Hello again! This isn't late or anything; I should have pointed out that the combat begun in the last post stretched across two more sessions and I didn't want to write a blog post that literally stopped between rounds of a big fight. I probably should have said something, and I apologize if anyone was concerned.
I can't think of anything else to add to this right now so let's get to it.
So where we left off, the guy with the smashfists -- let's just not dance around it, to keep things simple for me writing this he's a God-Blood named Puawei -- sent a signal to the Dragon-Blood, Champei, who had her bound demons materialize. Everyone realizes what side everyone else is supposed to be on, and... go!
(Oh, quick note, there's a lot of mass combat going on between battle groups of nameless goons on both sides of the battle. Unless I describe them doing anything specific or interesting, assume there's just ongoing clash going on in the background.)
The Eternal Wave elite squad attack Xương and Hǎifēng with swords. Hǎifēng takes a swig from a bottle and sprays it in their faces as they approach, throwing off the attack. Xương's eyes roll back in his head and he snaps around at them closing in, and interposes his tail between himself and them to stop their strikes.
Meanwhile, Mongo[0] takes a moment to rally the pirates, encouraging them by reassuring them there's Exalted help on their side now, to try and counteract the initial damage done before everyone knew where the lines were drawn.
Shango uses Wild Fury Awakening, calling out "To me, my brethren!" as he fires Weirdflame up into the air, summoning a swarm of ospreys that gradually begin together.
Hǎifēng, away from the elite squad, goes after the blood ape. They take another swig from their bottle and smash it on the ground, and charge at the demon. They jump up to grab one of its massive fangs for leverage to vault over its head, doing a flip mid-air and slashing at its head while they're upside-down. They stumble upon the landing, staggering over and grabbing a rock and just winging it to hit the demon in the eye, muttering "Bitch" under their breath.
As the Eternal Wave 'infantry' trip over their own feet in all of the confusion, Xương lunges at the tomescu. It stares him down -- at least, he thinks it does, it's hard to see it through the mystical fog, and it calmly says "Full Moon Lunar, blunt instrument. But fast." He chomps at it, and it tries to block his teeth with its blades while swinging a tetsubo at his head with a free arm, which gets a reply of "You call me a blunt instrument?" from Xương as the club just bounces off of his head.
Champei, perhaps sensing the threat that the so-far-unentangled Shango has to offer, takes the floating flaming sword that's protecting her and launches it at him. Hǎifēng dives in at the last moment to counter the attack with their Inauspicious Moment for Attack maneuver, the echo of the 100 claps throwing her off. They also use Friendship Dissolving Venom to redirect the flung sword towards the blood ape, trying to turn it against its summoner (albeit unsuccessfully, as sorcerous bindings are a bit stronger than that). Hǎifēng's intervention gives Shango an opening to literally take a shot at Champei. He narrows his eyes at her and says "Foolish little Dragon-Blood, why don't you hop on out of here?" as he blasts her with Weirdflame. The brightly-colored magical flame seems to consume her as she struggles and resists the magic, but as the sudden rainbow bonfire clears she's been turned into a giant river toad (albeit one with Earth-aspected anima flux kicking up rocks and such around her). Shango cackles maniacally.
Puawei, meanwhile, takes a swing at Hǎifēng with his smashfists. Hǎifēng, barely paying attention, tips forward and stumbles out of the path of the strike drunken boxing-style, 'accidentally' smacking his hand away. And, just as successfully, the tomescu shoots at Shango with a couple of its bow-limbs and misses.
Overhead, the ospreys arrive in sufficient numbers to begin harrying the various goons and goon squads.[1]
Xương, frustrated that the tomescu is so dangerous but also too small to properly engage with in his normal fashion, just starts pounding and tearing up the ground around it. It tries to swing back at him and miss with a sword, but in the thrashing he tears the demon apart. As it dissolves into the mist that then fades back into ambient essence, it lets out a baleful scream: "The bloody chains! The bloody chains!"[2]
Hǎifēng, recovering from the dodge of Puawei's strike, just looks back at him as if to say "Really?" before they turn their attention to the blood ape. They clamber up onto its back to slice at it over and over. It explodes into blood and gore that dissolves into a red mist, which then fades into Essence like fireflies winking and going out. As the body dissolves they kick the blood ape's head at Puaway, where it finishes dissolving into Essence just before it hits him.
