Originally I was going to start this off with a 'now I'm caught up, now to see if I can keep up to date' thing, and then it took longer to get written than I'd like, and I got waylaid by a massive headache one night and now this is late and I owe you two sessions' worth of material. Whoops.
I'm doing something a little different with this write-up. I'm not going to combine two full sessions into a post because it'll get too damn long. However, there's a point where the group splits up, and that split carries through from the first session into the second. For the purposes of narrative flow I'm folding some of the second session into the post for the first. So really, rather than two sessions in two posts, I'm doing a session and change in one and the rest in the other. Hopefully it'll be seamless enough that you wouldn't even notice, but I believe in transparency and setting expectations with stuff like this.
In related news, the Kickstarter for the next Exalted 'fatsplat,' Sidereals: Charting Fate's Course, has gone live! I didn't work on the book, but still promoting it anyways because I can.
(And before we get on with it, I just wanna say that I know this story arc's been a little slow. I'll be bringing it to a climax soon, Luna willing. It was meant to be kind of a 'filler episode' after the recent bigger plot stuff, and for a couple of reasons it's come out a little more low-key than I expected. The people responsible have been sacked.)
So where we left off before, the characters were winding down. Hǎifēng has just returned from stashing their stolen prizes. They just go and jump into their hammock and pull out a book to read, and then notice Xương's new patient.
"Another one?" they ask.
"Why would they stop at just the one?"
"Same cult?"
"Yup."
(That's not verbatim, but close enough.)
They then talk about at least Makarios is a pretty simple demon, at least not one that wants his worshippers to eat people. Xương points out that in a cult where someone is skinning people, then those cultists are probably all-in. It comes up that the worst thing about cults is that what gets done is what the cult thinks needs done, whether the demon wants it or not.
And from here, we segue into the group winding down for the evening.
The next morning Xương's awoken by a knock on the door. Koi is outside with a larger, gruff-looking monk with a slightly better belt (meaning he's a higher rank), who've come to check on the patient (whose name, BTW, is Umar, but I think I forgot to wrote down when he gives his name so well just wing it). Xương, determining that he's in good enough shape to do so, wakes the guy up and he's startled. Xương, being a good doctor, gets him some coffee with rum in it to help him adjust to the day and he offers some to the monks. Koi accepts some coffee but without the rum, and the other monk says he wouldn't mind a cup of tea if Xương has any. Xương goes ahead and gets some water going for tea while he checks on Umar.
"Am I awake?" he asks.
"If I am, you are," Xương replies.
"What day is it?"
Koi tells him it's Sunday, the 8th day of Descending Earth. Umar does some math and says he's been 'gone' for about a week and a half. Someone jumped him, and he remembers being drugged, and a place with smoke, but describes the place where he's 'been' and gives a description that matches that of Makarios' citadel. He also describes being trapped with a figure who, obviously, matches Makarios' description. He says that the individual told him he wasn't keeping him, but he was being pushed into an audience.
Xương informs him that he should be good to go now, as the worst of the drugs are out of his system and the symbol is gone from his forehead. By now Xương has tea ready for the older monk, who introduces himself as Futoshi. Xương just says he's 'the doctor,' and Futoshi says that he knows who Xương is and that he and the temple respect the help that the exiled Lintha offers to Lathe and its people.
Futoshi also says that if what Umar says is true, this sounds like he's been held captive by the Makarios cult, who've been particularly active lately. He mentions the report he's heard of a woman who'd been branded and helped, and Xương takes credit for that. The monks bow out of respect. Futoshi goes on to say that it's been hard keeping track of the cults with the chaos of the visitors.
Xương says they should be thankful that this is the simple 'dubious wishes and dreams' cult as opposed to the 'drinking the spinal fluid of babies' cult. Koi's a little put off by the comparison, but Futoshi just rolls with it and asks Umar if he remembers anything else. Umar stops and thinks about it and says he remembers hearing singing, like a chorus. Either above him or through a wall, he's not sure.
Hǎifēng comes out from the living quarters in the back of the clinic (startling a couple of folks) and asks if Umar can sing any of it. He tries humming it, and it sounds faintly familiar to Hǎifēng, who recalls hearing something similar coming from a teahouse (possibly the basement of a teahouse) in the theater district while they were stalking around looking for a way into the theater. Futoshi looks perturbed, and Xương asks if that's shareable thought he's got on his face. Futoshi says that the choral singing sounds like the Fulope, a type of First Circle Demon known to possess people and, among other things, make them sing. In fact, when they encounter other singers, includ each other, they're compelled to try and get into a singing contest to prove their skill.
