Revision as of 09:02, 3 April 2010

Notes on CtS Part 6

Yes, I'm aware that in the real world, new moons only occur during the daytime. Good thing that in Exalted, the world is flat and the moon's a goddess who rises and sets whenever she feels like it.

I have added in most of the commentary I received, via email, during the process of constructing this part. It's in italics, and credited. If, for whatever reason, you don't want your comments displayed openly here, feel free to just delete whatever you want kept private.

_Ikselam

• back to story.
• to WBM.

4/18/04

Characters

Jasper is shellshocked.
Mahi is probably kind of cranky.
Warden of Jade is being all inscrutable.

Dirt & Iron is being audited.
Allandra's fate is unknown.

Supporting cast members are doing various things.

What should happen:

• Warden needs to stop being so damn mysterious, or at least drop hints as to there being some rhyme or reason behind his mysteriousness.
  • Agreed. You're good at this... it'd be interesting to know, should you decide to do the hint-droppy thing, what *you* intend your hints to mean, so I have the knowledge to follow that up or misinterpret it creatively(: willows
  • Could be he's GF, found out about BF's pet Solar, is executing complicated mysteeeeerious scheme to subvert her. But how would this mesh with his introduction? D&I clearly thought he was an ally, and there's that "I'm not who you think I am" line to consider.
    • WoJ could have been a GF member secretly "infiltrating" the BF for the last couple centuries? Like maybe he was about to announce he was a member of the GF when he first finished his training, but his GF sifu helped hatch a plan where he would be more useful pretending to be BF? --dissolvegirl
  • Could be an ancient Solar or some such. Note to self, travel back in time and kill anyone who actually attempts to use this idea.
• J & MS need to assert their main characterhood.
  • This will mean shoving the rapidly-proliferating supporting cast into the background.
  • It'll also mean coming up with some reason for the super-characters like Al and Ward to not be completely dominating.
    • It seems like shunting the whole "mysteerious" crew off to Yu-Shan and cutting off their main-character interaction access is a reasonable and not-too-painful way to go about this. --willows
• No major plot reveals.

Questions I may need to answer:

• Where did everybody go?
  • End of EJGRgunner's part clearly states that Jasper and Mahi left town with Dellano. D&I is in Yu-Shan; I'll assume Al went with him.
  • I wanted to say that Jasper, MS, and Dellano headed north to Noss Fens at the advice of WoJ, but felt didn't want to hem the storyline in that much, so I didn't. I don't know where Allandra went, although my guess is back to her tomb to meditate and unwillingly, to remember. EJGRgunner

• Khentkheti should "Beware the flower of lake and sky." WTF.
  • I'm drawing a blank on this one, folks.
  • Well, not a total blank.
  • That was me being overly enigmatic; Khentkheti tells D&I to concern himself with the "mountain of jade" (Dellano) and the "black river" (Mahi-Sura); D&I tells Khentkheti to worry about the flower, who I can only guess (it has been along time) means Jasper. Hmm...examining the Cast page, I think I definitely did mean Jasper - his anima is a lotus, a flower of water, and he is Chosen of the Sun. (Looking at your comments below, it appears you've worked all this out anyway - it slipped past me that Dellano is skinny. Well, Imperial mountain and all that; earth symbol.) willows

• Khentkheti says: "The mountain of jade and the black river are your first concern." WTF.
  • Mountain of jade could refer to a DB. Who's, like, really big or strong or something. Could even be a nickname. Too bad Dellano's described as skinny... not exactly the type of guy you'd expect to have a nickname involving mountains, even if he does know Earth Dragon MA. Could work, though.
  • Black river could be a reference to a shadowland or something. Walker's Realm is nearby.
    • Could also be something that's black and like a river in some way. (What? No way, Roger!)
  • The mountain of jade could be WoJ, the black river could well be Allandra (the lithe movements and dark skin). --dissolvegirl (I think that by "Allandra," you meant Mahi-Sura. _Ikselam)

