Hey there, folks, back again with some more Exalted.
If I come up with anything interesting to add here, I'll do so. Until and unless I do that, let's get into it!
We begin with an information-gathering montage as the trio spend a few hours hitting the streets for information on the guy who stole the puzzle box containing the second Exigence.
Gou and Xương hit up the local bars and various shady connections they've got. Fortunately, while they only have a few details on the thief, they're distinct enough (the fact that he has a fanged mouth in one palm stands out, even in Creation) that it's easy enough to find out his basic identity.
His name is Whispering Stone and he's a treasure hunter and known sorcerer from outside Zhaojūn who came to the area about a year ago. He's been delving into the local ruins -- of which there are many, between Creation's two world-shattering apocalypses and the centuries of warfare and conquest the region's been subject to.[0] Nobody knows exactly where he lives, though it's certainly in one of the two closest ruins: Alder to the north and Riven to the south. Both are shrouded in shadowlands, though the monks are trying to close the northern one at the moment. Occasionally he comes into Goldenseal to sell thing's he's found, and it's theorized he might be in a palace or mansion. But anyone who'd care enough to find out where he's finding treasures is also too smart to go up against a sorcerer in a shadowland he's familiar with.
Xương also learns through his own contacts that the leather bracer he wears, the one with the herbal scent that Jaspio Tesa noticed last session, is indeed for medicinal purposes. Nobody knows the full story but he had it when he first showed up in Zhaojūn -- a horror he encountered in some ruin had messed up his arm so badly it's never properly healed, so he slathers it in medicinal herbal ointment to prevent infection and the bracer keeps crud out of it.
In addition to context for his distinct scent, it gives them an important piece of information: While Whispering Stone is a sorcerer, he's also clearly mortal. While Exalted don't inherently regenerate, by and large they don't suffer from persistent wounds like that.[1]
Now, Hǎifēng doesn't know this context, as they're busy dealing with the scent itself. They've shifted into monkey form and split off a bunch of clones to use their animal senses to work out Whispering Stone's movements and determine that he left Goldenseal headed south.
So, while not a terrible surprise, it looks like the thief has taken the puzzle box to Riven.
The trio get to the ruins of the city in late afternoon, with Xuong and Gou in human form and Hǎifēng in monkey form on Xương's shoulder, following the scent trail and giving him directions. They're passing through little shantytowns and villages in the midst of the larger ruin. Think one of those little semi-rural communities where they set 'fish out of water' comedies about city folk having to deal with country folk and their 'simpler,' traditional ways.
Except, of course, here the homes (huts and shacks, mostly) have wards on the windows and doors with salt lines drawn in front of the entrances. Hǎifēng whispers in Xương's ear that this is a place where people go when they think things have gotten 'too advanced.' Xương, for his part, can't imagine why anyone would want to live there. Gou says it feels like sadness permeates the air -- which it probably literally does, given that they're in a place where the land of the living and the land of the dead literally overlap.
The locals, living and otherwise, leave them alone as they make their way through the ruins. But then, Riven is a place mostly frequented by the desperate, smugglers looking for neutral ground, or folks looking to engage in questionable deals with ghosts. So in that context, a big guy who might be a Lintha with a monkey on his shoulder and someone with a flame piece come through, they're either gonna be pirates, Exalts, or both. Hǎifēng, who enjoys messing with random mortals, laments that it's not as much fun when people can guess what's going on.
At one point, the trio hear someone calling for help from a nearby patch of swamp: "Help me, I'm stuck, it's my leg!" It's certainly a trap, but Xương says they gotta check it out just in case, so they head over there and see a guy in the swamp, stuck at the base of a tree and waving for them. He tells them that his leg is caught in the roots.
Hǎifēng can tell this is definitely some sort of scheme, and as the group comes closer Hǎifēng can spot a spectral line or cord of some sort reaching under the water. The whole time, the guy's calling out for them like a video game NPC who's only got three lines of recorded dialogue that all basically say the same thing. Hǎifēng points out the cord to the others, having deduced accurately that this is a ghostfisher. Which is pretty much what it sounds like, a spectral anglerfish sort of monster that dangles a ghost out as bait to lure in the unwary.