As Puawei fends off the ospreys while they take a chunk out of him, Shango fires a blast of magical flame at him. The god-blood tries to block it with his red jade smashfists, but is still pretty well cooked. He revs up his own Essence, wreathing his fists in flame, and tries for a mighty leap to strike back at Shango! Shango blocks the punch, and flings Puawei to the ground hard enough to knock him out, though he does catch on fire in the process.
But he then turns on the elite squad, flying over them with an aileron roll, raining fire down upon them with flaming feathers. Many of them are killed and scattered and they shift their focus to Xương, trying to bring down at least the big sea monster-thing. They have to tear through the Lintha to get to him, and while their swords find purchase on Xương's hide they don't cut deep enough to actually do any damage.
Hǎifēng goes after the elites in the wake of their failure to even hurt Xương, tearing them apart. They declare "That is fucking pitiful" before they smash another bottle on the ground. Xương turns on the remaining cultist infantry, whipping around with his tail and scattering them to the winds, knocking many into the air and reflexively snatching them up with his jaws. That's enough to get the survivors fleeing as the Lintha pirates chase down the remainders.
(Meanwhile, off to the side, there are a bunch in an uneasy circle around a river toad protected by a floating flaming sword and a swirl of rock shards.)
There's still a lot of chaos and stabbing going on in the background, but that's just it -- it's in the background. For the most part, the smoke clears and Mongo comes over to where the Lunars are. (Xương, BTW, is still in his rancor-sized humanoid sea monster form) He immediately begins by reassuring Hǎifēng that he hasn't shared with anyone what they told him in confidence back in Lathe. But regardless, Doctor Zither was still connected to the murder of a Lintha captain, and other Lintha took that personally. So they did their own investigation (mentioning there's a few people who are going to be limping around Lathe for a bit) and eventually connected Zither to the Eternal Wave and the Eternal Wave back to Naibron Island. After that, it was just a matter of finding a few ships' worth of guys willing to pursue a raid for carnage and revenge rather than loot.
Mongo asks if they're here for the cultists too, and Hǎifēng, impossibly drunk, asks if that was a pickup line, and Mongo just doesn't know how to respond to it. He recovers and says that honestly wasn't expecting to run into anyone else in the middle of all this, he just came seeking the Eternal Wave. Hǎifēng clarifies they're here for that, too, and mentions that there's one still alive. Shango asks if they mean the toad, and Hǎifēng indicates the god-blood. Mongo remarks that he doesn't look like a death cultist.
Hǎifēng, through a haze of intoxication so pure you'd think there was a Sidereal Martial Art connected to it[3], explains that there's a 'bad god and they're here to kill it.' Mongo pauses, and does the math on that and is just, like, "Okay." He then says that there are 'civilian' cultists on the island somewhere[4] that they were planning on interrogating, but if the Exalted are here to get involved he'll try to get the other Lintha captains to back off rather than risk getting in their way.
Hǎifēng then proceeds to officially introduce the others to Mongo. They stumble a bit over Shango's name, but as the bird-man bows Mongo salutes him with a bloody sword. Then Hǎifēng mentions Xương, and that just gets a stare, as Mongo knows that name -- as I think I've mentioned before, Xương's an outcast from the Lintha. Mongo then asks, turning first to Hǎifēng but after a half-second including Shango in the question as well in the hopes of getting a coherent answer, if it was just a coincidence that Xương's here. Shango sarcastically says it is. Mongo, resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose, says in so many words "Okay, let me rephrase. Is -- not gonna say your name where others are going to hear it -- is the Big Guy running this operation and you sought me out on Lathe, or did we just happen to run into each other?"
Then something clicks and he turns to Shango and asks him if he was the bird that went after Khugor in the library. Shango actually says "Who, me?" and Mongo just stares him down and says "Yes, the osprey. Who summoned the other ospreys." He then comments on how weird this all is, because before meeting Hǎifēng on Lathe the most contact he'd really had with the Exalted was seeing Dukantha[5] from a distance, and now he's wandered right into the middle of all this. He comments that the Big Guy should know how the bar is set for a Lintha to call the situation 'weird.' Mongo asks the group if they have any thoughts on what he should tell the captains. After some back and forth, it's agreed that he should tell them they've crossed paths with some Lunars who've got a beef with the cult and should back off and let them have it.
