Hello there, folks, hope everyone's doing well. Got an Exalted session for you, no complicated bells or whistles or big announcements unless I think of something later and go back and edit this.
So let's get to it.
We pick up where we left off, with Lecht and Stray Dog studying the shrine that the people of Larkim normally use to contact and offer worship to their god, Diehl. It's been covered in warding scrolls and talismans, and special cords made of what smells like half-rotted sinew. The two of them work out that it's a component of a larger working, linked to perhaps more wards or an artifact or something. They can't work out all of it from the shrine alone, but it's definitely a trap meant to divert or interrupt the god's ability to travel to the shrine. It's well-designed but hastily-constructed, clearly meant to be quickly applied while everyone was tied up in battle.
Lecht produces the head of the Broken Antler warband that attacked the town. Wandering Dawn's confused, assuming it's some sort of trophy, and Lecht is a little offended at the implication. Dawn apologizes -- it was a joke, but not a great one, as he's not used to having traveling companions he can rib like this. Lecht says that Dawn needs help, and the Solar turns away, thinking 'if only you knew.' Lecht, exasperated, explains that the head's for questioning.
Wandering Dawn asks if they want to follow the Broken Antler's tracks back to their source, or if they want to search the town a little more or maybe try to dig more into the shrine. Between the handful of attackers that fled and the fact that a massive warband came here in the first place, they should be really easy to trace back to their camp. Stray Dog suggests dealing with the problem at its source, so the group follows the tracks back over the land and through the woods.
On the way, Lecht uses Corpse-Questioning Technique to talk to the head. Their index finger extends into a long, pointed needle that they jam into the head's ear and it comes to life with the wide-eyed, slightly-manic look the warrior had before he died. The Charm Lecht is using allows them to ask the corpse questions and get honest answers, though none of the individual's spirit is really in there and thus it has none of their personality.
"What's your name?"
"Borek."
"What do you do for a living?"
"I am a warband leader of the Broken Antler."
Wandering Dawn chimes in. "What is your mission in Larkim?"
"Attack the town, take what we can, keep them busy."
The group notes that suggests the attacking band likely didn't know or care about the shrine wards' details.
"Keep them busy for what?" Lecht asks.
"Someone was supposed to do something to the shrine. I don't know what."
"Cheeky devil," Lecht remarks. "He preempted my next question." They gesture to Stray Dog in case there's anything he wants to ask.
In fact, there is. "Is there anything we should be concerned about when approaching your camp? Any traps, any pitfalls, are the grounds patrolled by snow tigers?"
"Well," the head says after a beat, as if needing to think about it. "There's the worm-deer monsters."
Lecht and Wandering Dawn's "What?!" comes at the exact same moment as Stray Dog's annoyed "Fuck." The other two turn to him.
"The luminata," he explains. "The deer who hunt men."
"What?" Lecht asks, suggesting that this answer did not bring them the enlightenment they'd hoped.
"The deer who hunt men. They're demons," he explains, matter-of-factly.
"Oh!" Wandering Dawn gets it. "So they're demons, but... deer?"
"They're a mass of squirming tendrils in the shape of a deer."[0]
"Bigger than a deer, or deer-sized?" Dawn asks.
"Deer-sized, deer-shaped... just made out of writhing tentacles."
"We didn't have anything like that back in my day," Lecht mutters, disturbed. "What do you people get up to..."
"They can be conjured or compelled like any other demon," Stray Dog continues. "They're just dangerous when you're not the one issuing the orders."
"What would it take to summon one of these things?" Lecht asks.
"You were with me when I summoned the perronele," he says, indicating the demon he wears as a second skin under his clothes. "It wouldn't take much more effort than that."[1]
Wandering Dawn turns to Borek's head. "Do you know how many are guarding your camp?"
"Two."
"Doesn't sound too bad."
"Not to smirk and say something ominous," Stray Dog says, smirking. "But I think we can take two."
