a group both individually and numerically superior on relatively open ground.
>>
No. 916210 ID: bb5006

River took a split second to process the scene as she came to it, not stopping. Her assessment of what was happening, it was bad. Incredibly bad even. But, she was already working on formulating a plan, and for as much as she'd love to be in the center of a ten man pile up, she had better things to do at the moment than try to seduce weird demon looking people. (Spend one Willpower, down from 10 to 9 to skip even needing the temperance roll for sexual addiction) and like greased quicksilver, River sprinted down to where Morse was, and regardless of how agreeable she decided to be, scooped her into a ball, throwing the Drowned Shamisen over her shoulders and hoping that it would survive the starting droplets of rain.

"Well, it looks like you managed to get into even more trouble than I expected."

And with that, she took off, straight across the frozen lake, the force of her foot steps shattering holes as she sprinted as fast as she could across the precariously thin surface, sending something of a warning to the heavier and larger blood apes about following as directly as possible. She wasn't too worried about distance since she only needed to cover less than 200 yards, she could prepare a hiding hole, and hopefully that shaft led into a mine or something else labyrinthine enough to lose the blood apes in.

(Spending EXP 3 on locking in the Perfected Boots from a while ago, spending 15 on Solar Bond to bump it from 0-5 for 18 exp spent, with the justification that it was there all along as discussed in the Discord server)

As soon as the goal was in sight, she had lost sight of the pursuers, but she could hear them hot on the trail, and she needed to get Morse out of there right now. So, she disguised the hatch as best as she possibly could against detection from the uncivilized brutes (Wits 4+Survival 5+4 dice from the Solar Bond pool for 13 dice minus whatever penalties come from doing it quickly and Morse's devastation aura, +2 successes from Second Wits Excellency, +Spider's Trap Door in committed mode to provide the illusion effect.) and drops down, shutting the door above them and sealing them both in whatever darkness is in this tomb(Rolling Valor to resist Claustrophobia)
>>
No. 916212 ID: bb5006

rolled 4, 6, 4, 10, 9, 2, 3, 7, 2, 1, 7, 9, 1, 5, 1, 10, 8, 6, 9, 3, 5, 7, 3, 6, 8, 4, 7, 1, 4, 7 = 159

>>
No. 916213 ID: 2007b6

Okay, you kick the iron hatch open, then pull an already precariously-angled tree down off the top of the short cliff in such a way that it's upper branches smash your pursuers through the ice while it's roots conceal the hatch, and fail the Valor roll, so it costs another point of willpower to force yourself to squeeze into the narrow, lightless, downward-angled shaft. From grabbing Morse to the tree's impact is less than 20 seconds, so no need for a resistance roll.

Who's climbing in first, Morse or Rivers?
>>
No. 916232 ID: 0640da

rolled 8, 1, 3, 8, 8, 8, 10, 3, 5, 6, 9, 8, 1, 4, 3, 4, 7, 7, 8, 7, 6, 5, 7, 8, 10, 4, 3, 3, 4, 9 = 177

>>916213
"I did tell you I was going hunting. I like to think this is your fault, since you didn't come sooner." Morse continues to play as she's carried. "You're going to have to carry me in there... although I'm not sure why we're in such a rush. I can slaughter a few dozen blood apes. Alone."

Morse strums a few bars, still grumpy and frustrated with everything but in a cool and collected state. "Probably would have made me feel better if I got to kill them all, too."

Morse just cradles herself into Light's arms, hissing at her bad leg. "And besides that, you look like you dropped a tree in front of Lumberjacks. Honestly, are you thinking this through at all? The best way to hide is to slaughter them. Whatever, just jump in. We can both break our legs, and be twinsies."

Morse wants to go at the same time, but if that's unreasonable she'll go last.
>>

rolled 2, 1, 9, 6, 4, 2, 4, 6, 5, 5 = 44

>something tells me Morse has found trouble, so I should go deal with that
As Rivers rushed to the aid of her beleaguered beau, Lute pulls a dark hair from her pocket (a certain wilderness encounter proved fruitful in more than one respect), reclaims the Shard Fallen from Malice's curious examination, wraps the strand around one claw and clicks it- shifting the image from curious bat to beset abyssal.

"...oh dear. She has found trouble."

>clad in brown (?) jade
Perhaps another color color of jade, tainted by vitriol?
>>
No. 916259 ID: bb5006

"I knew you were going hunting, but I also weren't expecting you to explode, so that's something. Also, I both doubt you can actually pull that off, and suspect that you will get us killed in the process, since it isn't like you're in any shape to run while I buy you time."

In order to facilitate this, River took the Drowned Shamisen and put it on her back.

"Alright, I'll take point and do my best to see any dangers coming, but I don't want to get separated, so hold onto my tail. Bite it if you need to use both of your hands to crawl."

And with that, she pushed on and did her best to suppress her memories of being buried alive in a similar enough place to this, even if there weren't actually a lot of memories after that.

(Spend 1 willpower, down to 7)
>>
No. 916273 ID: 2007b6

>>916257
>>916248
If Arberus is setting out on foot only after Lute sees Rivers and Morse fleeing the lumberjacks, he's got ten miles of rough country to cover, and that's going to take some time.

When he arrives, the lumberjacks are excavating more or less at random around a wrecked underground chapel, giving up on any pit as soon as it fills with rain enough to corrode their tools or hands, while their decanthrope boss is inside, out of the rain. No sign anywhere of the hole Morse and Rivers vanished down.

The blood apes accept the proposal to tear their supervisor's various bodies limb from limb as a reasonable one, and proceed with relish, but the flesh and marrow spoils - sometimes literally turning to ash - faster than they can eat it. They're deeply disappointed and frustrated by this, and want to know if Arberus has any more advice on how to solve the problem.
>>
No. 916276 ID: 2007b6

>>916274
So... you're tromping around out in these unfamiliar woods, in the caustic rain, without proper equipment or any dots in Survival. This results in getting hopelessly lost almost immediately, and subsequently wandering in circles.

With Stamina 5, Resistance 3, you're only going to be avoiding damage from the acid about 21% of the time. Roll per five minutes, statistically you're going to be taking enough damage that it's going to cost 9.6 motes per hour to keep yourself healed up with Digestion Without Distinction, whereas you're only recovering 4 motes per hour naturally and maybe 2 more from worship. Unless he suppresses Conviction to switch strategies, or gets some outside help, Arberus is probably going to tap out his mote pool and then have all the flesh melt off his bones - which, just to clarify, would be fatal - some time before the rain stops. Possibly much sooner, if stumbling into a flooded area.
>>

rolled 8, 7, 8, 4, 5, 1, 7, 5, 5, 6, 5, 8, 2, 7, 1, 6, 1, 10, 6, 4 = 106

>>916257
>The Slayer Immediately runs off to confront a problem he is ill prepared for, without planning, or allowing himself to be advised.
An expression of annoyance momentarily mars the face of the Great Mother's vizier. There's a personality trait he has in common with his last incarnation.

>what do
Well, now is not the time to take leave of one's senses (there are others who can be relied on for that). Let's see if we can determine how bad River Song's situation is. Already they have to contend with injuries, malignant dead primordial, angry demons, and hiding in a hole. Are they hiding beneath an area that is going to flood?

Could Lute recognize any tell-tale signs of acid flooding in the tunnel Morse and Rivers are concealed in? Can I zoom out with the Shard Fallen and get a look at the terrain? Or can I query Efficient Secretary Technique for a map of the terrain near the cliff-side shrine or temple that could be used to make such an estimate? (Not willing to blow my entire pool playing 20 questions). Rolling for whatever might be applicable.

>>916248
I was hoping for some kind of lore check on the odd colored jade, but with only a single success, I suppose that's moot.
>>
No. 916440 ID: 2007b6

>>916326
>I was under the impression my artifact armor stopped the acid rain damage
Any sort of supernatural armor or cloak deflects some of the acid rain, and thereby reduces the successes required to resist it's damage by 40%, but doesn't thwart it outright, no. Environmental damage ignores most armor, flows in through the cracks. That's one of the main balancing factors between natural and worn soak. Now, if you had Scar-Writ Saga Shield, hardness from that would apply to environmental damage just fine.

The +4 Stamina from being huge would improve your attrition math, and longer legs help your movement speed, but in this downpour, putting your point of view six yards further from the ground without proportionally improving your vision just leaves you in the position of not being able to see where you're stepping. If you fell into a flash-flooded gulley, that'd be five dice of damage every few seconds, difficulty 5 to resist which could be a problem even with the stamina boost, and you might be swept away downstream, ending up even more lost or, concievably, drowning.

>>916419
Two successes. There are some problems with drainage, and leaky spots in the roof, and the whole place is sort of ugly and lopsided, but after a bit of adjustment it serves well enough.

You're tired, and hungry, and the rain soaking through joints in your armor long since crossed the threshold from helpfully washing away the last 8-Scream Devil Powder over into inflicting new itching all of it's own, vaguely reminiscent of pain, and all this is just... just unacceptable. Where's all that power the yozis promised you? Why aren't you effortlessly breaking the world beneath your feet, maiming the sky, and feasting on the flesh of gods? For a few moments there you were actually afraid of these blood apes, just because they're heavily armed, they have you completely surrounded, are individually physically stronger while you're not using your armor to be huge, there's more of them than you can readily count, they proved their willingness to commit abrupt cannibalistic treason, and probably have a better idea than you what's going on! Unacceptable. Fear used to hold you back all the time, but you're a Prince of the Green Sun now.

You sleep for eight hours, dreaming about a restaurant. The waitstaff is five frazzled young ladies: one in blue takes the orders, another in yellow brings them out, a third relays a complaint about silver hair in your soup back to the manager. The chef's red-eyed, sobbing, heavily pregnant, not wearing a hair net. The manager is made of solid gold, has four arms, and apologizes in an insolent tone that lets you know he's not really sorry, not yet, so you smack him a good one. Go wild, wreck the place. A green lady stands silent and impassive behind the bar as it all burns down around her, and some little forgettable slip of a girl whose tag says Violet, by the door, the one who showed you to your seat at the beginning, finally hands you an important piece of paper. You wake up just before the numbers on the bill come into focus, having refilled your mote pool, gained a point of temporary willpower, and learned the First (Isidoros) Excellency.

You're at a -2 penalty from hunger, which will increase to -3 in an hour unless you eat a full meal before then. Fortunately, you seem to be out of the blight zone where food spoils instantly, and the blood apes have thoughtfully gathered some pears for you. Less fortunately, the pears are metallic and thus, at least with your current metabolism, completely inedible. https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/18:_Snapple

>>916339
>Could Lute recognize any tell-tale signs of acid flooding in the tunnel Morse and Rivers are concealed in?
Rewinding to before it was concealed, the bottom edge of the hatch was a good three or four feet above the surface of the adjacent lake. Rolling forward again, the lake's surface has definitely risen about two feet, but the rate of rise seems to have slowed or stopped as it found some alternate drainage path, and a thick ice dam has formed around the roots of that fallen tree, so they're not in immediate danger on that front.

As for the walls of the tunnel, there's some dripping, but based on the color of the liquid (which is somehow plainly apparent despite total darkness, even beyond the reach of anima-glow) and lack of apparent flooded pockets in the surrounding rock it seems like condensation of the same sweet liquor that fills Hrotsvithas' lakes normally, rather than necro-contaminated vitriol rain leaking in.

>Can I zoom out with the Shard Fallen and get a look at the terrain?
Can't actually see the whole lake clearly from here, at least not without establishing additional viewpoints, but the opposite banks 150 yards away are just at the utmost blurry limit of what can be scried from a lock on Rivers, and you can get a sense of the currents from observing the movements of flotsam. You manage to peel a live image off of the mirror and stretch it out to fill a small room, realizing in the process that you can easily observe things on the opposite side of solid stone walls from your main observation target.

>Or can I query Efficient Secretary Technique for a map of the terrain near the cliff-side shrine or temple that could be used to make such an estimate?
A dragon-blooded adventurer happened to have passed through this same tunnel, made it back to Creation afterward, and recounted a reasonably consistent story to at least a hundred assorted friends and descendants, so Efficient Secretary Technique can provide some useful information, but it's incomplete, and several years out of date, so realtime observation is likely to be more useful for most purposes. For example, that algarel trap, with the brass trigger-spines like patches of porcupine quills on both sides of the shaft, about twenty yards ahead of them, that nasty thing's been thoroughly cleaned, reloaded, and reset.

Tricky part now is how to warn them about it in time.
>>

rolled 4, 3, 3, 1, 9, 10, 6, 10, 10, 2, 1, 2, 10, 10, 6, 5, 6, 2, 1, 7, 1, 4, 10, 4, 8, 1, 2, 9, 10, 7 = 164

>Tricky part now is how to warn them about it in time.
Tricky indeed. The pair is out of range of the Shard Fallen's stylus, and to get withing range, Lute would have to place herself miles away in the middle of an acid rainstorm without the benefit of the Great Mother's charms protecting from such danger. It would likely be necessary to secure Bridget's cooperation to travel that distance in time, placing the twilight in peril as well, if she could be persuaded or deceived into coming to Morse's aid in the first place.

Rivers did mention she was supported by minions, including a sorcerer. Infallible Messenger (or other means of communicating with their commander at a distance) would be eminently useful, right now.

Asking Efficient Secretary Technique for the location of nearby individuals who are subordinate to Light of the Moon Cleansing the World feels like it would be too esoteric to succeed. Might be able to ask for Efficient Sectary technique to provide the names and location of everyone non-native to the village (eliminate the exalts, airship crews, and any demons, and you've likely got Rivers' minions). Ooooor, if I have an arcane link to Rivers, could I use occult manipulation to use her as an arcane link to her subordinates, and locate them with the Shard Fallen?
>>

rolled 9, 10, 2, 9, 10, 7, 3, 4, 10, 2, 8, 5, 5, 9, 5, 3, 4, 5, 10, 2, 1, 2, 10, 6, 6, 3, 4, 2, 8, 1, 5, 6, 8, 3, 7, 10, 7, 8, 4, 1, 2, 4, 10, 4, 6, 3, 8, 2, 3, 5 = 271

>From discord discussion: the location of River's minions is valid for Efficient Secretary Technique, and they're holed up in a "haunted" house on the edge of town.