• Khentkheti's conversation in general. WTF.
  • Conspiracy? To do what?
  • "The Chronicler sent me here to speak with you; what would she have you say?" Do I interpret this to mean that she left a message with Kh to give to D&I... in exchange for a message she sent with D&I? I sure hope not, because that wouldn't make any sense, at least not in the context of the following chapters.
    • Yeah. It made sense before Chronicler became Allandra and was "mysteeerious person who stays offscreen and issues bizarre orders from there". Bah. At this point I'm having a hard time untangling what the events in parts 4 and 5 mean for the story, as they are rather in conflict with those that revealed the mysteeerious crew (for which, by the way, I apologize; there was rather more mysteerious in my part than I intended), and with each other. Why the hell is D&I's private, clueless executioner giving *him* orders, and vague abstract ones at that? willows
    • "The Chronicler sent me here to speak with you; what would she have you say?" could be an awkward way of saying, "I'm here to get a message, but my master will assume you want what she wants," or a sort of veiled threat, ie, "You'd better say what my master wants to hear." --dissolvegirl

Warden of Jade. WTF. No, seriously, man, WTF?

• He isn't who Dirt and Iron thinks he is.
• He can call down audits.
  • This could be glossed as an "anonymous phone call to censor" kind of thing, if necessary.
• He's apparently on Jasper's side.
• He's also apparently acquainted with Chronicler of Thunders and co.
• He has l33t fu.
• He has a hand made out of jade and starmetal.

My assumption has been that he's a Sidereal. EJGRgunner's assumption was that he's not -- he assumed that he was a servant of a Deathlord who happens to know SMA (he glossed the name-breaking thing as Pattern Spider Touch, which I guess works for now). The DL wants to draw out Allandra so he can suck her up. The Deathlord in question would almost certainly be Walker in Darkness, since Walker's Realm is right next door to Great Forks.

The extremely obvious problem with this scenario is that Warden is well enough connected in the CelestialBureaucracy that he can get D&I audited on short notice. This seems like a stretch for a guy who's in bed with the Enemies of All Who Live.

Argh.

But setting that aside for the moment...

There's this dream in part 5 which I just realized could be really easily interpreted as "Allandra rejects Future Jasper's marriage proposal." It could be that FJ is actually the bad guy here. He could have suffered some nasty obsessive Limit Break which caused him to be an evil stalker, driving Al to throw in her lot with the Bronze Faction. Or something like that.

The above theory fits with D&I's testimony.

Future Jasper, past Jasper? The rejected proposal thing is what I thought too. willows

Jasper has a dream, which involves him getting some relationship counseling from the past-life Zenith, and being a jerk-off despite it. He wakes up. Mahi has some words with him. She is upset by the whole kung fu thing. She might fill him in about Warden, or what she knows of him, anyway. Enter Dellano. He reveals where they're going. He and Mahi both put their feet down about Jasper acting chaotic on this trip.

They make it to the ruins? Dirt & Iron has a relevant cutscene?

Does this feel too much like a reset? Could have a character outright mention that it feels like they're starting all over again.

You'll notice that EJGRgunner's part more or less puts the Warden, holder of the spear, in control of the situation again, without revealing any useful information, which means that even before you start writing the situation is more or less reset - we've just replaced Jasper's fairly vague questions with a lot more rather specific ones. willows

• Dream. Jasper's past life has relationship counseling, but decides to be a jerk-off anyway.
• Jasper and Mahi-Sura have a Final Fantasy Nighttime Chat.
  • He was mean to her while he was having Freak-Out Time. She's not going to be his girlfriend.
  • Mahi is a No-Moon.
• Chronicler of Thunders is in a cage.
• Jasper, Mahi, and Dellano talk about what they're doing and where they're going.
  • Dellano is heading out because Warden gave him lots of money. He was surprised/dismayed to find that J&MS would be joining him.
  • The place they're going might be the same as where Bad Stuff happened to Jasper, three years ago. (MS could recognize the spot where she found him.)
• Warden of Jade hears gossip about the audit, is inscrutably pleased
  • He observes Chronicler, thinks something mildly illuminating
    • (His may have been the dream in chpt 2)(?)
• Our Heroes approach the big red X on Warden's map. Jasper recognizes something from his dreams (glowing fruit, prolly).
• Detective Pepo reports. Big-shot god (Talespinner, maybe) says something portentous.

