lelak
04-30-2005, 07:06 AM
There are four Solars in a stolen fishing boat en route to Chiaroscuro, arguing with their cat. At this point the cat appears to be winning.
We join our three heroes - Renna the Tya soldier of fortune (Dawn Caste), Jiang Li the deaf thief (Night Caste) with her black cat familiar Whispering Shadow, and A'Tegnum the swordsmith (Dawn Caste) - holed up in A'Tegnum's mentor/boss/girlfriend's smithy somewhere in The Lap.
They have just recently Exalted, and then fallen foul of the dawn patrol with its four Dragon-Blooded officers - last session was entirely comprised of a running battle through the streets and over the rooftops which left two DBs dead, and everyone else alive but beaten to a bloody pulp.
The consensus is that the Wyld Hunt will soon be after them, so it's time to get the heck out of Dodge. Jia'hl, A'Tegnum's significant other, seems a little twitchy about her apprentice's new status as a Solar Abomination, and appears sorely deficient in love and sympathy for her situation.
The Solars hatch a plan to distract the remnants of the dawn patrol by commandeering the horse and cart of the local nightsoil collector. A'Teg and Jiang Li make a visible point of taking the cart and making a getaway, then ditch the stinking vehicle at the first opportunity and instead head for the fields, lugging the badly wounded Renna along with them.
A'Tegnum's knowledge of the local area takes them through cornfields to a cluster of caves a few miles outside the city, where they hole up for a few days to lick their wounds. They spy a messenger on horseback galloping out with what they presume is news of their Exaltation, but decide to let the messenger go.
Renna, once she's regained consciousness, asks about Jiang Li's cat. "Is it friendly?" she asks. The cat replies, "No". Jiang Li is annoyed to discover that the cat can talk - "you never talked to me before!"; the cat, for its part, is unrepentant. It expresses its disgust that the Unconquered Sun should waste its time with Exalting a pack of fools like the PCs.
Jiang Li stages a midnight raid on a farm to collect supplies and returns with a goat. They slaughter the goat (cries of "Ritual sacrifice!" "Kosher goat!" from the players), and A'Tegnum rolls a spectacular number of successes on her Craft roll to tan the goat's hide. She ends up with a goatskin vest, new boots, a belt and a collar for Jiang Li's cat.
During this time at the caves, while Renna recuperates enough to travel, they hatch a plan to travel north to the coast and get their hands on a ship. Their eventual destination is Bluehaven, from whence Jiang Li comes - they figure it's safer there than it is here.
It's going to be a few weeks just to get to the shore of the Inner Sea, and none of the characters are particularly well versed in geography, so they're all a little hazy about exactly what the journey involves. Nevertheless, well fortified with supplies of smoked goat's meat and stolen maize, they set out northwards, travelling by night to avoid both the heat of the day and the eyes of people who might be pursuing them.
About a week into their journey, Jiang Li catches a whiff of decaying flesh on the breeze. Much discussion ensues as to the source of this stench, and while Renna suggests avoiding whatever it is, she's outvoted: they travel northeast in search of answers. Soon they can not only smell something but hear something too: the sound of marching feet. An army on the move.
It's at this point that they realise that, in their still not-entirely-unwounded state, taking cover might be the best idea. Jiang Li takes advantage of Easily Overlooked Presence Method as she cowers on the hillside. Renna throws herself flat to the earth in the gully that lies alongside the roadway. A'Tegnum, struggling to conceal her abundance of weapons and her shiny new goatskin vest in the light of the full moon, manages to jab herself with one of her throwing knives. "OW, DAMMIT," she yelps - as the troop of five hundred undead soldiers round the corner, with a black-armoured deathkight on a demon steed at their head.
Alerted by A'Tegnum's complaint, the deathknight calls the troop to a halt, and immediately a handful of soldiers leave the road and head out to intercept the interloper. A'Tegnum decides that her best course of action is to Run Like Buggery. She sets off up the hillside, full-pelt, with the warriors in hot pursuit.* She's a Solar Exalted, Chosen of the Unconquered Sun. She is swift! Fleet of foot! She's getting away -- until the deathknight and the demon steed join the chase. The deathknight lunges from the saddle and catches A'Tegnum in a death grip, hauling her off her feet with one fist clutched in the collar of her shirt.
