BillGarrett/InvincibleSwordPrincessMustDie

Introduction

This is my attempt to picture what the Usurpation might have actually been like, from the perspective of an attack on a single Solar.

Invincible Sword Princess Must Die

It took a year and a day to co-opt the guardian spirits of the two dozen Manses whose various stones protected Invincible Sword Princess, but the Sidereals did it. Bound into oaths so cunning that not even the gods themselves knew what was to come, the various spirits were tricked. On the day to come, they would not stop the destruction of their Manses.

They sacrificed the lives of three Dragon-Blooded, who marched bravely to their doom, in order to secure the cooperation of King Magpie. He and Madame Marthesine of the Lost would cooperate in the theft of the sword Mountain-Cleaver, and in return were given the rarest and most precious baubles of all, souls.

Midnight came. In widely-separated areas of Creation, blazing balls of fire suddenly consumed twenty-five Manses and the spirits inside.

One second passed. Invincible Sword Princess woke in her bed, surrounded by her lovers. She knew her life was in danger. Her sword leapt to her hand.

Two seconds. King Magpie swooped through the room, a mere ghost. His talons seized around the blade, pulled it from the Solar's grasp. It passed into the power of Madame Marthesine at that moment; the Solar's only recourse was now a Charm.

Three seconds. The Solar sensed danger, flaring into eye-searing brilliance as her Tiger Secures Lair Combo activated itself. In a moment the Combo broke apart, shattered into its component Essence by the power of the Prismatic Arrangement of Creation style. Invincible Sword Princess whirled, realizing now that one of the lovers who sprawled over her enormous bed was adopting a Sidereal fighting stance.

Four seconds. Madame Marthesine materialized within the confines of a warding circle that awaited only the final mote of Essence needed to activate it. The Sidereal sorcerer who had crafted it stood ready; the circle sprung into life. The god released her prize; a grand daiklave clattered to the stone floor. Its Solar master could now not call her favored blade to her hand. She would have to defeat the ward, and she would be dead by then.

Five seconds. The would-be Sidereal assassin vanished into the streams of fate, using her Avoidance Kata to save her life after the Solar had taken her arm and very nearly the rest of her with a knife hidden in her hair. Invincible Sword Princess assessed her situation.

The Sidereal's work had been thorough. In the moment she had parried the Combo, her skin had touched the Solar's, and the virulent contact poison thereon had already set in. Invincible Sword Princess detected it immediately, invoking her protective magics of resistance to negate it. She knew the purpose - not to kill her, but to deprive her of Essence in as many ways as possible. She would need to move fast.

TODO: conclude this.

Comments

One must assume that a First Age Solar would have an equivalent to Foot-Trapping Counter. Heck, even a contemporary Solar could probably do it at less than Essence 6. This makes your "five seconds" entry erroneous, unless ISP is conserving Essence in the absence of her Hearthstones. --MF

I'm assuming that ISP attempted to re-invoke Summoning the Loyal Steel in the second round, having just woke four seconds ago and not QUITE aware of how prepared somebody was to deprive her of her primary daiklave. I'm allowing Private Plaza of Downcast Eyes to block STLS, because what the Charm does and what the spell do have a clear interaction, and PPoDE's effect is clear: teleportation doesn't work here. In that time she was able to bust out an additional Thrown attack that was damaging enough to force the Sidereal who SHOULD have killed her to retreat. I consider that fair :) More to come.

Also, look at it this way re: Foot-Trapping Counter. If ISP lets her assassin go, she knows who trained her anyway, and is now no longer in the vicinity of a dangerous martial artist without a magical weapon immediately in hand - her next move will be to go to ground, track down a couple Sidereals, and interrogate them. Keeping her around forces ISP to engage this person who has had unknown time to prepare and unknown assets backing her up (at least two major gods, as I'll give ISP an awareness of who snatched her 'klave). But I'm always interested in alternate viewpoints. -- BillGarrett

First off: This is cool. I mean this as a alternative, rather than a cricism. Honestly, I don't think there would have been many Sidereal assassins for several reasons.

