Hello and salutations, my good folks. Here I am with another visit with the crew of the Moonlight Maiden, albeit separated from the aforementioned ship by a few hundred miles at this point. Seriously, this far outstrips the river trip they took in An-Teng for distance from the nearest harbor.
To make up for this, once they get back to port, the next four stories will entirely be underwater. (I'm kidding.)
Anyhow, before I get into it, here's a quick reminder that the Mirage Kingdom and the Mirror City are mostly original places I've created for this game. As of this writing, literally everything in print about the Three Devil Princes can be summed up as "There are three Lunars who are ridiculously rich and living at the edge of Creation." Everything else is just something I've come up, so don't @ me if future supplements describe something drastically different.
And finally, for those of you following Exalted, here's a reminder about the crowdfunding campaign for the Exigents book.
So we left off on the crew getting settled into the Mirror City, and pick up on a short montage of Hǎifēng going out to explore the city. It's fully-functioning civilization in a way that Hǎifēng has likely never seen, even living in An-Teng. There are differences of course -- An-Teng is a little more laid back and open to the elements, particularly in the 'resort town' atmosphere of the coast with which Hǎifēng is the most familiar. But the Mirror City is comfortable in a different way. There are plenty of resources for the relatively smaller population, and even the 'lower' classes seem to be treated well. It's easy to see why the Mirage Kingdom would be relegated to the status of myth and legend even though people who've been there can leave and tell others about it, as it would be so very hard for anyone to believe.[0] (For the record, the footnote here is an extensive one, so maybe save it until later.)
The main thing that stands out to Hǎifēng's eyes is a noticeable sense of cultural displacement and isolation. Fashion in the Mirror City, while recreated from or just imported from other parts of Creation, is a little out of date. In addition, many of the locally-designed pieces of clothing and artwork, even those derived from other extant cultures in Creation, reflect First Age aesthetics in a way that few people have seen in centuries. And this vibe continues across other art forms -- the Mirror City's arts district has playhouses and the like, and they put on performances seen in other parts of Creation, but a few years after the same plays have fallen out of favor elsewhere, with sets representing distant locations that the locals have never seen.
It's pleasant, but distinctly different from anyplace in Creation, in ways that some (like Xương) would have trouble reconciling.
But anyhow, we move on to the next day, where Xương and Shango have things to do!
First off, Xương's got an appointment in one of the libraries with one of the city's savants, where the two of them go through the city's expansive collection of knowledge finding the place from his vision. (Which, as a reminder, comes up at the very end of this session.) The savant goes over what the local plants look like, any other physical features like whether the stars were visible and if so what constellations, that sort of thing. And that narrows it down to a section of jungle close to the coast.
They also go over what they know of Vaihil -- which is very little about him specifically (you'd have to go to recent Immaculate records for that), but they know he's a disease spirit of autumn fever and from the mainland. And while they don't know for sure that Vaihil had some tie to the location of the Empty Palace, they still look at him as a likely lead. So that lets them narrow down places where he's likely to have come from, and that gives them a section of the jungle that overlaps with the first.[1] It's not an especially small section of jungle -- an overlapping sliver between two circles, basically, about a hundred miles long and fifty miles wide at its widest point, but it shouldn't be too hard to explore if someone is conveniently capable of taking on a bird form.[2]
The savant warns Xương that they have no way of knowing from here how dangerous the place is, and that it's likely that there may be a Wyld zone in the area. I can't recall if I'm remembering something I explained out of character, something Yanisin said last session, or something the savant explains now (or I might have said it before and just repeated myself), but it comes up that the Empty Palace is one of a number of places in Creation thought lost when the Fair Folk invaded following the Contagion. The borders between Creation and the Wyld became fluid at best, many places were overtaken, and reality came very close to falling apart before the Scarlet Empress seized the Sword of Creation and put a stop to it. When the Wyld rolled back like a wave to roughly where it is now, a number of locations in or close to the Wyld got dumped into Creation far from their original locations, and just kind of glitched into the local terrain. The Sidereals smoothed things over as best they could, but that doesn't change the fact that a Lunar fortress wound up at the bottom of what's best described as a small lake, thousands of miles from its original location.