Is this the end? A'Tegnum stares into the deathknight's chalk white face and eyes the colour of old blood, and the deathknight stares back. Then the deathknight speaks. Unexpectedly, it's a woman's voice. "Fear not, my beloved," says the deathknight. "My master will save us all in the end."
And she throws A'Tegnum fifty feet across the field. It's the signal for the rest of the army to attack. They pour down from the roadway to attack Renna. Jiang Li breaks from Charmed concealment, and takes off up the hill after A'Tegnum. She's nimble enough to evade her pursuers, and vanishes into the darkness of the hills. A'Tegnum, winded a little from being thrown, staggers after her and likewise makes her escape.
It's Renna alone now on the hillside, making her own retreat. She's almost reached the place where the other two Solars disappeared, when she stumbles on the uneven ground. Finds herself at the edge of a precipice, a gaping wound in the earth. And there's the deathknight and the demon horse. The demon horse rears up to strike -- Renna summons her Immaculate Golden Bow and fires at point blank range. The horse's hooves rain down razor-edged death, and Renna, close to Incapacitated, flings herself into the chasm to escape.
She skitters down the near-vertical embankment, finds herself in a narrow gorge with her fellow Solars. They're largely unwounded, but the cat is a great puffball of feline indignation, and Jiang Li is covered in the resultant scratches. From above, they can hear the demon horse's shrieks of rage, and see the sparks its hooves are casting off the rocks.
They head off down the gorge in search of a way out - and eventually find themselves on a narrow ledge far above what seems to be an underground lake. They explore the path using the glow of their forehead caste marks like the lights on miners' helmets. They walk for a long way - several hours - with no sound of pursuit, and eventually find a stairway down to the water's edge.
There's a pier made of stone, and what looks to be the remains of a fortress, both broken down to their foundations, blackened by long-ago fire, pitted by the ravages of time. The place reeks of power.
"A manse! A demesne!" delight the players. But none of the characters have Lore. They try desperately to Stunt their Intelligence rolls, standing on their heads, diving into the salt water to shock their brains into action, and even tapping their skulls with the hilts of their Artifact weapons looking for inspiration.
The cat starts laughing at their efforts. Renna promptly throws the cat into the harbour. This looks to be the start of a long feud between Solar and feline. While Jiang Li sulks and tries to dry Shadow off again, Renna builds a fire and meditates, singing an old sea shanty her grandfather taught her.
The shanty reveals - or reminds her - that historically there were manses built in caves by the sea. It becomes Renna's ambition, therefore, to attune herself to this manse they've found.
Jiang Li dreams again that she has tattoos on her wrists and hands - black tattoos that mark her as Black Hand of the Sun, a First Age Solar renowned as a ruthless assassin.
Meanwhile dawn has come, and the light spilling in through the opening to the outside world reveals that the cave opens to the sea coast. They build a raft out of driftwood to carry their supplies and swim out to the beach to investigate their whereabouts.
While recuperating from their chilly swim and gathering fresh water at a stream that runs down to the beach, they discover a set of footprints: someone's been to the creek recently. They may seem to be out in the wilds of nowhere, but they are not alone.
They're presently too tired to care, however; they doze off in the warm sun while the cat bounds off to hunt, coming back with some large flightless bird for dinner. A'Tegnum sets out to find firewood with which to cook their meal, and stumbles across a boy who's as startled to see her as she is him.
He's about fourteen or fifteen, tanned and skinny and looks due for his growth spurt any day now. His name is Orchid, and he's come back to the creek to empty the lobster pots he'd set earlier. He informs them that there's no village nearby - the nearest village he knows of is the fishing village of Sandspur, some three days travel west. It had been his home, but he'd had to leave there after "things became complicated". The nearest city of any size is the great city of Chiaroscuro, but that's several weeks journey away, and no one he knows of has travelled so far.
Three days is three days, what of it? Jiang Li resolves to steal one of Sandspur's fishing boats. Because a fishing boat will get them to Chiaroscuro, where they can doubtless - or so the plan goes - steal a seafaring ship. Both Jiang Li and Renna have some experience as sailors (or, in Renna's case, with sailors - "she puts the 'ho' into "yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!"), so it's not the worst plan yet.
Jiang Li heads out to find Sandspur and the boat, while Renna (aka "Lingering Death Girl") recovers from her latest set of injuries and A'Tegnum teaches Orchid how to spar with lengths of wood in place of swords. Orchid is reluctant to speak about his past, but A'Tegnum is the insistent sort and keeps harrassing him with questions. She's not the smartest of folk, though, and ends up giving him more information about the Solars than she gets in return.
