Welp, here we are again, with more Exalted-y goodness!
And, um... I can't actually think of anything to add. So let's just get to business to defeat the Huns!
(Actually, before we get to business, quick CW for references to mild drug use. Normally I wouldn't bother but there's just enough of them that I feel it's necessary.)
We begin with a dramatic sweep of the camera over the town of Smolder and the surrounding area, showing fields of crops and a few farming villages in the distance. A little over a mile away, along a road being traversed by a small horse-drawn buggy sprawls a walled estate being patrolled by guards wearing the House V'neef crest. The guards appear to be on edge, like they're waiting for something.
A tropical bird comes into view, swooping over the building, circling it. The camera shows off a skylight revealing a large inner courtyard, and a smaller courtyard out back overlooking a cove. A yacht sits in the cove, waiting patiently at the bottom of a series of caves and walkways leading down to the small dock.
The bird swoops down and lands on a second story window, and the camera follows them to show an empty guest room as the bird hops off the windowsill into the room just as guard looks up as if spotting the movement out of the corner of their eye. Inside the room, the bird transforms into Hǎifēng's monkey form, and they slip out into the hall. They sneak around the estate, getting a rough idea of the layout. They're occasionally spotted by a servant, but this is a tropical paradise -- monkeys are a thing that happen, like birds at Walmart, so they ignore what they assume is a mindless critter unless they get into something. The whole place smells like... well, I'm not going to dance around it. It smells like weed, which is a local crop on the island and a favorite of V'neef Gamon.[0] In fact, when Hǎifēng finds the central courtyard they find a sideboard with some blends and pipes available for guests, in much the same way the wealthy may have a selection of liquors in decanters.
They proceed to swipe some for later for themselves.
They also find a special balcony over the courtyard with a fancy double door, and they climb up on top of the frame to open it just a crack and peek inside. They see a room full of fancy weapons and armor on pedestals. There's an orichalcum signet ring, some sort of rose-cut clear gem that symbols appear in depending on how the light is catching it, what looks to be a Gateway (a chess-like board game) board, a set of orichalcum armor, a pair of what appear to be two full suits of armor holding halberds in the corners, an orichalcum serpent-sting staff, a jade wrackstaff with an orichalcum cap on one end and a moonsilver cap on the other, and a big-ass soulsteel reaver daiklaive.[1] There's also a dark-skinned Easterner polishing the soulsteel sword.
They then go looking for the study, which they expect to probably have all of the useful information in the place. As they do so, the eventually notice the estate servants getting into a tizzy. Eventually they overhear someone talking about getting the 'good tea' and decide to follow the servants to see what's going on. They find themselves in the foyer, which is full of minions and V'neef Gamon herself.
The Dragon-Blood has warm tawny skin and a willowy build, that kind of 'Olive Oyl from Popeye' skinniness. She looks like she's positively swimming in the kimono she wears, but somehow it works on her. The kimono itself is patterned with green and blue, starting with what appears to be imagery of leaves floating on water on the bottom, but the shade of the blue changes so by the time it reaches her shoulders the leaves appear to be blowing through the sky. Her eyes are green and her hair is brown dreadlocks that look like gnarled roots, with what appear to be twigs and leaves sticking out of it. So obviously a Wood Aspect. She's also holding a kiseru (one of those long Japanese pipes you see in anime) in one hand, and has this look on her face like she's stoned, but it's hard to tell whether she just naturally looks like that or if she actually is stoned right now. (It's both.)[2]
And then the Abyssal shows up.
Like, I'm not going to dance around it. The figure that comes in the front door is decked out in all-black leather with a hood pulled up over her head, framing a face that's pale as moonlight. She's also got a blood red set of what look like fist-sized prayer beads slung over shoulder and hip like a bandoleer. And when I say black leather, I mean black. Like vantablack, so dark it seems to absorb the surrounding light. It's actually hard to make out the detail on the outfit, but you can actually get a good idea by looking up the player character from Bloodbourne. (It's actually kind of a pain in the ass to get a decent picture of the character that's not a figurine or that shot from the back that's used on the box art.) Just also imagine a leather hood instead of a hat and adding the aforementioned prayer beads. (It's a minor detail I forgot to mention in the session so I'm describing it here, but like the Bloodborne character she also covers the lower half of her face with a scarf, but she pulls it down when she takes the hood down so she can speak normally.
But seriously, this is a fucking Abyssal, and neither the character herself (nor I, by extension) make even the first effort to pretend otherwise.[3] She doesn't go to the trouble of painting her Caste Mark on her ship or anything, but Abyssals by and large don't do 'subtle.' However, for better or worse, Creation is the sort of place where Abyssals' degree of eccentricity, if not the exact flavor, is common enough it doesn't completely give them away unless you're In The Know. Hǎifēng, by virtue of being a Lunar who's been trained and inducted into the Silver Pact (and also has a couple of dots of the Occult skill), is In The Know.
