And now comes my weekly scrabbling around for something to put above the 'read more' jump break. But no real updates or announcements to make at this time, assuming nothing comes to me by the time I get this finished and posted.
Oh, actually something did come to me -- I slightly tweaked last week's post, as I realized I forgot to do an 'intro caption' for Shichirou. No real revelations there, but just mentioning it.
As a heads-up, as implied by the title, this post has a few guest appearances from some canon characters who aren't gods. Though as I type that, I realize I've been having guest appearances from various gods (and there'll be more in this one) from the start of this story, and haven't made as big of a to-do about it. And now I'm wondering why it's a big deal when canon Exalts show up but not as much when canon gods do. Something to ponder. Either way, recognizing the characters shouldn't be necessary, but it might be a fun thing if you do.
Anywho, let's get into it.
We pick up with the group catching their breath after Hǎifēng's match against Shichirou. And we move into a montage of 'background' fights between other fighters... obviously I didn't describe all of them there, nor will I do so here, but a few highlighted matches from characters who stand out for one reason or another...
First, a match between a dark-skinned man with a sword, wearing fine blue and purple clothing[0] and a mantis mask, and a monk wearing a hornet mask. The monk quickly gets within the radius of the sword, swiftly getting and maintaining a grip on the swordsman that he maintains across a series of maneuvers until the man taps out. Shango, however, recognizes the monk's style. He's using a blend of Falcon Style, which Shango used to practice, and Mantis Style. But in particular, he recognizes how the monk moves...
Shango and his brother, once upon a time, grew up studying Falcon Style. And then, some years back, his brother underwent the Second Breath as a Terrestrial Exalt, and was whisked off to the Realm as a 'lost egg.' The Mantis Style techniques are new, but Shango recognizes how his brother implements the Falcon techniques. I have alluded to story stuff with his family in general and his brother in particular, in passing.
Another match is a six-armed woman with daggers in loose, flowing clothes and long hair[1], wearing a mask resembling a spider clinging to her face, up against a woman with short-cropped hair so dark that it almost seems to absorb light decked out in an outfit that to a modern audience would resemble 'motorcycle leathers.' In particular, a thick armored leather-ish jacket and pants. At first glance it looks like she has bronze skin but further inspection reveals that it's actually a layer of fine bronze or golden fur on her skin. She carries a matched pair of short orichalcum daiklaves and wears a mask that looks like a lion's face.[2]
She and the six-armed woman rush at each other in a flurry of clashing blades until the woman in the jacket sends one of the daggers flying away and skittering across the floor. The six-armed woman, with a flick of her wrist, draws the dagger back to her hand on a string of spider-silk. The woman in the jacket pauses at that, and with body language clearly indicating 'Okay, then,' she goes in with renewed vigor, wearing the six-armed woman with what looks like a thousand tiny cuts and slashes, wearing her down for the best of three falls. As she leaves the ring, she takes off the jacket and slings it over her shoulder, revealing tattoos on her arm that read "Shimmerside Corsairs" in Old Realm script -- obviously some sort of gang tattoo, though 'Shimmerside' isn't anyplace that anyone in the group has heard of.
For one of the matches, we see Captain Tarok squaring off against a heavily-armored woman with short, white hair and a mace[3], wearing a shark mask. The match starts slow, clearly more of a casual fight for both of them, with Tarok drawing things out. And after a while, the group can't hear what the woman in the shark mask is saying but her demeanor suggests it's something along the lines of "Oh, you're just a Dragon-Blood, aren't you?" At which point Tarok steps it up. They start using pressure strikes on their opponent to disrupt her Essence, using Water Dragon techniques (like the signature move Drowning-in-Blood Technique), and finishes her off with Breath-Seizing Technique, an Air Dragon Style move that leaves her gasping on the ring floor for a few moments.
After that, Plentimon steps back out and declares a break. It's about 7am in-character and most of the folks there have been up since before midnight, barring anyone who got a nap on the trip to the arena or has ducked out on the matches they're not part of to get some rest. So he gives them until 4pm to socialize, eat, sleep, and so forth. Xương and Shango both decide to rest up, the latter trying not to think about the hornet-masked monk, while Hǎifēng goes to have a nice, long soak in a bathhouse in the style of the Blessed Isle's finest such establishments. Rashmi takes off to go eat food from parts of Creation that he hasn't had a chance to visit since his family's traveling route was reshaped by the unrest in the East.
Time passes -- conveniently, enough time to let pretty much any Exalt rest for long enough to recover all of their Essence.
The Circle has the chance to reconvene on the way to the arena when the breaks wraps up. On the way, they're approached by a pair of gods: A man with spiky hair who appears to be sculpted out of golden light, and a tall, impossibly-thin man with umber skin, golden eyes, and black, downy feathers in place of hair. Both are dressed in fine fashions likely popular among the Heavenly elite. The golden man introduces himself as Lytek, Scribe of the Chosen and God of Exaltation, and Verumipra -- whose position Lytek is reluctant to get into.[4] He says he's been trying to talk to as many of the competitors as he can over the course of the tournament, and asks if he can sit with them. Naturally, the group accepts and Xương offers him a corn hog (as he's taken to calling his invention).