Orchid also seems anxious that Renna - whom he seems to identify as the real warrior of the group - should protect him. Again, he's not too specific as to what he should be protected from, but his fear seems real and visible.
Jiang Li arrives in Sandspur without incident, and overhears - or rather, lipreads - the villagers talking about rumoured disappearances, and their concern. "But it should be okay," one of the fishermen reassures his mates. Jiang Li steals one of the boats - the village has only three - and escapes back to the beach and the rest of the group.
Orchid greets her with the question, "Did you used to have tattoos?" He tells her about a dream he had, involving a man with green hair, another man in brown robes, a woman in blue ("who I thought was me") and "you, but you had tattoos on your hands". Strangely, that night, she has the same dream.
The next morning, while they're packing up the supplies they've gathered in preparation to sail, Orchid again goes to Renna and begs her to protect him. Finally, Renna relents. "Promise?" he asks, and holds out his hand. "Promise," she agrees, shaking his hand - and his anima banner flares white. He's an Eclipse Caste, and he's just witnessed her oath.
"You're going to have to tell the others what you are," she orders him, and with great reluctance and sheepishness - "honestly, anyone would think you were trying to tell them you were gay!" - he finally does so. And they sail out, headed for Chiaroscuro.
The cat, for its part, seems quite pleased by this turn of events. "You're only one Solar short of a Circle," it announces cheerfully. Then, when they start pestering it for more information - the cat is the only member of the group who has anything in the way of Lore - it shuts up. Jiang Li has to scruff it and threaten to throw it overboard to get it to share anything more.
There seems to be a certain amount of overlap in the dreams folks have been having: the man in the brown robes has also featured in A'Tegnum's dreams, along with a dark-skinned woman who seems to have been the original owner of the silver warhammer that is A'Tegnum's Artifact weapon.
It's a long journey by boat, and the characters have plenty of time to discuss what little they know about what they've become and their plans for the future....
[Session ends]
* Yes, at no point did our brave Solars turn and fight against what were effectively mooks. Then again, they're newly Exalted, and their first combat experience - against a larger and more experienced group of DBs - seems to have left them battle-shy.
We join our three heroes - Renna the Tya soldier of fortune (Dawn Caste), Jiang Li the deaf thief (Night Caste) with her black cat familiar Whispering Shadow, and A'Tegnum the swordsmith (Dawn Caste) - holed up in A'Tegnum's mentor/boss/girlfriend's smithy somewhere in The Lap.
They have just recently Exalted, and then fallen foul of the dawn patrol with its four Dragon-Blooded officers - last session was entirely comprised of a running battle through the streets and over the rooftops which left two DBs dead, and everyone else alive but beaten to a bloody pulp.
The consensus is that the Wyld Hunt will soon be after them, so it's time to get the heck out of Dodge. Jia'hl, A'Tegnum's significant other, seems a little twitchy about her apprentice's new status as a Solar Abomination, and appears sorely deficient in love and sympathy for her situation.
The Solars hatch a plan to distract the remnants of the dawn patrol by commandeering the horse and cart of the local nightsoil collector. A'Teg and Jiang Li make a visible point of taking the cart and making a getaway, then ditch the stinking vehicle at the first opportunity and instead head for the fields, lugging the badly wounded Renna along with them.
A'Tegnum's knowledge of the local area takes them through cornfields to a cluster of caves a few miles outside the city, where they hole up for a few days to lick their wounds. They spy a messenger on horseback galloping out with what they presume is news of their Exaltation, but decide to let the messenger go.
Renna, once she's regained consciousness, asks about Jiang Li's cat. "Is it friendly?" she asks. The cat replies, "No". Jiang Li is annoyed to discover that the cat can talk - "you never talked to me before!"; the cat, for its part, is unrepentant. It expresses its disgust that the Unconquered Sun should waste its time with Exalting a pack of fools like the PCs.
Jiang Li stages a midnight raid on a farm to collect supplies and returns with a goat. They slaughter the goat (cries of "Ritual sacrifice!" "Kosher goat!" from the players), and A'Tegnum rolls a spectacular number of successes on her Craft roll to tan the goat's hide. She ends up with a goatskin vest, new boots, a belt and a collar for Jiang Li's cat.
