Greetings, and hope everybody's new year, etc., etc.
Anyhow, we come to the first proper game session of 2022. I'm not sure where I was going with pointing that out, but here we are.
So let's get into it.
After an evening exploring Dutan Island and an overnight stay, the group grabs their crate of booze and barrels of peppers and gets back out on the water. They're traveling towards Lathe, in the far Southwest of Creation, and after about a week's travel[0] they stop off on the mainland just east of the Cinder Isles to resupply and check their charts, as the Cinder Isles is a very volcanically-active region and sometimes an island is there that wasn't there last year or vice-versa.
They sail into a small trade town called Hisir, tie up in the dock, toss the usual handful of coins to the harbormaster, and so forth. As the group go getting supplies and water and stuff and looking for someone to buy the peppers they brought back from the island -- which isn't that difficult, because this is a popular spot for merchants who travel overland rather than risk pirates. Which is also one of the reasons why the trio has stopped here to resupply, rather than on an island a little more in the middle of everything -- there've been more and more House Peleps ships on the shipping lanes, presumably because of increased pirate activity.
But stepping away from matters of geography and more to the medicinal, the people in town appear to be sick. It's an illness that's suddenly befallen Hisir in just the last few days. Lethargy, headaches, some depression, some stomach issues. Xương's medical knowledge suggests that it resembles -- thought not exactly -- mild mercury poisoning. He puts together a testing kit and starts going over some of the local water sources, and determines that something is tainting Loban River, nearby. He can't be entirely sure, but he thinks it hasn't saturated the local river bed and the groundwater yet, so maybe if they can put a stop to the source then it's possible everything will flush out on its own before anyone gets too much sicker.
Hǎifēng asks around the town about anything that may have happened recently, just subtly getting a picture of recent events. The only thing that sounds like it might be a lead is that about a week go a half-dozen scavenger lords[1] showed up in town, asked some questions about the local geography and history, and then went upriver. The locals don't realize that the river appears to be the source of the illness sweeping the town, so they haven't connected the adventurers looking for some ruins upriver with an illness sweeping through the town a few days later.
Xương recalls that this corner of the Southwest used to be a very Lunar-heavy area back in the early Shogunate era, and out in the mountains further inland there are probably at least a few manses.[2] If the scavenger lords found some ancient ruins and broke or awakened something and it got into the river, the timing would be about right for it to influence the town.
Hǎifēng takes on bird form and flies upriver to scout out the land, where they find traces of the scavenger lords' passage -- not enough to follow all the way back, but enough to get someone started on following their trail. They can also see, with the literal bird's-eye view and the angle of sunlight shining on the river's surface, that there is definitely some substance tainting the river, along with some dead fish in the river.
And then they notice the thirty or so armed individuals advancing towards the town. The glowing armed individuals. Like, not anima banner glowing but more like a glow-in-the-dark toy in a dark room, though bright enough to be seen during the day.
Hǎifēng immediately returns to town and tells the first person they see of the impending attack, and within moments shouts and alarm bells ring out. While the townspeople don't react to this news as if it's anything routine, Hǎifēng can immediately see from their response that this clearly happens often enough that they have plans in place for it as locals begin arming themselves and getting certain people into shelters. They then seek out Xương and Hǎifēng, finding them respectively asking questions in an inn and gathering supplies at the market. They tell the other two what they saw and warn them that these attackers are glowing, and they suspect that the locals might not be prepared for that.[3]
The trio head to a road that passes by the town, not an extremely well-defined road but enough that merchants traveling overland use it regularly. It'll give them enough room to fight pretty freely without being so close to town they'd have an audience. They see the raiders approach with axes and heavy swords, skin glowing, eyes blazing, and some of them even letting out little puffs of flame with their breath (think when your breath fogs in the cold, except it's fire).
