SJE/Session7
= Exalted Session 7
The One in which the Cathaks go to war and the Wyld Hunt battle an Anathaema
So, having named the mortals Jaq and Orchid Anathaema, headstrong Fire Dragon Initiate Cathak Anaria pulls her red jade short daiklaives.
Jaq pleads his innocence, asking how he can prove he isn’t Anathaema. Anaria replies “In Blood!”, so Jaq cuts his own arm and says- “Look, if you prick me, do I not bleed!”
Anaria accepts this, but spots thaumaurge Floating Summer Orchid making herself scarce. A thrown daiklaive into the wall stops this and Anaria charges! Orchid dodges at the last minute and finds herself penned in by the two daikliaves to either side of her head. Brand grabs Anarias arm to stop a killing blow, and Anaria turns on the flames, scorching him till he lets go. Jaq tries to arrest Cathak Anaria for assaulting a Watch Officer.
At last the Captain regains his senses, punches Jaq before he says anything more stupid and launches into a fawning, obsequies speech about how Orchid is innocent, how she brought the Anathaema problem to his attention and how its all a trick of the real Anathaema to get their opponents to destroy each other.
Meanwhile, the real Exalts (Ravitsu and Brand) stay werry, werry quiet.
Moved by the Captains bluster, compliments and ass-kissing, Anaria relents and storms out the Hungry Yeddim in a foul mood, her dreams of Anathaema-slaying glory in ruins, her angry flames still silhouetting her body.
She walks up the street in a Creation of her own, not noticing the wagon accident, the spilled firedust, trapped pedestrians and Cathak Alana (her mortal Dynast cousin on the run). Alana notices Anaria though and shouts at her to stop.
Anaria looks up- instant recognition! She screams “Cousin? Traitor!” and walks toward Alana in a fury. Alana throws caution to the wind and tackles the Fire Aspect around the waist, throwing herself onto the fiery inferno in order to keep her away from the firedust. Even as her skins burns, clothes smoulder and face char, Alana keeps on top of Anaria, desperate to stop her igniting a catastrophe.
The two cousins, similar in build, face and colouration tussle and brawl in the dusty streets of Gem, just feet away from the barrels of firedust. Alana hears a booming voice in her mind “WILL YOU CHOOSE THE INNOCENT OVER YOUR FAMILY?”.
‘Yes’ thinks Alana. Anarias deadly open palm strike then hits Alana in the face, but rebounds as if it had just struck solid gold.
Somewhere above the night parts and a pillar of bright sunlight shines down on the feudin’ Cathak cousins.
“WILL YOU LEAD MY PEOPLE TO THE PATH OF RIGHTEOUSNESS?” booms the voice of the Sun.
‘Yes’ thinks Alana, suddenly filled with holy fire and passion.
Anarias eyes widen as she takes in the sight of her cousins glowing golden halo and anima, its fire even hotter and purer than her own raging elemental inferno.
All of Anarias strikes are useless, rebounding from Alana’s flesh as if she were hitting metal itself.
“WILL YOU PROTECT GEM FROM ALL ENEMIES WITHIN AND WITHOUT?” says the great voice once more.
“If I can” thinks Alana
“THEN ARISE HAMMER OF THE SUN!”
With a full celestial choir souding, the pillar of light brightens to blinding flare and Cathak Alana, she who had been failed, abandoned by the Dragons, is filled with the warm, eternal and unconditional love of the Unconquered Sun, a Zenith reborn!
Anarias head comes up to head-butt her Solar abomination cousin, just as Alanas caste mark flares out! Anarias head rockets back into the ground, unconscious, a burned circlular disk branded into her forehead.
The rest of the Watch have arrived and Orchid and the other Exalts quickly hustle away a dazed Alana. The Captain fails to spot any significance in the pillar of light from Heaven and assumes its some sort of DB tom-foolery. Jaq and the Captain take the unconscious monk Cathak Anaria up to the Immaculate Temple and say there was an accident with firedust. Fortunately Master Ledaal Tanaka is away battling Ssseth (at Jaqs earlier Machiaviallian request) so there is no one to punch holes through the story.
The 3 Exalts & Thaumaturge go off to discuss their future and help Alana understand her Damascene Conversion from failed DB hater of the Anathaema to righteous priest of the Unconquered Sun. They can fill in that part.
Jaq and the Captain also sort out the firedust. Suspiciously there is no owners mark on the kegs, so the Captain diverts it to his cousin on the understanding they split the money for the cargo 50:50. Jaq spots this ninja-style but doesn’t interfere in the al’Amarah corruption.
