SJE/Session8
Exalted Session 8
The one with the character development and clues
A fairly quiet session this time, in part due to my extreme tiredness (never run 9 hours of Living Force the day before- too much Star Wars gaming drains your OTT Exalted batteries) and us being down Brand & Jaqs players.
Midday- 15th Descending Fire, RY 768
So we begin with the sun having been blotted out and night fallen at midday over Gem as the Lord of Silent Repose makes his escape. Captain Ibrahim, having been berated by Immaculate Master Ledaal Tanaka, quickly dictates a cover-your-ass memo to the Despots Office presenting his side of things and asking for an audience. The Captain also orders Watch Thaumaturge Floating Summer Orchid to fix the sky.
Orchid looks up at the Resonance effect bringing night to day and determines that the Essence flows have been disordered, but will restore themselves in about 20 minutes. She drinks tea and pretends to do magic whenever the Captain is around and then reports full success in her counter-magic efforts as the clouds part and sunlight once more falls upon Gem.
Orchid also investigates the mysterious Thrice-Locked Box, recovered from the Department of Forbidden Magics and Profane Rites. He is unable to open it, but is incredibly fortunate in matching its description to a tale told by her mysterious patron, the Inconstant Hierophant of Five-Fold Adamant Pedagogy. The Hierophant had once whispered how a mysterious order of Dragon Blooded sought to seal away the spirits of the Solar Demons they slew in the Usurption so they would never threaten Creation again. The Thrice-Locked Box matches the description and was designed to require more than mortal skill to open. An expert locksmith suggests either a nimble-fingered Fae with tools of gossamer, or perhaps the greatest thief in Gem (the Black Mouse) might be able to get it open. Orchid elects to send subtle word to the Black Mouse, offering a job worthy of the Master Thief.
The Captain and Ravitsu head down to the Hot District to ask about caravans to the South depositing demons in Gem. There have been two in the past 15 days- Iblans Gold Caravan and a Guild slave caravan lead by Guilder Profitable Endeavour. The Watchmen take some Iblan guards drinking, where the Captain disgraces himself as his subordinate drinks him under the table and elicits a drunken tale of a Forgotten Oasis with mysterious spun towers and demon-folk. It is from here that both Lucita the Demon-blood girl and the Sewer Monster have arrived from. Occult rolls ID the tower demons as Neomah- Demon Courtesean, summoned to Creation for the pleasure of a sorcerer. The Forgotten Oasis lies to the South East, 20 east of Palm Tree Wadi.
Alana and Orchid follow up on the Joaqim the Dreamer case (longest open investigation on the board.) They visit the elegant, beautiful but ruthless woman of a certain age, Mother Sahlak (of the Sahlak brothel and dreamstone monopoly, she is played by Glenn Close) who explains that her Dreamstone was perfectly normal before Joaqim was lent it to craft a dream. Now she wants it back from the Watch (as Brand took it from her men) and would lift the contract on Brands head if her property is returned. Such a pity the Golden Dreamstone is no more….
The duo then visit Joaqims old house and confirm an Exaltation took place here, apparently while Joaqim was recording his dreamstone. (the trouble you get when the Sun appears in a vision and then a fragment of His Essence is trapped in the dreamtone…. ). At a loss to discover Joaqims whereabouts, newly Exalted Zenith, Cathak Alana tries prayer.
It works! She is given visions showing Joaqim leaving the city that night, golden disk on his forehead still shining and wandering the desert, then being surrounded by Bedioun style desert nomads…. Clearly he is no longer under their jurisdiction. Writing it up as an anonymous witness saw him leaving the city, they close the case.
Ravi escorts the drunken Captain back to the Granite Tower. En-route she spies a relative of the Captain being chased by two thugs. She races the thugs before simultaneously tripping the two with her spear and takes them in. (after preventing the Captain from drunkenly beating them) The two mooks clam up quick and demand to see their lawyer, whose name they refuse to divulge.
After the Captain gets some Chiaroscuro Special Blend coffee down him, they head to his family compound to learn more. It seems that the appropriated firedust from last session belonged to the Obsidian Thieves Guild who are buying up/nicking every barrel of it they can. The Captains cousin accidentally sold their confiscated firedust back to them and they sent the heavies after him. His cousin demands that the Captain get them out of the terrible mess that Ibrahim has brought down on them all. Adding to the bad news, it seems the Black Mouse stole into the Al’Amarah secure storeroom and left an obsidian mouse on the kegs of stolen firedust. Now the Master Thief is involved too!
Then the Captain gets his summons to the Despot. After waiting a lot, they talk, and the deceptively mild mannered Despot takes the Captains dumb silence, weak evasion of responsibility for the prisoner escape and paranoid conspiracy theory with barely a raised eyebrow or comment. (I reason that the Despot is running down the Watch and leaving the Captain in place does more to aid that goal than hinder it. Plus the Watch have managed to upset nearly all the power-blocs in the City over the last week and the Despot likes them upset and off-balance)
Ravitsu Cale has meanwhile remembered what he did with his Spear of Shininess (Moonsilver Direlance) in a past life- he was killed during the Usurption, falling into the then active volcano 12,000 years ago. He transforms into his Eagle Totem beast shape and flies above Gem, scouting the now water filled caldera and discovering that there are lava tube tunnels on the caldera interior….
The various investigations seem to show the following-
- The Forgotten Oasis of Demons seems to be a threat, but its far away for now
- The Abyssal is loose in the city, but the resident DB’s are on Wyld Hunt mode.
- There is some death-related plot or Hungry Ghost infestation in the lava tunnels
- The Obsidian Thieves Guild are doing something nefarious, buying up a huge supply of firedust.
- Opening the Thrice Locked Box might be a bad idea.
The consensus seems to be that dealing with the Hungry Ghosts under Gem (& who ate Watch Exorcist al’Mazarin 5 years ago) would be best.
16th Descending Fire RY 768
Next day, the Watch muster and head to the Market and the lava tubes. The one Al’Mazarin was dragged out of had suffered a cave in. It takes the Watch over 90 minutes to clear a way through and they begin descending into the cold, dark, scary tunnels. They make entry at 10:00 am. (sunset is 10pm)
Soon they encounter bodies- dead for many years but strangley mummified by the cold and dark. These people were bound and then cut across the face, guts, arms and legs, left to bleed out. Fearing Hungry Ghosts might come out the bodies at nightfall, they use Firewands to cremate the corpses and mix the ashes with salt. (they do have a Zenith with them, but she doesn’t want to reveal her Anathaema-ness to the Captain and Jaq)
More bodies leads to another clue- one of the long dead victims got their hands free and used their blood to draw a crude stick figure picture of a person with an umbrella. Unfortunately, no one In-Character got the reference to the Princess Magnificent.
Deep in the bowels of the volcano, their light radius seems to shrink back, cold causing goosebumps in a similar manner to the Prisoner Belows dark cell. The Captain grows suddenly sober when he hears a low, droning, chanting sound from further on- “Oy-yaa, Doy-yaa” repeating on and on.
Then ahead, their lights pick up more bodies. And some bodies that are standing, rather than curled into death on the floor. What could be ahead as all now hear that terrible chanting in the language of the Dead?
And now I have many, many evil ideas…..
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