Xương steps forward to meet them, and informs them that they are done and need to go home. They pause, glance at each other, and then charge. Xương simply nods as if to say 'okay' and seems to explode in a wave of Essence-infused moonlight, going full iconic with the array of Charms he activates at once. He blasts a crater into the ground under him and pushes aside a couple of trees as he takes on his hybrid form and grows to titanic proportions, jaws snapping as if with a mind of their own, his eyes rolling back. He swells into a creature that doesn't seem to be able to stand under its own power and yet remains crudely humanoid. Wherever the extra mass for his body comes from, the depths of the ocean seem to come along, the creatures of the void staring from the shadows that appear around him the flare of his iconic anima banner. He looks like little more than a leviathan breaching the surface while also being a beast standing on land.
Meanwhile, back in town, far enough away that they can't see what's going on through trees and such, the people of Hisir gape in awe at the pillar of bright moonlight rising from the jungle, and fearfully watch to see if the pillar is going to move towards them or away.
Back at the road Xương wades into battle, hissing hideously at the raiders, boiling seawater steaming over his jaws as he comes at them with his claws, smacking them around like a child angry with his toys. He scoops up a bunch of them into his jaws to crunch down on them and their blood tastes like old lamp oil. It glows as it runs down his cheeks and he retches at the taste, spitting out their bodies (which he would have done anyways, for the record). Undeterred and hopped up on whatever has infused them with unnatural power, the rest lunge at him.
Hǎifēng, who'd been lounging in a tree watching with amusement, leaps down to interfere. They get between the raiders and Xương and clap their hands together as they tap into the Laughing Monster within. The thunderous applause is echoed by 98 hidden pairs of hands clapping along in unison, creating a shockwave that staggers the horde back. They then get out of the way as this opens up the raiders to another attack from Xương, who spins around 360 degrees to hit them with his tail. He knocks them into the air and catches them in his massive jaws, effectively ending the rest of them.
He catches his breath as he reverts to normal size and starts flushing his mouth out with booze and spitting for fear of swallowing whatever is in the raiders' systems. As near as the group can tell from a brief examination, it looks like these people were on their way to attack Hisir anyways when they encountered something that changed them. They recognize the raiders as, aside from the glowing, matching descriptions of the Raolai Damay, a known threat in the region that's been raiding neighboring towns more and more as it's clearer that the Realm is less capable of protecting the people. Their waterskins contain something else in addition to the water -- not what's tainting the river, fortunately, but it certainly doesn't seem to be a coincidence. As the group checks the bodies, one of them just spontaneously bursts into flame.
The trio moves away from town to catch their breaths and wait for their anima banners to fade before moving on. Because he's the only one not glowing, Shango goes back to town to get some supplies for a trek into the jungle.
While he does so, Hǎifēng comments to Xương that they wish there was a way to turn off anima banners. Xương suggests that they consider it an incentive to build a world where people recognize their heroes instead of persecuting them. There's some back and forth on why it has to be so difficult to just take out the Dragon-Blooded regime and win hearts and minds away from the people, and at one point Hǎifēng suggests that the gods should be stepping in and doing something. Xương points out, though, that 'stepping in and doing something' is the Exalted's job.
Shango gets back with supplies for the hike, and it's been enough time that Hǎifēng's anima banner has gone out and Xương's is still a soft enough glow that the group can't be tracked from a distance, and they start heading up the river in various animal forms -- Hǎifēng and Shango as birds, and Xương as a horse rather than risk exposing himself to something unpleasant in the river. They can make out traces of the Raolai Damay's passage as well as the scavenger lords' roughly parallel to the river (albeit on opposite sides) for a while, until they see something glowing through the trees on the raiders' side. They decide to follow up and they find a pool of water that a stream from the river is feeding into... as well as the blood of a creature dead on a cliff overhead dripping into the pool. They're mixing into an unnatural glowing substance in the pool, and it's easy enough to guess that the raiders stopped, drank from the water, felt empowered, and all took a big chug before moving on.
And then, of course, there's the creature. It looks like it's been here a while and yet still bleeds liquid blood. It's a vaguely-humanoid lizard creature, about 12-14 feet tall, and it's not a known creature that they can recognize.[4] It looks like some sort of Wyld mutant or similar creature, but it's tough to tell. The cause of the monster's death seems to be a bunch of knives in the face -- cheap ones, at that, like someone just went into a store and bought up all the knives because they knew they'd need them. The Lunars proceed to burn the creature's body, discovering that it burns with unnatural ease once it catches.