Location in mind, Lute sets out with all due haste for the nearest of River's minions, quite literally slipping between the densely twined fleshy vines twined in her path, stepping under another arch of vegation and disappearing.

(Exploiting dash, hearthstone power, and the chancel to rapidly cover ground).

Upon crossing paths with Mother Bog's children, Lute will present herself as an ally of Light of the Moon Cleansing the World (hopefully the creatures are not out of the loop, or can smell Rivers on her, or are compelled by sincerity), and try to impress upon the daughter the danger River is crawling towards, and the necessity of warning her (they have a sorcerer with infallible messanger, no?) before it is too late, and potential is snuffed out too soon.

Have a bunch of dice. Rolling for the traversal (if necessary) and for manipulation. I'll enhance the attempt to persuade the Boggites with Perfection In Life (since wp is a limiting resource for the creeper), and channel compassion.
>>
No. 916822 ID: 6eb5e6

rolled 9, 4, 2 = 15

>>915442
Im kinda stumped at where to start looking for the other monks, so rather than stewing on it some more I am just going to throw dice at you. Wits and int are both 3. Don't think I have any relevant investigation skills. Roll is to go out and look for the other monks, hopefully without provoking a zombie horde.
>>
No. 916894 ID: 2007b6

>>916815
If you're eating parts of yourself to relieve your hunger, using Digestion Without Distinction, that means you're temporarily damaging one or more of your attributes. Which one?

>>916798
Infallible Messenger takes five minutes to cast and dictate a message, tracking down the nearest Creeper and introducing yourself also takes some time. So, the main question is how far along that chute Light and Rivers have crawled in the first ten or fifteen minutes.

>>916822
You find the Disciple of Pasiap first, moping in that little greenhouse on the side of town facing away from the demon forest. He explains that the Anathema has been merciful - or at least negligent - and offered miraculous healing to everyone injured in the riot, monks included. That cup Sifu stole is the mechanism by which healing was offered; it works by transferring blood. The anathema bled himself out more than a whole herd of cattle over the course of twelve hours or so, showed no sign of weakness. Plants have already been mutated by the eruption of a demesne under the town, unenlightened humans will be too over the course of the next few years, if they survive that long.

He also explains that the Disciple of Hesiesh has gut-fever, which the demesne's energies have exacerbated, and all the conventional medicine for treating that sort of infection was used up to save people who were hurt in the bandit attack. The disciples of Sextes Jylis and Danaa'd are alive and well, so far as he knows.
>>
No. 916897 ID: 2007b6

>>916895
Digestion Without Distinction heals health levels of non-aggravated damage. It doesn't sort out crippling effects by itself, particularly not amputations. There's an upgrade charm for that.

The size-boost 'mutation' only applies to parts of your body currently contained by the armor, so you're only going to be able to extract as much meat as your normal human body would contain. A satisfying meal for two dozen blood apes would be more meat than you can afford to lose.

Even if you could cut parts of yourself off and have them grow back, doing surgery on yourself is at +2 difficulty, you've got no dots in Medicine, and it's at least partly dexterity-based so your excellency won't help much either.

>Does this idea work
You strip off your armor and mutilate the bejezus out of your own left shoulder, severing the brachial artery. Sacrificing Stamina to offset hunger penalties means you bleed faster (one lethal health level per [stamina] minutes) and it's harder to close the wounds and stop bleeding (stamina + resistance, difficulty 2 normally, potentially worse with complications such as botched surgery). If your stamina drops to zero, you'll die.

Your coadjutor thinks you're https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TooDumbToLive but attempts to warn you anyway, since he'd prefer not to go down with the ship.
>>
No. 916912 ID: 8d924c

>>916897
Broken Wings of Red and Gold presumably arrives to the outskirts of town without incident, atop his agata. He immediately seeks directions to the nearest location where he may rent a room for the evening. His agata he gives orders to surveil the location aerially, locate demons who have entered this bit of Creation, and report back. Local demons active enough to be investigating the place are good targets for binding.
>>
No. 916937 ID: 0640da

rolled 10, 3, 5, 5, 1, 8, 9, 10, 7, 2, 10, 4, 8, 10, 4, 8, 8, 5, 3, 5, 2, 6, 8, 3, 8, 7, 1, 7, 1, 7 = 175

Morse reluctantly relinquishes her instrument when it is torn from her hands, and a silence unheard until now blankets the surrounding area. It's a good thing cities make noise... Morse adjusts herself to be draped around Light's shoulders. "So, are we planning to just... hole up here, for a few days? Until the rain passes? Because I would prefer more... timely medical attention, that I might return to my sermons. At least a room to myself... so I can sit and play."
>>
No. 916940 ID: bb5006

River kind of had to adjust to awkwardly crawl through the cramped tunnel that was a bit to narrow for what they were trying to do. Both of them were pretty tightly pressed up against the floor/ceiling, greatly slowing down their passage, buying a fair bit of time for Lute to warn them.

"Well, that's kind of about what we're stuck doing. Trying to go out there, we'd both wind up dying from the rain, and I know I'd sacrifice myself for you, and you'd probably sacrifice me, but I'm sure as hell not letting you die, so unless you can think of a way to not die, either to the demons or the acid rain, we're sticking to riding this storm in a good place.

"But, I will have to say I'll do my best to see about finding you a room for that."
>>
No. 917042 ID: 8d924c

>>916912
(Assuming I have 8 XP to spend at this point, I'd like to put it towards Transcendent Desert Creature. If I have managed to get to 16, which I don't think I have but I'm not very good at figuring this out then put that towards Verdant Emptiness Endowment.)
>>
No. 917058 ID: d9acdc

rolled 3, 4, 1, 1, 2, 8, 1, 2, 2, 9, 9, 4, 6, 2, 6, 8, 8, 8, 4, 10, 8, 9, 8, 8, 6, 3, 4, 6, 8, 8 = 166

Bridget, quietly concentrating, waiting for her thoughts to coalesce, watches as Rivers runs after Morse, Arberus runs after Rivers, and Lute heads off to try and fix whatever is causing them all to run off in the first place.

Sufficiently able to think and process, Bridget determines that her prior allies have been compromised by this "Morse" character and her overwhelming mental influences. Unable to do much currently, she makes plans to help out where she can in town and see if the monks are any better equipped to handle this. Maybe after clearing up her allegiances, they will be willing to put aside their philosophy to unite against a common threat: Pretty much everything else, currently.

Her first step is to find the surgeon Lute was working with. She heads to the kitchen/lab, and, should they not be home, meditates on the nature of the disease she witnessed, turning it over in her minds eye, contemplating the patterns of the mycelium, the fruiting caps, the twist of the intestines within the monks gut.

Beginning training for Flawless Diagnosis Technique, and looking/waiting for Edgar and the Barber within their kitchen/lab.
>>
No. 917080 ID: 8d924c

>>916798
Once having dealt with the basic necessities of paying for a room to stay(a hit to strained finances which will need to be dealt with later,)Seven Broken Wings of Red and Gold taps into what's left of his Personal Essence pool to activate Essence-Dissecting Stare(-4 motes, draining the remains of my Personal motes since I have 4 Perception/5 Occult.)

Red and Gold, seeking any essence users in the town, would likely be drawn to the 'haunted' house where sorcery was being used, but is in no hurry. He'll probably arrive fifteen minutes or more after Lute's scrambling.
>>
No. 917108 ID: a22b6c

>>916894
>merciful
"Did he say why? Perhaps that cup's healing comes with a price. Sifu didn't use it despite dire need. I don't trust this mercy at all."

I'll ask him to come with me to find the other monks and hole up in the mission building. "If we are all to die here, we should be together at least."
>>
No. 917195 ID: 2007b6

>>917080
>Once having dealt with the basic necessities of paying for a room to stay(a hit to strained finances which will need to be dealt with later,)

There are no rooms available for rent. The whole town is practically a madhouse. Complete shambles.

The guard at the gate facing the airfield is holding a flat piece of wood in one hand and a raven's feather in the other. When someone speaks to him at length, he scratches the latter against the former almost as if taking notes, but leaves no actual marks; the feather hasn't even been cut into a proper pen. When someone greets him, or otherwise catches his attention without saying more than a few words, he replies "staycher namen buznis," like someone who can't remember how to pronounce anything else. When left alone, he just sort of stares off into the middle distance. Eats, when food is offered to him, and doesn't smell like he's forgotten how and when to find a latrine, but doesn't seem to be providing any sort of effective perimeter security whatsoever.

Inside the town, two old women, in fancy clothes and jewelry, are sitting on a streetcorner like beggars, and bawling like little children. They've apparently been there leaning on each other in roughly that same pose so long that thin vines have grown around and over them. Even the relatively functional townspeople have a haggard, hollow-eyed look, like they've been on a forced march along a week or more of bad roads, with vicious pursuit and inadequate rations, and aren't home yet.

There are no rooms available for rent, but there IS at least one traveller's inn. Seven Broken Wings Of Red And Gold had seven quarter-obol jade bits in his purse when he came to town, but then there was entirely too much paperwork and now only one remains.

"...and initial here, thank you. Alright, here's the key to your room, and this is the key to the front door, this one goes to the wine cellar, this one's for the cashbox, the rest are on their proper hooks right back there as you can see, the title deed and all your licenses and so forth are in this scroll case. Now you're the proud owner of the largest and least arson-afflicted hospitality establishment in... well, in this whole... region, around here, so far as any of us know. Questions?"

The three people Red And Gold had initially mistaken for a busboy, the night manager, and the inn's owner turned out to be, in fact, the county coroner, the mayor, and a tax assessor. Former owner of the inn was recently confirmed to be dead, found frozen solid and wandering aimlessly across the countryside, pants around his ankles, with rather a lot of back taxes and sundry other debts, and apparently no known next-of-kin anywhere. Well, anywhere accessible, at least, though he had plenty of extended family no more than a few days' travel to the south as of last week.

>Assuming I have 8 XP to spend at this point,
I count 18, so yes. Fortunately this inn of yours seems like a nearly ideal place to spend eight hours a day over the next five days meditating on emptiness, dusty desolation, and unexpected, unwelcome, yet difficult-to-refuse gifts. Assuming you put any meaningful effort at all during that time into getting the inn re-opened for business, mark down a second dot of Resources as well, at the cost of 3 more XP for a total of 19 spent. None of that income is in jade, nor even much silver, mostly just odd-flavored vegetables, mossy chickens, various sorts of labor, and other direct expressions of gratitude. Running the inn competently, and straightening out the rest of the local economy a bit (probably involving additional dots in Bureaucracy), could justify a third dot within a few months.
>>
No. 917205 ID: 8d924c

rolled 1, 7, 7, 1, 6, 6, 6, 8 = 42

>>917195
Oh dear. Is this the result of whatever brought them here? If this is the state things are in, I can't just leave it. They'll all be dead in a month. And that would be such a terrible waste of the potential here. Malfeas has mortals, of course, but not unenslaved mortals with their own bit of Creation as a package deal.

First things first is determining who is in charge here.

"Yes, I have questions. And answers, also. This region appears to have been dumped from whereever it originally was into the middle of Hrotsvitha, the Spawning Forest. I would recommend noone who isn't very heavily prepared enter the forests. You can't miss them, they're bronze. Don't cut down the trees. Who runs things around here? The Realm? The Immaculate Order? Local gods? The Guild, maybe? I need to discuss some things with whoever it is. Especially since now you're all very much in the domain of some very different laws from what you'd all be used to."

(Scratch the previous intended expenditure on Essence-Dissecting Stare, 4 motes instead on the 1st Cecelyne Excellency to give myself some persuasive power(Charisma+Presence), this all hooks into my plans to build a power base here)
>>
No. 917376 ID: 2007b6

>>917108
>>917058
Alright, the temple's door is un-barricaded, Sifu comes downstairs, still exhausted and seriously injured but with renewed confidence, saying "He's dead! The Anathema has been slain."

A few of the remaining non-monastic Immaculate faithful have regrouped to render whatever aid they can. One, a cheesemaker with some ideas for alternative disinfectants and antipyretics, asks which specific Anathema Sifu is referring to.

The Disciple of Sextes Jylis mutters that such a question could serve adequately in some eventual history book as a summary of the entire month of Descending Wood this year, to which the Disciple of Pasiap replies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siRpBH6wUUk The Disciple of Hesiesh starts to sit up, flops back down, says "What about that one?" and weakly points at Bridges The Sun And Moon, who's walking right up to the temple's wide-open front door. The Disciple of Danaa'd, seeing this, whispers "Aw, hell," and smoothly unfolds that seven-section staff while stepping forward to block the way.
>>
No. 917394 ID: afdebc

>>917080
When Red and Gold arrives at the site of the "haunted" house, and the source of the sorcerous energy he detected earlier, he finds a run down building, and two women discussing something out front, one dressed in flowing clothes that seem far too high quality for her current surrounding, and occasionally gesturing with an ornate hand mirror.

At the Fiend's approach, the hand-mirror disappears into a pocket, and the better dressed of the pair faces you with an expectant look, clearly expecting an introduction or statement of intent.

OOC, you've found Lute Silhouette Speculation and one of Mother Bog's daughters (with human disguise up).
>>
No. 917400 ID: 8d924c

>>917394
>>917205
Once the discussion is wrapped up, Red and Gold goes back to his original plan for locating any local power players, by activating Essence-Dissecting Stare. Unfortunately this leaves him with little to draw on without the risk of anima flare, but it does bring him to the ruined house on the edge of town.

He assumes that the more ornately dressed figure is the one he's looking for, and goes into a slight bow, one hand holding awkwardly to his hat to keep it on his head.

"Good evening to the two of you! I am Seven Broken Wings of Red and Gold, and I followed the trace of sorcery to this location. As a fellow sorcerer, given the nature of recent events regarding this segment of Creation, I felt it necessary to investigate. Would you be local experts? It appears that this lovely bit of land has been shifted from where it started into the middle of Hrotsvitha, the Spawning Forest, you see, and so I came to spread the word of the Shadow of All Things. Freedom from the slavery of the Guild, freedom from the slavery of the Realm, freedom from the slavery of the Gods and their arrogant, short-sighted bureaucratic servants in the stolen city of Yu-Shan. Freedom in all things, for those willing to take it."

