Hey there again, I know it's been quiet here. I'm a little behind on these Exalted posts -- just as soon as I got caught up, I know -- and I don't have a good reason, just grappling with some stuff and couldn't line up my brain right to get into it.
I don't really have much in the way of personal announcements or anything. Closest thing to such is that the Trinity Continuum Player's Guide is now out as a backer PDF for folks who crowdfunded, and it's been interesting going back through and seeing how my writing got through editing, now formatted and with artwork and stuff. I was dealing with a few things when I wrote it, and it's weird to look back on almost two years later. But at the same time, it's always exciting to see my work presented in a final-ish form (and I legitimately hope it always will be).
Anyhow, this is about to take a needlessly-maudlin turn, when we're supposed to be focusing on my group's Exalted adventures.
So where we left off, the group just fought (and, let's not dance around it, killed) a big chunk of the Leaves gang/cult, as well as their leader. On the way out, they talk about splitting up so Wandering Dawn and Lecht can get some answers from Luca Liczka and Stray Dog can study the runes carved into the walls of the amphitheater and get a better idea of how Anica channeled the power of Elmorze to turn the gang into a cult.
The camera follows Wandering Dawn and Lecht heading up the stairs into the house, and at the top of the steps they find Luca, rushing downstairs and trying to get a handle on everything going on.
"Oh good, I hate it when I have to fight them," Lecht snarks.
"Good, just the man we were looking for," Wandering Dawn says to Luca.
Luca asks them what in the gods' names are going on, and the Solar and Exigent remark on how ungrateful he is that they're there to save him. They ask who wants to tell him, and Lecht recommends grabbing his lapels and pinning him to the wall. Wandering Dawn proceeds to do so, and Lecht says they need to have a serious conversation and normally when they have a conversation like that they're normally just talking to someone's head (Luca pales), and they want to try this while he's still alive (Luca pales more).
Lecht explains that first they had to kill Luca's father, because Anica poisoned him until a hungry ghost came out, and then there's a cult taking over the city at her behest, so they had to kill her too. They ask Luca if he's got any sons or daughters, and he says 'no.' (which is good for Lecht, as they're worried they might have to end the bloodline)
They ask if he had anything to do with his sister poisoning their father, and he says 'No,' and in his fear it's pretty obvious he's telling the truth. They ask if he's been in talks with the Guild to sell the city. Lecht threatens to decapitate him and get the answers out of his head, and Wandering Dawn points out he's seen them do it.
Luca says he does business with the Guild, but he wasn't going to sell them the city, that's preposterous. Lecht asks if they provided him with a book about demon summoning or if he knows someone who'd be into that. He's utterly baffled and has no clue what they're talking about. Lecht says that's not a helpful response, but good for him, and that his bloodline can continue.
Lecht then says they have the perfect plan for him. Their friend Stray Dog downstairs said, to paraphrase, instead of surgery, maybe they should try medication.[0] They ask Wandering Dawn to find a chair and tie him to it. Dawn thinks this might be going a little far, though he slings Luca over his shoulder and indeed carries him further into the house. Lecht just remarks there are two rotten apples on the tree and they're trying to save the third one.
We then cut to Stray Dog, who's been going around the room, feeling and examining the runes and making rubbings for future study. (And also damaging the runes so nobody else can do anything with them.) He does his best to understand them and combine them with the Elmorze runes from the Broken Antler village, and with the help of the perronele he wears as a second skin (as they're quite talented translators), he gets a handle on what Anica did, enough that he can create a ritual to counter it. The simplest way to describe what Anica and the demon have done is they've been sharpening the townspeoples' resolve, scraping off bits of doubt and other emotions in a much more gradual and subtle way than the Broken Antler. So rather than making them into fearless berserkers, it slowly makes them into fanatics and zealots -- and even if the Leaves' mission fails, these people will still be dangerous in time.
Because of Stray Dog's musical idiom, his counter ritual is going to be built around a song. So he send his entourage off to get the ball rolling on gathering up his roadies to prepare for a performance. He then sits down and composes a song, an odious ballad that will smite that demon's influence with vulgarity and arrogance. Basically, the idea is to hit the townspeople with the emotional equivalent of a defibrillator, which should shake loose Elmorze's influence. It'll be chaotic and there'll be a little bit of collateral damage, but if the performance goes off right then the locals should go back to normal.
