Friday, 17 January 2014

Next Exalted story plan

Exalted plot line re: Ragara Dinyacout and the Fair Folk

Gossamer items are traded for the lives of slaves which are drained and given back.  Occasionally guards as well.  The tricky part of this encounter is that it will involve combat with characters that are superior to the player character.  The guards are mere mortals, but they could be elite and so the regular dramatic rules about combat with mortals fails.  Regular dramatic combat rules are when combat occurs against weaker non magical foes, the game master treats them as such, every three successes when hitting the foe counts as a level of damage, it need not be rolled and each foe has only three levels of health instead of seven.  This dramatically increases the speed of combat for lesser foes.  The guards in this case will be slave guards for the most part, the dragon blooded character will not be a real combatant but a bureaucrat, to make him an easier fight.  But the Fair Folk will be very deadly, even if they are Worker Caste and poor in combat, they will still be deadly and able to warp people with their thoughts.  

Fair Folk are intelligences of the pure chaos that dwell beyond the edges of creation when in Creation, they are affected by the stability of Creation and are forced into a fixed shape, but it would be wrong to assume that they just how they appear.  It would be more reasonable to think that they are malleable by nature and can change things to fit their nature.  More specifically they change things to fit the story of the way things should be, to them.  In this case Worker Caste Rakasha (the name they call themselves) have raised themselves to Nobility and have overthrown their cruel master, the Noble Caste Rakasha.  However, this is extremely unlikely as Noble Rakasha are superior to workers in every way.  The Noble Rakasha wanted a dramatic story arch that would be worthy of a tale to his caste deeper in the Wyld, so manipulated hi own story, he shaped the his story and those around him to suit his needs and he was captured by his underlings.  

On a tour in the south of the Wyld, Stanza like a Summer Breeze that Harkens to the Winter to Come, was waylaid by a local nature spirit,  his retainers, Words of Chill and  Urgent Chill took him at unawares and bound him in Gossamer. Summer Breeze means to spend a century or so under the power of his lessors so that he might gain a fury that drives him forth so that he may never be subjugated again and thus rise to prominence within the Jet Court of his peers.  He has spent the better of a century already in this bondage, but has not worked out a way to escape and subjugate is imprisonors, that should happen in a decade or so and defeat his foes in a great struggle.

Alas, Summer Breezes story arch has encountered a unforeseen plot twist, the Nameless coming to investigate and stop the Dragon Blooded from selling slaves to his oppressors in exchange for gossamer items of little worth.  Seizing upon the plot twist as an means of early escape, he sends the Solar Exalted to extinguish the Bonefire at the center of the Freehold to free herself and bring the freehold down.  Once the Freehold is compromised Summer Breeze will stand with her new Ally to fight her oppressors and their ally the Dragon Blooded Ragara Dinyacout and fight them in a great Battle.

If the Nameless acquits himself well in the battle, Stanza like a Summer Breeze that Hakens to the Winter to Come will grant him a limited boon in addition to the unravaged slaves, to be named later, when they meet again.  If, however, the Nameless does not do so well in the combat with the superior Dragon Blooded, Summer Breeze will block the killing blow and defeat Ragara Dinyacout, if only he would grant her a boon at a later time.  If the boon is granted, The Nameless will be miraculously healed and will be given the unravaged slaves.  The Boon is important as it will tie a future story to Summer Breeze and the Nameless and that will increase the power of the story that he will tell in the Jet Court.

It should be noted that the motivations of the Fair Folk cannot be understood by mortals; the Rakasha are alien in every sense of the word to Creation.

The Freehold will have the appearance of an Ice Palace, hidden in the depths of a lingering snowdrift.  The ice crystals that form the Palace shift and move at odd whims.  If the Nameless tries to ambush someone prematurely to Summer Breeze's wishes, they may form a mirror that reflects the impending attack.  The Freehold is large, larger than the Nameless will get to see.  Summer Breeze has split it in two, the first part where the two Worker Caste live and hold Summer Breeze prisoner complete with fake Bonefire and font of Liquid Ice to put out the fake Bonefire.  If the Bone fire is put out, the bonds that hold Summer Breeze will break, freeing her and putting her with the Nameless against their combined foes.  The second part of the Freehold is the greater part, where Summer Breeze might normally live when not at court, it contains the real Bonefire, which can't normally be simply put out, but must be willed out by an act of shaping the Bonefire with their mind.

Ragara Dinyacout, was a bureaucrat with a problem many years ago.  He had a slave discipline problem, many more escapes than the other administrators and his overseers had noticed and he was told that he had to deal with the problem or he would be replaced.   

Of course it could all go into the garbage when we start playing,

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