Red and Gold pauses here, glancing to see whether he'll have to respond to an attack of some kind. "How could anyone be opposed to that, my friends?"

(-4 motes again for Essence-Dissecting Stare, then assuming those are recovered here. Current XP expenditures- 8 XP for Transcendent Desert Creature, 8 XP for Verdant Emptiness Endowment, 6 XP for Presence 2, Integrity 2, War 2, Resistance 2, Medicine 2, Bureaucracy 2, which should add up to 22. The favored abilities raising to 2 are instant, right?)
>>
No. 917412 ID: ec487a

rolled 2, 10, 6, 6, 10, 10, 8, 7, 7, 7, 9, 1, 10, 2, 1, 5, 5, 10, 5, 3, 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 9, 6, 2, 6, 7 = 180

>>917376
The conversation with the barber turned medic and the raptor turned mortal was rather brief- simply a matter of explaining her intentions to the two, who spent the next few hours catching up on rest, since it seems they would need to be at their best to battle whatever this disease was. Bridget quietly contemplated the nature of the body, thinking of the wounds and deaths she had seen, the healthy and the sick, holding them in her minds eye before internalizing the ideas of what separates sickness from health. Satisfied with her understanding, she approached the temple door, ready to start on the path to making things right.

As the way is barred, the barber steps forward from behind the mountain to protest, before Bridget stops her with a heavy hand.

"I come to heal your sick, as promised. If givengiven, I may understand the nature of the gut rot consuming your friend, and meditate on how to treat it. If you cannot allow me in, then allow your fellows to enter in my stead, and they shall assist me in my diagnosis. As long as I can see the wounded clearly and question as needed, the problem will be understood.

Spending 8xp on Flawless Diagnosis Technique, and 5 on Medicine 4, for a total of 13xp.

Activating FDT and spending the next 5 long ticks examining and diagnosing the patient through the doorway, with the help of Edgar and Aly (the barber).
>>
No. 917564 ID: e4aa95

>>917376
Standing behind the Disciple of Danaa'd with knife in hand

>"I come to heal your sick, as promised ..."
"Just step aside and let her in, it's not like we can stop her." Turning to face Bridget, "What is your relationship with the monster who brought us here, tainted the land, and drove the townspeople to madness?"
>>

rolled 2, 10, 1, 9, 7, 3, 9, 9, 10, 10, 6, 9, 8, 1, 3, 4, 7, 10, 9, 2, 6, 3, 1, 7, 7, 9, 3, 1, 3, 9, 8, 8, 10, 10, 6, 6, 5, 8, 9, 9, 1, 1, 8, 6, 3, 2, 10, 5, 6, 2 = 301

>>916940
As the creeper casts, relaying the seer's words to his mistress, Lute Silhouette works quickly, drawing a crude map of the dungeon on the dirt floor of the basement hideout. There was little time to intercede on behalf of beloved companions.

Miles away, huddled underground, the opposum totem Lunar receives a warning of the trap ahead, and and an explanation of her companion's plan.

"And prepare for the swap in 3, 2, 1...now!"

Lute’s hand shoots into mirror and meets a paw, and moments later Rivers finds herself standing before an earthen map and her boglings, while Lute joins Morse in her tunnel.

"You really do need to be more careful Morse. I know you have an affinity for the grave, but entombed twice in a week?" Lute gently chides her wayward companion with a grin that quickly turns grotesque as her body, elogantes impossibly, threading the needle between components, before reforming on the other side.

"All right, your turn now. Hold still please, no wiggling."

Another press of the mirror and akuma and death knight find their positions reversed, Morse Song now past the trap, and Lute Silhouette closer to the entrance.

"Now behave for Rivers, she's going to have a hard enough time seeing that you survive and live up to your potential."

Lute’s hand descends into her hand mirror a third and final time, leave a possum poised to walk through the trap and rejoin her lover on the far side.

Crafting a quick map of the dungeon based off what I got from my earlier use of Efficient Secretary Technique, using the Shard Fallen to swap with Rivers, Lute’s hearthstone to bypass the trap, then swapping again with Morse, and one final time with Rivers. Each swap includes a feat of strength, each bolstered by a wp channel. Have a pile of dice for the craft roll, and all the wp channels.

So that's -15 m, -3 wp, offset by stunt rewards for however many actions that alcounts as.

>>917400
Minutes later, outside the haunted house.

"How could anyone be opposed to that, my friends?"
Wryly, "I imagine the guild, the realm, the gods and anyone else who stands to lose power in this sudden emancipation would object.

"Fortunately for you, I am none of their representative."

Lute Silhouette returns the introduction. She's not a local expert, she only arrived in town shortly before, well, all of this.
>>
No. 917729 ID: c8a0f5

rolled 9, 6, 2, 10, 9, 6, 8, 7, 6, 9, 9, 4, 9, 2, 9, 4, 7, 6, 7, 5, 9, 5, 10, 10, 10, 7, 7, 1, 9, 9 = 211

Having been dropped off into the room where her the rest of Mother Bog's minions hid out was something of a strange experience, but, she had a job to do, and she noticed the map dug into the ground and took to studying it. However, at the last second before she was pulled back through the Mirror, she saw an old familiar face, and she was left to wonder what he was doing here in hell.

But, that was a thought for later as she got back to pulling Morse through the cramped space, walking over a strange grate, and jumped into a much more wide open room, and got behind Morse to push her into the pile of coal.

>discord: Main chamber is twenty feet by forty feet, there's a pile of surprisingly soft fluffy rice-grain-like coal under the chute's exit, no other obvious threats or items of interest, three open archways leading off, 10' wide in each of the longer walls and a narrow horizontal crawlspace at the far end, both of the wider halls have sharp turns after ten yards or so, crawlspace continues straight for at least sixty feet but also has some sort of opening on the left side after thirty.

>Okay, left side passage splits into a T-junction. To the left again, you'd be going back around underneath the chute.

>Sort of a cheesegrater thing in the ceiling. If that firmin wasn't asleep on the job, he'd be able to stab up through those little holes to impale anybody who was descending slowly after the fire trap. After that, it meets up with the hallway from the other side of the coal room.

>Okay, if you're coming from the cheesegrater, it's a T-intersection. Following the hall that doesn't lead back to the coal room, there's a big oval bronze hatch with a crankwheel (presumably for some locking mechanism) on the right-hand side. Whatever's behind the door would be approximately underneath the midpoint of the chute.

Transforming back into a human now that there is plenty of space, River took the lead and picked Morse back up, and following the trail laid out, both from the crude earthen map, decided to try and make conversation with Morse with her human vocal cords.

"So, is exploding into a field of death a common enough thing that I can't let you out of my sight?"
>>
No. 917730 ID: c8a0f5

As soon as River got to the door and locking mechanism, she did the obvious thing and checked to see if it was still locked, and if it was, knocking on it.
>>
No. 917840 ID: 8d924c

>>917705
Red and Gold's lips peel back to show teeth at the response. Normal human teeth. "Fortunately for them, I suppose. I don't worry much about that sort here, unless by some circumstance Luna herself decided to visit us here in Malfeas. Unlikely, I'd say. No, I feel quite comfortable saying they have no influence here. But I do! Not locals, you say? Are you planning to stay long?"
>>
No. 917910 ID: afdebc

>>917840
>Are you planning to stay long?
Lute holds a hand out parallel to the ground and jostles it absently.

"Difficult to say. I have business in Creation I will need to return to eventually, but there are many preparations to be made beforehand, especially if the locals are to survive to reap the benefits of their newfound freedom."
>>
No. 917929 ID: 70903e

>>917564
As Edgar and Aly begin to roll out the set of tools they've complied, from her parents old surgery kit, to the barbershop razors, to her teapot engraving needles, Bridget looks to see if the other monks will heed their fellows advice, or if she will have to conduct her diagnosis through the threshold.

"Unsure. I suspect Morse is behind this, but have no proof other than her misdeeds. I have tried fruitlessly to kill, to entomb. It controls your people, I fear mine as well. I will salvage what I can, and lead those the willing to saftey. You may help, but I will tend wounds regardless.
>>
No. 917934 ID: 8d924c

>>917910
"They seem to be having some trouble with that already. Or do you know of something worse in their future? Aside from the likelihood that the locals will want to steal everything down to the dirt on the ground. Something specific."
>>
No. 917985 ID: 0640da

>>917729
"...common enough." Morse looks away with an expression of shame. "My leg going out is new. Usually the rain isn't so acidic, either... I blame the local weather conditions." Morse seems appreciative of Lute's assistance, as well as Light... "How about I navigate with the map you were given, and you carry me? Unless you want to be... grated into lumps of flesh cheddar."

Morse feels that 'flesh cheddar' is an interesting concept she should return to at a later time. "Just draw it on the floor or the wall for me. My memory is strong enough to retain it for a while."

Morse will get the information about the map from River, and memorize it... then she'll help by using her (Survival?) to navigate. With both of them working together and knowing the rough layout, it should certainly be easier.

"Let's use the chute. Should lead up, I'd think..."
>>
No. 917998 ID: 2007b6

>>917730
No response knocking. Mechanism initially seems to be rusted or otherwise jammed rather than secured by an actual lock; after some alarming crunching noises and metallic squeals, it yields to brute force, opening to reveal... a solid wall of amber-colored ice. Indentations in the ice closely match facing contours of the door.
>>
No. 918001 ID: 2007b6

>>917929
"You bear the mark of the Unclean," says the Disciple of Pasiap, indicating Bridget's forehead. "What is the price of this aid you offer?"
>>
No. 918004 ID: bb5006

rolled 3, 5, 5, 1, 1 = 15

River did her best to recreate the map on the floor with the rice grain consistency coal before they moved on, and it turned out kind of nice and almost legible for someone who was illiterate (Rolled a Single Success in Discord).

"Well, I guess I'll just have to keep you close after these next however long it is until you stop radiating that essence."

After hearing the point about the chute going up, she had to just kind of look at Morse surprised. "You don't know why we're here, do you? We're hiding out until it's relatively safe to pull you out so that we both don't die from the acid rain or the demons you managed to piss off somehow, and hopefully until your leg heals. Up is the complete opposite direction we want to be heading, especially since it seems like Lute can just swap places with us at will, and that makes this all so much easier."

With Morse on her back and no answer to the knocking, she got into a runner's stance, took off, and slammed foot first into the door, which swung open, having not been particularly locked by anything other than ice. Right into the work station of a Neomah hiding from the porcupine who happened to be in the middle of working with the energized flesh and fluids of past exchanges, protected by the Death Essence's rot by virtue of having still breathing essence in it. Despite River's baser desires upon seeing this hot strange purple androgyne, she did her best to focus on Morse and when that had the opposite of the desired effect, the fact that if they didn't get sufficiently lost in this maze than they might well both wind up dead. Also the fact that kicking down a solid iron door hurt like hell.
>>
No. 918005 ID: afdebc

>>917934
"No specific foreknowledge, no, though I do possess some insight into the challenges to be overcome. These people have suffered several setbacks, recently."

With a half-turn, a cloth-draped arm is offered in Red and Gold's direction.

"Would you walk with me? My friend and I were about to return to town. We can discuss recent events, and your thoughts on freedom."

If Red and Gold accepts, Lute will bring him up to speed on the recent trials and tribulations of the nameless village (the bandit attack, food stores stolen, the revelation that nearly a third of their own had turned against them, the sudden emergence of the wood demesne, and the Fanged Lord defeating the local immaculate mission and claiming the city), and let him talk up the yozi and his own plans as he wishes. There's entirely too many supernatural ways to be spied upon for Lute to break cover and tell him what she is at this point, but listening to his pitch is an alternate method to establish herself as a would-be ally, and to get a feel for the fiend.
>>
No. 918021 ID: 5f0ee2

>>918001
"Hm." She ponders, sitting cross legged as the wounded monk is propped up into position.

"Typically, I demand 3 sheep and participation warding against fair folk. Here however, I need allies, to protect the people, and fend off the singing corpse. I shall tend wounds regardless of your help. I plan to lead those I can away from this place to my home for protection when given the opportunity."
>>
No. 918074 ID: 2007b6

>>918005
Two dozen horned ape-demons, wearing tidy uniform jade-reinforced leather jackets and armed with assorted rusty, bloodstained axes and saws, make their presence known just outside the bogling's lair by performing a surprisingly well-coordinated and soulful acapella (plus a bit of improvised percussion) arrangement of the concerto from the end of the second act of the Contagion-era opera "Raikuru's Dream," which has since become a popular devotional piece to guide offerings to Kimbery or her third-circle souls - Ululaya in particular - on behalf of those to whom the performer has no close personal connection, such as a hostage whose family has hired a professional negotiator, or the sundry residents of a district at risk of flooding, or fellow employees within a sodality and which is also Bohemian Rhapsody, by Queen, maybe not word for word and note for note but certainly close enough to infringe a copyright.

Once the song's over, and someone has come outside, or opened a viewport in a door, or otherwise initiated conversation...

"Me an' the boys, uh, 'found' this," says the leader of the blood apes, awkwardly picking a clot of human hair out from between his fangs, "An' some div-nah-torque-ee pree-caught-chems, such as we of the Reverent Society of Reflective Foresters root-teenly em-ploy, em-pli-kay-shunned it ought'a be brought over t'this exact spot straightaway an' quote 'Delivered Graciously unto the Agent of That Which Wears Down The Mountains' en-quote. Izzat any'a you in there, or is she not here yet?"