15th Descending Fire RY 768
Next morning, Brand and Ravitsu talk to the Prisoner Below about Yigors death. He warns them a dark rider is coming, death in its wake and offers to help with the Shadow Below Gem case.
Then Brand, Ravitsu, Jaq and Alana head down to the Hot District to find Lucita the little Demon-blooded orphan get her story. Alana accidentally burns the child when Lucita hugs here, Alanas new Anima power kicking in reflexively. After the others calm the child, they get the story. Apparently the stony, grey faced ‘Bad Man’ lives in an oasis to the South (though none know of it) and he sent Lucita away with a caravan. She escaped from the caravan into Gem. Brand remembers that this isn’t the first caravan from the South from which a demon crawled- the Sewer Monster demon had burst out of Drunken Horse, a caravaneer of Iblans Gold caravan.
Meanwhile Orchid and the Captain visit the Immaculate Temple to see Master Tanaka. The aged Immaculate questions them about the incident that left Sister Anaria in a coma, and is not convinced by the Captains story and demands to part of the Anathaema investigation. The Captain then asks the monk to come visit the strange Prisoner Below as he suspects that the Prisoner might be involved. (Orchid's Essence flows are examined by Tanaka as she casts a warding and she is declared clean of Anathaema taint)
Tanaka makes it to the Granite Watchhouse before sensing the necrotic energies of the deathknight imprisoned below. The normally temperate monk shouts at the Captain, asking why he couldn’t recognise the Anathaema under his own nose! (Orchid tries not to giggle too much)
Cathak Aron is sent for and the 2 man Wyld Hunt prepare for war. Ledaal dons his blue jade breastplate and unsheathes his Infinite Jade Chakram. Aron arrives laden down in armour, powerbows and direlance.
(I let the PC’s play the DB’s and I take the Abyssals character sheet for this)
The doughty Hunters head down into the cold, dark corridor, with its far cell quiet as the grave.
“Prisoner?” bellows the Captain. “I come to release you. I’m giving you to the monks”
the sibilant voice echoes from the shadows “So you, as a duly appointed officer of the Watch are releasing me from Watch custody?”
“Yes” says the Captain before anyone thinks to gag him.
Three great drum beats sound in the earth as the Lord of Silent Repose is released from his oath to obey the justice of Gem. For the monks and Wyld Hunt are not part of Gems Justice, but the Realms!
Aron charges at the cell, lance lowered. As he does, the cell door swings open and from the darkest shadow within, the grating sound of sword being drawn is heard (Lord Silent recalls his Soulsteel daiklaive from the Void)
In a flurry of blades Aron stabs at the deathknight with his lance. The Abyssal easily parries and counter-attacks, Aron dodging. Then Lord Silent tries to chop off Arons hand, but the Cathak legionnaire pulls back the guard of his jade lance to save his fingers from being shorn off. Ledaal Tanaka unleashes 5 ghostly chakrams into the crowded cell, 3 of them biting deep into the Byronic, pale Abyssal.
(2nd Round) Aron, his fiery anima burning like a forge, spins and hacks with his direlance knocking stone chips from the walls, through his anima banner, turning them into a deadly molten weave of fire aiding his attacks. But all his stuntworthy efforts are for naught as Lord Silent becomes a flickering wisp, a shadow quicker than the wind that bends through the dark places between the fire and the molten stone.
The Lord of Silent Repose races for the stairs intent on escape, his Essence rapidly depleting. The Captain musters his courage and tries to stop him with a cone of fire from his firewand but again the deathknight twists round it like living darkness. Tanaka unleashes a terrible rain of chakrams, 25 filling the air, a hurricaine of metal. Yet when the survivors look up, they find the Abyssal vanished, leaving only a few cut pieces of black silk where the chakrams came too close.
There is a deathknight loose in Gem.
All the City become aware of this, for the clouds scud across the sky at maddening speed, gathering and spreading from the epicentre above the Granite Tower! Soon the clouds blot out the sun, from horizon to horizon and Gem falls into darkness at midday! Bells ring out to warn the faithful, but these sound strange, newly cracked by the Abyssals unleashed Resonance….
Alana looks up from the District, knowing at once that another agent of evil is loose in Gem. The Captain looks down as Tanaka castigates him for his incompetence and swears to tell the Despot. Lucita looks up in happiness as the Watch adopt her….
Hopefully next session, we fight crime!
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