What if Warden of Jade set up the events surrounding Jasper's Exaltation? What if HE killed J's scavenging buddies? J's been closed-mouthed about that event so far, but what if he literally can't remember what happened due to Arcane Fate?

Why would he do this? What possible purpose could it serve, in the context of him being involved with the Thunder Chronicling Project (whose exact goals remain nebulous -- it seems there's a lot more to be milked from it than just "yeah, we've got this pet Solar, and she kills other Solars. Pretty sweet, huh?")?

stuff to convey:

• it's hot
• the expedition has stopped to water the animals
• Mahi is now wearing pants
• Jasper wants to die, or at least jump in some water
• Dellano is a rock

Dellano wants to know what the other two know about Warden

Warden gave him a map, and paid him lots of money

...he MAYBE dropped a hint that they were going to J's old stomping grounds

...which is not much

they have a brief discussion about this

WILLOW TREE!

the expedition has stopped
they're walking up the stream
they stop by the tree
they chitchat
some realization which leads into warden's scene, maybe just a "what the hell's his game?"

warden's cutscene
he's among the gawkers
he is pleased that so many people now know of her existence
he sees Al's hesitation
this makes him happy

It could be that he's (relatively) recently become aware of some crisis situation on which he can't easily gather info, but knows that J's past-life circle was heavily involved in a related incident. The only way he can get the needed info/deal with the problem is to get access to Al's memories.

• Unleash the Death Machine! Some kind of killer robot of Allandra's design has/is about to become active. Only she knows how to turn it off.
• Related: some devilish beastie(s) is attempting to enter Creation. J's Circle dealt with it in the past, but sealed off the portal and hid it so that no one would try to reopen it.
• Warden is actually Gold Faction, and the time has come for him to sabotage D&I's operation.
• Warden is setting up this whole situation as part of a plan to discredit someone important, like Kejak.

Or it could be that he's into something much less tangible.

willows says, regarding how to make sense of Khentketi's scene in part 2:

This is my compilation of the facts in the three parts, and the implications I see for them:

• Ch.3:
  • D&I has an appointment with both Kh. and WoJ.
  • D&I tells both of them to "beware" the "flower of lake & sky", Jasper.
  • WoJ isn't who D&I thinks he is.
    • Kh. isn't particularly interested in WoJ's betrayal. Why?
  • D&I gets from his appointment with Kh. that he is to concern himself with the lesser Exalted.
• Ch.4:
  • Dim interprets the mountain and river as memories to be awarded to Allandra.
  • D&I is much more upset than Kh. about WoJ's behavior.
  • D&I is subordinate to A. A. is magically prohibited from harming D&I, by some higher power presumably.
  • "We" (unspecified, includes D&I) have some bargain with A. that has something to do with her memory loss.
    • Is WoJ part of the group that made this bargain? That might explain why D&I is pissed - and if Kh. is involved with this thing but unwillingly, then he may be pleased that the bonds are slipping enough for WoJ to get free, so that he might follow.
• Ch.5:
  • Jasper's executions are Official Heavenly Business.
  • D&I has the gumption to remind A. of her duties at this juncture - even though he is scared shitless.
  • WoJ calls down an audit to stop Jasper's execution. As much as this does save a main character's life, it is painfully deus ex machina; what motivation does WoJ have to justify this move?
    • What is WoJ doing with soulsteel? Is the chain an emblem of office, perhaps? (I seem to see a "resplendent trappings" theme running through this chapter, though I'm too far from my books to look them up.)
  • WoJ obviously has the fu to stop this without needing to appeal to mandate - so why does he?
    • Maybe the same thing that's preventing A. from harming D&I is preventing WoJ from using physical attack - thus, the name-breaking previously and the paralysis in this chapter.

• back to story.
• to WBM.