The item in question is a suit of armor, mostly ivory, similar but not quite identical to the Three-Hundred And Thirty Thirsty Fangs of Madelrada's own invention, which Lute Silhouette Speculation In Comet's Reflection examined just a few hours ago and, more recently, experimentally tugged at with Destiny-Knitting Entanglement.
>>
No. 918081 ID: e4aa95

>>918021
>I plan to lead those I can away from this place to my home
"Ah, it's the townspeople she wants! It's our duty to protect these people and we won't let you cart them off to slavery. If you can provide safety, autonomy, and quality of life wherever you plan on taking them, then I will offer whatever help I can in combating this singing corpse."
>>
No. 918082 ID: cfcf9e

>>918081
"Slavers are eradicated, their victims given provisions, hospitality, and medical care. The journey is an offer, no demands, but any who stay will likely perish to the forces plotting against you. I tend my flock, should any be capable, they may join."

Bridget resumes her questioning, separating the symptoms caused by the gut flora from the ones related to the wound itself, as Aly and Edgar help her re-postition and examine the monk.
>>
No. 918096 ID: 2007b6

>>918082
One of the blood apes has become separated from his team and is strolling casually through the town's main street. There's a certain amount of screaming, but most of the random bystanders are too worn out for a full-blown panic, and he's not actually attacking anybody, though the dark greenish liquid dripping from his coat leaves occasional smoldering pocks in the cobblestones.

Peeking into the Immaculates' rented storefront, he says to Bridget, "Hey! I know you! You kicked my ass last year. Haha, what're the odds?" Then he raises a clenched fist as to rap on the space where the door would be, if it were closed.

Thanks to Flawless Diagnosis Technique, Bridget soon has the Disciple of Hesiesh's infection all figured out, and even some loose sketches toward a treatment plan. Only problem is, it'd require supplies you don't have - for the best options, things you're not sure even exist. Some sort of liquid which humans can safely drink, and that's got an occult correspondence with the skeleton... but which holds absolutely none of the latent Earth or Water essence that could nourish fungi while suppressing the Disciple's half-awakened Fire essence. In fact, the more receptive it is to Fire and/or Solar essence, the better. And you'll need a lot of it.

Demon lumberjack, overhearing this description, cants his head and asks if that's supposed to be some kind of crummy riddle. "You're clearly talkin' about bonewine. Second or third cheapest sort of booze at any decent bar in the City. Why? You wanna go get hammered? I got my week's pay a little early, so I could pick up the tab on a five-gallon jug for us to share, no prob."
>>
No. 918111 ID: d9acdc

rolled 10, 10, 4, 4, 1, 2, 5, 4, 2, 5, 8, 8, 6, 8, 1, 10, 2, 6, 4, 10, 7, 3, 3, 8, 8, 7, 3, 2, 4, 7 = 162

>>918096
>"Hey! I know you! You kicked my ass last year. Haha, what're the odds?"

Bridget looks confused as she meditates on her past year, before the connection twilights on her, caste mark glittering with solar essence.

"Yes, I remember. I cannot drink until my work is finished; guidance to a suitable bar is appreciated. Acceptable currency includes?"
>>
No. 918120 ID: b3605c

Malice materializes and asks the blood ape (in old realm) if he knows anything about airship repair.


>huge demon shows up, asks the anathema out for drinks
Disciple of Mela cracks up uncontrollably and asks if she can come along between bubbling laughter
>>
No. 918162 ID: 2007b6

>>918120
>asks the blood ape (in old realm) if he knows anything about airship repair.
"Air...ship? Y'mean something sorta like a huge artificial khomfai? Izzat what those two big tents, just outside the wall there, are for? I c'n tie knots pretty good, helped some heranhal fix a big cage once (mostly by holding loose stuff in place while they hammered on the broken parts and swore a lot), and that Guild sorcerer last year had us do two weeks first aid training and two weeks putting out fires before we could go on the march, but otherwise I got no idea."

>Disciple of Mela cracks up uncontrollably and asks if she can come along between bubbling laughter
"You can't just...!" Sifu points an accusatory finger, then realizes he's got flowers growing out of that forearm but doesn't remember how or when they got there. Takes a half-step back, sits down heavily on a bench, coughs up a bit of blood, clears his throat and reconsiders.

"If you're going to renounce your vows and go carousing with demons, leave that robe and belt behind, and any other items that are rightfully the property of the Immaculate Order as well."
>>
No. 918186 ID: 8d924c

>>918005
Red and Gold follows after Lute Silhouette, listening curiously to the recent events.

"This 'Fanged Lord' would have been the most likely to challenge anyone making a claim here, then? Well, as I appear to have purchased the local hospitality establishment for a quite reasonable price, I think perhaps I will throw my hat into the ring. It did cost me rather a large amount of my remaining funds, and I'd rather not waste the investment. Let's discuss the continued survival of these villagers, then. The Immaculates may need more humbling, which I suspect could be accomplished with the application of a demon or two. This Fanged Lord, were they a particularly formidable combatant? Will I need to raise a scale of erymanthoi to challenge him, do you suspect? Assuming he bothers to show his face before I get things settled here, that is. The more pressing issue is likely to be whatever local group of demons first decides they want the place."

Red and Gold mostly seems to be talking to himself at this point.
>>
No. 918209 ID: e4aa95

>blood ape's words
"That's probably good enough! You wanna work for me? I'll call you Legbreaker and nobody will ever know the difference."

>"If you're going to renounce your vows and go carousing with demons ..."
Disciple of Mela manages to calm herself down. "I'm sorry sifu. With respect, I don't plan on carousing. I just want to make sure the bonewine makes it back here so that the Disciple of Hesiesh can be treated. If you don't think it's wise, I'll defer to your judgement. But it might be his only chance."
>>
No. 918308 ID: 2007b6

>>918209
>Disciple of Mela manages to calm herself down. "I'm sorry sifu. With respect, I don't plan on carousing. I just want to make sure the bonewine makes it back here so that the Disciple of Hesiesh can be treated. If you don't think it's wise, I'll defer to your judgement. But it might be his only chance."
Sifu takes a few deep, wheezing breaths, gathering his strength and re-ordering his thoughts, then speaks in High Realm (in which all the monks are at least minimally conversant, but Bridget and the blood ape are unlikely to understand):
"With regard to that accursed chalice upstairs, I saw an opportunity and struck, directly, without consulting anyone - as must we all, in such dark times! Or so I thought." There's a brief but meaningful glance between the Disciple of Hesiesh, and Bridget's uninjured thigh.
"By going through proper channels, even clumsily, after I failed to do the same, you have shamed and humbled me by your superior grasp of the Third Noble Insight. To not only defy, but actually volunteer to supervise an anathema, like some troublesome child on a trip to the market fair... and wandering off into that otherworldly wilderness again, with your own wounds not even fully healed... is this another of the air dragon's self-sought tests?"
He smiles, slightly, and continues in Rivertongue with much less formal tone.
"The proposal for a supply run is approved. Grab a spare begging bowl, as well as a wax tablet and stylus to note what other goods are available that may be of use, and go, with whatever blessings I have left to give - but take care not to remove that mayfly mask while the brazen domes of the demon city are close enough to smell, or you shall surely die. No, I don't know how far that would have to be, or why anything works that way. It was just a few lines in one of the more obscure and fragmentary Immaculate Texts."
>>
No. 918325 ID: 0640da

>>918004
"..." Morse has been watching a grotesque (from her perspective) display of incest between two clones, neither of which she can particularly tell apart, for a not insignificant period of time. They seem to be slobbering over each others cheeks... and inserting slot b into slot b... and biting each others ears...

"Maybe this would be more arousing if my leg wasn't decayed and withered. Or that you weren't blowing me off to make out with your mirror image." Morse complains about the current state of affairs. "This is going in my diary, and it's going to be a poem bitching about you." She directs this at the neomah, huffing with jealousy. "Can I at least have my shamisen back, if you're going to leave me in the corner on the floor like this?" To be clear, Morse moved herself to the corner of the room.
>>
No. 918330 ID: bb5006

It was a shame that Morse wasn't enjoying the display, given that her participation was a part of the loose deal that River had worked out with the Neomah through body language at great difficulty. It was most of the reason that the Neomah had used illusions to look exactly like River for Morse.

"Well, there's hardly anything stopping you from getting involved."

(Probably just skip to the Neomah trying to make an infant out of them to keep this comfortably R as opposed to NC-17?)
>>

rolled 7, 7, 3, 5, 3, 3, 2, 9, 2, 8, 10, 8, 6, 7, 9, 6, 2, 8, 4, 2, 5, 1, 9, 10, 6, 10, 7, 7, 2, 9 = 177

>>918074
Ahhh, a fine performance, and almost nostalgic to hear performed. Not the most common song performed by her cult (after all, they had a closer connection to the souls they worshiped), but such energy.

Lute will emerge from cover, and accept the Blood Ape's offering, in a manner consistent with such an offering this probably involves head bobbing. Responding in Old Realm:

"Your divinations have not led you astray- I am she. Your offering is accepted on behalf of the Unquestionable Madelrada, That Which Wears Down The Mountains, Eighth Soul of the Sea That Marched Against the Flame."

"May you know the Great Mother's Mercy and not her Wrath."

Rolling for... I'm guessing acting out a role in the right is performance? (Knowledge of the rites probably falls under lore). Maybe socialize.

>Arberus is dead
Lute offers another silent prayer for a second fallen agent of the Reclamation. These poor Brass Tigers, charging headlong into unwinnable battles. Is there something wrong with that spark?

(Have some dice for prayer too, why not).

Armor's too big to fit in my pocketes, so Lute will store it in he glassworks for now.

>>918186
Responding to Red and Gold in rivertongue:

>The Immaculates may need more humbling, which I suspect could be accomplished with the application of a demon or two.
"Perhaps a blunter solution than the situation requires? They are already in disarray, and could be undermined in many ways."

I was tempted to reference Maxim 37 here, but then I realized in-universe of the setting's permutation of the Seventy Maxims would probably require dots in war.

>This Fanged Lord, were they a particularly formidable combatant? Will I need to raise a scale of erymanthoi to challenge him, do you suspect?
"Certainly less formidable than erymanthoi, it would seem."

"With the death of the Toothy Tyrant, perhaps the most pressing concern is the now unclaimed demesne. If the wrong demon were allowed to claim it, things could end quite badly for the villagers."
>>
No. 918575 ID: 0640da

>>918330
"Other than the fact that this creature is a Neomah, no. There are no things against this situation. Just the violation of a doctrine against creation." Morse is still stuck on her withered leg, able to drag herself around-- but if River and the Neomah truly conspired to have a surrogate child from her own flesh, there's little she could do about it. I've noticed Morse has a whole theme of 'powerlessness' going on, here.
>>
No. 918576 ID: 0640da

rolled 3, 5, 7, 6, 10, 10, 10, 6, 4, 8, 7, 2, 9, 2, 6, 9, 10, 7, 8, 9, 8, 1, 2, 3, 2, 7, 1, 9, 4, 8 = 183

((Asleep at the wheel today))
>>
No. 918609 ID: bb5006

"I think that we both know that I have no idea what that means, I just thought that it would be a nice little pick me up, since you've been having a pretty objectively bad day."

The real River, not that Morse could actually tell the difference, came around and gave Morse a hug from behind.

"But, I might not know what you're talking about, but I have a gut feeling that everything will work out fine in the end."
>>
No. 918954 ID: d9acdc

rolled 1, 10, 1, 5, 2, 7, 2, 10, 9, 6, 2, 10, 3, 9, 3, 6, 6, 2, 9, 7, 7, 7, 3, 9, 7, 4, 2, 10, 5, 9 = 173

>>918308
>"The proposal for a supply run is approved. Grab a spare begging bowl, as well as a wax tablet and stylus to note what other goods are available that may be of use, and go, with whatever blessings I have left to give - but take care not to remove that mayfly mask while the brazen domes of the demon city are close enough to smell, or you shall surely die. No, I don't know how far that would have to be, or why anything works that way. It was just a few lines in one of the more obscure and fragmentary Immaculate Texts."

The massive head of the forge troll nods, satisfied that people are finally coming together.

"Rest, prepare, I require several hours. When I am ready we leave. I might forge goods for trade."

Bridget leaves curtly, and goes to explore the power she can feel crawling across her skin, permeating the air. She intends to internalize it, understand it, and wield it to her advantage.

Rolling to attune to the demense
>>
No. 918977 ID: 8d924c

rolled 7, 9, 7, 6, 9, 7, 5, 4, 10, 4, 8, 2, 8, 7, 7, 3, 9, 7, 7, 8, 4, 6, 3, 3, 9, 4 = 163

>>918357
>>918074

Red and Gold is wary at the arrival of the blood apes, but they don't demonstrate hostility, and the discussion Lute holds clearly involves the mention of That Which Wears Down The Mountains. He relaxes, nodding.

"I see perhaps I have no need to convince you that we are working towards similar ends, for now. I may have chosen differently, but there was always a need for a guarantee from ah, one of the less questionable locals? But it's seeming I will need to acquire services for translation, at the least. If you do not object, I will head to my new business premises to call on some additional assistance. I prefer not to do these things in the open. Scares the locals too badly."

If Lute doesn't have something else to say, Red and Gold will be heading to the inn, to lock up and then perform another summoning, after preparing the wine cellar as best he can for it(first leaving his Sesseljae outside the wine cellar.) There may be a lack of ritual tools to make things easier, but it should be possible to at least clear some space and establish a semi-permanent summoning circle. At the same time, the inn needs a name. And since we can boil theming right in, lets call it The Jade Lion.

First, we'll summon something to make dealing with future summonings less potentially difficult, and also keep a useful asset around. Red and Gold is calling on a teodozjia this time, with preference for one who knows Rivertongue, to bind it to the following task:

Oversee summonings within The Jade Lion's summoning circles, preaching their duty in service to Seven Broken Wings of Red and Gold as one of the Green Sun Princes.

(First two rolls on this post. -20 motes for a -2 to the teodozjia's resistance, -1 WP. If not enough personal essence is available yet to limit that to the 1 mote peripheral flare, can go up to the stealth impeding caste mark level of peripheral essence. Also taking Willpower for any stunts, assuming that it's available. Next planned XP expenditure is Cecelyne Mythos Exultant so I can stop needing to decide.)
>>

rolled 2, 1, 6, 4, 2, 7, 6, 1, 4, 7, 10, 8, 5, 9, 6, 1, 10, 7, 4, 2, 2, 5, 3, 5, 4, 7, 8, 7, 7, 9 = 159

>>918977
>I see perhaps I have no need to convince you that we are working towards similar ends
"I wouldn't have expected erymanthoi to let the cat out of the bag, but here we are."