But with that mystery squared away, we move over to Shango, who's got an appointment with Yanisin Stoneblood. The toad Lunar leads him into one of the lower levels of the tower, and starts to explain the procedure they're going to be doing. As has been previously mentioned, the Mirror City used to be a staging ground for expeditions into the Wyld. While for the most part the Exalted are able to resist the worst of the Wyld's excesses, that doesn't apply to mortal or God-blooded support staff. Even spirits and gods can be corrupted and twisted by the Wyld, after all. The facility has systems originally designed to help restore a Wyld-shattered mortal mind, and they discovered through experimentation that it could be used to let an Exalt tap into the prior bearers of their Exaltation.[3] There are limits to it -- Yanisin says that he's been alive long enough it simply can't reach far enough back to get his prior incarnations. I might be misremembering the conversation, but I think he also says it's never been used on a Sidereal because they haven't had a lot of contact with them on account of the time the Bureau of Destiny tried to murder them all. He says it exactly like that, just way too casually, and Shango can't tell if he's just so jaded by his incredible age that he takes it in stride, or if he's rehearsed saying it like that to mess with people. (I know he used the 'the time the Bureau tried to murder us all' line, I'm just fuzzy on the exact context)
Yanisin reassures Shango that the procedure should be safe, but it will be jarring -- it'll restore memories long-removed from their original context, and may have an effect on someone's personality because it's effectively adding to the past experiences that make up part of who someone is. He says that what it will likely do is awaken elements of being a Lunar that Shango in his relative youth hasn't tapped into yet, and kind of speed up his development as a person and as a Lunar as a result.[4] Over the course of the conversation, as Yanisin occasionally makes comments about the procedure that could seem ominous in the wrong light, he repeatedly reassures Shango that this is all very safe.
So they reach the lab, which has numerous toadfolk technicians working on a bunch of mad science-y equipment with dials and switches and flashing lights and Tesla coils. Shango lays down on a ridiculously-comfortable chair (for those of you who know earlier editions, think 'thousand comfort lounge'), and they strap him down. They consider giving him a mouthpiece to bite down on, but Yanisin figures he's fine as he's not going to have to worry about shapeshifting into something with sharp teeth. There's some brief back-and-forth as to whether the straps are for Shango's safety or everyone else's, and Yanisin clarifies it's the former, all-too-casually remarking that he has nothing to fear from Shango. Again, it's tough to tell if he's trying to play it up as a form of dry humor.
But they begin the procedure, which to be fair is a lot like electroconvulsive therapy but with Essence instead of electricity. They pump him with the power and he feels it dance along his nervous system and infuse his cells. It feels a lot like Exalting, all over again, while the techs adjust a bunch of dials and switches to sort of fine-tune the frequency as the jumbled images eventually become clearer. And then he starts getting scraps of memory -- of a red-tailed hawk Lunar wielding flame pieces and all manner of fire magic, taking on sort of a phoenix-like cast.
He 'remembers' flying over an advanced city with crystal towers and airships and all sorts of things, and he's aware that this is Meru, the once-capital of the Solar Deliberative and the Exalted Host, the literal center of Creation. He recalls bits and pieces of the violence of the Usurpation, of leading his comrades to Wyld Observation Station 6 near the border with the Wyld. He remembers arguments about how to handle refugees fleeing the Contagion, about efforts to prevent it from getting into the city and how to contain it once it did get in.
The last, strongest memories are of battle. Of fighting the raksha invading Creation, of being on the front lines -- after all, their floating city is literally right there -- of swooping around, wielding flame both magical and chemical against them. He remembers being pushed to his limits, of being wounded and worn down, and in the end luring the invading hordes to get in close before. Shango recalls the Fair Folk and their hobgoblin armies descending upon him to finish him off, and before he detonated everything he had to take as many with him as he could, he thought to himself "I think I forgot for a second that wasn't actually a phoenix." And as the explosion and conflagration end that stretch of memory, Shango becomes aware of this incarnation's name: Aditsan Phoenix.
From there, the procedure gets into some blurry, faint pre-Exaltation memories, recalling bits and pieces of having come from the Southwest, of growing up in some nation or culture that was probably wiped out centuries ago (likely during the Contagion). And as everything starts to fade, he gets the distinct sensation of every muscle in his body swelling up with Essence like a balloon, and then just... deflating.
Shango wakes up in a dark room, where off the side a toadfolk technician is reading a book next to a lamp. He sits up, rubbing his temple with his fingers, and she puts the book down and goes to check on him. According to her, from the perspective of the technicians everything went okay, but she asks him how he feels. He says he feels like he tried to go five rounds with Xương and only made it through half of one, while she gives him some fruit juice. She says that 'Lord' Yanisin is busy but she'll inform him and the others that Shango is awake. She also gives him a small case that was left for him for when he woke up, something that belonged to his previous incarnation. He takes the case and she directs him outside, where he comes out of a tunnel on something of a hill just beneath the tower at the center of the city.
