Hey there folks, it's me again. As opposed to whom, I couldn't tell ya. But it's me.
Y'know, not that I'm gonna make it one, but it occurs to me that if this were a podcast I could get away with a generic intro. Just thinking.
Anyhow, I'm slowly trucking with trying to get these posts on track. But I'm still having issues with my arm and typing for long stretches is difficult, which isn't helped by the fact that I have multiple typing-related obligations going on at the moment. So I have to pace myself, as much as I'd love to just sit down and bang one of these out every night (heh, phrasing) until I get caught up. But at the same time, doing these gives me a bit of a mental buffer so I don't get burned out on the other stuff.
Speaking of which, let's get to it.
We pick back up in the chamber where the group just slew Mistress Valeska and what's left of the ghost that was Master Tristian. With the necromancer gone, the air already seems a little less oppressive as Hǎifēng take a few minutes regaining their wits as the others remain close but give them some space.
Once Hǎifēng appears to have regrouped, Xương asks if they're 'good.' They say they don't know if they'll ever be good, but they think they can at least finish this. Xương says they just have to handle it one day at a time, and the group returns to the tunnels to head towards the heart of the volcano.
As they make their way inward, they can feel the place getting warmer, and they hear a rumbling up ahead. Eventually they find a larger chamber -- big enough that Xương could grow to his full height but not so big that he could fight like that without potentially bringing the place down on their heads. There are pools of lava[0] around the edges of the room, giving the place a little bit of light. They wander around the room, pretty sure the sanctum is somewhere in there.
As they look, there's a rumbling noise and footsteps that send shockwaves through the floor. A humanoid figure steps out from behind a wall of stalagmites like it was a folding screen. The figure is about seven feet tall, appearing as a blackened skeleton wreathed in what's best described as solid flame or orange hard light. It almost looks like resin. The shape is draped in a robe that appears to be crumbling, smoky lava, with a texture kind of like what's commonly described as a pimp's coat.
Guys, gals, non-binary pals: Meet Blackened Bone Whispers.
He asks if it would insult anyone's intelligence if he asked to say his piece, give them the full pitch, etc., before they jump straight ahead to the violence. But he's perfectly fine with jumping ahead. Xương and Shango take their cutes from Hǎifēng, with Xương in particular ready to dive in if Hǎifēng twitches in any way in the god's direction.
Well, Hǎifēng twitches.
"Showtime, then," Blackened Bone Whispers says as elementals of molten rock emerge from the lava pools off to the side, and he lunges at Hǎifēng with the solid flame around his fingers shaped into claws. But ever since Hǎifēng mastered Laughing Monster Style, they're a little less... there. So when the god swings at them, a little bit of them becomes a cloudy substance and the strike passes through, barely missing.
Then Xương comes in, keeping his head down to hide his gaping maw until the last moment where he reaches Blackened Bone Whispers and flips his nose upward to reveal all of his teeth and closes them over the god's head.
Hǎifēng drops their fans to the floor and steps onto them, grabbing them with their feet (remember, monkey hybrid form) and does a backflip, bringing the fans up in a strike to Blackened Bone Whispers' body. They then grab Xương and pull themselves up to come down on the god's body with another attack. They then carry that momentum forward into more strikes from every angle with impossible speed, switching weapons between hand and foot and tail to leave the god nowhere to run. After a frankly ridiculous number of strikes[1], they're ready to fall over... but Blackened Bone Whispers is still standing.
And now the lava elementals lunge at everyone. Hǎifēng manages to scramble out of the way, pushing their capacity to move quickly in a short period of time while Shango manages to backflip out of the way to make some of them bounce into each other. Meanwhile, they just bounce off of Xương.[2]
Shango readies Weirdflame and unloads it into Blackened Bone Whispers, blasting him with everything he's got as the rumbling builds.
Something emerges from one of the lava pools, a massive humanoid figure covered in lava. The elementals all stop and kneel before it. Then the lava falls away to reveal what looks like an old man with deep red stone skin, ashen-gray hair, and a cloak that resembles a mountain slope.
Magma Blossom's home.
"What have you done?" he demands with a booming voice as he strides to Blackened Bone Whispers, gripping him by the neck and holding him up.