>I prefer not to do these things in the open. Scares the locals too badly.
Operational stealth is certainly something Lute understands and approves of.

>There may be a lack of ritual tools to make things easier, but it should be possible to at least clear some space and establish a semi-permanent summoning circle
If Red and Gold is willing, Lute Silhouette will offer to assist with setting up his ritual circle. As her right arm dissolves into a mass of tentacles that glint and catch the basement candlelight, she observes that she always has ritual tools in-hand.

Occult 6 for knowing what to do, and rolling Intelligence 6 + Craft(Air) 6 + Stunt + Specialty 2 (assuming summoning circles are symmetrical) + 3 successes from the craft arm. Ritual setup to give Red and Gold an equipment bonus, or to offset the penalty of missing ritual tools.
>>
No. 919065 ID: 2007b6

>>918977
If what you want is a bodyguard to protect you from summonings gone wrong, a tomescu might serve better. If you're looking for an administrator/taskmaster, how about a Decanthrope or Aalu?

>>919007
You've definitely got the necessary skills to set up an adequate summoning diagram, the question is where you're getting raw materials from. As a bare minimum, for the reusable parts of the "cage," you could get by with two or three pounds of silver wire (or various other Resources 2 purchases) but that would be pushing the limits of both Seven Broken Wings Of Red And Gold's ability to pay and the town's ability to provide.

Red And Gold already has an abscissic-bound Hopping Puppeteer just outside town. Could pull it off the temple excavation, set it to building a smelter, hire the blood ape lumberjacks (on credit, or in exchange for something the demesne can produce more easily) to gather Malfean plant life as both fuel and ore, then let Bridget draw the molten metal into wire with her bare hands.

Could cut some sort of deal with that violet-eyed fellow in the old tapped-out copper mine.

Probably other options.
>>
No. 919068 ID: 2007b6

>>918330
>>918575
The neomah is eager to offer prolonged and/or 'special' services if either of you would be willing to give up at least one tooth, or better yet your entire tongue. Such materials aren't any more useful for making new life the usual way, but it's handy (she explains) to have a stash available for bartering with any Hooded Lanterns that drop by unexpectedly. While you've hired one of them, see, others won't attack you.
>>
No. 919075 ID: d9acdc

>>919065
>let Bridget draw the molten metal into wire with her bare hands

I assume this cannot be done at the same time as attuning to the demense?
>>
No. 919079 ID: 2007b6

>>919075
Well, there isn't any molten metal available yet, so no. Bridget's finished attuning to the demesne well before a smelter could reasonably be built. Might be possible to pick up the necessary summoning-circle materials as part of the same supply run to fetch that bonewine to treat the Disciple of Hesiesh; with zero dots in Occult, Bridget would not necessarily find a demonologist's shopping list suspicious.

Somebody who can reliably swing at least as many successes on a Bureaucracy roll as the Resources value of the items being sought should probably come along on that trip too, if only to be sure cows don't get traded away for mundane beans.
>>
No. 919093 ID: 0640da

rolled 3, 10, 8, 4, 4, 3, 9, 7, 9, 8, 4, 7, 2, 8, 9, 3, 5, 3, 7, 7, 2, 3, 9, 1, 4, 6, 8, 3, 4, 9 = 169

>>918609
"I'm very, very much not comfortable with any of this is what it means. Can you just get me to a clinic to treat my leg, already? I know it's difficult for you to resist your base, carnal urges, but surely your pea-sized brain can manage to see why I'm not comfortable with the current situation." Morse pulls out her still unbroken fingers and lists off. "A Neomah wants to mate with me. My leg is broken. I'm still a little singed from acid. Everything is pointless. I hate Malfeas. I loathe the rain. Pigs can eat shit. My leg is broken. My Lunar Mate is cuckolding me. My Lunar Mate is making out with a Neomah. Lute is presumably watching this and laughing. You stole my instrument. My leg is broken. We're in a sewer. A Neomah is plotting against me to create my child. You're plotting with the Neomah." Morse has long since run out of fingers to complain with, and had to loop back a few times on her speckled left hand.

>>919068
When the Neomah tries to stick a finger in her mouth to take a tooth, Morse isn't sure whether or not this is River or the Neomah. She looks very frustrated, and can't decide in time to bite down-- her tooth has been taken. "Ow! Damn it, I knew you were the Neomah!" She covers her bleeding gums... can I soak this damage with Spirit Hardened Frame?
>>
No. 919103 ID: bb5006

"Well, I don't think we can get out of here in a timely manner, let alone anywhere safe to get your leg patched up, while the rain is going on, and we definitely can't go back to town while you're radiating that essence. Plus, I've broken my legs from misjudged leaps, especially towards the beginning of my time as an Anathema, and it looks bad, but you'll heal up from it as good as new without any issue soon enough."

River, the real one still, hugged Morse as best she could with how injured she was. "And I know you're uncomfortable, it's why I'm trying to help get you in the mood to try and unwind. But, since we're going to keep moving, and this place looks like a labrynth, and Lute will probably pull us both out as soon as it's safe, I will give you your instrument back. Also, I can see your point about having a child right here and now, but at the same time, I think a child would be pretty great. I mean, can you think of a more visible sign that I love you than that?"

She was visibly perturbed by the Neomah taking the tooth out of Morse's mouth though. "Now why did you do that for?"
>>
No. 919112 ID: 8d924c

>>919065
Frustrating, but Red and Gold will have to pull the marotte off current duties. The town simply isn't ready for the temple, anyways, and he's actually concerned about the infant thing now that he's inadvertently purchased a place.

First he explains this to Lute, then mentions staying away from the location where the temple was to be built to any local villagers who are paying attention, then he heads to go tell the marotte what to do.
It receives new, extremely strict orders regarding its wandering, so that it remains away from populated locations while it shifts to instead constructing a smeltery and forge, on a nearby spot to the planned temple. It /can/ go into Hrotsvitha, but not towards the populated bits of this part of Creation. Additionally, Red and Gold will harvest a dose of the exoplasm, since he may need trade goods.

Since actually summoning anything wasn't possible, he should have more than enough essence to use at the moment, and defers to Lute on suggestions for further action.

(Oh, add that Resources 2 purchase to planned XP, so Res 2>Cecelyne Mythos Exultant.)
>>
No. 919121 ID: afdebc

>>919065
Requesting that Bridget make use of her dice in survival to gather some Malfean plant-life to melt down seems like the most expedient solution there. And would she really need a specialized smelter if she had access to some other heat source (perhaps the local blacksmiths, or Lute's glassworks), and Craftsman Needs no Tools?

>defers to Lute on suggestions for further action
Our immediate priority might be setting up some kind of perimeter security to preempt demon incursions. Enough Marottes could build walls and fortifications eventually, but for now, Cloud Arsenals might be a better choice for sentries and perimeter guards- they don't actually like combat, don't have a pronounced quirk that will drive them to harm the mortals, and well, the screams would help with time-keeping.
>>
No. 919274 ID: 2007b6

>>919112
>Since actually summoning anything wasn't possible,
It certainly is possible, just somewhat unsafe (-1 external penalty on the first binding roll, difficulty 5 wits + occult to banish the demon if binding failed - same problems you faced with the hopping puppeteer), and Lute Silhouette Speculation can't do much to help you without proper materials.
>>919103
>"Now why did you do that for?"
"Payment for services rendered, in accordance with the Neomah Charter. I could put the tooth back and take something else, if you'd prefer, but options are limited because of a loathesome necrotic aura floating around here lately, which rapidly spoils soft-tissue samples. I haven't a preservation spindle strong enough to block it."
>>
No. 919367 ID: 0640da

rolled 8, 8, 6, 3, 5, 3, 3, 9, 5, 9, 1, 7, 10, 10, 3, 8, 8, 1, 5, 2, 7, 7, 4, 2, 9, 5, 1, 3, 8, 9 = 169

>>919274
"...don't tell her to replace it, River. I can grow a tooth back... probably. I don't have any way to get rid of a black rock lodged in my gums." Morse sighs. "If you're going to continue with this ridiculous farce, I want something to show for it. Can you get me to any sort of... medical demon. Do demons practice undead medicine? Just... organize something for my leg."

Morse would like to barter her tooth for medical attention, rather than immediate sexual gratification. A letter of introduction or directions to the nearest surgeon would probably do her fine.
>>
No. 919389 ID: 2007b6

>>919367
A sesselja catches up to you. Was making slow progress on the tracking because it stopped to lick and nibbling at the blooms of corroded metal which emerged wherever Morse touched the walls or floor. The hideous little cricket-spider has a voice like a child, and claims it could repair Morse's leg easily, but wants at least a dozen doses of some recreational intoxicant in exchange. Doesn't care which one.

>>918977
Alright, y'know what, let's go ahead with Seven Broken Wings Of Red And Gold summoning a Teodozjia. The jade lion can barely squeeze through the wine cellar door, but recognizes not only it's summoner, and Lute Silhouette Speculation In Comet's Reflection, but also the inn itself, on sight, and seems to understand the whole strategic situation without needing to be told. (Red And Gold's coadjutor gives a brief empathic impression of smugly grooming itself.)

"Permission to begin securing the perimeter, sir?" it growls. "I propose we reach out to the Haslanti in the airship just outside of town, and recruit them by describing the situation in terms of this effectively being a two-thousand-square-mile greenfield surrounded by legions of eager soil-thieves rather than an allied outwall territory. They could fly around the perimeter in eight hours, at top speed. With Madelrada's agent onboard carving one 'keep out' sign per second, and your already bound marotte hanging under the airship to deploy those signs and grab material for more, that would at least be a symbolic start on establishing access control."
>>
No. 919427 ID: 8d924c

>>919389
"Permission is granted, but do be gentle with the mortals. I don't want to break them when I'm not yet sure of the desires of the Unquestionable and they could still have both informational and tactical purposes. Spirits you can handle as you see fit, and I'll assign the marotte to follow your orders. Infants are a resource, so try to keep it away from them."

Red and Gold looks to Lute for approval or disapproval of the proposed actions, since it would require her assistance, but would collect his sesseljae familiar and head out to give the marotte its new orders.

Is the Teodozjia bound? I went and looked over the plates again and I think the Courtesan might actually be the most appropriate one to use and I just sort of ignored it earlier because of the name.

(Still replenishing willpower off of any stunt bonuses, until I hit 10, then back to motes.)
>>
No. 919446 ID: bb5006

"Well, we don't have any booze right here and now, so how about you fix up her leg, and since I like to drink, I'll just give you however much booze I drink for a week or two. That should be way more than 12 drinks."
>>
No. 919505 ID: 2007b6

>>919446
"Okay! I'll climb into your stomach, and then as soon as we drink enough booze, I'll fix her leg."
>>

rolled 10, 1, 9, 3, 1, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 6, 3, 8, 5, 5, 10, 2, 5, 4, 4, 2, 5, 6, 2, 2, 10, 6, 10, 10, 7, 8, 2, 2, 10, 2, 9, 7, 9, 8, 4, 9, 10, 9, 1, 2, 10, 7, 8, 1, 5, 9, 8, 4, 2, 2, 6, 5, 6, 4, 7, 4, 7, 6, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 10, 5, 3, 8, 10, 2, 6, 3, 6, 8, 6, 4, 10, 8, 2, 3, 5, 3, 2, 7, 5, 4, 3, 2, 5, 6, 3, 8, 7, 10, 3 = 552

>>919389
>>919427
"The Jade Lion's stratagem is sound, I will lend my support." Lute agrees, as her robes turn silver, melt, and reform into garb more like that worn by the Haslanti. "I am already antiquated with the airship crew, and have aided their repairs previously- it should be possible to secure their assistance."

Lute will depart and attempt to sell the Haslanti airship crew (whose fuel reserves have been freshly topped off with wood-demesne olive-oil) on the plan to ward the surrounding territory against further demonic incursions by providing an artificial Autumn's worth of leaf foil warding talismans. (No no, not these demons. They've been bound by a sorcerer who's understandably interested in not being overrun).

>I figure Lute can carve a leaf from Hrotsvitha into a simple "property of Madelrada, keep out" sign with a miscellaneous action using Craft (Air) at difficulty 3, since it's both simpler and more error-tolerant than a prayer strip.
>She's got twelve dice, plus three bonus successes from that prosthetic arm's bushbot mode.
>A six-action flurry with a base pool of twelve dice would mean rolling 6 dice on the first, 5 on the second, 4 on the third, 3 on the fourth, 2 on the fifth, and 1 on the sixth - but thanks to those bonus successes, anything more than zero dice is enough.

Rolling to persuade the airship crew to help, for the social attack in the engraved message, and for crafting in that crazy flurry.

As a day long warding / protective action aboard the airship, I'm going to count this plan as a day of training towards Stone Skipping Spirit (1 of 3). (And when Lute takes a much deserved sleep after all
>>

>>919523
Correction / continuation, not for xp
>(And when Lute takes a much deserved sleep after all
of that, she's going to start training the First Kimberly Excellency in her sleep).

Training plan for the next week or so is going to be:

50 xp = [1 day] 27 xp (First Kimbery Excellency) + [instant] 3 xp (Linguistics 2 to 3) + [3 days] 9 xp (Blue Vervain Binding) + [3 days] 11 xp (Stone Skipping Spirit)

SSS is probably going to involve working with the airship crew to reinforce protective measures / safety, BVB is all about binging people into grounds and fostering communication- training for that will likely involve working with the shell shocked and introspection plauge-ed villagers to try and reinforce cooperative social groups (or forge new ones). Encouraging people to find themselves in working together.
>>
No. 919615 ID: e4aa95

As per the discord discussion, I'll be playing a new dragonblooded character.