Gou waves as the ghost-lure and calls out that the three of them haven't fallen for it, and to try someone else. The ghost looks confused and just tells him that his leg is caught in the roots and he needs help. Hǎifēng says that the lure is probably only capable of saying a few select phrases and if you keep asking it questions, it won't know what to do. Gou is tempted to tease it and see how far he can take this whole thing, but the Lunars don't have a lot of time to dawdle.[2] So they just turn to leave as the lure calls out to them, and Gou tells it he's rooting for it.
As they move on, following Whispering Stone's scent, eventually they come to what they're pretty sure used to be a palace or some sort of military installation. Someone calls out "Who goes there?" in an archaic dialect of Flametongue before a group of ghosts in armor that nobody recognizes come out of defensive spots to demand the characters' identity. Xương asks if they're trespassing, and the group is warned to go back the way they came. Xương says they're looking for a sorcerer with a mouth in the palm of his hand. The soldiers insist there are no sorcerers there, and they are defending their rulers from the invasion.
It becomes clear about this moment that these aren't normally ghosts, but haunts -- also sometimes called 'drones' or 'echoes,' ghosts who are caught in their last moments. Like many ghosts in this shadowland ruin, these solders probably died here centuries ago and don't realize they're dead or that any time has passed. They're likely to be a nuisance at worst, at least to a Circle of Exalts. Hǎifēng suggests Xương pretend to be their commanding officer, play into their narrative, and see if they respond.
So he gives it a shot and manages to convince them he's their superior officer traveling incognito and he needs to go in, and they fall for it. As he tells them to get back to their posts, there's a moment where the Lunars see the area for what it was like when the soldiers were alive as they start to disperse back to their defensive positions. But the group, glad that went smoothly, goes in as Gou tells Xương "Nice acting." He says it came to him in the moment.
As they reach the palace ruins, they see warding talismans along the outer entrances. But there's nothing stopping them from going inside, and once they're out of sight Hǎifēng hops off Xương's shoulder and fluidly shifts into their hybrid form. Xương does the same.
The three of them can hear a whispered conversation between two people in one of the nearby rooms -- though only one set of footprints moving around. They can't clearly hear the conversation, and what they can hear is hard to decipher because the dialect is weird, but the sound is clear enough they can follow it. They overhear them talking about 'finding the right graveyard' as Xương seeks to interrupt the conversation. He rushes the half-door between the Lunars and the room the voices are in, bursting through it shoulder-first.
There's Whispering Stone talking to a ghost woman with hazy, indistinct features and glowing red eyes. Behind the two of them, on a stool in the corner, is the puzzle box. Xương, having gotten their attention, points at it and says "That's not yours."
At this point, as disc spins up and we move from the overworld into the combat interface, Hǎifēng rushes past Xương into the room, pretends to faint/die, and as they fall over they take on Laughing Monster Form -- using Dancing Wind-Monster Transformation to dissolve into a cloud of madness, cackling all the while.
Knowing that the ghost is going to be materialized since she's in a shadowland, Xương rushes in with claws and teeth to try and tear her up. She manifests a spectral spear wreathed in shadows to try and defend herself, but isn't prepared for the sudden assault and he sends her off-balance. She lunges back at him, only to be interrupted by Hǎifēng -- a gust of something not quite wind shoves her spear aside, leaving her open for Xương to rush in and clap his hands together. The clap echoes like thunder through the building, hitting hard enough to discorporate her with a banshee-like shriek.[3]
Whispering Stone lets out a pained scream and lunges at Xương with his machete, which Xương just catches in his tough-skinned hand.
Gou takes aim at Whispering Stone with Weirdflame and fires a burst of flame at him, but he manages to pull the weapon free of Xương's grip (not that he's holding it too tightly) and deflect enough of it to avoid injury.
"Do you know what you're doing?" he yells at Gou as he rushes him, this time with that devil-mouth hand. Gou brings up his daiklave, Haze-cleaver, and catches the mouth on the blade. As the mouth's tourmaline fangs try to bite into the blade, he can feel the mouth trying to draw the moisture out of him. He then twists to the side, using the blade to make the human move past him as he frees the blade and completely throws him off-balance with an upward slash.
Hǎifēng rematerializes, positioning themselves so Whispering Stone is surrounded. "Maybe it's a good time for you to quit, huh?"
"Fine," the man says, defeated. "She'll be back, just... if you're going to send me to join her, do it."