1. There are more Solars than Sidereals, about 300 to about 100
2. It seems like the Sidereals might not want their grinning faces to be the last thing the Solars see as they are ambushed, as, well it seems like something that could be remembered between incarnations. (Yeah, I know they had a plan to stop that. But it still seems like a risk).
3. Technicly, MA is suposed to be less efficient than normal ability charms(at a given level), and at high essence levels Sidereals have to rely on MA, so technicaly, they would be less effective one-one vs high essence solars.
4. There doesn't seem to be a reason for them to risk themselves.

Honestly, if Marthesine has your blade, I don't think you can teleport it back. (I.e. I think her bag would be stronger than PPoDE). Honestly, the main difficulty with this type of thing is that there are so many different strategies. She could have gone with Glorious Solar Sabre or even just had a backup one. (For Steel Devil Style, frex). Anyway, it would be nice to have a version featuring dragon blooded also. Hmmm. --FlowsLikeBits

I would say that myself. Solars may be able to call weapons from Elsewhere, but Marthesine is the goddess of lost things. I wouldn't say there's not a Solar Investigation Charm that could find the blade, but I like to think that a Melee-user would be puzzled long enough to give up and use another weapon. Like her bare hands. Or a bedpost. Or a lover.
~ Shataina

Agree actually. It seemed strange to dump the weapon in a warded spot rather than just let Marthesine keep it. There are reasons of course(someone wanted it), but it seemed odd here. No biggie though. -FlowsLikeBits

Two reasons. 1. I'm ruling it's in her power even if it's not in her hands, because she's that good. 2. The spell makes a good backup to the spirit's own power. -- BillGarrett

I would think that the nature of the Sidereals (Arcane Fate, etc.) is such that even if a Solar were (after Lytek trimmed the shard) to remember the event itself, it's most likely he'd remember Some Guy's smirking face than remember A Sidereal's smirking face. And on top of that, he probably wouldn't remember what said Guy looked like. (Unless, of course, he was already pretty familiar with the Sidereal at hand.) Incidentally, my character, Havoc , over at YouZhao has a sidestory that may eventually feature this very situation. ~_^ As far as risking Sidereals is concerned, I don't think Bill is suggesting that this scenario is a snapshot of the standard practice during the Usurpation; rather, an example of what a strike might have gone like against an overwhelmingly powerful Solar. The risks in this case would be worth taking. What else are they going to do, send Dragon Blooded?

Speaking of which, the Dragon Blooded version would probably look something like this: "Seconds One through Eleven Thousand: Dragon Blooded Hit Solar. Dragon Blooded Die." ~ Grandmasta

Assuming we're going by canon, there are canonical examples of Solars remembering specific, named Sidereals in past-life visions. I remember reading at least one in a CasteBook.
~ Shataina

I guess I just missed this, but the same thing I had earlier applies here. Except for Hardness, you really can beat the solars just with ping damage from masses of DragonBloods. Jaelra

This is way cooler. ~ G

I think First Age Solars with 10 Essence probably have Charms that eliminate ping damage against them. Or armour. Or other artifacts. There's a *Terrestrial Circle* spell that partially eliminates ping damage (granted, only for wussy attacks, but still). This is assuming that Invincible Sword Princess lets attacks get through, which she doesn't. If there's a canonical 3/2 Charm that doubles all your attack and parry pools for a scene, and a canonical ... 5/4, is it? ... Charm that gives you your Melee in perfect reflexive parries for a few motes and a WP, then it's not too much of a stretch to think that there's a 10/10 Charm that -- AT LEAST -- triples all your parry pools, activates automatically, gives you a perfect sword made of Essence, and gives you infinite reflexive parries for, say, a day. Which strikes me as pretty weak, but hey, the authors have paradoxically said that we shouldn't be giving upper-level Exalted infinite perfect parries, which is at least a good idea even if it seems to kind of contradict the system.