Xương jokes that that sounds like the sort of thing that needs a surgeon, and Futoshi explains that actually it is -- the Fulope, also known as the Choral Equestrian, physically attaches itself to its victims one of the ways to end the possession involves physically cutting it off of someone. Xương makes sure they know he's available if they need him to cut it off of anyone (and he makes a dramatic cutting gesture while doing so, if I recall correctly). The Fulope is pretty minor as far as threats go, so it tends to be low-priority on sweeps of the city to deal with loose demons.
Futoshi says he's going to report in to the temple and probably send out patrols to places where they know that Fulopes can congregate as a lead to seek out the Makarios cult. He and Koi wish Xương farewell and make sure Umar know that he's free to come by the temple if he needs any further assistance, and with that the two monks bow to Xương, leave their cups, and go.
Umar says he'd like to rest at the clinic a little longer if Xương has no objections, and Xương gets him some broth and bread to get something in his stomach as he recovers. Once he's eaten, though, Xương gets him a room at a nearby inn where he can rest without Xương having to worry about leaving someone alone at his place when the group goes back out.
And with that, the trio all head back out to the theater district. It's really busy today, and there are just way too many monks among the crowd, and Shango even sees Mnemon Arima[0] out and about. Even Rova Seafoam, the raksha pirate, has an entourage today even if most of the crowd gives her a wide berth. Shango goes and checks in for the tournament and discovers that she is in fact his first opponent.
Once they sit down at the table, discovering this is the slightly more-complex five-tier version of Gateway rather than the three-tier version, she produces a coin made out of a purplish metal called hepatizon. It looks like a Guild dinar in every other way that matters, just hepatizon rather than silver. They flip to see who goes first, and she wins.
He has no clue what to expect playing her, and in the early game he focuses on tactics and tricks he hopes she doesn't recognize. He uses a Charm to try and provoke her into attacking early, giving him room to counterattack, but she just kind of 'flows' around all of it. She comes across like she's spacey and inexperienced but talented, in a way that would seem like a bluff coming from a mortal. Like she barely knows how to play the game. As he plays he catches little glimpses of things out of the corner of his eye, distant sounds related to the animals represented on the pieces he's moving. He assumes this is some trick she's doing to mess with his head.
As they move into the mid-game he focuses on the basics of the game, trying to counteract her chaos with order, sticking with solid fundamentals and more traditional techniques as he plays against her as if he's playing someone new who happens to be a savant. The world around them seems to shift as he finds himself on terrain much like that the game board represents, surrounded by animals representing the pieces. The raksha has drawn his mind into a representation of the game itself, but he's able to maintain control and after a moment she gets a look of realization and says "Oh, a Lunar, nice," she says like someone who's just spotted a rare animal in the wild, and the illusion drops.
From there he goes into the end-game, pressing hard to maintain and build off of his momentum with the solid fundamentals he learned from his teachers. He handily beats her, as it feels like something's just... lost in her playing once she realizes who/what she's playing against, like she just realized she's not the main character of this story. The spectators cheer and she plays up being a sore loser as she throws her hat on the ground. He says "Good game," and she's caught off-guard and says "Yes, yes, you too," and makes a big show of stomping off. But it still feels like she's doing that because it's what she's supposed to do.
As the crowd of spectators disperses, Mnemon Arima steps out of the crowd to approach Shango. All smiles as if this is a normal social call, he congratulates Shango on the match and they talk for a bit on the... strangeness of Shango's opponent, as he subtly gestures and sends a couple of monks in more casual clothing to vanish into the crowd to follow her. Then Arima tells him that he's glad to see him in Lathe again, and wanted to fill him in on his investigation into the whole thing with Vaihil. He explains that Vaihil was a problem on the mainland that the Order thought they'd dealt with, but he went to that island that Shango told him about and found that Vaihil had already been taken care of by the time he got there. (The implication is that he didn't much appreciate Shango sending him on a wild goose chase)
Shango remarks that it looks like someone competent took care of the problem, and then he reaches out to casually grab a cup of tea from a passing server and dramatically down it. Arima acknowledges that it was lower-ranking members of the Order who'd been sent to deal with Vaihil, and that's not a mistake he'd make again. Shango says that he probably has another party to get to, and gestures in the direction that Roba went. I'm blanking on exactly what he said, but it was probably an "all in due time" sort of reaction.
But first he wants to offer Shango a warning. The temple's gotten a tip of a confirmed Lunar Anathema running around, who's robbed the tournament organizers of a bunch of prize stuff. He says he wants to warn him about the danger out of respect to their previous associations. Shango assures him that he's been here the entire time and he has 'no intentions of doing anything illegal or insane.' Then he adds, under his breath, 'until the tournament is over.' Arima takes that at face value[1], and says that he was just offering a basic courtesy, and then leaves.