He then takes a walk, turning over all of the things he saw in his head, feeling new memories and experiences settling into his mind. Really, it's a form of moving meditation. The city feels so very familiar now -- not everything is how Aditsan knew it, but most of it is. Interestingly, he distinctly 'recalls' the city mostly being maintained and handled by automata: robots doing repairs, self-driving motorized carts instead of rickshaws, city guard robots like the Brass Legionnaires they found on Talipan Island.
Eventually Shango winds up at the top of a building and, looking down over the city, spends some Essence to flare up his anima banner -- which he's satisfied to see has a wisp of fire to it now. He then leaps off the building and transforms into his osprey form in mid-air to continue his 'moving meditation' in flight.
Rewinding a bit, while Xương and Shango are having their respective appointments, Haloke (in human form, where they still have mantis eyes and antennae) seeks out Hǎifēng as they're just enjoying the delights of the city. Figuring that Hǎifēng might be interested in something to do while their companions are busy, Haloke wanted to brief them on what the Princes had worked out regarding the problem of Blackened Bone Whispers. They take Hǎifēng to the tower and into an empty room that looks like a conference room where they show the younger Lunar a simple but tasteful gorget with a hearthstone socket that appears to be made of fabric at first, until Hǎifēng takes a close look at it and discovers that it is in fact orichalcum and moonsilver chainmail so very fine it's indistinguishable from fabric from a distance.
The gorget is called Shining Authority, and while not exactly 'common' versions of it were used in the First Age to grant a certain degree of authority to a Solar or Lunar's underlings, often Dragon-blooded Exalted or God-bloods. As Haloke begins to explain what the gorget is for, they pause and ask Hǎifēng how much they know about the Solar Exalted. Hǎifēng says what they know is very little, that they were the shining heroes of Creation but supposedly went mad and were put down. Haloke says that's reductive but not entirely inaccurate. They talk about how a combination of long life and immense power led to a certain hubris and dehumanization, and while many Lunars fell prey to this[5], the Solars -- as the mightiest of them -- got the mightiest of these flaws.[6]
Haloke then gets to the point and explains that the Eclipse Caste Solars have the ability to call upon ancient oaths that give him a type of diplomatic immunity when dealing with powers outside of Creation proper -- the Underworld, the Wyld, and Malfeas (and maybe others as yet unknown). As long as hostilities haven't already been initiated, they can force these otherworldly powers to treat them peacefully and fairly. Shining Authority potentially lets non-Solars borrow this power as well, as long as their Caste mark is active. But more importantly, it has other powers that give the bearer authority over spirits. Lunars, for instance, have Charms that will let them enter a spirit's sanctum, but Shining Authority presents a shortcut to such powers without having to spend time and effort (and XP) developing them.
And here's the wrinkle -- normally, accessing these powers through Shining Authority would also require time and training (and XP), but they have a way around that. It's going to take a few days, but Yanisin is going to craft something like an artificial hearthstone they can socket into the gorget which will let the group use that power without having to be trained. It'll be a single shot, but it'll work.[7] And speaking of 'single shot devices,' there's the subject of how they're going to disconnect Blackened Bone Whispers from his sanctum.
Namely, they're going to blow it up.
Among the Princes' vaults they have a First Age device that is essentially a magical bomb. Haloke doesn't have it right there as it's a rare and dangerous item, but if the group can get into the god's sanctum, they can activate the device and get the hell out of there and let that take care of itself. Yanisin would prefer not they not use up something like this, but the alternative is spending weeks if not months finding or making something less-valuable. Also, what's the point of having this if it never gets used?
Hǎifēng asks why the Devil Princes see Blackened Bone Whispers as such a threat, and Haloke gives them an explanation like Xương mentioned recently, that if Blackened Bone Whispers supplants Magma Blossom as the primary volcano god of the Cinder Isles, then that means a lot more people being thrown in volcanoes. And with Blackened Bone Whispers allied with a Deathlord, anything that drastically increases the mortal death count is potentially a problem. And Blackened Bone Whispers might have agents in Heaven, so the people who usually handle this sort of thing might not catch on in time, so it's gonna have to be a problem handled in Creation. Right now, the tricky part is finding the sanctum, and the Princes are putting their people on it.
Then Haloke asks if there's anything they can help Hǎifēng with. Haloke emphasizes that they and their Circle are aware of everything they've got in the Mirage Kingdom, and they're trying to give what help they can afford to give, and in particular to assist other Lunars in any way they can. Hǎifēng says that they're not sure what they might need, really. They don't think there's anything in their past that can be returned to them or even how they'd begin looking if it was.