V'neef Gamon begins to address her by name, and she holds up a gloved hand and says "'Captain Coral' is fine," as she pulls back the hood to reveal short, slightly-spiky hair that at first looks black but is in fact midnight blue. She then says she wants to get this over with so she's willing to skip hearing her whole name every time.[4] Gamon starts to offer her tea or some other refreshment, and Captain Coral raises a gloved hand and makes it clear that she just wants to verify the artifact and get it over with. Gamon, obviously off-balance and taking a hit off of her pipe, proceeds to lead her through the estate to the collection room.
Hǎifēng follows along, slightly underfoot, using Predator-and-Prey Mirror to appear as 'prey' instead of 'predator' this time. So the staff underestimates them and mostly ignore them or just keep them out of sight (for lack of any better, faster options) so nobody important has to notice or acknowledge the wild animal that got into the house.
Everyone gets to the collection room where the artifact keeper Hǎifēng saw earlier stands at attention, and bows to the guest as she approaches the soulsteel reaver daiklaive.
"Ah, the Epitaph of Sunset," she remarks as she reaches out to touch its etched surface with a gloved hand. "How did you get this?"
Gamon says that she has her ways. Captain Coral asks what she knows of its history.
Gamon nods to the savant who apparently manages the room for her. He tells the story of its previous owner, Bleached Bones' Gleam, one of the Solar Exalted in the late First Age who reportedly went mad and tried to raise a minor rebellion against Heaven. He was supposedly captured and they tried to treat his madness, but the Dragon-Blooded rose up to strike down the tyrannical Solar host before anything could be done.
(By the way, in my head, the savant looks like Chidi on The Good Place, as played by William Jackson Harper. This in no way foreshadows anything about this character's relative importance in matters. Not at all. Just a perfectly normal human worm baby.)
Captain Coral then asks if he knows about the previous owner. He says that as far as he knows Bleached Bones Gleaming made and was the first to wield the blade, though Hǎifēng suspects he knows more than he's letting on.
Her cold, ominous, gothy 'mask' slips just a bit when she tells the story of Voice of Eternal Sunset, the previous incarnation of Bleached Bones' Gleam. A Zenith Caste who spoke for the dead, wanting to make sure the living heard their stories. He ministered to the living and dead alike, and was loved by his ghostly followers. He perished trying to gleam secrets of the Underworld and necromancy that were beyond even the might of the Solars.[5]
After Voice of Eternal Sunset's demise, his ghostly followers carved a memorial to him into a sheet of soulsteel, telling his story and recounting just how many of the Underworld's denizens he helped. Bleached Bones' Gleam took it upon himself to take the memorial and have it made into a sword, folding the slab of soulsteel into the reaver daiklaive it is now. There's a moment, as Captain Coral finishes telling the story, where she realizes she's very close to touching it, and pulls her hand back.
She turns to V'neef Gamon and insists she must know where she got it. Gamon says that she acquired it from some people south of them on the mainland who deal in such things. Then the captain turns to the expert and demands to know the name of someone so wise in the ways of sciencewho knows so much about such obscure lore. He says he's Nefvarin Tomonari, originally from Lookshy.[6]
Captain Coral says that the blade is authentic, and that she's going to return to her people and prepare an offer for its acquisition. Then she pulls up the hood on her coat and strides out of the place without further adieu, moving with such purpose you'd think she's getting ready to kill someone at her destination. (Which she might be, who knows.)
As people file out of the collection room, some of whom following her to see her out and others attending to V'neef, Hǎifēng slips back to the study and starts going through papers and ledgers and trying to get an idea of what she might be trying to get from the Abyssal. There's nothing clear on paper, but they get enough of a feeling for how Gamon thinks to figure out that as long as she's offered something valuable enough, she'd part with almost any item in her collection. But they also recognize that the V'neef is likely to let Captain Coral just have the sword in exchange for doing something about the blockade (or accept such an offer, if the Abyssal proposes it first).
With all sorts of knowledge and horrifying revelations in tow, they escape the house (easy enough, it's not like the servants wanted a monkey in there), return to bird form, and return to Smolder where they find Xương and Shango at the Drunk Octopus. They're in there drinking when Hǎifēng comes in, looking legitimately haunted by what they witnessed out at Gamon's estate, smoking some of the weed they swiped to take the edge off.
Hǎifēng just comes right out with it -- they just saw an Abyssal. I can't remember if there was an in-character spit-take at this, but it's easy to imagine there being one. The describe the encounter at the estate, and in broad strokes the scene in the collection room. Xương wonders why Captain Coral is bothering to negotiate and buy the sword rather than just kill everyone and take it, which to be fair is an extremely good question. Shango offers that there might be some larger plan in the works.