Meanwhile, Xương's already moved around to where the puzzle box is and holds it up. "Don't care what you do. You just can't have this box.
"Fine, take it. It's a gamble that we were probably gonna get stiffed on anyways."
Xương asks who put them up to all this. He says that he got word some 'necromancer pirate' wanted the box and knew where it was going, and that if someone got it they could name their price. Hǎifēng, pretty certain who the 'necromancer pirate' is, asks how he was going to get it to them. Whispering Stone says he and Yewande (the ghost) were going to take it to a graveyard and get a 'graveyard messenger' to take it to them.
Xương, knowing what that is, tells the others that a graveyard messenger isn't exactly a ghost, but an Underworld entity that can get a message or deliver something to just about any ghost in three days. And that gives him an idea and he says that maybe he's got a message. Whispering Stone says he's in no position to argue, and he gives the group directions to the appropriate graveyard.
The mortal treasure hunter is so pathetic they're almost ready to just leave him there, until they remember that he's a murderer who killed an innocent man, brought a blood ape into a heavily-populated area, and turned it loose where it killed someone else and would have wrought havoc if Xương hadn't stopped it. So they're thinking they want to drag him back to Goldenseal to face justice, but Xương does want to meet with a grave messenger... Gou resolves the dilemma by cold-cocking Whispering Stone with Haze-cleaver's hilt and ties him up so they can drag him along and then take him back. As long as Xương doesn't mind carrying him, which he doesn't.
They find the graveyard in question where there is indeed a messenger lounging at a shrine. He addresses them as 'petitioners' and asks what he's going to be hauling, pointedly looking at the unconscious human slung over Xương's shoulder like a sack of rice. Xương says it's just a message, and the entity asks to whom?
The Captain of the Ashen Umbra.
The grave messenger, a little uneasy but not balking, asks what the message is. The message is that the Captain better watch their back, because Người Kéo Xương is ready to be the sea monster their nautical adventure is missing.
Pretty confident this won't get him destroyed, he says just the usual prayer of petition will be fine.[4] Xương goes through the motions as he learned among the demon-pirate cult in which he grew up. The graveyard messenger says he's on it, and he wishes them 'good luck with that' (meaning the Captain) and additionally 'good luck with that' (the unconscious man Xương's carrying).
And we leave it there, with the trio headed back to Goldenseal with a puzzle box and a thief.
[0]-- Quick history lesson in case you need it: By apocalypses, I mean first the Usurpation (a years-long war that completely changed the way Creation was run) and then the combo of the Great Contagion and the Fair Folk Invasion. And then locally, the Meiyu Coast was conquered by the Zhao and Baihu after fleeing a failed rebellion against the Scarlet Empress. More recently, the Realm moved in, breaking up the Zhao empire into smaller states and taking over piece by piece.
[1]-- Well, some Abyssals might. But they still wouldn't be worried about infection, and they'd likely be showing it off unless they were remaining strictly incognito. And then there's the Liminal Exalted, but they've got a whole deal and just trust me he's not a Liminal.
[2]-- In addition to the need to keep the puzzle box and its contents out of the wrong hands, the shadowland has a time limit all its own. Long story short, if you leave a shadowland during the day, you wind up back in Creation. But after sundown, the only thing beyond the shadowland's border is the Underworld. If the characters spend too long in Riven, they can't get back to Goldenseal until the following morning barring some sort of special portal or other magical intervention.
[3]-- Okay, so to explain in game mechanics terms what happened. The ghost attacked Xương. Hǎifēng used Inauspicious Moment of Attack, a Charm that lets them intercept an attack with a distract gambit. (A 'gambit' is like what either D&D or Pathfinder or both used to call 'combat maneuvers,' like trip attacks and such.) Now, the distract gambit lets you pass initiative to someone else (in this case Xương) and give them a free reflexive decisive attack. Also, as Hǎifēng is in Dancing Wind-Monster Transformation, they can use other Laughing Monster Charms to enhance their allies' attacks. Which they did, enhancing Xương's attack and letting him effectively one-shot the ghost.
[4]-- I'll admit I actually had a bit of a brainfart and forgot you have to summon the graveyard messenger with a prayer until I was partway through the scene. But they don't normally ask for complicated prices anyways, so I handled it like you see above. As ghosts and spirits and other entities can be 'fed' by the Essence that comes from prayer, I figured that they could just pay it that way.
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