Hey there, folks, hope everyone's doing okay at the moment and that the world hasn't ended in the time between me starting this post and putting it up. We've got another Exalted Essence session for ya as my mixed-Exalt Circle of PCs continues on their trek to Gethamane.
I don't have any big announcements, but in case you missed it, I did another character build, this time for Cyberpunk RED, a game that doesn't use fistfuls of d10s for once! And I've got another build in the works, but wanted to get this up first to break them up a bit (and, also, y'know, to get it up some time before the last-minute, which lately has led to me forgetting to link my posts on social media).
But with that out of the way...
The characters wake up at the caravan the morning after the mammoth fight to find folks setting things up, packing up gear, etc. Some of the merchants traveling with the caravan have concluded their business and are continuing on (like Oguri), some are newcomers to the caravan heading for Gethamane, and some of the ones they came up with are staying in Fella for a bit.[0] The refugees they rescued from the raksha way back in the first episode are parting ways, taking time to regroup and recover in Fella and the adjoining hospital before they presumably continue on with their original plans to travel to Fajad in the Northwest.
Wandering Dawn wakes up first -- with the dawn, in fact, both just out of good practice and because as a Solar he's kinda 'sensitive' to that sort of thing. He carefully steps over the passed-out revelers from Stray Dog's most recent party as he checks on everything. Off to the side, Oguri is sparring with Kasyan. The foxfolk is clearly holding back, but even taking that into account Oguri's actually holding her own pretty well for a mortal -- she's clearly trained and experienced, enough to make the young Dragon-Blood work for it.
Over time Lecht and Stray Dog Serenade awake and also get their stuff set up (well, Stray Dog's flunkies do much of the lifting there for him), ready to get on the road. As they do so, they see Spring Lily leaving Fella heading south with a pair of wagons and a couple dozen House Ragara soldiers. Obviously the contents of the wagons aren't available for all too see, but it's a safe bet that one is supplies and the other is cash to compensate the people of Eslund for their recent mistreatment by Dreadful Thorn.[1]
But soon enough, by early afternoon, they're on the road headed for Gethamane. Lecht comments that it'll be nice to be home, and Dawn asks if they're from Gethamane. They say not exactly, and they're not sure their hometown is even on the map any more.[2] A few days pass, during which the characters check in on the usual villages and stuff along the way. Everything's fine, peaceful, clear skies and pleasant weather and all that.
Until...
(c'mon, there's gotta be an 'until' or there's no story)
As the group passes near a town called Larkim set a little back from the Traveler's Road, they see smoke through the trees. And not the usual 'town with living people and functioning chimneys' smoke, either. It's that 'buildings on fire' smoke.
So naturally the characters rush ahead, telling the caravan to stay on the road and they'll catch up. As they head up the side-road with Lecht's wagon, they see that the town is under attack from raiders! The Circle (including, in case it needs to be said, Stray Dog's honor guard) rushes for the town, with Wandering Dawn, Mollie, and Stray Dog's flunkies taking point while the group's sorcerer and necromancer both stop to gather power.
Lecht rhythmically taps the chimes on their staff as they whisper a prayer to draw on ambient Essence, noticing that there are dead bodies strewn about and considering the grim prospect they might need to call on some 'reinforcements.' Stray Dog tries to draw threads of Essence into the palm of his hand to wave them into power, but there's something discordant in the local Essence patterns interfering in his efforts at sorcery. "Something isn't right," he comments. "The Essence isn't coming."
Ahead, a bunch of the raiders -- who appear at a glance to be one of the local Icewalker tribes -- draw bows to fire at the oncoming monster hunter and wolverine leading the charge. Mollie just charges through, while Wandering Dawn swats arrows out of the air with his hatchet.
Stray Dog keeps trying to draw power, this time to channel it into Lecht to speed up their efforts, but the sour note in the local Essence flow keeps throwing him off. So Lecht just draws the sharp tip of the staff across their palm, drawing blood and whispering and chanting to keep building power.
Wandering Dawn, closer to the action, plunges into a group of raiders in the town itself with a battle cry and a flurry of swings and chops. He hacks at them with enough force that even when they block, it staggers them, and he can see there's an unnatural mania blazing in their eyes, like they're high on something. So, as he glows, he brings his hatchet up and slams it on the ground with a shockwave that sends them flying into walls and such or just sailing dozens of yards through the air. While he's focusing on them, Mollie's attention turns to the archers, mauling them and wrecking their bows and Stray Dog's troops back Dawn up with the raiders.
