The Thessaliad Redux

Well, today was fairly hysterical.

So our first scene was an accidental appearance at a massive street brawl. We didn't do very much damage, but the brawl wasn't directed at us anyway; two groups of 'employees' of a couple of local merchants were at each other's throats for reasons best left vague. One of them made the mistake of drawing a knife and got an Emissary -- one of the men/sorcerors/things that run Nexus -- on the scene. He touched the offending knife-wielder on the head and the next thing you know he was being eaten by termites. The Emissary knows what we are, by the way, and is happy for us to be around so long as we're not overt. And he sent us out to our employer, who had reason to see us.

Guess what -- that whole brawl was one big clump of punching, kicking, biting, drunken foreshadowing. One of the merchants had set 'bandits' on one of our employer's caravans and they'd stolen some "priceless antiquities", which I get the impression we're not supposed to ask about. Then the other merchants set more 'bandits' on the first 'bandits' and stole one of the other items. Turns out the two merchants are brothers and haven't spoken in a long long time. They not-so-cordially hate each other and the second bandit raid was really to piss the first guy off. We were supposed to try to buy the single item off the second merchant and find a way to get the other items off the first guy (Mellin, I think; never been much good with names).

For Mellin, I came up with a plan -- well, I am the one descended from the Solar Deliberative, okay? Anyway, plan was for me to go into Mellin's house as a bard and scope out the lay of the land, hopefully to give Narsil (Mark's character) some information so he could break in and steal 'em, if I couldn't do it myself. Well, not that I told them that last bit... Anyway, that meant that the other four had to go up to Bastion (really really really rich area of the city) while I got myself cleaned up and costumed appropriately for an elegant function. Thankfully Valandil (Toos' character) decided to get himself dolled up before he went up to Bastion because when he turned up at the costumier's our boss recommended, I'd just sent a seamstress fleeing in tears.

Allow me to explain something about Kayla. She is a consumate barbarian. She used to be a pretty, slightly dim but very talented island girl. Then she and her sister got attacked by a river dragon; her sister died, she went Exalted, kicked its scaly arse and fled the islands altogether without saying goodbye to her family -- they probably think she died, too. She remembers very little about the islands and never really talks about it other than the fact that she's seen someone killed by a river dragon -- when she sailed, she wound up in the North of the Realm and spent some time with the Reindeer-Men, hunting and tracking and skinning and tanning and all that kind of thing. She left them after around a year and went on something of a 'vision quest', which resulted in her finding her sword, then went East because she thought that was what the Unconquered Sun wanted her to do. Given she wound up in Nexus with that lot, she turned out to be right.

Anyway, the fact remains that she is an utter barbarian. She hasn't used a hairbrush in years and doesn't even remember what one's for. She hasn't worn anything but skins in a similar span of time. Face paint is for tribal war-and-hunt use only. Trying to beautify Kayla is a bit like cleaning up Encino Man ... except for one thing. She might be kind of insane, but she does have command of the language and some very strict views on things. Like people touching her inappropriately.

So when she goes to a costumier's and is being measured for a dress...

The first costumier threw me out after I gave a seamstress a black eye. And Valandil turned up in time to keep me from killing anyone in the second place; just tried to explain that "she's not from around here". Then came to me and had to explain dress fittings and the whole figure-hugging thing...

Kayla: There will be no hugging!
Valandil: It's the dress that will be hugging...
Kayla: It is an inanimate object; it cannot hug.

You get the idea. Comedy of errors. While they were finally fitting me for the dress without my trying to kill them, then fixing very long hair that hadn't been brushed in years and doing my makeup, the other four went to the second merchant. Instead of wanting money for the one item he had, he insisted that his payment would be for us to steal the other antiquities from Mellin and humiliate him at the very party I was supposed to be entertainment at. He'd get the three men invitations and have White Moon Lotus there as his escort (in the most tacky, figure revealling misogynist's dream of a costume ever designed by man). They didn't tell him about me. I'm apparently ace in the hole.

After the wardrobing stupidity, I met them outside the gates to the lift that took people up the cliff to Bastion. None of them recognised me until I spoke to them, at which point Valandil did a lot of babbling until I asked him to go along with me to the Bardic Guild -- I'd been given an address and a contact by our employer. The first man we saw was very annoyed at Valandil but really softened when he got a look at me -- I just kept my mouth shut as much as possible. When we went up to meet the contact, we heard a repeated *whh-TISSH* -- apparently the Guildmaster has some ... eeghy tastes. We got in, I auditioned (using a nice little charm that gives me one automatic success in performance for every two motes of Essence I lay down) and was not only permitted to be slipped on the books for this Mellin 'do but invited to sign onto the Guild's books permanently. We didn't get the time to discuss that because the Guildmaster had an appointment with Mr Whippy.