We cut back to upstairs, where Lecht and Wandering Dawn have locked themselves into a sitting room with Luca, who's tied to a chair. They've gotten stuff from around the house to create a ritual circle, and warded the room so they won't be interrupted, and Lecht is using Necromancy to curse Luca such that acts of blatant greed and avarice will painfully age him, shortening his lifespan.[1] Partway through the process -- which, among other things, makes sure the power is contained and doesn't directly affect anyone outside of Luca or draw the attention of any entities that might be sensitive to such energies -- Stray Dog shows up as gotten as much done on his project as he can for the moment. Naturally, he asks what the hell is going on.
Lecht explains that they're following Stray Dog's advice about being as ready to take a life as save one, so they're trying medicine instead of surgery. Wandering Dawn explains they're putting a curse on Luca, and Stray Dog agrees "fuck that guy."
So Stray Dog, with his own occult knowledge, chimes in to help harness the dangerous energies involved. Lecht recites a litany of clauses and sanctions, basically condemning Luca and explaining the curse to him.[2] They complete the ritual they've concocted, marking Luca's shoulder with a 'brand' of dead flesh that will never go away -- and in fact, when he dies, his bones will be inscribed with the curse as a warning to others.
Of course, by the time the curse is finished, Luca's passed out in the chair, foaming at the mouth a bit, and Lecht asks who's up for a drink, as it's been a long day.
It's late afternoon/early evening, by now. Stray Dog asks the others about maintaining security if, say, he were to do a show. The others volunteer to help handle crowd control if it comes to it, and Stray Dog accepts that and explains what he has in mind -- and makes it clear that if things get out of hand, they should feel free to cut their losses and get indoors. So they spend the next few hours finding a tavern-keeper willing to let him perform up on the roof, and wrangle the roadies into getting things set up to help make that happen (as well as having his own honor guard help with the crowd control).
While Stray Dog is getting set up for the show, Lecht goes out and does some detective work -- during their rummaging for supplies in the Liczka Estate earlier, they asked the servants about the fancy book where Anica found the instructions to contact Elmorze. They got the name of a Guildsman who had in fact been staying in a guest room of the house and took off after Marku's death, a man by the name of Rhion Bryn. Now they start hitting up the beggars and various street folks of Silverpost to see if they can learn anything about him, and manage to get a description -- Rhion is the red-haired guy they ran into at Nadia's on their previous visit to Silverpost. They also find out he's got a flunky, a sleazy drug-dealer sort named Betto, and they make a note to track him down later when they've got more time.
So once night's fallen, Stray Dog gets up on the roof and really puts on a show. I've described him singing and throwing parties, but this is one of the times he's been really front and center about this. It's kind of a deliberate anachronism, but his musical style is that of a metal singer, leaning heavily into the fact that the Green Sun Princes have been described as 'punk rock gods of Hell.'
His song is a profanity-laden burst of vitriol, meant to release the steam that Elmorze has been building up in the people of the city. At a high-point in the song, he brings up his claws and drags them along his shield to let out an unholy screech of pure noise to shock everyone's system.[3] Not only does it dislodge Elmorze's lingering influence from the Leaves, but it'll also blur their memories of their cultish experiences, letting them start with a clear slate.
Of course, it does this in part by sending out a ripple of pure chaos through the populace -- after all, Stray Dog's music is meant to convey notions of anarchy and rebellion, meant to stir uprisings into being. In another circumstance, he might've respected what the Leaves represented, if not for the strings being pulled to control them. This is a long way of saying that whether mystically affected by his song or not (as the supernatural effects only really hit the cult members), it does wind up kicking off a riot. The city isn't destroyed, but there is some collateral damage and it becomes a show that will be talked about for years to come.
And we'll leave off there, as Stray Dog's infernal shrieking echoes into the night.
[0]-- Lecht's re-interpretation of Stray Dog's advice of "Don't be quicker to deal death than you would be to restore the dead to life." into a medical paradigm.
[1]-- For the record, the group actually doesn't have any reason to suspect he's going to do anything like that, aside from simply knowing that he's a small-city aristocrat and capitalist.
[2]-- Again, the short version is that the more he indulges in greed, the quicker he ages. In addition, Lecht can check in on his state of health with a thought to see if he's been triggering the curse, and a massive activation will likely get their attention. Luca's all inherently aware of this as part of the magic, BTW, he's not going to activate it through ignorance.
[3]-- First, as a reminder, by 'claws' I mean Stray Dog's customized version of Wood Dragon's Claw, which he keeps up all the time because he can. And I can't remember if I've mentioned this, but his artifact shield is Irenio's Bell, an artifact that appears in the Arms of the Chosen supplement for 3e that I've converted over to Essence. It's made of orichalcum alloyed with bronze from a demon prince's temple bell, and harmonizes with the music of Malfeas.
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