Ketrus/C1C1

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Dramatis personæ

• Ketrus/IronSoul : The circle's Dawn
• Ketrus/Key : The circle's Twilight
• Ketrus/Nadira : The circle's Night
• Ketrus/PlatinumStorm : The circle's Eclipse
• Ketrus/Ibis : A Full Moon who makes first meeting with the Solar circle

• Nakia, The Twisted Reins : A beautiful ghost of a powerful Air-Aspect sorceress, captured and guarded by a victim of her ancient betrayal.

Cutscene One

The bloody whirlwind of the previous day has finally come to a close, giving the Solar Exalted time to recover and examine the fruits of their newest victory. First and foremost, the town of Nakiahl has begun to make its slow recovery. With the assistance of Reckless Draught and Wandering Platinum Storm, the adults that had maintained the best health nurse the rest back to full vitality. It will be several weeks before the weakest among them, the frail and the children, manage to overcome the lasting effects of the Drought, but their recovery is assured with time.

Iron Soul makes great effort in examining the soldiers personally, as well as what remains of the ancient fortifications. The ghostly seneschals are in excellent condition, displaying the greatest ability and discipline he's ever seen among the rank and file. Trained by the Solars of the First Age, they number one thousand of the most effective troops in either Creation or the Underworld. Their manse, on the other hand, has seen better days. Half of the fortress's five walls lie in ruin, with only two left fully standing. The First Age defense mechanisms are all either spent, destroyed, or disabled by Aimless Key, leaving only fifteen ballista and the war-beasts. Twenty yeddim and four hundred twenty horses remain. The gems of the tiny army, though, are the twenty-five officers which have been trained to near-perfection in every possible mortal discipline by the Circle's previous incarnations. They are all inhumanly loyal, their very souls broken by the charms that forever bound them to their masters.

Aimless Key, meanwhile, delves deeper into the actual Manse itself. Far beneath the surface, she finds basements and sub-basements containing the ancient occult rooms and dungeons that fueled the necromantic security systems two thousand years ago. The torture rooms are so heinous, so thick with the memory of inhuman suffering that she cannot stand to remain in them for longer than minutes at a time. Doubtlessly, their previous selves were monsters, and powerful monsters at that. Above the basements are more normal artifacts, such as the security systems which can not currently be fully understood, much less reactivated. The hearthstone chamber itself contains the strongest magic, its revitalization a mere five motes away from completion. Upon activation, it will burst forth with such mighty Solar sorcery that the shadowland will be destroyed, taking every ghost within a mile with it. Freed from its slumber, the fortress-manse's obscuring sorceries will be destroyed and it will once again be accessible to the world. What would happen to the legion of guardians, should they be deployed elsewhere upon their home's return to Creation, Aimless Key cannot say.

Nadira and Ibis take less proactive measure over the next week. Both return to their nearby manses, to refresh themselves and meditate upon the events of that terrible night. They make it back to the fortress hours within each other, just before Nakia.

She comes bearing tidings and news, from the Kingdom of Deme and the Underworld at large. The Empire of Aki, a free and self-governed nation of ghosts, is for the first time in its long history under serious attack. The Walker in Darkness, Deathlord and master of the Walker's Domain, a vast shadowland just south of the Confederacy of Rivers, has declared war upon the Empire. If not for the betrayal of his trusted Deathknight, the self-styled Errant Son, the war might already be over. Instead, his first attacks were met with swift and decisive resistance, where they expected little, and a battle between equals has begun. On his side, the Deathlord has a strange new ally, a strategist known only in rumors and whispers, that guides his new war effort. Additionally, his bonestrider army, the Legion of Ivory and Despair, has taken half of the Kingdom of Astal.

The Thirteen Kingdoms, vassals of Aki, hope to counter his growing strength with reinforcements from the living world. They have created a dozen small shadowlands from tiny rural towns in the Confederacy of Rivers, and are now using them to send out ambassadors to the major powers in the region to petition for aid. Nakia comes to the Circle acting as one of them, asking for formal alliance between the five Celestial exalts, and the Kingdom of Deme. With their help, she explains, sufficient strength can be mustered to not only resist the offensive campaign of the Walker in Darkness, but push the fight into his own domain, toppling the Deathlord himself.

The price for failure, on the other hand, is grim indeed. The goal of the Walker is to take the Confederacy from below, first, then rise above. By conquering the Empire of Aki, he hopes to blight the world above for a thousand miles within Great Forks, a middle step in some plot to overthrow the city of Great Forks that has vexed him and all Deathlords for so very long. Doing so would destroy the entire region, wreaking havoc upon the only place in Creation truly free from the Realm.

It is up to the Circle to decide upon their course of action, and they have little time. This war will be decided within the next two years, this much has been written in the stars of the Underworld. The rest is up to fate, and the actions of the Exalted.

End Cutscene

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