After that, I realised "Hair tangles when you sleep on it, and the whale-grease would wash off. So I went to White Moon Lotus to lament my lack of "torture implements". When I finally explained I meant 'hairbrush', and enquired about makeup, we went to see our employer. We asked about a number of things: how to get our weapons into the house (we don't; I have six-inch hairpins, but that's about it); what to do about the makeup and hair (we got appointments with the costumiers and various bathers, masseuses and pamperers for the next day) and whether I could sign on to the Guild books (not a problem so long as it doesn't interfere with my other duties). In the course of the last, I mentioned the Guildmaster and his infatuation with Mr Whippy. I did apologise for troubling him as I left, and White Moon Lotus got told, "She can apologise all she likes, but that image is going to be with me for days..."

So after a bit of exercise with the Blade (and cutting a clothesline out from under Narsil and Valandil, who were pulling a Crouching Moron, Hidden Wisdom) and a good night's sleep, White Moon Lotus and I submitted ourselves to pampering and turned up at the party. I got there first, got treated with very little respect (jealousy; I was the prettiest musician there...), then White Moon Lotus on whasisname's arm and the dress (garland of plumes on the head, silver bikini top, gauzy blue loincloth thing and about thirty pounds of silver jewellery and bells), then the others. Not much happened -- I finally got the warning about Mellin's majordomo (which none of my group had thought to give to me beforehand -- thanks, guys), Narsil went sneaking into the shadows ... and then a Dragonblood Exalted of the Realm turned up at the party. The guys who are trying to hunt the Solars down. And he'll know exactly what we are just by looking.

Can we say, "oh shit"?

Anyway, 7th Sea tomorrow, Firefly Tuesday, Mage Sunday. Simson's going to be awhile in the turning up to the group but that's sort of okay because we're running a fairly loaded game anyway and I'm about to start the Pontypridd storyline so it'd be nice if they could get through that before Simson leaps into action. I'd rather not have Brenna cut him up for not turning up to the 19 August thing...

Yep. This is my life. Oh, the excitement...

There are hardly the words in English to describe how much arse I kicked today.

Okay, so there was a lot of dithering pre-game. I mean a lot of dithering. I was happy to let most of it go on, though, because a fair bit of it was explaining Mage to Kat, Mark and Simson. Yeah, we're having a character gen session on Sunday 13th, time to be decided, but I got a fair idea of what a lot of people were going to be doing anyway. Seems Toos has decided to go for the Euthanatos after all, and Andy O's playing a Hermetic. Thankfully, he's playing a different house than cholten99 is, so it's not going to get overly stupid. Kat seems to have settled on Cult of Ecstasy, which strikes me as odd until she mentioned the Nordic berzerker branch of the Cult. Great -- this Ecstatic gets off on battle fury. The others I don't know so much yet, but I'm going to send off a all-Mage mailing asking people who know what Tradition they want to play to let me know as soon as possible so I know where to focus my reading. Andy O's already loaned me the books on Order of Hermes, Cult of Ecstasy and Euthanatos, so I can at least get that out of the way.

Anyway, we finally started the session. We've all been in Nexus for at least six months, working for this guy who knows we're Exalted. He called us into his office and said, "There's something breaking into a few of my warehouses and eating my livestock, my staff ... anything that can be eaten. Go down and make it go away." Fine, okay, we can do that. Funnily, Kat, Toos and I showed our character's personalities perfectly simply in the way that we got to the warehouse from our employer's house. Toos, well-bred chocobo breeder, rode 'his' war chocobo through the streets, saying "Excuse me" in a haughty sort of way and letting the bird peck anyone who didn't move out of the way. Kat, or 'White Moon Lotus', minced through on her racing chocobo (named 'Peacock' until Toos' character explained that actually, the racer was female) saying, "Excuse me" every few steps. Kayla, riding her war-bird (named Astaroth; Toos' character accepted a bet that he could sell the bad-tempered thing from a cousin and turns out I'm the only living thing it'll let approach it) simply pulled an Andre the Giant -- "EVERYBODY MOVE!" Then when Andy O said "That just sums them up in a nutshell, doesn't it?", we laughed so hard we nearly puked.