Willpower 10

Compassion 1 Conviction 5 Temperance 3 Valor 2

strength 1
dex 5 (11 with artifact)
stamina 1
charisma 5
manipulation 4
appearance 0
perception 4
intelligence 4
wits 1

Archery2
Linguistics 3
Lore 3
Martial Arts4(aspect)
Presence3(favored)
Melee2
Performance2
Ride1
Stealth1
War2
Socialize3(favored)
Integrity 1(favored)
Bureaucracy5(aspect)
Sail 2(aspect)
Dodge2
Occult3

Specialty: Linguistics - Speak Old Realm like a native to the Lintha dialect. (1)
Specialty: Occult - Warding and Exorcism (3)

(required)
Wind-Carried Word Technique
Elemental Bolt Attack (requires lore 2)

(aspect)
Finding the Water's Depths(requires bureaucracy 2)
Thoughtful Gift Technique(requires bureaucracy 4)
First Martial Arts Excellency
Terrestrial Martial Arts Reinforcement

(extra 2)
Threshold Warding Stance (requires dodge 2)
Language-Learning Ritual (requires linguistics 2)

(backgrounds)
Resources 4
Artifact 5
Arsenal 2
Retainers 2
Connections 1 (Tin Orchid Academy, hell school)
Connections 1 (Lookyshy's Intelligence Directorate)
Connections 1 (Priesthood of Cecelyne)
Destiny 1 (Hook up with Malice to father a race of buggy bat babies)
>>
No. 919621 ID: 8d924c

>>919615
Here's my current sheet for my Golden Janissary Style martial artist DB

Fire Aspect Dragonblooded(Lookshy)

Attributes
Strength 4
Dexterity 5
Stamina 1

Charisma 1
Manipulation 1
Appearance 5

Perception 2
Intelligence 2
Wits 5

Abilities
Linguistics 1
Lore 2
Occult 1
Stealth 1
Thrown 1
Athletics 3*
Dodge 3*
Melee 1*
Presence 1*
Socialize 3*
Archery 1
Medicine 1
Performance 1
Ride 1
Survival 1
Awareness 1*
Craft 0
Integrity 3(+1 Against Demons)*
Resistance 1
War 1
Bureaucracy 1
Investigation 1
Larceny 1
Martial Arts 5(+3 Golden Janissary Style)*
Sail 1

Willpower 10
Essence 3
Personal Pool: 15
Peripheral Pool: 33

Virtues:
Compassion 2 Conviction 2
Temperance 4 Valor 2

Charms:
All of Golden Janissary Style, so-
Cleansing Flame Strike, Rotten Leaf Arrested, Where Is Doom Inquisition, Golden Janissary Form, Paralyzing Combustion Imbuement, Light-on-Dark Shield, Lone Spark Lights the Conflagration

Backgrounds:
Breeding 3
Artifact 3
Arsenal 3
Undecided 3 points

Artifact 3:

Red Jade Dire Lance: 2 Dot Artifact

Speed 4, Accuracy +2, Damage +9L/13L, Defense +2, Rate 2, Minimums Str 2, Attune 5, Tags 2, L, R

Red Jade Skinmount Amulet: 2 Dot Artifact

Silken Armor: 2 Dot Artifact

+5L/3B Soak, Attune 2
Stacks with armor
>>
No. 919623 ID: e4aa95

>>919615

(mutations)
-2Can't wear ordinary belts, shirts, or armor due to wing membrane
-2Diet (Blood of Mammals and Birds)
1Enhanced Hearing (Bat Ears)
1Enhanced Vision (Four Eyes)
-2Fragile
1Fur
6Wings
2Prehensile Tongue
-1Ugly
-1Hungry
-2Greater Curse

Artifact 5 (robot spine)
Resources 4 (Law firm)
Languages are Rivertongue(native), Old Realm, Skytongue, Forest-tongue

Motivation: Learn the martial arts of the Anathema

Name is Fanged Flair Effulgence (which is an alias)
>>
No. 919635 ID: bb5006

Name: Sesus Xanin Dynastic Fire Aspected Dragon Blooded
Willpower: 10/10

Attributes
Strength 3 (6)/Charisma 2/ Perception 3
Dexterity 5 (8)/ Manipulation 2/ Intelligence 3
Stamina 3 (6)/ Appearance 3/ Wits 3

Abilities:
Archery 3
Athletics 4
Linguistics 2 (High Realm Native, Old Realm, Rivertongue)
Lore 1
Martial Arts 3
Melee 5 +2 Slashing Swords
Occult 3
Performance 1
Presence 5
Resistance 3
Ride 2
Socialize 2
Survival 3
War 5

Backgrounds:
Artifact 5: Crown of Thunders and Infernal Cannon (Large)
Artifact 3: 3 dot Thunderbolt Shield, 2 dot Reaper Daiklaive, 1 dot Cigar case of endless tobacco
Manse 2: Cecelyne Aspected Manse with a Sand Serpent Stone with Comfort Zone x2 and Zone of Influence for the Manse itself. A hotspring made out of jets and ice cold vitriol.
Command 3: 250 soldiers
Resources 3: Enough for a largely exiled lazy Dynast.
Breeding 4: In spite of being a lazy person who doesn't want to be involved in the upcoming civil war, she is actually of an impressive pedigree, and being in exile definitely isn't going to stop her from being married to a nice suitor.

Valor: 3
Compassion: 3
Conviction: 1
Temperance: 2

Drawbacks:
Greater Curse: 4
Megalomania: 2
Hungry: 1

BP: 23
Stamina 2-3: 4
Willpower: 6-10: 4
Athletics: 3-4: 1
Presence: 3-5: 2
Melee: 3-5: 2
War: 3-5: 2
Artifact 3-5: 4
Artifact 2-3: 1
Breeding 3-4: 2
Melee Specialty 2 dots: 1

The story behind Artifacts:
The Manse, a Cecelyne aspected manse on the border of Hrothvista and the Demon City. Atop it was an Infernal Cannon primarily used by a Blood Ape who refused to look at Xanin, largely because of her azure shield. With little other defensive capabilities, it was a one sided take down to claim the Manse, and the Infernal Cannon with it. At present, negotiations with the Blood Ape formerly running said cannon to accept the new owners of the hotsprings have been dicey.

In the basement, there was a puzzle lock, it declared that whoever should solve it would know power and command. It was an impossibly complex working made from Azure Glass, and would have taken years to solve. Fortunately, a boot heel to it worked just as well. Inside was the Crown of Thunders.

The Air's New Shield:
Forged during the Primordial War by a Twilight Glorious Orichalcum Rainbow for one of her circle's air aspect armies, designed to exploit their enemies' obedience to their master's command to the law of not witnessing Azure, allowing the army to have almost free range with leading unexpected attacks against the demon armies.

In the millennia since, the production of these shields has slown down to nothing, and they are most frequently given as ceremonial gifts, save a few hundred used by Wyld Hunt parties who are expecting to have to deal with Demons summoned by Anathema.

Rules: While the shield is available, the attuned is counted as under the effects of the charm "Atrocity without Witness" (pasted beneath) against all natives to Malfeas (including Infernal Exalts) or anyone with an intimacy towards Cecelyne's laws.

Anyone with Dodge MDV of 8+ is immune to the effect, and spending a point of willpower to resist counts as a scene of eroding an intimacy towards Cecelyne's laws.

The Shield also acts as a method of safely getting down from high places, for two motes it allows the user to determine the speed at which they fall, anywhere from 5 yards a tick to terminal velocity up until the last second for 2 motes. This can activate while unconscious, but requires the shield be securely attached to the Attuned user's body, and that they have the 2 motes to spare.

The Cigar Case of Bottomless Tobacco:
A custom gift commissioned by her parents given to Sesus Xanin after her graduation from the House of Bells. It always has a single cigar when opened, and provides a +2 bonus against disease to the user, or anyone benefiting from Enfolded in the Dragon's Wings, or +4 for everyone in a building if smoking has become routine enough that it permeates the building. It also helps supplement eating, and if routinely smoked doubles the period before hunger penalties start occurring.
>>
No. 919641 ID: bb5006

Slight change to above: Occult 2, Slashing Sword specialization to +3

Excellencies: 1st War, Athletics, Melee
Terrestrial War Reinforcement
Normal Charms
Dragon Graced Weapon
Ghost Fire Blade
Enfolded in Dragon's Wings


Weapon: Reaper Daiklaive changed to be Green Jade
4 speed, +5L damage, steal 1 mote/hit, +4 accuracy, +1 defense (9 Parry), rate 3, strength 2 required

Soak
Natural: 6 Bashing, 3 Lethal
Thunderbolt Shield: +2 Bashing/Lethal

Total: 8 Bashing, 5 Lethal
>>
No. 919655 ID: bb5006

"Okay, I think I know exactly what to do, but I hate that I have to do it."

River, more than happy to oblige, went back to the Amber colored impression on the wall, and her hands turned into silver as she hacked out as much of the stuff as she could possibly drag down the hall, the surgeon wanted 12 doses of some kind of intoxicant, well whatever the hell this was had to be something that it would enjoy probably.

She also proceeded to shut the door, since the last thing she would want to do is flood this area.

Then with that, she was left to shave up the ice as good as possible with her claws, backtracking and gathering plenty of the coal rice to use as sprinkles, since it wasn't like she wouldn't eat it.

Rolling int+Craft (Water)
>>
No. 919656 ID: bb5006

rolled 10, 4, 7, 2, 3, 10 = 36

>>
No. 919659 ID: 2007b6

>>919656
Even with a steep penalty for improvised tools, that's at least two successes. Over the course of the next sixteen-plus hours, you successfully pacify numerous catacomb-dwelling horrors with hostess fruit pies bizarrely delicious coal-sprinkled sorbet. The stomach bottle bug honors the agreement and repairs Morse's leg.
>>
No. 919661 ID: bb5006

Finding out that Specializations are cut off for mass combat's War cap, I'm making a slight edit.

Archery 2 (-1 skill dot from 3), Presence 4 (-1 BP)

War: Tactical Plans +3 Specialty
>>
No. 919663 ID: bb5006

I am an idiot and had missed that we got 4 free specialties, so nothing is being sacrificed for the War specialty, and Occult is going up to 3 since I also was wrong about how that worked in the first place and you can't trade Skill Dots for Specialties.
>>
No. 919708 ID: bb5006

Presence from 5-4 (+1BP) Greater Curse from 4-5 +1 BP

Also, since I apparently missed some stuff for the original character Sheet:
Hungry: +1 BP
Great Curse (originally) 4
Megalomania: 2 BP

Since I also messed up the Willpower rules by not noticing it in the Erata, I'm just starting at 9 WP.

And, with those 2 freed points of BP:

Artifact 3-4: -2 BP
Replacing the Reaper daiklave with a Reaper Beamklave.

The Burning Blade of Sorcerer's Fire (Green Jade Reaper Beamklave)

Long has Sorcery been associated with green. So too was the rationale behind the inventor of this blade, who's name has long been forgotten by all but the wisest. Forged as a weapon for the newly formed Exalts in their war against the Primordials, it combined Green Jade's nature to grow and give life with Red Jade's raw destructive burning nature to create a sword that grew into a more intense flame than a sword could normally ever hold. It slew countless scores of demons, and had, for a time, been lost to creation. Lost in the pits of Malfeas, same as the Crown of Thunders.

Some would say that a sword of similar appearance has appeared throughout Malfean history, only in tiny roles dedicated to some warlord or another cutting down scores of soldiers with their arms and armor cleaved in twain. Whatever the case, it wound up in the hands of the owner of the owner and operator of the Burning Agony Spa, and destroyed the next weilder's mundane arms and armor.

By appearance, it's quite simple when powered off. A handle in the shape of a flame covered in Adamant, covered with Old Realm Text in a dialect so long forgotten it scarcely looks like Old Realm at all in this day and age. When activated, it becomes a brilliant green blade, seemingly with no defined edge as it wavers and crackles like a fire.
>>
No. 919709 ID: bb5006

Presence -3 WP from 9-10 since I need motes more than social skills at first.
>>
No. 919859 ID: bb5006

I went through some considerations, and I reshuffled skills around, and some other changes to account for actually being a leader in some regards, and helping actually build a not shitty small fiefdom in Malfeas and eventually some Satrapy.

The big one affecting BP:
Stamina: 3-2 +4 BP
War: 5-4 +1 BP
Breeding: 4-5: -2 BP
Arsenal: 0-3: -3 BP

Bought with Arsenal: Red Jade Superheavy Plate at 3 dots, 1 Hearthstone "Memorial Armor", and Exceptional Longbows at Magnitude 3 for the army presented by Command

Skill changes (And what skills are favored) just listed here for convenience:
Archery1
cAthletics4
Awareness2
fBureaucracy3
Craft
cDodge
Integrity
fInvestigation 1
Larceny
Linguistics2
Lore1
Martial Arts2
Medicine
cMelee5 +3 Slashing Swords
Occult2
Performance1
cPresence3
Resistance3
Ride2
Sail
cSocialize2
Stealth
Survival1
Thrown
fWar4 +3 Tactics
>>
No. 919870 ID: bb5006

Because I didn't realize how powerful they were, I'm swapping Arsenal 3 for another purchase of Artifact 3, keeping the Jade Superheavy Armor, but getting a Skin Mount Graft instead of the Hearthstone, and a Collar of Dawn's Cleansing Light.