Xương is, understandably, very concerned that they're going to be poking around Gamon's estate when the Abyssal comes back, and while they're all competent combatants with potent Celestial Exaltations, this is a fucking Abyssal. They've got the raw power of the Solars, but refined towards killing and murder; they're called 'deathknights' for a reason. Hǎifēng says that Captain Coral is going to meet with someone and work out a price for the sword, so they've got a little bit of time if they move now.
Xương thinks it's way too soon to strike, but as he thinks over the situation he realizes he's doing the one thing he said he wouldn't do -- assume she's up to no good just because of her Exaltation. After all, he himself just explained to Rashmi a few days ago that that's what their enemies do. Hǎifēng suggests that they're pretty sure the sword that Captain Coral is after probably belonged to her in a past life, when she tried to overthrow Heaven. (For the record, they're right -- again, I'm not being terribly subtle with the good captain.) Xương thinks it still might be a bit much to assume she's going to use it for carnage -- after all, despite having the capacity and almost certainly the temperament, she's still trying to get it peacefully.
Probably.
Either way, they talk about whether letting Captain Coral have the sword is going to be a Huge Problem. Xương, at least, knows he doesn't want to be standing between her and it when the time comes. Hǎifēng suggests they go deal with V'neef Gamon, and if Captain Coral shows up offer her the sword in exchange for leaving the island, and let the rest be Future Spike's Problem. All prejudices aside, it looks very much like the Abyssal has a rightful claim to the sword's ownership. Xương argues that barring some new development or information, initiating conflict with an Abyssal Exalt isn't a priority.
But either way, settling things with Gamon needs to come first. Xương proposes, as Plan A, that they just tear down the wall, kill anyone they have to, deal with the V'neef, and let Captain Coral have the sword in exchange for leaving the island and not coming back. Nobody has a better plan, so they go to talk with Bokano to get her ready to move since they might need the Magma Kraken sooner than expected.
On the way to her, they find a disturbance in the street -- a bunch of the Peleps troops surrounding Shichirou the Digger, Captain Tarok's second in command, basically just hassling him for being a pirate. He stands there, impassively waiting for them to get bored and wander off, because things are tense enough that violence at this point could set off the violent conflict that's been brewing. The group is trying to figure out if they should step in, and then they see one of the troops reach for the monk's spade strapped to Shichirou's back.
Hǎifēng quickly rushes up to Shichirou, blubbing and apologizing for the money being late, and that they'll pay him back, don't hurt their family, etc. They use this as a vector for Lion-Mouse Inversion, which lets them use Predator and Prey Mirror on someone else, and basically make Shichirou come across as the most badass figure on the street to get the troops to back off. Shichirou's confused as hell as he plays along by dismissing Hǎifēng, but it works.
They go talk to Bokano, who's been watching from a short distance away. After a brief discussion about what she just witnessed, Hǎifēng tells her about the Abyssal at Gamon's place. And that is definitely not a fight the crab Lunar wants to have. Hǎifēng makes sure to point out that Captain Coral, in a previous life, once started a rebellion against Heaven, and clearly they're concerned about her getting up to old tricks. Bokano states that, in her opinion, that's Heaven's problem.
Getting back to the matter at hand, though, she says they're still going to have to deal with the Peleps squadron after sorting out Gamon one way or another, but sorting out with their immediate threat and a show of force should be enough to secure the island. Bokano also suggests that while she wouldn't go so far as to consider Captain Coral even an ally of convenience, it is possible that the Abyssal pirate may regard the Peleps squadron as being in her way and they may be able to take advantage of that.
So Bokano suggests they go ahead and sort out Gamon one way or another. She doesn't particularly care if she lives or dies, just as long as she's gone. In the meantime, Bokano is going to make preparations to summon her people and make declarations.
The trio take on their animal forms for rapid travel to Gamon's estate. Xương, upon arrival, just cranks himself up to his full 30-something foot height with Mountainous Spirit Expression (this is broad daylight, by the way) with enough Essence to go full Iconic Anima. He goes to try and just collapse as much of the bulding as he can, and in the process more or less tears the front off of it while the guards move in to attack him. Just when they're about to strike, Hǎifēng dives in and uses Inauspicious Moment of Attack, clapping with a hundred hands to knock the mooks all back so the shark-monster can unleash an earth-shattering roar and seize as many as he can in his terrible jaws. Shango comes down onto the roof from above with Emerald Wasp, the powerbow he took from the Wyld Hunt, and begins pelting them with arrows. The guards flee once they realize this is a coordinated attack.
Xương starts tearing into the building, scattering rubble as servants flee, and he makes his way into the central courtyard where there's the balcony leading to the collection room. Nefavrin Tomonari calmly stands in the open doorway, waiting. He lets Xương know that the lady of the house is out back, making a run for it. But he himself just wants to know what they're going to do with the artifacts. Xương says they plan to take them. Tomonari says he needs more detail than that. Xương says they're going to trade them away, and stops and is like "Why am I talking to you?" as he leaves Hǎifēng to deal with this and goes around back where Gamon has fled down to the boat in the cove behind the house.