There's something I'm going to have to try to keep in mind in this game; I'm apparently looked on as the leader. This has something to do with my Caste -- I'm a Zenith, which means my kind once led the Solar Deliberative, the ancient governing body of the Realm. But there's also the fact that Kayla, despite being the youngest of them, has actually been Exalted the longest. Actually, it turns out that Kayla's been Exalted a little bit longer than Andy O wanted his characters to be, but he was so taken with my background that he let it go. Sometimes being a writer simply rocks.

So down we go, tracking a blood smell and going into the sewers, where we got attacked by ROUS; three of them. And my dice were hating me, absolutely hating me. I need to separate my dice out between 7th Sea dice, Exalted dice and Mage dice or something. Actually, there might be something in the fact that I loaned Andy P my dice on Thursday. Oh God, I'm becoming a superstitious gamer. Muh.

After that, we went down into this cavernous area that was, apparently, a part of the Old City, the one on which Nexus was built. I had changed dice by that point, and when Simson's character (this benevolent monk type whose only skills are in hitting things and cooking) got an arrow through the shoulder, I did what any self-respecting lunatic with a vaguely Northern Barbarian mindset would do -- I charged, waving the Blade (orichaclum diklaive nearly as big as I am. Blundered into a sort of were-rat, holding a bow and wearing a stunned look as this teeny little nothing of a girl barreled into him and, by dint of a very good sword, some expenditure of Essence to wield it and a very good role courtesy of the new dice, nearly cut him in half. His guts fell out, he sank to his knees, and I beheaded him. Can I just say I see why people play combat bunnies now?

There were five more of them. White Moon Lotus shot an arrow right through one of their heads, Mark's character (in the only thing he actually did all session), used a very nice charm that allowed him to throw one knife and stick an opponent in several different places, and then we charged. I tried a manoeuvre that was described to Sparhawk in the Elenium, for quick battlefield disembowelment -- "Lateral incision just below the navel. Then kick 'em over backwards. Everything ought to just fall out at that point." It kind of worked, but it had a sword and it tried to stick me. However, I do have one charm that's all kinds of useful -- called "Reed in the Wind". Basically doubles my dice pool for Dodge+Dex. Didn't hit me. Ha! Anyway, between that, Simson's character going excruciatingly klaive-fu (he has a Grand daiklaive and a charm that I will be saving up for called "Call the Loyal Steel", which brings your weapon to your hand no matter where you are) and Toos' not-really-combatant managing to pin one rat-thing like a lepidoptery specimen, the only one that survived was the one Mark's character had stabbed, and it survived just long enough to mention the mother rat and chuckle wickedly before it died. So we turn around -- huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge rat-thing, with many heads and tails. It was like Siamese sextuplet rats or something.

So we attack it. Simson's character basically turns into the Tazmanian Devil wielding seven feet of bladed nasty and lops paws off, but not until Toos and I managed to kill two of its heads. Toos' character, who's got this Heron Grace charm, got on top of it and was stabbing it from on its back, whereas I just ran under it, stuck the Blade in its trachea and twisted. (This got the Blade tangled in its fur -- and its trachea -- so I grabbed the hilt, swung myself up so my feet were planted on its neck and yanked, managing to not land prone.) It took a swipe at me but I've still got Reed in the Wind so it missed me and I managed to lop a paw off it. Simson, meanwhile, gouged a trench through its side and down it went. So a couple of us went to finish off the remaining heads and I think Andy O was a little miffed that I'd dealt that level of damage without taking even a tiny bit of damage myself, because he gave me a three Lethal rat-bite without even giving me a chance to dodge. Anyway, we looked for a nest, couldn't find one and I hacked off one of the heads and presented it to our employer as a trophy, still covered in rat-gore and sewage, I might add. Then I cleaned myself up and invited White Moon Lotus to the tavern where I was performing. Yeah, my character plays lute and sings -- even before her Exaltation she sang well enough to make grown men cry. With a touch of Performance Enhancing charm, matters can only improve, and White Moon Lotus saw this utter barbarian sing quiet, beautiful laments and love ballads and basically went, "Bloody hell!" Eh. Went well. Generous game, so five XP. Hee!

Yeah. So. I rock. 7th Sea tomorrow, too. I like gaming.