Haloke understands and just makes it clear that the Mirror City has whatever resources they may need, and if Hǎifēng needs anything, even if it's just a conversation or sparring, they just need to ask. And even though it's hard to reach, the Mirror City is open to any Lunars who aren't jerks (and they do word it that way). And while there's no easy portal or anything connecting the city to the coast, Hǎifēng will always be welcome there if they can make it back. And with that, Haloke takes their leave, as they have their own monastic order to get back to.
Some time passes, during which Xương and Hǎifēng are informed via clockwork songbirds that Shango's awake and fine. And eventually the three of them meet back up at their guest house, with Hǎifēng the last to arrive with bags of stuff from shopping. (Well, is it really 'shopping' if you basically get special Lunar credit? Anyhow...) They ask if everyone's had a good day. Xương says he's had a productive day, and Shango says he's never felt freer, though he says it in a way that makes Hǎifēng instinctually take a step or two back. Xương says that Shango must have caved in a skull, but it comes up that he's actually barefoot at the moment, having discarded the iron boots. Honestly, Shango's coming across as a little high.
Shango notices Hǎifēng wearing the collar and starts to remark on it, but the subject quickly gets back around to whatever drug Shango's on. He says that he feels freed, and compares it to being destitute until one day finding out a rich uncle has died and left you a fortune. But in everything, as his mind has recovered from the procedure, he feels like he's lost some of his old martial arts training, like a dream that's blurry as soon as you wake up. And while this gets a little concern from the others, Shango insists that he's happier now.
Xương says he looks like he's had an expensive massage. Hǎifēng says he looks like he's had a 'happy ending.' Xương says "Same thing."
Hǎifēng then goes on to say that Shango seems like his brain's been scrambled, but Shango insists it's been unscrambled. Xương, feeling like he desperately needs coffee to continue this conversation, goes over to the crystal panel used to summon someone. He proceeds to fiddle with the panel, jabbing at with a finger in the background as Shango goes on to explain to Hǎifēng that his previous martial arts skills feel like when you're studying for a test but your mind blanks when you actually have to take the test. Xương and Hǎifēng, not having had formal schooling (having grown up in a demon pirate cult and on the streets, respectively), have a little trouble relating to this. Xương finally gets the crystal to light up, indicating that someone's on the way, and we have this moment:
Hǎifēng: "I'm happy that you're happy."
Xương: "I'm not. Shango's a weirdo now."
Hǎifēng: "I wasn't going to say it out loud."
In response to that, Shango just says that he doesn't think he's going to be crushing skulls any more, to which Xương says that now he's sure Shango's been replaced with someone else.
At this point Shango goes back to his room and comes out with what was in the case: an artifact flame piece, something like a gun but instead of bullets it fires sprays of fire fueled by firedust, kind of like dragon breath shotgun rounds. Imagine something like a flintlock pistol with a spiral moonsilver barrel shot through with veins of garish, pulsating chaos and a mother-of-pearl grip. The flintlock pistol design is standard for flame pieces (the rifle equivalent called a 'firewand'), but the rest is because this one is an artifact called Weirdflame (which appears in Lunars: Fangs at the Gate). And everyone's a little freaked out that Shango went into a lab, came out acting weird and having forgotten his martial arts skills, and now he has a gun (a gun that can temporarily unbalance him mentally to fuel its powers, but I can't remember if that comes up in-character or not). Shango assures them that given time and rest he'll calm down, and Hǎifēng at least accepts that for now.
Then there's a knock at the door. It's Silver Lily, with coffee![8] She brings in a bunch of coffee and cookies on something like a room service cart. Xương picks up a pot of coffee, pours a cup, and then walks away with the rest of the pot. Silver Lily asks how Shango's doing, and Xương immediately says that he's not right. She goes over and checks his pupils but determines that he's going to be fine. Xương says that Shango's forgotten skills and might be developing new ones, and she says that while it's a rare and extreme reaction to the procedure, it's not unheard of. But given that they're in a magical flying city protected from the ravages of the Wyld by a magical dome, it's important to take these things in context.
After she leaves, Hǎifēng then goes into the gorget and what it does and explains the Princes need a few days to prepare it for them to use to deal with Blackened Bone Whispers. They then explain that the sanctum is going to be dealt with with some sort of bomb, which has Xương freaking out slightly because this has officially gone outside his expertise. Which, to be fair, we are talking about breaking into a god's sanctum and detonating some magitech from a lost era to destroy it. Also, Xương's less than thrilled at the prospect of staying a few more days, both because the city still weirds him out but he also just hates lounging around. He's a shark, he's gotta swim.