During this time at the caves, while Renna recuperates enough to travel, they hatch a plan to travel north to the coast and get their hands on a ship. Their eventual destination is Bluehaven, from whence Jiang Li comes - they figure it's safer there than it is here.
It's going to be a few weeks just to get to the shore of the Inner Sea, and none of the characters are particularly well versed in geography, so they're all a little hazy about exactly what the journey involves. Nevertheless, well fortified with supplies of smoked goat's meat and stolen maize, they set out northwards, travelling by night to avoid both the heat of the day and the eyes of people who might be pursuing them.
About a week into their journey, Jiang Li catches a whiff of decaying flesh on the breeze. Much discussion ensues as to the source of this stench, and while Renna suggests avoiding whatever it is, she's outvoted: they travel northeast in search of answers. Soon they can not only smell something but hear something too: the sound of marching feet. An army on the move.
It's at this point that they realise that, in their still not-entirely-unwounded state, taking cover might be the best idea. Jiang Li takes advantage of Easily Overlooked Presence Method as she cowers on the hillside. Renna throws herself flat to the earth in the gully that lies alongside the roadway. A'Tegnum, struggling to conceal her abundance of weapons and her shiny new goatskin vest in the light of the full moon, manages to jab herself with one of her throwing knives. "OW, DAMMIT," she yelps - as the troop of five hundred undead soldiers round the corner, with a black-armoured deathkight on a demon steed at their head.
Alerted by A'Tegnum's complaint, the deathknight calls the troop to a halt, and immediately a handful of soldiers leave the road and head out to intercept the interloper. A'Tegnum decides that her best course of action is to Run Like Buggery. She sets off up the hillside, full-pelt, with the warriors in hot pursuit.* She's a Solar Exalted, Chosen of the Unconquered Sun. She is swift! Fleet of foot! She's getting away -- until the deathknight and the demon steed join the chase. The deathknight lunges from the saddle and catches A'Tegnum in a death grip, hauling her off her feet with one fist clutched in the collar of her shirt.
Is this the end? A'Tegnum stares into the deathknight's chalk white face and eyes the colour of old blood, and the deathknight stares back. Then the deathknight speaks. Unexpectedly, it's a woman's voice. "Fear not, my beloved," says the deathknight. "My master will save us all in the end."
And she throws A'Tegnum fifty feet across the field. It's the signal for the rest of the army to attack. They pour down from the roadway to attack Renna. Jiang Li breaks from Charmed concealment, and takes off up the hill after A'Tegnum. She's nimble enough to evade her pursuers, and vanishes into the darkness of the hills. A'Tegnum, winded a little from being thrown, staggers after her and likewise makes her escape.
It's Renna alone now on the hillside, making her own retreat. She's almost reached the place where the other two Solars disappeared, when she stumbles on the uneven ground. Finds herself at the edge of a precipice, a gaping wound in the earth. And there's the deathknight and the demon horse. The demon horse rears up to strike -- Renna summons her Immaculate Golden Bow and fires at point blank range. The horse's hooves rain down razor-edged death, and Renna, close to Incapacitated, flings herself into the chasm to escape.
She skitters down the near-vertical embankment, finds herself in a narrow gorge with her fellow Solars. They're largely unwounded, but the cat is a great puffball of feline indignation, and Jiang Li is covered in the resultant scratches. From above, they can hear the demon horse's shrieks of rage, and see the sparks its hooves are casting off the rocks.
They head off down the gorge in search of a way out - and eventually find themselves on a narrow ledge far above what seems to be an underground lake. They explore the path using the glow of their forehead caste marks like the lights on miners' helmets. They walk for a long way - several hours - with no sound of pursuit, and eventually find a stairway down to the water's edge.
There's a pier made of stone, and what looks to be the remains of a fortress, both broken down to their foundations, blackened by long-ago fire, pitted by the ravages of time. The place reeks of power.
"A manse! A demesne!" delight the players. But none of the characters have Lore. They try desperately to Stunt their Intelligence rolls, standing on their heads, diving into the salt water to shock their brains into action, and even tapping their skulls with the hilts of their Artifact weapons looking for inspiration.
The cat starts laughing at their efforts. Renna promptly throws the cat into the harbour. This looks to be the start of a long feud between Solar and feline. While Jiang Li sulks and tries to dry Shadow off again, Renna builds a fire and meditates, singing an old sea shanty her grandfather taught her.