All this has drawn the attention of what appears to be the leader of the warband, a guy with this massive two-handed 'cartoon barbarian' battle axe. He calls out to his men to keep it together as he lunges at Wandering Dawn with his axe. The Solar, glowing brightly, almost casually reaches up with his free hand and grabs the guy's arm to deflect the blow. But the leader's attempt to rally his troops goes about as well as his attempt to hit Dawn with his axe, as a bunch of the crazed tribesmen leave the archers to unsuccessfully shoot at Dawn.
The leader just yells at the archers to worry about the rest, insistent that he's got Wandering Dawn taken care of, as he swings at him again. Dawn uses his hatchet to snag the haft of the man's axe, looking for all the world like someone blocking a broadsword with a dinner knife with the difference in weapon sizes.
So the archers turn on Stray Dog's troops (not recognizing the threat that Stray Dog and Lecht represent), firing bravely but not impressively.
Stray Dog, frustrated, spits past his clenched fist in frustration, and he lunges forward with his claws -- which he's kept up for the last few days, as there's not a time limit on the spell -- and goes straight for the first bits of soft meat he can reach. Lecht, shocked, yells that he's lost his mind as Stray Dog wades into the archers with a rabid look in his eyes.
Lecht refocuses on the leader, as Dawn's parry provides the perfect opening. The bones on their staff break off to form the spiked chain of the Flying Guillotine, aiming it right at the warband leader. The man's head flies off, forever locked into his wild-eyed confusion from the sight of Dawn's hatchet blocking him. The bones swing back around and become the chimes again.
Wandering Dawn, blazing with power, points his hatchet at the remaining warriors and tells them that if they value their lives... Run. And they actually look for a moment like they don't value their lives, that they're going to keep fighting, but in the end they break and run for it.[3]
As people start checking the wounded and the last skirmishes in the town peter out, the locals rush up to the Circle, thanking them for their help -- the attackers are the Broken Antler, a tribe of Icewalker renegades and outcasts.[4] They've been a problem before, but never in these numbers and certainly never with this intensity.
But there's something else... the town has a local god of the hunt that protects them, Dhiel, but the Broken Antler have done something, possibly trapped or kidnapped her. The locals lead the group over to a shrine where they present offerings to her, but someone's hastily bound it up in a collection of wards.
And as the people start explaining how the attack started, the camera pans over across all the bindings and talismans and ribbons on the shrine, and the text of one of the wards reveals, in plain English, the title of the story:
"The Snare"
To be continued...
[0]-- I can't remember if I've explicitly spelled this out here, but at any given time the characters are traveling with a small handful of merchants and other travelers. In general, most of them are intentionally nameless and faceless so I (or a player) can define them as needed, but just so there's at least one recurring face they can talk to, they've got Oguri. Who, I stress, is not a Sidereal. I don't even mean that jokingly to imply that she is -- after past experiences with them in "The Moonlight Maiden," I feel it's become imperative that I go out of my way to specify that certain characters are not Sidereals.
[1]-- My notes don't mention it, so I can't remember if it was an in-character conversation, an out-of-character one, or one that straddled the line, but I think we had a conversation over whether they'd be safe on the road like that. But Spring Lily is a visibly-old Dragon-Blooded monk accompanied by a couple dozen professional soldiers. He'll be fine.
[2]-- Admittedly, I don't think I was aware that this is the case, but Lecht has never actually told the others how old they are, though they've dropped comments hinting at it.
[3]-- They've actually got an effect that makes them immune to fear (and should be immune or at least resistant to rout checks), but ExEss gives Dawn Caste Solars an anima effect that lets them intimidate enemies who can't be intimidated, like zombies and constructs, so except for an intimidation roll at the end I just kinda passively applied that effect so I wouldn't have to stop the battle to explain it and spell out what's specifically going on.
[4]-- The Icewalkers are a culture of nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes, following and tending herds of elk, caribou, and mammoth all across the North and Northeast of Creation, maintaining pacts with the various gods of these animals. They have a not-entirely-unearned reputation as raiders, though by and large they're more reasonable and peaceful than local stories might suggest. They've recently experienced a massive upheaval in the form of Yurgen Koneko, elder of the Reedplains Elk Tribe, being reinvigotated by Solar Exaltation and building an empire about 800-ish miles east of where the characters are right now. (The Broken Antler, however, are a creation of mine, unless I subconsciously lifted them from something.)
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