This reminds me of JPCardier/DemonKillerWhite. Have you read it? I think the Sidereal outlined therein would be a good, much weaker starting point to think about Invincible Sword Princess's powers from.
~ Shataina

OK, my eighteen cents or so. First and most importantly, this is so much fantastically cooler than a horde of Dragonblooded beating on the solar until it dies, and this is Exalted, so coolness is rewarded. Remember, all these extensive preparations were probably a bunch of three die stunts on somebody's die pools for something. Secondly, I don't think the whole "grinning Sidereal" thing would be that much of a concern. First of all, there is no reason to assume that a reincarnated Solar would remember the moment of its death. It's an "if," sure, but a pretty big one. Secondly, Sidereals don't look that distinctive. They have funny eyes. Big deal. This is Exalted, and a lot of people have funny eyes. Finally, and most importantly, don't forget that the Sidereals were planning on never seeing the Solars ever again. You mentioned that, FlowsLikeBits, but I kind of think you're underestimating Sidereal confidence.

Altogether, awesome. Personally, I'd like to see/contribute to one of these for each caste. Invincible Sword Princess Must Die, Brilliant Sun Prophet Must Die, Puissant Spell Savant Must Die, Lurking Wolf Spider Must Die, Silver Rose Courtier Must Die, and so on. We'd have to assume combat abilities for all of them, but they could still be styled. Puissant Spell Savant's doom would involve getting past his bound demons and possibly dealing with his necromancy, you have to find Lurking Wolf Spider before you can kill him, and any plan to kill Silver Rose Courtier would have to take into account the fact that most of those sent against her are going to fall in love and kill themselves rather than harm her beauty. - the long-winded Seraph

I like the one per caste idea. I suppose Sideral overconfidence can explain alot.(In that case, why send just ONE) Honestly, I think 5-10 Essence 7 dragon blooded with cool tactics would be neat also. I don't feel SMA is needed to make it cool. That's just me though. I think it would also be neat to feature the Lunars part in this somehow. There could be more than one per caste also... thinking.. -FlowsLikeBits

Yeah, how about defeating Impervious Twilight Statue? Iron Kettle Body, Twilight Caste Ability and Essence Gathering Temper. Requires a willpower, but there are many avenues for getting willpower back, including the next charm up the tree! Jaelra

That one might involve even more Sidereal-Fu and sorcery and perhaps the use of, I dunno, a battery of implosion bows. But you know how it is... Impervious Twilight Statue Must Die! - the over-enthusiastic Seraph

Most of the things worth saying have been said, but I still thought I'd point out that it would be very difficult for a Sidereal to secretly infiltrate a Solar's bedroom back in the First Age. I mean, there are only 100-ish Sidereals in the first place - any Solar who had been Exalted for more than a century or two (probably far less than that, too) would probably know them all personally, and even Arcane Fate would be unlikely to make a 2000-year-old Solar forget, considering how insanely huge dice pools can be expected to get in that age range. There would need to be an entire complex set of preparations just to disguise the assassin so thoroughly that Invincible Sword Princess would not suspect anything at all, as well as to ensure that she would not notice any lingering magical effects on the Siddy in question qhile in bed with him or her. Because of the way the rules for sensing magic work, the more effort used to disguise the Sidereal, the more likely ISP would be to detect the magics. There's probably a way around this, but I'm just saying that it's yet another large hurdle to contend with.

Oh, and I don't think the Sidereals would have gotten directly involved if they could help it. They may be overconfident, but they're also sneaky, treacherous bastards. They'd probably rely heavily on the Dragon-Blooded to do the bulk of the work, enhancing their efforts with battle-pattern Charms, astrology, and maybe even Greater Signs of the Maidens. But that's just a personal opinion. -Everyl

Arcane Fate didn't even exist in the First Age, did it? I thought it was a result of the broken Mask. But yes, even if it did, I think we can assume Invincible Sword Princess has 10+ Wits + Occult, and therefore autosucceeds on the relevant roll.
~ Shataina