The shanty reveals - or reminds her - that historically there were manses built in caves by the sea. It becomes Renna's ambition, therefore, to attune herself to this manse they've found.
Jiang Li dreams again that she has tattoos on her wrists and hands - black tattoos that mark her as Black Hand of the Sun, a First Age Solar renowned as a ruthless assassin.
Meanwhile dawn has come, and the light spilling in through the opening to the outside world reveals that the cave opens to the sea coast. They build a raft out of driftwood to carry their supplies and swim out to the beach to investigate their whereabouts.
While recuperating from their chilly swim and gathering fresh water at a stream that runs down to the beach, they discover a set of footprints: someone's been to the creek recently. They may seem to be out in the wilds of nowhere, but they are not alone.
They're presently too tired to care, however; they doze off in the warm sun while the cat bounds off to hunt, coming back with some large flightless bird for dinner. A'Tegnum sets out to find firewood with which to cook their meal, and stumbles across a boy who's as startled to see her as she is him.
He's about fourteen or fifteen, tanned and skinny and looks due for his growth spurt any day now. His name is Orchid, and he's come back to the creek to empty the lobster pots he'd set earlier. He informs them that there's no village nearby - the nearest village he knows of is the fishing village of Sandspur, some three days travel west. It had been his home, but he'd had to leave there after "things became complicated". The nearest city of any size is the great city of Chiaroscuro, but that's several weeks journey away, and no one he knows of has travelled so far.
Three days is three days, what of it? Jiang Li resolves to steal one of Sandspur's fishing boats. Because a fishing boat will get them to Chiaroscuro, where they can doubtless - or so the plan goes - steal a seafaring ship. Both Jiang Li and Renna have some experience as sailors (or, in Renna's case, with sailors - "she puts the 'ho' into "yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!"), so it's not the worst plan yet.
Jiang Li heads out to find Sandspur and the boat, while Renna (aka "Lingering Death Girl") recovers from her latest set of injuries and A'Tegnum teaches Orchid how to spar with lengths of wood in place of swords. Orchid is reluctant to speak about his past, but A'Tegnum is the insistent sort and keeps harrassing him with questions. She's not the smartest of folk, though, and ends up giving him more information about the Solars than she gets in return.
Orchid also seems anxious that Renna - whom he seems to identify as the real warrior of the group - should protect him. Again, he's not too specific as to what he should be protected from, but his fear seems real and visible.
Jiang Li arrives in Sandspur without incident, and overhears - or rather, lipreads - the villagers talking about rumoured disappearances, and their concern. "But it should be okay," one of the fishermen reassures his mates. Jiang Li steals one of the boats - the village has only three - and escapes back to the beach and the rest of the group.
Orchid greets her with the question, "Did you used to have tattoos?" He tells her about a dream he had, involving a man with green hair, another man in brown robes, a woman in blue ("who I thought was me") and "you, but you had tattoos on your hands". Strangely, that night, she has the same dream.
The next morning, while they're packing up the supplies they've gathered in preparation to sail, Orchid again goes to Renna and begs her to protect him. Finally, Renna relents. "Promise?" he asks, and holds out his hand. "Promise," she agrees, shaking his hand - and his anima banner flares white. He's an Eclipse Caste, and he's just witnessed her oath.
"You're going to have to tell the others what you are," she orders him, and with great reluctance and sheepishness - "honestly, anyone would think you were trying to tell them you were gay!" - he finally does so. And they sail out, headed for Chiaroscuro.
The cat, for its part, seems quite pleased by this turn of events. "You're only one Solar short of a Circle," it announces cheerfully. Then, when they start pestering it for more information - the cat is the only member of the group who has anything in the way of Lore - it shuts up. Jiang Li has to scruff it and threaten to throw it overboard to get it to share anything more.
There seems to be a certain amount of overlap in the dreams folks have been having: the man in the brown robes has also featured in A'Tegnum's dreams, along with a dark-skinned woman who seems to have been the original owner of the silver warhammer that is A'Tegnum's Artifact weapon.
It's a long journey by boat, and the characters have plenty of time to discuss what little they know about what they've become and their plans for the future....
[Session ends]
* Yes, at no point did our brave Solars turn and fight against what were effectively mooks. Then again, they're newly Exalted, and their first combat experience - against a larger and more experienced group of DBs - seems to have left them battle-shy.