Also, grabbing the Memorial Iron as the 3rd dot of Hearthstones from Manse 2, that manse is tied to the Blessed Isle though.
>>
No. 919884 ID: d9acdc

Character Sheet for Cathak Othok Dythyk, Earth Aspected Dynast Dragon Blooded

Virtues
Compassion 1
Conviction 4
Temperance 2
Valor 2

Essence 3 (Raise from 2 to 3 for 10BP)*

Willpower: 10 (Raise from 5 to 10 for 5BP)*

Attributes
Strength 2
Dexterity 3
Stamina 2

Charisma 1
Manipulation 4
Appearance 4

Perception 3
Intelligence 5
Wits 2

Abilities
Archery 1
Athletics0
*Awareness1
Bureaucracy 0
*Craft 2 (Air), 2 (Fire), 4 (Lightning) (1BP to raise from 3 to 4)*
Dodge 0
*Integrity1
Investigation 0
Larceny 0
*Linguistics3 (3 dot specialty for persuasive writing)
*Lore 5 (2BP to raise from 3 to 5)*
Martial Arts1
Medicine3 (1 dot specialty for cybernetics)
Melee 1
*Occult 5 (2BP to raise from 3 to 5)*
Performance1
Presence1
*Resistance1
Ride 1
Sail 3
Socialize 2
Stealth 0
Survival0
Thrown 0
*War 1

Charms
Terrestrial Circle Sorcery
Death of Obsidian Butterflies
Demon of the First Circle
Dragon of Smoke and Flame
Emerald Circle Counter Magic
Incantation of Effective Restoration
Lightning Spider

Backgrounds
Artifact3Belt of Ariel Mobility, Scrying Apparatus (2 dot elemental core), Spell Book
Savant 2Reduces requirements by, and provides bonus dice equal to, rating of background, for magictech maintenance
Mentor 3Mara, The Shadow-Lover
Resources3
Breeding3 Additional 3/5 motes to their respective pools (2BP to raise from 1 to 3)
>>
No. 919885 ID: d9acdc

>>919884
I forgot to include, but I have taken the Creature of Darkness Mutation, to give +4 BP and reconcile with the Budget
>>
No. 919901 ID: afdebc

Here's my contribution to the Dragon-Blooded lawship team.


Unhappy Wood DB (Name Pending)
Wood Aspect Dragon-Blooded (Lookshy)

Iconic Anima: Whorls of lily of the valley, blossoms swaying in an unfelt breeze
Motivation: Learn the dances of lost Saigoth

Strength 2 Dexterity 5 Stamina 3
Charisma 2 Manipulation 2 Appearance 3
Perception 3 Intelligence 2 Wits 4

Compassion 1, Conviction 3, Temperance 2, Valor 3

Essence 2, Willpower 10
Personal 14, Peripheral 27 (Base) + 10 (from Skinmounts)

Aspect: Archery, Medicine, Performance, Ride and Survival
Favored: Integrity, Awareness, Martial Arts

Abilities / Skills:
*Archery 2
*Awareness 1
Bureaucracy 1
Dodge 3
*Integrity 1
Linguistics 3 (Native: Rivertongue, Others: High Realm, Low Realm, Skytongue)
*Martial Arts 3
*Medicine 5
Melee 2
*Performance 5 (While Under Fire +2)
Resistance 3 (Evil Stepmother Boots +2)
*Ride 0
Sail 2
Stealth 1
*Survival 5
War 2

Charms:
Wind-Carried Words Technique
Elemental Bolt Attack
Infection-Banishing Prana
First Survival Excellency
Hostile Environment Preparation Method
First Performance Excellency
Three-String Sword Prana
Third Resistance Excellency

Mutations, Merits and Flaws:
None

Backgrounds:
Arsenal 2 (3 + 2 * [# of pooling Lookshian allies] dots: 1-dot Swaying Grass Dance Style manual), 1-dot Fivefold Harmonic Adapter (Moonsilver-Jade) [see below] )
Artifact 3 (Evil Stepmother Boots, Starfish Tent) [see below]
Artifact 2 (Silken Armor, Horn of Ways)
Artifact 2 (Skinmount Amulet x2)
Breeding 3
Connections 1 (Guild) [see below]
Destiny 3 (Twins Raised Apart) [see below]
Manse 3 (Gem of Elemental Travel, Purifying Mercy Stone, Stone of Breath)
Resources 3 (Dancer or Surgeon depending on locale)

Mundane Equipment / Resource Purchases:
Fine (or Exceptional?) Bow
Medical Supplies
Feathersteel knife

Intimacies:
Dance (Unrealized Passion)
Evil Stepmother Boots (Stubborn Pride)
[Santova’s DB] (Friendship)
Fanged Flair Effulgence (TBD)
[The Golden Janissary] (TBD)
[Calamari God’s DB] (TBD)
Her Ordained Role (Duty) [A negative intimacy]

BP Spent:
+18 Free with Chargen
-5 raising WP to 10
-6 Medicine, Performance, Survival 5
-4 Breeding 3
-3 Three Background dots

Fivefold Harmonic Adapter (Moonsilver-Jade)
Per houserules, any given Harmonic Adapter only acts as an adapter between two magical materials.

Connections 1 (Guild)
Not a full-blown ally, just somebody you can go to for a simple menu of services, cash on the barrel... plus some "frequent flier" bonuses with a larger mercantile network. Notably, includes this includes a means to access Emerald Countermagic in case of an emergency with the Evil Stepmother Boots.

Destiny 3
[Name here] has an identical twin sister she was raised apart from, and each is unaware of the existence of the other. One twin was raised in Lookshy, the other in the Realm. While their panoplies are distinct and reflect their differing circumstances, they are otherwise eerily similar, both manifesting the same flower in the their iconic anima, expressing similar virtues, and training similar attributes, skills and charms.
It was fated that the twins would first walk separately. That they will eventually meet. That each will walk a mile in the other’s shoes. And that finally, that they will stand together, and ensure their family continues.

Evil Stepmother Boots (Artifact 3)
Tiny golden bells adorn this pair of moonsilver boots, and chime softly with every every movement of the wearer. A dancer moving in tune with this music will find her actions grow easier and more graceful, and her feet carry her further, buoyed by the grace of dance and tintinnabulation. However, when she tires, the dancer will find she cannot stop, nor can she free herself from her ringing footwear. Without countermagic, the bells will continue to ring out until finally falling silent with a death knell. Such was the fate of the Evil Stepmother the boots were originally tailed for, and gifted to.

The Evil Stepmother Boots count as a pair of moonsilver hearthstone bracers, with the performance ability substitution effect of the Hauberk of Bells, the mobility boost of Perfected Boots, and the statistics of a pair of moonsilver God Kicking Boots. They cost (Performance dots to substitute) x 2 motes to attune, minimum 4m.

Starfish Tent (Artifact 3)
Start with steelsilk, embroider it with patterns to resist corrosion and disease, enchant the fabric with the elemental benediction of wood so it's self-repairing, fold it all up tightly around an Infinite Seed and soak it in the same oil used to summon the minions of the Eyeless Face. Once the oil is finished soaking in, the Infinite Seed has been split and hollowed out and functions as a hearthstone socket.

The result is an inflatable airtight tent (with airlocks) originally intended as an isolation ward for field hospitals. It maintains a positive pressure, such that any holes cut in the walls leak out, not in. When a hearthstone is inserted, the tent expands to comfortably accommodate a group of magnitude equal to the heathstone’s rating. In one ill-advised incident, when a Protoshinmaic Vortex was connected to one of these tents, it kept folding and inflating until it reached ten stories high with enough bedrooms for a full legion before catching fire.

Lookshy cannot produce more Infinite Seeds, but they can make Skin Mount Amulets, so they've figured out a way to cut such a tent in half and graft in a new hearthstone socket. Accordingly, they are sometimes called "starfish tents."


Other Notes:
[Unhappy Wood DB] was trained to serve as something between a medic and a ranger, and it is this capacity she serves aboard Fanged Flair Effulgence’s flying legal firm. She’s dissatisfied and not living her passion- she’s much happier as a dancer than either a medic or a ranger. Her current deployment to hell, perhaps, presents an opportunity in this respect. She can come across as curt or abrasive to others. (Or defiant, as her performance specialty reflects).

Her belled boots serve as both instrument and weapon, and as a concession to her better self, despite the inherent risk involved. She has a tendency to wear them longer than is necessary, which has landed her in trouble before. (It’s how she and [Santova’s DB] met, actually).

She wears a traveller’s dress (cut up the side to allow high kicks and general freedom of movement) and a hooded cloak, one or both of these representing her Silken Armor Her pair of Hearthstone Sockets are installed on the outside of each leg, where one’s hands would be if placed in one’s pants-pockets.

---

General plan is to complete her relatively short term motivation, have a point of epiphany, figure out / affirm who she really wants to be, and pick a more far reaching motivation, and start investing in more integrity and performance charms as a result. (Essentially, she’s ripe for Lute Silhouette Speculation to mess with). This may or may not result in her leaving her current position on the law ship, but we’ll see.

Arsenal is kind of complicated, and may require some revision (figuring out what to do with the unspent points, possibly moving some gear from the artifact to arsenal background).

TLDR: Unhappy Wood DB dancer with musical ass-kicking boots
>>
No. 919912 ID: d9acdc

rolled 4, 7, 5, 6, 1, 4, 9, 3, 4, 5, 4, 7, 7, 5, 10, 10, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 8, 9, 2, 3, 2, 6, 8, 6, 6 = 174

>>918954
Bridget walks slowly, feeling the plant life hum in time with the ebb and flow of essence. By the time she completes a circle, she has internalized the song as part of herself, becoming one with the life energy pooling around this village. Invigorated by the surge of essence, she seeks out the monk who volunteered to join her, as well as their blood ape guide. A quick assessment confirms that everyone has prepared well for the journey in the last few hours. After mapping out the directions, getting her bearings, and finding a good launch point, she grabs both party members underneath her arms and leaps forward, heading to the closest point of sale for bonewine. According to the Blood Ape a nearby spring would serve well as a landmark, as it bordered both the forest and city.

Attuned to the manse, rolling to navigate to the hot spring run by Sesus Xanin, stunting a bonus from the directions the blood ape provided and activating Mountain Crossing Leap for 10m, 1wp, leaving her on 21/26/6 Personal Peripheral and WP.
>>
No. 919920 ID: afdebc

>>919901
Whups, Lookshy DBs don't get the discounted Manse background, and I forgot Lore. Corrections:

Skills:
Lore 2

Backgrounds:
Arsenal 2 (1-dot Swaying Grass Dance Style manual, 1-dot Fivefold Harmonic Adapter (Moonsilver-Jade), 2-dot Purifying Mercy Stone, 1-dot Stone of Breath )
Manse 3 (Gem of Elemental Travel)

Also since I'm using the normal manse background, I'm going to have to design it. Pending.
>>
No. 920150 ID: 2007b6

>>919367
While the lunar is making demonic sno-cones, a vision of the Princess Magnificent With Lips Of Coral And Robes Of Black Feathers appears in Morse Song's daydreams. "Hello, my darling! As long as you're stranded in Hell, could you pick up some yozi venom for me? Hundred doses should be plenty. Deliver it to Dari of the Mists - Underworld analogue of the present-day city of Paragon - in an appropriately sealed container, either personally or by a courier with a solid reputation for discretion. In a separate container from the Unmelting Heart, obviously. There's no rush, you can take as long as you need, just don't leave the demon realm without it. Any questions? How are you holding up?"
>>
No. 920179 ID: 0640da

rolled 5, 10, 3, 7, 5, 5, 6, 3, 2, 2, 2, 9, 5, 2, 8, 2, 8, 9, 3, 6, 8, 7, 10, 4, 8, 9, 6, 7, 2, 8 = 171

Morse doesn't thank anyone in the process of getting her leg restored. As soon as she can walk on both legs, she picks up her Shamisen and begins to play again. After some time, however, a message comes through to her from her master...

>>920150

"...I'm holding up terribly, my liege. There seems to be... significant Celestial interference in my activities. There are no less than four beings, and in all probability more, that have been granted the graces of the stars. Including one inconsiderate, but subservient, Lunar mate and-- as predicted-- the child of Venus you had predicted would aid me. As always, you saw the future and I was mistaken in my estimations-- she has saved my hide twice now." Morse grunts.

"The Neverborn sent me on a task to do with an Underperson, so my performance may be limited-- although I will ensure I complete both tasks to my Liege's satisfaction. While the Unmelting Heart has eluded my grasp due to interference by a Solar and her flunkie, I know exactly who has it and where they are in Malfeas." Morse flips open her compass. "I don't quite know the status of the Solar interfering with my activities, although I suspect after a bit of time she's gathered an army or found an artifact to deal with me when I return to our... shared camp. The residents there are all mortals, but she's a bit dangerous... nearly killed me once now, and I've no doubts she plans to do it again. Do we have any... tools for dealing with errant Solars who get in our way? I'd love to retrieve them when I return to Creation."

Morse would like to put aside some of her EXP to purchase an artifact. Something that could threaten those who aren't mortal. She understands she won't be able to retrieve it until she reaches a Shadowlands or Creation-- but Liege should work as Resources for this, correct? I'll discuss it in the discord.

"...is this communication channel safe? I fear I may have put the cart before the horse by revealing a bit too much." Morse realizes her faux pas and apologizes.
>>
No. 920201 ID: afdebc

>>919920
Manse design!

The Respite of Alpine Amenities

In the territory of the Marukan Alliance, amidst the inhospitable cold of a snowy peak, perches a comfortable mountain retreat built of humble stone and hardwood. The interior is always warm and accommodating despite the climate, and hot drink, comfortable furniture, and pleasant music await its guests. This is a place of hospitality and comfort. Even the northern lights are welcome- on certain occasions they dip low, providing an enchanting sight, and a beacon for lost travelers.

Originally built during the Shogunate, the Respite sports a moving lift, to carry visitors up the mountain. In the modern era, the lower end of this luxury has found a more utilitarian purpose, and also serves as a millstone (necessitating occasional cleaning of the lift mechanism by mortal caretakers).

While welcoming, this lodging is not helpless against guests who abuse the offered hospitality. The innermost sanctum is protected by concealed traps and pitfalls, and those who overstep their bounds may find themselves unceremoniously dumped outside on steep snowy slopes.

The manse produces a Gem of Elemental Travel, which among other benefits, allows the hearthstone bearer to effortlessly cross fields of deep snow.

The current hearthstone bearer was first granted atonement to the manse as a safe retreat during survival training. This posting turned to an unexpected delight when she discovered the combination of Glorious Halo of Hesiesh and Mela's Sweet Whisper could produce a private dance studio at her whim. On some nights her image still dances within the Respite, unknowing what audience sees her performance, or if she dances alone in the Respite beneath flickering Aurora.


CP Budget:
+6 Manse Rating x2
+2 Maintenance (Cleaning moving parts)
-1 Comfort Zone
-1 Magical Conveniences (Skii lift / millstone, automated preparation of hot food and drink, laundry)
-2 Central Control
-2 Glorious Halo of Hesiesh
-1 Mela's Sweet Whisper
-1 Minor traps and Tricks

The controls allows guests to work the kitchen and adjust the music, but overrides and control of other functions are restricted to the hearthstone bearer.