And now we roll back the clock and the camera zips over to Xương and Hǎifēng in the back alleys near where Hǎifēng's pretty sure they heard that singing before. They comb the neighborhood, and find what looks to be an empty art gallery that not only has a basement but has a hidden door, given away by a smudge of blood revealing a seam. The hidden door leads to stairs down to a sub-basement.
The sub-basement is smoky with some sort of heady incense, though not as much as someone might think, suggesting the presence of a vent. They find tables, obviously scavenged from different places, being used as beds to hold what looks to be over a dozen people drugged into unconsciousness. A handful of people stand guard over them, including the mercenary who followed Hǎifēng after their dinner with Kes. They're pretty sure they recognize some of the other guards as people watching the theater district the night of Hǎifēng's clone-monkey-surveillance. At least, too many to be a coincidence.
The Silver Shell is the Makarios cult. Which, while it wasn't necessarily obvious, makes a lot of sense.
Xương gives Hǎifēng the universal hand gesture for "Do you want your sharkman friend to murder all of these people?"[2] Hǎifēng considers that and shifts to hybrid form to maintain their cover, and says that they're going to at least give these people a chance to back off. They also use Predator-Prey Mirror to make themselves seem even scarier. They ask Xương if he wants to go in as Xương, or as 'the Bonetaker.' Xương says that they may as well scare these people properly as he takes on his own hybrid form.
Hǎifēng squares themself up and marches down to the bottom of the steps with all of the swagger they can muster.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen, hi! We have a problem, and that problem is you!" they announce, before they demand to see who's in charge.
A bald woman with light brown skin and features suggesting Near Southern heritage -- probably from Chiaroscuro, or the Lap -- with a gray scarf draped over her shoulders and a wrapped sword on her hip steps forward.
Hǎifēng asks her who's in charge. She says she is. They ask again who's in charge. She then asks if this is building up to the sort of thing where they're trying to intimidate her into saying that they're actually in charge, and Hǎifēng answers in the affirmative before just grabbing her head and bouncing it off the nearby table, knocking her out.
The others all draw their swords and knives and take a step back. Hǎifēng points out that Xương's even scarier than they are, and one of the remaining cultists asks what the two of them want.
Hǎifēng informs them that the whole thing where they're capturing people and drugging them, branding them, etc., is over. Hǎifēng explains that they have things to do and this cult business is interfering in their plans. One of the cultists points out that it's going to take a little while for their victims to wake up. They've got stuff that'll wake them up quickly, but it would be dangerous.
Hǎifēng begins to give them a deadline, and then stops to ask Xương's opinion. Based on what he saw with Umar, Xương estimates that letting the people here sleep off whatever they've got and get them on their feet will take 4-6 hours or so. He gives them 12 hours for good measure, and says he's also going to be taking their supply of the drugs they've been using.[3] Hǎifēng makes sure they all heard that, and Xương emphasizes that they don't have to like it, they just have to do it. He also plans to stand there and watch the whole time.
As they begin packing everything up, Hǎifēng gets the distinct impression the cult has been through something like this before, and know how to cut their losses -- an understandable reaction for a commerce-minded demon cult. The woman that Hǎifēng initially knocked out comes to and someone fills her in on what's gone on while she was out. She asks Hǎifēng and Xương if she can leave to have a word with her superiors while they're waiting. Xương's willing to allow it, secretly hoping it's a setup for her to go get a bunch of goons and come back to pick a fight.[4] Hǎifēng, totally down for that logic, defers to his wisdom and dismisses her with a gesture.
The next few hours pass uneventfully as people wake up, are helped back into a functional state, and allowed to leave. Hǎifēng and Xương overhear the cultists whispering to their victims that they're not to tell anyone what they saw or where they've been or else the 'monkey and shark are going to track them down,' clearly letting them assume that Hǎifēng and Xương are involved in the cult to intimidate them. The pair decide to let that stand for the moment since if nothing else it helps prevent a panic.
But in the end, the cult's victims leave under their own power, and the cult packs up all of their stuff for Xương to haul back to his clinic. He tells the cultists they can go, but he doesn't want to catch them culting around again. And when he gets up, Hǎifēng -- who's been leaning against him and fell asleep -- starts to fall over and Xương quickly catches them to lean them against the wall.
But we'll leave this off here, on the two of them leaving the sub-basement to catch up with Shango.
[0]-- Aka, lest we forget, Watchful Talon, Chosen of Endings.
[1]-- It's worth noting that Watchful Talon made and failed a Read Intentions roll. I do have a full sheet for him, after all, and wanted to be fair about it.
[2]-- Sean demonstrated this hand gesture but it's vague enough that I'm not sure I could adequately describe it.
[3]-- This is partially make sure they can't buy time by drugging the people even more, as well as make it harder for them to just set this operation again elsewhere right away. Also, being a doctor, Xương potentially has a use for those drugs depending on what they are.
[4]-- Unfortunately for them, she doesn't.
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