He does a flying leap off the cliff into the cove, cutting off her escape. She looks up at him and just makes it clear she's trying to leave. She's done. She's out. They can have it, she doesn't care any more.
Back in the house, Hǎifēng jumps up some piles of rubble to get up to the balcony to confront Tomonari. He just calmly adjusts his glasses and says the only reason he needs to know what the plans are for the artifacts so he knows what to put in his report. Hǎifēng correctly calls Tomonari out as a Sidereal[7], and the man doesn't deny it.
Hǎifēng considers a moment and says that they plan to use what they can, and trade the rest to the Three Devil Princes down south. They reassure Tomonari that despite stereotypes about Lunars, they don't go ransacking the countryside without reason. If they see something 'messed up' and people are getting hurt, they're going to get involved. Tomonari looks Hǎifēng square in the eye and says that he has no interest in standing in their way, and the Lunar gets the distinct impression that the Sidereal means that above and beyond this specific encounter.
Then Tomonari says he has to go and cover his own ass. He remarks that this wasn't entirely what was expected to happen. The smart money was that the Peleps squadron's spies in town would find Gamon was dealing with an Abyssal and use that as pretense to invade (because, y'know, Anathema). The Lunars getting involved was the second-most likely scenario, with the people of the island rising up against Gamon as a distant third. Before he leaves, he says that they can call him 'Owl' and he hopes they meet under better circumstances in the future.
Back to the cove out back, Xương offers to let Gamon go as long as she leaves behind any artifacts she was running with.[8] She points out that her yacht is an artifact and she needs it to leave, but she'll give him everything else. He considers that acceptable. She ducks into the boat and comes out in a fresh set of clothes, handing over a bundle of stuff wrapped up in the kimono she was wearing, and he lets her go.
And we left off on that.
[0]-- For the sake of trying to prevent a tangent of jokes on the subject during the session, I resisted the urge to refer to her as a 'Weed Aspect' Dragon-Blood. But I have basically no shame, which is why I mention that here.
[1]-- Daiklaives in general are huge-ass magic swords, big enough that mortals can barely carry them, let alone wield them, and an Essence-user has to attune to one to treat it as anything but a hunk of metal. (The big-ass swords in Devil May Cry are a good visual reference) So you know how I said in the previous post that a reaper daiklaive is a much more compact katana-looking magic sword? A reaver daiklaive is the opposite. They're basically proportioned like the Buster Sword from Final Fantasy VII, just ridiculous flat slabs of metal. I compared it to a claymore, which is more renowned for crushing its victims than neatly slicing through them.
[2]-- Wood Aspected Dragon-Bloods tend to have a sensual, hedonistic quality to them.
[3]-- I feel the need to link this and its follow-up somewhere, and this seems as good a spot as any.
[4]-- Abyssals tend to have long, gothy names. It's part of their deal, they give up their real name to the Neverborn when they Exalt and replace it with something dramatic and flowery. In this case, Grasping Fingers of Bone-White Coral. Fun fact, Abyssals are actually punished by the forces that empower them for not being all dramatic and ominous (though as with many things, we don't yet know exactly what form that will take in this edition).
[5]-- In other words, as Sean correctly and cleverly guessed during the session, he tried to discover the highest tier of Necromancy and died in the effort. Just as only Solars are capable of learning the highest and third tier of sorcery (called the Adamant Circle or more colloquially Solar Circle), only the Abyssals and the Deathlords can learn the third tier of necromancy (called the Obsidian Circle or the Void Circle). As the Deathlords didn't exist before the Usurpation and the Abyssal Exalted didn't exist until a few years ago, the highest (or lowest, depending on your point of view) tier of necromancy was purely theoretical in the First Age.
[6]-- For the record, it's a legitimate coincidence that we've just had two stories with Lookshyan artifact experts. I'm not trying to be coy, it just fits with how things came together in my head.
[7]-- Sean, Xương's player, called him out as the 'obvious Sidereal' earlier out of character. I mean, yeah, I wasn't trying to be particularly subtle about it. They haven't spotted any of the other Sidereals they've encountered, so I still consider myself to be 'winning' on that front.
[8]-- A little glimpse behind the curtain here: Gamon's got a set of silken armor that I'd intended to go to Hǎifēng, but I wasn't expecting them to assault the house with such an obvious attack that it only made sense for her to run because she actually can't fight particularly well. But catching her trying to leave, well... killing her then was going to feel a little too much like an execution. Which is why I had the cutaway to Haifang and Tomonami, to give us time to think of an alternative, which was Xương agreeing to let her go in exchange for her stuff.
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