By default, Glorious Halo of Heseish serves to enhance the homey atmosphere, and conceal the traps more effectively. Other illusions can be evoked at the direction of the hearthstone bearer, as usual. Notably, this power is also used to project an image the aurora borealis in the night sky above the manse, though this only appears on certain on certain auspicious nights.


It's a skii lodge with integrated sound system and limited holodeck.
>>
No. 920270 ID: bb5006

>Morse doesn't thank anyone in the process of getting her leg restored. As soon as she can walk on both legs, she picks up her Shamisen and begins to play again.


Given that River can't hear the small conversation that's going on, so she just kind of leaned haphazardly on Morse's shoulder awkwardly as she had to lean down almost a foot. "So Miss Grouchy Robes, we've still got a day we're stuck down here, maybe three or four depending on the state of that storm cloud, so if you're not interested in getting it on with a remarkably attractive demon, what ARE you interested in doing to pass the time while we're stuck here. Other than playing music, since something tells me that's something of a constant."
>>
No. 920284 ID: 0640da

rolled 9, 5, 5, 8, 3, 4, 8, 4, 6, 3, 4, 10, 10, 2, 6, 3, 1, 5, 7, 10, 7, 2, 9, 5, 4, 4, 6, 7, 3, 8 = 168

>>920270

Morse looks at her mate and rolls her eyes. "I would be reading if there were any books. A healthy mind allows one to deal with the hopelessness of the future and postpone one's oblivion until the time is right. Maybe you should read a book or two. It would give me room to breathe-- erm, think, and increase your pitiful intelligence considerably. Now, leave me alone. I'm busy with... something. Go play with your new fuck buddy."
>>
No. 920285 ID: bb5006

"Well, I would, but you keep trying to blow me off. And that's neat. I'll see if I can get a book when we can go back to town, but I was asking for more of a 'Here and now' perspective.

"Although, if reading is so important to you, maybe you could teach me how. I mean, not really a high priority for a barmaid or a footsoldier."
>>
No. 920336 ID: 2007b6

>>919523
Eight successes on the dice plus three successes from anima power means demons with a modified MDV of 10 or below will be inclined to stay out. That covers the vast majority of first-circles, and probably even some second-circles. Main concern at this point would then be Luminata, and any others whose Motivation is in direct conflict with the instruction, or those who routinely travel by flight or through tunnels and thus might miss the fence entirely.

The Haslanti aircrew got about five hours cumulative exposure to Hrotsvitha-fumes, but channeling Perfection In Life through a pep talk about maintaining shipboard discipline prevented any serious meltdowns. Some of them are also suffering hearing impairment due to the godawful screech of high-speed engraving. They'll likely be fine in a day or so, but for best results should spend some time further away from the border, in the interior of the region excised from Creation. They're also exhausted from pedaling; those first six hours were at full sprint speed, as planned, but the last forty miles of perimeter took more than four hours.

Lute's prosthetic arm is quivering slightly and has a dull reddish interior glow regardless of form. Any action involving fine manipulation will be at a -4 internal penalty due to fatigue, though a good night's sleep would be more than enough to sort that out.
>>

rolled 10, 6, 4, 5, 10, 7, 3, 2, 8, 8, 5, 5, 5, 2, 7, 3, 6, 2, 3, 3 = 104

Ah, that happy-tired feeling from a day's work done well. The local bubble warded from a wide array of intrusion (though it would do to revisit the gaps in that defense later), the hopping puppeteer dropped off at the church in-progress, and a safe return to port. Would be a good idea to secure hearing and environmental protection for the mortals the next time she attempts something like that, though. At least the crew is tired enough that making sure they get the rest they need shouldn't be difficult.

After getting the sailors settled in, assuming Red and Gold is still up (easy enough to ask a little birdie spidey where he is and what he's doing) Lute will stop by to appraise him of her progress. After that, I assume it's getting late and Lute should head to bed.

>Lute's prosthetic arm is quivering slightly and has a dull reddish interior glow regardless of form.
Ooh, pretty. Still, wouldn't do to worry anyone or attract undue attention over that. The resident joybringer's latest outfit sports long, comfy sleeves and gloves to conceal this.

Rolling disguise. Intelligence 6 + Larceny 0 + Speciality 1 + Infinite Resplendence Amulet 2 + Stunt - Fatigue. (Not sure if sidereal specific bonuses apply? Does "me, but not a scary infernal exalt" or "me, minus certain traits" count as a false identity?)

>Training
Still planning to pick up the first Kimbery Excellency in Lute’s sleep, if she can. Helping make sure the airship crew gets their rest and recovers from the environmental hazards the next day can probably be used as another day of training for Stone Skipping Spirit (2/3), although other stuff might come up that will interrupt that.
>>
No. 920422 ID: bb5006

Strength:3+3 Charisma: 2 Perception: 3
Dex: 5+3 Manipulation: 2 Intelligence: 3
Stamina:2+3 Appearance: 3 Wits: 3

Virtues:
Compassion: 3
Conviction: 1
Temperance: 2
Valor: 3


Willpower: 10
Limit: 0/5
Essence Pool:
Personal: 17/17
Peripheral: 5/31 (3m committed to Burning Blade of Sorcerer's Flame, 8 motes to Jade Superheavy Plate, 10m attuned to Crown of Thunders, 5 motes to attune to the Exalt's New Shield, +4 from the Sand Serpent Stone slotted in Skinmount Graft)


Artifact: 5 (Crown of Thunders, Infernal Essence Cannon)
Artifact: 4 (Exalt's New Shield, Burning Blade of Sorcerer's Flame)
Artifact: 3 (Red Jade Superheavy Plate, Skinmount Graft, Cigar Case of Bottomless Tobacco)
Manse: 2 (Sand Serpent Stone (A spa on the edge of the Forest and the Demon City, Memorial Iron)
Breeding: 5
Command: 3
Resource: 3

Skills:

Archery1
cAthletics4
Awareness2
fBureaucracy3
Craft
cDodge
Integrity
fInvestigation 1
Larceny
Linguistics2
Lore1
Martial Arts2
Medicine
cMelee5 +3 Slashing Swords
Occult2
Performance1
cPresence3
Resistance3
Ride2
Sail
cSocialize2
Stealth
Survival1
Thrown
fWar4 +3 Tactics

Charms:
1st melee Excellency
Dragon Graced Weapon
Ghost-Fire Blade

1st War Excellency
Terrestrial War Reinforcement
Enfolded in Dragon's Wings

1st Athletics Excellency

Panoply:
The Burning Blade of Sorcerer's Fire (Green Jade Reaper Beamklave)

Long has Sorcery been associated with green. So too was the rationale behind the inventor of this blade, who's name has long been forgotten by all but the wisest. Forged as a weapon for the newly formed Exalts in their war against the Primordials, it combined Green Jade's nature to grow and give life with Red Jade's raw destructive burning nature to create a sword that grew into a more intense flame than a sword could normally ever hold. It slew countless scores of demons, and had, for a time, been lost to creation. Lost in the pits of Malfeas, same as the Crown of Thunders.

Some would say that a sword of similar appearance has appeared throughout Malfean history, only in tiny roles dedicated to some warlord or another cutting down scores of soldiers with their arms and armor cleaved in twain. Whatever the case, it wound up in the hands of the owner of the owner and operator of the Burning Agony Spa, and destroyed the next weilder's mundane arms and armor.

By appearance, it's quite simple when powered off. A handle in the shape of a flame covered in Adamant, covered with Old Realm Text in a dialect so long forgotten it scarcely looks like Old Realm at all in this day and age. When activated, it becomes a brilliant green blade, seemingly with no defined edge as it wavers and crackles like a fire.


The Air's New Shield:
Forged during the Primordial War by a Twilight Glorious Orichalcum Rainbow for one of her circle's air aspect armies, designed to exploit their enemies' obedience to their master's command to the law of not witnessing Azure, allowing the army to have almost free range with leading unexpected attacks against the demon armies.

In the millennia since, the production of these shields has slown down to nothing, and they are most frequently given as ceremonial gifts, save a few hundred used by Wyld Hunt parties who are expecting to have to deal with Demons summoned by Anathema.

Rules: While the shield is available, the attuned is counted as under the effects of the charm "Atrocity without Witness" (pasted beneath) against all natives to Malfeas (including Infernal Exalts) or anyone with an intimacy towards Cecelyne's laws.

Anyone with Dodge MDV of 8+ is immune to the effect, and spending a point of willpower to resist counts as a scene of eroding an intimacy towards Cecelyne's laws.

The Shield also acts as a method of safely getting down from high places, for two motes it allows the user to determine the speed at which they fall, anywhere from 5 yards a tick to terminal velocity up until the last second for 2 motes. This can activate while unconscious, but requires the shield be securely attached to the Attuned user's body, and that they have the 2 motes to spare.

The Cigar Case of Bottomless Tobacco:
A custom gift commissioned by her parents given to Sesus Xanin after her graduation from the House of Bells. It always has a single cigar when opened, and provides a +2 bonus against disease to the user, or anyone benefiting from Enfolded in the Dragon's Wings, or +4 for everyone in a building if smoking has become routine enough that it permeates the building. It also helps supplement eating, and if routinely smoked doubles the period before hunger penalties start occurring.

The Unyielding Flame that the Sea Marched Against:

A single one of a set of 100,000 Red Jade Superheavy Armor forged for the Dawn Caste "Golden Spear that Pierces the Depths"'s Fire Aspected Gens more in celebration for a decisive victory against Kimbery's armies. Originally it was inscribed with heretical runes, but has had the runes praising the sun defaced by a number of Immaculate Monks over the centuries. The result is a substantially less heretical suit of armor, both from the perspective of the Immaculate Faith, and the perspective of Malfeas.
>>
No. 920446 ID: bb5006

The Cecylene Aspect Manse: Mechanics (Comfort Zone x2, Zone of Influence)

Sitting on the border of Hrotsvitha and Malfeas the City Proper, this manse was constructed on orders of the Cecylene Priesthood to serve as the local law enforcement, and the job of keeping the place under a tight shift was given to a Neomah who had pleased the local priest.

That job was failed quickly, as the place quickly became a pleasure center, though nothing illegal was going on. And so this continued for a few scant centuries. Recently however, it was taken over by Xanin.

Mounted up top is an Infernal Essence Cannon, operated at present by a Tomescu who has held the job for long enough that nobody actually wants to take over.

The transitory period from Neomah local lord to Dragonblooded local lord was a short and relatively bloodless one, as only a few dozen dissenters were killed, with another few dozen being killed in the local seizurepurchase of assets with the first batch of minted coins, forged using the Burning Blade of Sorcerer's Fire.


Said coins are the new enforced currency, both for local trade and for access to Hrotsvitha. They are forged by using the burning green blade to cut into a piece of brass, and using a clear section of old realm script from the hilt, with a loyal enough Harenhal checking the craftsmanship of each coin that comes back to the Manse to make sure no counterfeit coins are being added to circulation.

At present, the currency is so new that the majority of the local taxes are collected in resources that go to improving Xanin's present palace and keeping the army fed as best as possible, and a refund is paid in coinage until there is a large enough supply.
>>
No. 920619 ID: d9acdc

>>919884
Revised Character Sheet for Cathak Othok Dythyk, Earth Aspected Dynast Dragon Blooded

Iconic Anima: The Imperial Mountain, inverted, with a large, multi-hued, jade gear centered at the widest point

Aspect: Awareness, Craft, Integrity, Resistance, and War
Favored: Linguistics, Lore, Occult

Virtues
Compassion 1, Conviction 4, Temperance 2, Valor 2

Essence 3, (Raise from 2 to 3 for 10BP)* Willpower 10 (Raise from 5 to 10 for 5BP)*

Attributes
Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2
Charisma 1, Manipulation 4, Appearance 4
Perception 3, Intelligence 5, Wits 2

Abilities
Archery 1
Athletics 0
*Awareness 1
Bureaucracy 0
*Craft 2 (Air), 2 (Fire), 4 (Lightning) (1BP to raise from 3 to 4)*
Dodge 0
*Integrity 1
Investigation 0
Larceny 0
*Linguistics 3 (3 dot specialty for legalese)
*Lore 5 (2BP to raise from 3 to 5)*
Martial Arts 1
Medicine 3 (1 dot specialty for cybernetics)
Melee 1
*Occult 5 (2BP to raise from 3 to 5)*
Performance 1
Presence 1
*Resistance 1
Ride 1
Sail 3
Socialize 2
Stealth 0
Survival 0
Thrown 0
*War 1

Charms
Terrestrial Circle Sorcery
Death of Obsidian Butterflies
Demon of the First Circle
Dragon of Smoke and Flame
Emerald Circle Counter Magic
Incantation of Effective Restoration
Lightning Spider

Backgrounds
Artifact 3: Bracers of Universal Crafting, Scrying Apparatus (2 dot elemental core), Spell Book
Savant 1: Reduces requirements by, and provides bonus dice equal to, rating of background, for magictech maintenance
Mentor 3: Stanewald
Resources 3
Breeding 3: Additional 3/5 motes to their respective pools (2BP to raise from 1 to 3)
Connections 1: Locust Crusade

Other
Creature of Darkness Mutation: +4 BP

Character Flavoring

Motivation: Unite the realm and the reclamation

Intimacies:
>Fanged Flair Effulgence
(Love and loyalty)
>UWD [Maygeys DB]
(friendship)
>[The Golden Janissary]
(TBD)
>[Calamari God’s DB]
(TBD)
>Crew
(Useful)
>Reclamation
(Idolize)
>Realm
(Duty)
>Lookshy
(Respect)
>Technology
(Interest)
>Self
(Messiah)
>Demon Realm
(Dangerous)
>>
No. 924074 ID: bc637f

Hello, how are you all doing?
>>
No. 924487 ID: 2007b6

>>924074
Once you've got all the details filled in (names and contexts of famous family members or major contacts, intimacies, etc.), post your character sheet here.
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