Mongo says he's gonna do that, and let the Lunars have the god-blood. He also says that he and his will interrogate who they can and maybe try to capture the Dragon-Blood. Hǎifēng says they should take bets on who can do it, and Shango informs them that if it helps, her transformation should last five days. After that Hǎifēng stumbles off to lie down, and Mongo then has a grownup conversation with Shango, who confirms they are there dealing with an evil god. He explains that they're here for Blackened Bone Whispers, and Mongo's response is "Oh, that asshole." Which, y'know, is always a good sign coming from someone who grew up in a culture of bloodthirsty, demon-worshipping pirates.
Shango says that if the three of them had gotten there sooner, they might have been ambushed or taken in by the cultists, and Mongo says with a nod that they tried pulling that at first. But it's a little harder when they've got the tattoo. To indicate what he means, he finds a nearby body and nudges a sleeve up with his foot to show the tattoo hidden beneath. He then says he's going to leave the group to their god-blood and go talk to the captains. He's not in charge or anything, but because he's peripheral to what happened he's wound up in kind of a prominent position coordinating the attack.
Mongo salutes the group again with his bloody sword and turns to leave, and Shango tells him to clean off the sword because it'll rust. He stops, looks back at Shango with a weird look, and then just keeps going.
Shortly afterwards as things die down (and the toad's been captured), horns from the ships bellow across the area getting the remaining Lintha to reel it in, and they start dragging captives into convenient intact buildings or back to the boats for interrogation. Xương, by now, has returned to human size but he's still in his beastman form so he doesn't have to worry about anyone else knowing who he is. The Circle has dragged the still-unconscious Puawei into a building, relieved him of his artifact gauntlets, and tied him to a chair.
They start talking about what they're going to do and hammer out a plan to interrogate him. Shango asks if they're going to let him go in exchange for information, and Xương says that if they promise to let him go he's not going to sign off on murdering him afterwards. Hǎifēng agrees that, at least, they can offer him a head-start. Shango goes to slap him awake and Hǎifēng steps in, taking him over to the wall and slapping him hard enough that it lets him use Unitary Being Forge[6] to smack a little imp out of him, a little phantasmal monkey-fied version of him representing his fear of Xương from the beginning of the fight.
That slap wakes him up, and he's groggy, and he sees the imp, and both he and the imp freak out a little bit. Shango asks him how devoted he is to his cause. Puawei asks what Shango thinks his cause is. Shango says he doesn't know the specifics, but assumes it involves supporting a local volcano god, and possibly an alliance, something about turning the ocean into a shadowland. Puawei says that he honestly doesn't think the Captain can actually pull off that 'whole ocean shadowland' trick, but he is loyal to Blackened Bone Whispers. Shango asks what he's going to get out of it, and Puawei says that if all things go well, he gets an Exigence out of it, and even though it's true he's clearly saying that to see their reaction. Shango has that "check out the big brain on Brad" look on his face.
Puawei explains that the Realm is moving in, making more pushes into the West and Southwest, and that when they get bored with the Caul then they're going to properly set up shop in the Cinder Isles. He goes out of his way to indicate that either the Realm or House Peleps is going to set up shop full-time, and when he mentions House Peleps he says it with a pointed look and inflection that suggests the Dynastic House as a separate entity from the larger Realm[7], and Magma Blossom has forgotten Creation and he won't be there to stop it. Puawei says that his deific waste of a father hasn't been seen in Creation in years.
Hǎifēng's visibly thrown by this -- everyone figured that he was a god-blood, but they'd assumed he was a god-blood of Blackened Bone Whispers. But Shango and Hǎifēng are both like "Oh, is this a 'mad at daddy' thing?" and Shango goes to hug him either out of condescension or genuine sympathy, I'm actually not sure which (given his own family issues, it could be either way). They ask what he thinks he's getting out of throwing in with Blackened Bone Whispers, who is -- lest we forget -- not merely a volcano god but a god of volcanic sacrifice. He says that as Blackened Bone Whispers' purview grows, he'll have to expand by default, and his nature will change. He admits it's not a great situation, but in the grand scheme of things he doesn't think Blackened Bone Whispers could be any worse than the Scarlet Empress. This leads to a lot of back and forth and people talking over each other -- particularly insistence that this is still a 'mad at daddy' thing, despite his protests, as well as an interpretation that he's holding the Empress up as a positive example. Xương tries to get the others' attention and says he thinks there's been a miscommunication because he's hearing something different, and he argues they hear Puawei out.