They move on until it's dark enough to make camp for the night, and keep hiking the next day. Eventually, they start to move into the foothills and find where a stream of a goo that looks like diluted, dirty mercury is running down a natural channel in the rocks and earth into the river. They follow that up into the hills, where the by-now afternoon sun coming from the west reveals something shining like silver ahead of them.
They keep going and come across another dead lizard creature, dead the same way (though the knives seem to have been retrieved this time), and they hit on an idea to block the stream of the goo from getting to the river, at least for a while. Xương attunes to that artifact axe they still have and between him and Shango they're able to move rocks and build a trench that should catch enough of the liquid to cut off the flow until they can put together a more permanent solution.
While Xương and Shango work on this, Hǎifēng's 'curious monkey' nature shines through and they decide to mix some of the dead creature blood with some of the pure silvery goo coming out of wherever. It combines into some sort of glowing gel that bursts into what looks like a dragon or lizard-shaped thing made out of fire which flies around, shrieking for several moments, before starting to dissolve and just impacting on a rock with a small explosion. Xương and Shango are both startled by this, and Shango asks Hǎifēng to explain what they just did, and it almost looks like the combination of chemicals created something like an elemental for a few seconds.
Hǎifēng gets a closer look at the goo, and with their knowledge of supernatural matters are pretty sure that this is some sort of First Age alchemy. The goo is either a fuel, a lubricant, or maybe somehow both, and was likely made by the same people who manufactured the lizard creatures. They theorize that the scavenger lords broke something they shouldn't have to release the goo, and either released the creatures intentionally or accidentally broke something that was keeping them in stasis.
Hǎifēng wants to use a couple waterskins pilfered from the raiders to take a sample of both the blood and the goo just in case. Xương doesn't like the idea, but Hǎifēng insists and points out that to prevent accidents they can have different people hang onto the different containers. Basically, they have a bomb now. (I was specifically asked to note that.)
The flow of the goo cut off, they move further into the hills and find the shiny thing ahead of them -- it's an open gate leading into a cavern, partially laced with moonsilver. Almost certainly a manse. Between them and the entrance is some sort of automaton that, from the shape, may have once been the actual door as well. But currently it's laying on the ground, wrecked, with a single dagger sticking out of its eye.
And we leave off on the trio, unsure what to expect (but not exactly thrilled to deal with whomever keeps putting knives into things), venturing into the darkness of the cave...
And that's it for now! Hope to see you soon!
[0]-- I kinda handwave travel times a little bit, as I may have mentioned before. Creation is big, and even bigger in third edition. I've got some guidelines on how long it takes to get places, and I kinda treat it as if the characters are traveling at top speed, especially when they're sailing when they can operate in shifts and not necessarily have to stop the boat. Someone once suggested that if they were to run Exalted, they'd actually cut the scale of the map in half, and honestly if I'd heard that idea before running the game I'd have done that. But I'm not sure I want to go back and rework my calendar.
[1]-- 'Scavenger lord' is a term to a particular variety of adventurer in Exalted. Basically they're treasure hunters and Indiana Jones-style archaeologists, seeking out ruins of the First Age and (to a lesser extent) the pre-Great Contagion Shogunate Era. They use the term kind of like how the Borderlands games toss around 'Vault Hunter.'
[2]-- I haven't really talked much about manses in the game so far. In Exalted there are places of power called demesnes, natural wellsprings of power and Essence. Someone sufficiently knowledgeable in such things can 'cap' it by building a structure called a manse to focus the Essence. Often they produce hearthstones, which contain some of the power of the manse. I can't remember if I mentioned this before, but the artifacts that the characters took from the Wyld Hunt a while back had a couple of hearthstones.
[3]-- To be fair, it does seem like glowing hordes attacking places is something you'd hear about if it happened often enough for the locals to have a trained response to it.
[4]-- For the record, for those of you familiar with the setting, it's not a Dragon King.
No comments:
Post a Comment