Hey there, folks, welcome back! It's been quiet here because RL issues have prevented us from playing, and I just haven't had the time or the energy to write up the last session we did play before now due to a combination of issues, one of those getting the first draft of my work in on the new Alchemicals book.
But now that that's out of the way, I'm gonna relax and unwind from writing Exalted stuff by...
...
...by writing a blog post about Exalted. Frig.
All kidding aside, I do have some other content planned for the blog, but I wanted to get this posted before my next session. That said, I've been neck deep in Exalted core mechanics and I have to make sure to get my brain back into Essence mode before our next session. Here's hoping.
Speaking of which...
So where we left off, the group had just arrived in the city of Fella and turned in the quest that brought them theremet with Ragara Ledayo to try and get everything squared away regarding his subordinate's banditry in Eslund.
So after that, the group establishes the Handy Trespasser, one of the local taverns, as a meeting point to unwind for a bit. After all, most of what's brought them here is escorting merchants and refugees. The merchants are doing business, and the refugees move on to the nearby hospital to get some of their number checked out after their recent experience.
So after they've had a drink to get the dust out of their mouths, Stray Dog decides to stick around and sing and get the crowd good and rowdy, as is his wont. Lecht moves on to the nearby hospital as well to chip in with their skills tending to both the living and the dead. Wandering Dawn doesn't really stick around to drink much, but after establishing the meeting point he heads to the nearby Bright Horizons Orphan Home to donate some stuff, fix some things, just sort of 'professional hero still being a hero during downtime' stuff.[0]
Some time passes, relatively peaceful given that one of the characters is getting a bar all riled up and another is running around a hospital. It's late afternoon by now, and out at the orphanage, Wandering Dawn's wolverine familiar Mollie suddenly sits up and begins growling at something while Dawn's playing with the kids. Moments later, alarm bells start going off at the western side of town, as people at the wall start yelling "Sun shower! Sun shower!" Either from book learning or personal experience, all three of them take that for the warning it is and come running to help.
Okay, in this context, a 'sun shower' is a known but not necessarily common Wyld phenomenon. We know 'sun showers' as when it rains out but it's only partially cloudy and the sun is shining. And in Creation, that means much the same thing -- except, if a sun shower happens in a Wyld zone, especially in the North... (Cut to the whiteboard, now with a crude dry eraser marker drawing of a raincloud beneath the sun, and a rough map of the 'near North') ...the Wyld energies turn it into a literal sun shower. The rain is liquid sunlight, capable of burning crops, people, and animals... (Marker drawings of what's presumably plants, a stick figure human, and a stick figure cow, all on fire) ...and some who succumb, whether from the burning rain itself or from drinking the pools of liquid sunlight left, become 'haloed husks.' Their bodies are still alive, but the liquid sunlight hollows them out into mindless monsters who hunger for light and can cause sun showers themselves.
And now, back to our adventure, as the group rushes to the western side of town to help. Wandering Dawn grabs a treated hide to help shield himself from the liquid sunshine raining from the sky as he helps get people out of harm's way. Stray Dog also focuses on clearing the streets with the help of his entourage, though he avoids danger more by using his surprising agility to dance between the raindrops, gracefully slipping between them and moving to a beat he holds in his head. Lecht pulls up their hood to brace themselves against it and gets starts treating the people who've been injured by the burning rain.
As they focus on getting people to safety, the camera pans up to the flickering, glowing clouds, which take on the shape of the episode title:
"Burning Daylight"
The camera pans back down to show a little bit of time has passed as the sun shower seems to be petering out with the movements of the clouds. But there's a commotion at the western gate, where the guards are gathered and looking at something outside the city. Naturally, the Circle steps up to see what's going on, and that's when they see them -- the haloed husks, which seem to have caused the sun shower. Two of them are humans, their scorched clothing suggesting they were hunters in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the other two are deer -- a stag and a doe. Light streams from their eyes and mouth, and peeks out through cracks in their burnt skin as they stagger forward in what looks like a rapturous state.
While the guard try to figure out how to handle them, Lecht steps out to see if they're dead 'enough' to control with their necromantic powers -- but apparently not. "Well, I tried." So they plant their staff in the ground and run their fingers along the chimes to begin gathering power to cast something a little more direct, as Wandering Dawn and Mollie rush out to charge them.