The god-blood says that fundamentally, he's loyal to the Cinder Isles -- the region is literally in his blood -- but they don't have the defenders to stop the Realm from rolling in. Despite his heritage, he doesn't have the wealth to hire enough Dragon-Blooded mercenaries, and there aren't enough Solars to give a shit about the Southwest because they're all in Nexus or getting laid in An-Teng, or in Chiaroscuro or some shit. Xương gives a bit of a speech about how the three of them are going to kill Blackened Bone Whispers, but he understands that they have to fill the void that death is going to cause. Shango chimes in that maybe they can even find Magma Blossom and kick his ass and get him back to work and Xương says that's definitely on the table. While the imp has mostly matched Puawei's expression up to now, it noticeably looks scared at the notion of Magma Blossom suddenly showing up even though Puawei himself does not. But Puawei is listening, as it's made very clear that Blackened Bone Whispers is going to die, and anyone between the Lunars and that goal is going to get wrecked.
Hǎifēng attempts to bluff by grabbing the imp and whispering in its ear that if he gets in their way then Xương is going to eat every living person on the island. And then they push the imp back into Puawei's chest, fusing it with him again. And they've sufficiently threatened him that he agrees to back off.
Puawei says that Blackened Bone Whispers' sanctum is on the other island, the group can't miss it, and that nobody lives there -- then he stops and corrects himself and says there aren't any settlements there. Only one person lives there, and... well, nobody goes there. They haven't in years, if they can't help it. Xương asks if there's just a crazy eyeless prophet, and he says 'Close enough.' But he emphasizes that not even the death cultists go there if they can help it, and haven't in about 15 years. Xương asks about any stories about the place, and Puawei looks at them.
"Let me tell you about the Calibration Moon..."
And we leave it there.
[0]-- Mongo isn't much of a presence -- he has his own stat block in my notes, but he mostly just operates as part of the Lintha pirates here except where I'm describing him specifically.
[1]-- Seriously, at this point there are four battle groups on the field that I'm managing. Two groups of cultists, the pirates, and now the ospreys. Normally I'd just handwave a lot of what they're doing to keep things running along, but I wanted to keep them relevant to the larger battle so I actually rolled for everything (though as a time saver I only had them do a single point of damage to each other). I wouldn't go so far as to call it a mistake, but I certainly won't do it again if I can help it.
[2]-- One of the distinguishing traits about the tomescu is that they can predict the future, and they're known to sometimes predict a doom that is fated to fall upon someone. And no, I don't know why spiritual entities keep giving Xương warnings about the future. For the record, the tomescu would have screamed something portentous to whomever finished it off, customized to the character.
[3]-- Deep cut lore reference mostly to amuse me, if you don't know it don't worry about it. If you really want to know, ask and I'll explain.
[4]-- Yeah, there's no good spot to explain it except as a footnote aside, but it becomes clear (especially in retrospect) that the village they're at is all able-bodied fighters. There's nobody who could pass for a noncombatant, so either this is just something like a work town, or a training camp, or a first line of defense, or all three.
[5]-- Not quite one of the setting's Big Bads, but certainly one of its minibosses (remember, by and large the Lintha are bad guys), Lintha Ng Hut Dukantha is a Lintha Dragon-Blooded akuma -- a Yozi-worshipper who's not only been infused with mighty demonic power but is the Yozi Kimbery's high priest. Despite his Terrestrial Exaltation, between his age and demonic enhancement Dukantha is easily a match for any of the currently-incarnated Solars (and probably a group of them).
[6]-- So this is normally a combat charm, and a weird one, from Laughing Monster Style. (To be fair, every Laughing Monster Charm is a weird one) It lets you hit someone and bud off a little imp representing one of their Intimacies, and it gives you bonuses in trying to read the target (as the imp reflects their true feelings) and there's stuff you can do to them.
[7]-- For those of you who don't know the intricacies of Dynastic politics, the Realm is on the verge of a civil war with the Empress gone. House Peleps is very close to just wishing the rest of the Realm peace among worlds, abandoning the Blessed Isle, and sailing West to establish their own empire with blackjack and hookers. (Which will be easy, given that both blackjack and hookers are in steady supply out that way.)
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