With that settled, the group continues closer to the Broken Antler as dusk begins to settle in. They start seeing more signs of recent passage and civilization up ahead -- signs of campfires and the like. But ahead of them, somewhere through the trees, the setting sun outlines the shape of a stag. "At this distance, that could be a stag or that could be the demon," someone (I think Stray Dog, I didn't write it down) remarks.
Lecht bets a silver coin that it's a deer. Dawn takes that bet. Stray Dog says it's time to find out.
The Infernal steps ahead and says, in a singsong voice and a shimmying little dance: "Oh, I'm so soft and huntable, perfect prey for some demonic predator. I hope it doesn't get me!"
The deer stops and looks at Stray Dog, baffled, and then with a blur it dashes behind a tree -- only to reappear behind another tree, much closer than it should be in such a short time, either teleporting or just too damn fast. But it's right on them and the group can see the white, wormy tendrils and brown hateful eyes of the infernal hunter.
Stray Dog immediately drops into a crouch and raises his shield with one hand, the other drawing down threads of Essence as his entourage rushes forward to interpose themselves. The creature seems surprised, possibly as if taken in by Stray Dog's little pantomime and confused, as they manage to break its momentum. Wandering Dawn rushes in to join them with his spear, plunging it into the tendrils while Mollie rushes in to claw at it, and the combined efforts keep it from washing over them and getting at Stray Dog.
Lecht's been lining up a magical blast, and the efforts of the rest of the group give them an opportunity to give it a good blast before ducking behind a tree to start gathering motes for their own spell. Stray Dog keeps gathering sorcerous power as he moves to defend Lecht with his shield at the same time.
Meanwhile, Wandering Dawn leverages his spear like a crowbar to create an opening for strikes to plunge deep into the creature, which both Stray Dog's entourage and the wolverine try to exploit. But this has drawn the luminata's attention to Wandering Dawn, moving with that awful speed to lash out at him with its tendrils as it seems to be ready to dismiss the deer shape. It lunges at him with rubbery antlers and he just blocks it with whatever he's got, while it flows over the haft of the spear and goes after his arm.
Next, Stray Dog finds just the strand of Essence he's looking for, pulling it and wrapping it around his arm to wreathe it in an unhealthy green light. Milky-green jade oozes out from under his fingernails, forming over the hand and forearm in the shape of a jade lion's paw -- complete with retractable claws (and, yes, beans).[2] It has the glow of cartoon radiation, both unsettling -- and, to some, inspirational.
Next, Lecht takes advantage of how everything's lined up -- the people fighting the monster, its brief distraction at Stray Dog, the opening offered by Wandering Dawn -- and they flick a finger. A little blur flings out of it, going right for the beast. The blur zips through the thing, the bones making up the Flying Guillotine only fully manifesting once they're past the gash that opens up in it -- but it's not down yet.
No, for that, Stray Dog's inspired entourage rushes in to take the 'wound' opened in the creature and ripping it wider, tearing it apart and rending it into chunks of dissolving Essence-meat.
The group stops to catch their breath after that, as the camera pans up and over the forest, giving the audience a glimpse of the Broken Antler's settlement, with an ominously-glowing demonic totem in the middle.
To be continued...
[0]-- This is, in fact, a thing from the books. Even I can't come up with something this weird.
[1]-- One of the nice things about Sean playing an occult expert is that out-of-character he knows enough about demons to recognize descriptions and rattle off the basics without needing me to prompt him or feed him information. At worst, he needs a quick nudge. But luminata are in fact demons of the First Circle. They're progeny of Octavian, the Living Tower (Second Circle), who is in turn the Defining Soul of Munaxes, the Ravine of Whispers (Third Circle), who is in turn the Fourth Soul of She Who Lives in Her Name, the Principle of Hierarchy (Yozi). Y'know, for those of you who care about such things.
[2]-- Stray Dog's experimenting with using Personal Modes to enhance his Wood Dragon's Claw spell, upgrading it and representing the upgrade by changing the appearance to match the paw of a leonine demon called a teodozjia.
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