Mollie, trained to help the Solar fight threats like these, rushes at one of the human husks to distract it from Dawn's strike to knock it off-balance with his cudgel. Thanks to his Charms, he then windmills his arm and does an uppercut against its jaw with an unsettling crack.
Back at the gate, Stray Dog -- still dancing -- uses his grace to get past the crowd and enter the field of battle, but once he's past the gawkers he realizes his entourage haven't kept up. Then he notices the guards, gives a 'good enough' shrug, and with all of his supernatural charisma he gestures at them and points at the other human husk as he says "Get them, my loves," as if they're his own followers.[1] But they're enthralled and inspired, and they do indeed rush in to charge and clobber the husk as the figure gazes upon Stray Dog's now-glowing form with a rapturous look on its face.
The husk fighting Dawn lunges at him, going straight for the glowing caste mark on his forehead, trying to claw at it -- haloed husks crave sunlight the most of all, and a Solar Exalt's anima is basically that. The other human tries to get at Stray Dog as well for the same reason, but neither of them is strong enough to get what they want. The stag charges at Dawn, and he braces himself to grab its antlers to stop the charge. The doe, meanwhile, goes after the also-now-glowing Lecht, who draws upon the ambient Essence in the air to slow it down as they step back into a safer position.
As the two deer keep struggling against their intended targets, Lecht notes that the stag is trying to gore Dawn with its antlers.
"Hey, Wandering Dawn, did you get the point?" they ask.
"Not now, Lecht!" he replies.
"Try not to let it stick the landing!"
"Ha ha, very funny!"
(Y'know, I don't think Dawn found it very funny at all.)
Lecht turns their focus to the doe, stepping to the side to let her pass, and they gather up their essence to cast a necromantic version of Flying Guillotine.[2] Their spooky green anima blazes as they conjure a barbed chain of bone (which probably looks a lot like the chains of a rantai) that flies at the stag to help out Dawn. A ripple of green and black power runs down the chain as it flies at the stag husk, the light drawing its attention and causing it to reflexively lift its head up and present its neck. The chain catches on the neck and wraps around it and cuts through, and a moment later the stag falls into two glowing, sparking pieces as the energy within sputters out.
Meanwhile, Stray Dog Serenade's anima glows even brighter as he channels his charisma to sing a verse about the people of Fella rising to defend their city, inspiring the guardsmen to double their efforts to practically beat the haloed husk into paste. Dawn, also emboldened by the song, raises his cudgel to bring his full force down to bash the other human husk's head into its chest. Then he whistles a command to Mollie, who leaps at the husk doe to grapple it and keep it away from Lecht, savaging it with claws and teeth.
Lecht, not as good in close combat for the most part, uses their staff to manipulate the doe into a good spot for the enthralled guards to rush in.[3] Stray Dog gestures to the doe and announces "No one stops my party," encouraging them to rush in and finish the beast off -- which they handily do.
The sparks of sunlight leave the broken and dead bodies of the haloed husks as the guards start to have a 'wait, what were we doing?' moment, as the people of the town cheer the Circle.
"You know what this calls for?" Stray Dog yells out. "A fucking party!"
And we leave it there... well, first, the camera pans over to the nearby woods, where something rumbles in the shadows... and then we leave it there.
[0]-- When Wandering Dawn's player said he was going to go help out at an orphanage, it took much of my self-restraint to not immediately default to a Yakuza reference.
[1]-- This isn't something I plan to do casually, but in the moment it felt like the situation didn't make sense to have the brute squad right there, and I was trying to figure out whether/how to have the guards involved. So I made an executive decision and let Sean, Stray Dog's player, treat them as if they were his minions.
[2]-- Most spells have an alternate name for a sorcerous version and a necromantic version, but y'know what? 'Flying Guillotine' works either way.
[3]-- Quick mechanics note, Exalted Essence has a few systems for characters to build and transfer Power to their allies, setting them up for powerful attacks of their own. So if I describe someone doing something that doesn't seem to have a lot of direct mechanical effect, it's a safe bet someone's moving Power around.
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