"You know what I did, you know why, and I apologize for nothing."
"Nothing it is, then," he says as he crushes the smaller god, rendering him into dust and Essence.[3] Magma Blossom then takes a moment to catch his breath, having traveled a long way in a hurry, before addressing the Lunars with all of the dignity he can muster.
"I have made mistakes, I have been derelict, I have been manipulated and tricked, and thanks to your allies to the South I have a chance to repair things. Thank you for giving me this opportunity."[4]
He then starts to leave, saying he's going to let them do whatever they need to do and he'll speak with them outside. So Hǎifēng puts on that artifact collar and goes into the sanctum. The sanctum itself looks like another chamber with statues and such in it, and a lot of fancy flourishes -- while not the blood-bathing chamber they found themselves in 15 years ago, the resemblance is close enough to clearly have been an inspiration. They set the device up, start the timer, and go back out and the three of them flee the volcano. (Well, Shango and Hǎifēng flee, Xương more 'ambles with purpose.') As the group leaves, the chamber starts to collapse, the sanctum destroyed and taking a big chunk of the structure with it. The burning flesh smell is gone.
One of them, I didn't write down who but I'm pretty sure Hǎifēng, says that they hope this time there'll be nothing left of the volcano as they leave.
Magma Blossom is waiting outside the volcano for them, and he's trying very hard to maintain a semblance of dignity despite the situation that led to this meeting. He informs the group that they should know they have an ally in Heaven -- well, more an ally in him, because he's not going back right away because he has things to put right.
He also confirms that Blackened Bone Whispers is truly gone, just in case they need that, and he explains that Whispers wasn't even originally a god of volcanic sacrifice. ('Blackened Bone Whispers' wasn't his original name, either, but Magma Blossom realizes he can't even remember what that was.) He was originally the god of an island that was destroyed by an eruption, and Magma Blossom made it up to him by giving him a job as sort of a middleman managing protocols and rituals.
He says he's not a particularly proud god today, and Xương tells him that he needs to fix things. He remarks that in better times, the Exalted were there for that, but then in better times they wouldn't have needed to fix things at all. He makes sure the characters know that he owes them for this. Xương reiterates that he needs to fix what's broken while he and the others go deal with the Deathlord.
Hǎifēng is lying in the sand as Xương informs Magma Blossom that he's got 'a neck to chew through' and they'll regroup on the island in a few months and see how things are. They talk a bit more, though I didn't think to write down exactly about what, and Xương tells him to knock off the human sacrifice. He makes it clear that he's never demanded such and he can't necessarily stop the people from doing it, but in any case he's lost his taste for it and perhaps with Whispers' destruction he can begin having that conversation with the people of the islands.
Before they go, he reminds them he owes them and tells them "May the Sun and Moon shine on your shoulders. Clear skies, safe travels."
"And the blood on our hands never dry," Xương says.
"Speak for yourself," either Hǎifēng or Shango says.
And with that, the group heads back to where they have the boat tied up, noticing that bugs and animals are already starting to return to the island. The camera pans up to show Magma Blossom walking towards what's left of the volcano, arms outstretched, as it begins to collapse on itself even more.
And that wraps up the session and the story.
[0]-- I'm pretty sure it's technically lava once it's exposed to the air but is still liquid, even though it's still in an underground chamber.
[1]-- So I'm not going to rattle off the whole list of Charms involved, because I didn't write it down. But it started with Thousand Claw Affliction (which gives you multiple withering attacks) to put Blackened Bone Whispers into Initiative Crash, and then used Unhesitant Scorpion Lash to transition into a decisive attack -- or, optionally, Octopus-and-Spider Barrage, which they did. In the end Hǎifēng spent thirty-something Essence, made 8 attacks in all, and dealt 24 levels of damage to the god... and it wasn't enough to bring him down. (Though it was close.)
[2]-- If it hasn't been made clear by implication, Xương's defense strategy is called 'the highest-possible soak.'
[3]-- For the record, the characters did legitimately beat Blackened Bone Whispers. I probably could have made it a little cinematically clearer in the moment, but his was one of those 'cutscene triggered by a killing blow' sorts of scenarios.
[4]-- In case it needs to be said, this is the help that Yanisin alluded to in his recorded message.
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