Speaking of which, Shango asks Xương about his trip to the library, and he proceeds to give the group the run-down on what he learned, and shows them the map. It'll be a bit of a trip, but Dakuri should be able to give them a ride to make things a little easier on them.
And from there, we kind of get into a montage of what the group gets up to for the next few days. Xương offers to 'hurt people for the Princes,' really anything that'll let him get out of the city, so for a few days he accompanies Dakuri on his ranger patrols, mostly checking out weird weather phenomena and fighting the occasional monster. Shango asks for a place to train with Weirdflame, and after spending some time down in the desert making sure he's got the basics in a mostly consequence-free environment, they let him continue training on some ranges in the city itself. And Hǎifēng... spends the time getting pampered and enjoying themself.
And we leave off there.
[0]-- For the record, while there's no shadowy dark underbelly to it or anything (until I decide to give it one later), there are sides to the city that my Circle isn't seeing because they're only visiting and as Exalted they have a lot of privilege here. Lunars (and hypothetically Solars, when they become more aware of it) pretty much have free rein to come and go as they please, but getting into the city is hard for everyone else and becoming a permanent citizen is even harder. And while not all citizens have to work, anyone with certain skills (magical or mundane) will be expected to contribute whether that's maintaining physical systems, preserving and promoting culture and the arts, or smaller stuff like running shops and restaurants. The Princes work hard to maintain a certain percentage of 'contributing' citizens, through not only restrictive immigration but also advanced physical and mental heath services to ensure as many people as possible are keeping the city literally afloat. (Though for the record, those with greater ability, including the Princes themselves, are often expected to shoulder a greater burden even if it's not immediately obvious as many of those jobs are out of the public eye.) Getting permission to leave is difficult (to control the flow of information outwards), though people only rarely want to -- normally, if a mortal would want to move out of the city, it'll be to raise a large family, as the Princes are also very restrictive regarding childbirth. And those who do leave often find their memories jumbled by the magical processes needed to reach the ground, making it hard to come back or lead others to it. The city is practically a paradise, but it's only sustainable with rigid population control. And then there's the ever-present fear that one of these days, the wrong millennia-old piece of tech will give out without a skilled enough Exalt available to quickly repair it and the city will fall to the ground, explode, become vulnerable to the Fair Folk, or any combination of the above.
[1]-- And it's almost directly south of Sarahan, which means the odds are good that Vaihil taking over that town might have simply been a matter of 'the first place he found once he got a safe distance from the coast.'
[2]-- Seriously, protip for Lunar players: If your spirit shape isn't already something that can fly, particularly long-distances, take such a form ASAP. It potentially opens up a lot of avenues for travel and investigation.
[3]-- I might have mentioned this before, but a given Exalt isn't exactly the reincarnation of an earlier one, because by and large, Celestial Exaltations jump from one 'host' to the next and don't necessarily pass through traditional lines of reincarnation. As a random example that doesn't hypothetically murder one of my PCs, if something happens to Volfer the signature Dawn Caste Solar, his Exaltation will move on to someone else. That person may have access to some of Volfer's memories, and would inherit any Lunar mate that Volfer does or doesn't have, but that person wouldn't strictly be a reincarnation of Volfer because they were already alive and Creation doesn't do timey-wimey balls.
[4]-- I mentioned this in a footnote in the last post as well, but Shango's player Bryan and I have been working on a way of letting him rework some aspects of the character. Conveniently, at the time we started cementing plans to make this work, I'd already been kicking around the idea of having Shango's prior incarnation be one of the original founders of the Mirage Kingdom, and then later came up with the idea of handwaving some magic that would instill some of said incarnation's traits into Shango and using that as a jumping-off point for sending the character down a new path development-wise.
[5]-- I might be misremembering, but I think Haloke even mentioned that they're fully aware that at this point they themselves would have trouble connecting with most of Creation, between their age and their centuries of relative isolation.
[6]-- As a reminder, nobody but the Yozis knows that all Exalted are also subject to a Great Curse that drives them to extremes under certain circumstances, and that if not the driving force in the Solars' downfall, was certainly the biggest one.
[7]-- Behind the curtain: So, I wanted to give the group something that would get them into the sanctum so they could be sure they're rid of Blackened Bone Whispers once and for all. But in-character, they're trading away a bunch of random artifacts for this and other assistance, and I didn't necessarily want them to be cashing all that in solely for single-use plot devices.
[8]-- There are benefits to having a hospitality manager with oracular talents.
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