As they all get to the group's private box, Verumipra takes Rashmi aside for a conversation. Lytek makes small talk, asking the group about their adventures while they wait for things to get going again. After a few minutes, Verumipra and Rashmi rejoin the rest, the latter oddly quiet.
Plentimon welcomes everyone back and says they're going to kick off the next wave of fights with an exhibition match, at which point Xương's mask tingles and lights up. He looks across the arena to see someone else in a private-shadowed box with a glowing mask finishing a drink.
Excited to actually get in on some of the action himself, he leaps from the box with a guttural roar, transforming in mid-air and taking advantage of an opportunity to shift to his full-size. He lands in the ring in a way that leaves a crater, the arena's magic causing the space to shift to accommodate him. Across from him, waiting, is a woman with red hair and a green and blue dress, with a mask that looks like it was made from a wicker basket. She holds out one hand and a massive scythe made of black iron shot through with seams of green jade flies from her seat to her hand.
If you need a visual, this might seem familiar to those of you who've read the Exalted 3E core book[5]:
Across the bottom of the 'screen,' the following caption appears before rippling in an imaginary breeze and falling away in shreds as its cut in half:
Strawmaiden Janest
The Harvest Exalt
Exigent of Ten Sheaves
Hǎifēng quickly puts together one of those improvised betting slips to bet some money on Xương.
The fight begins and she watches as Xương gets himself all revved up with his rage-inducing Charms. Xương's jaw dangles under his protruding snout in the way that a goblin shark's does, his hands hanging down as he knuckle-walks over to her and looks down at her. With little to no warning he goes from smiling to snarling and bringing his claws down upon her in a way that would send a lesser opponent in twain. But Janest brings up the scythe to hold off the blow, staggering under the weight of it. Despite his size and the advantage that should give over her, she pushes back and channels her Essence to slash at him again and again with increasing speed, moving as if reaping wheat, trying to seize and maintain the momentum.
After a few such slashes she goes in for a stronger strike. He reaches out to catch the blade in his hand, slicing the webbing between his fingers and cutting his hand down to the bone as he closes his fingers on the scythe blade. Blood goes everywhere, the power Janest channeling into her scythe kicking up the scent of spices unfamiliar to Xương. And then, tightening her grip on the scythe, she manages to pull him down to the ground.
Then Xương grabs at the scythe as his hand impaled on it, pulling for leverage as he twists in something of a death roll to close his jaws around her waist. Up in the stands, Hǎifēng yells "Take her down, I got 200 riding on you!" as Xương shakes her like a rag doll in his jaws. He's not trying to kill her, but his eyes roll back in his head as he lets himself lose control a little bit, wanting to be stopped more than wanting to stop.
"Okay, that's enough!" she yells as she smacks the side of his head in a clear sign of yielding, chastising him like a rowdy animal. He releases her and shrinks back down to his regular size. Both of them stand there, bloodied and drained of power, and she goes to shake his hand as she says she's buying the first round. He shakes her hand and claps the back of it with his bloody one, and the two of them drag themselves back to their respective viewing boxes. Xương discovers that a bunch of stuff has already been set up to clean up and take care of his wounds, but first he claps Lytek on the back and asks how great that was. Lytek, as the chronicler of the Exalted's deeds, is thrilled.
And we left off there.
[0]-- This is one of the aforementioned cameos: Azu Tegama Asarkon, the signature Full Moon Lunar and the fellow on the cover of Lunars: Fangs at the Gate.
[1]-- Another cameo: Eska of the Seven Blades, another Lunar. She appears in the collected edition of Adversaries of the Righteous and turns up in at least one piece of art in the aforementioned Lunars book.
[2]-- You may think I'm spending a lot of time energy describing this seemingly random character. That thinking would be correct. (Also, admittedly, there are a couple of details here that I forgot to mention in the session itself.) Now let me set something on the mantle and return to you the rest of the post.
[3]-- Another cameo: Iron Siaka, Sidereal Exalt and former signature Chosen of Serenity. She also appears in Adversaries of the Righteous. For the record, when I was fleshing out the background matches I didn't go in intending to Worf a bunch of canon characters with my NPCs. I mostly just kind of picked the characters and put the matchups together later.
[4]-- For the record, Verumipra is Heaven's Ambassador to Malfeas. I can't remember (and didn't write down) if it comes up in-character or not, and my memory's fuzzy on the matter because if it didn't come up in-character I know I mentioned it out of character for context. So I mention it here, just in case.
[5]-- So in case it isn't obvious, this isn't merely a cameo but a special guest star for the episode. For the record, while extremely unlikely to happen, if Janest shows up later in the continuity of 'my' Exalted games, I reserve the right to handwave her having been gotten a power boost or something like this so my interpretation of Janest isn't locked into being maxed out for combat.
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