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Nightfall - Daybreak Caste Abyssal


Viatos

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Nightfall in the Ruins of Paradise Reveals No Dawn Was Ever Promised

Formerly known as Ket, a mortal child of Heaven's untended gardens

 

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Concept: Savant necromancer seeking the secrets of resurrection and the comfort of a home.
Role: Physician, investigator, explorer, minion support.
 
Exalt: Daybreak Caste Abyssal
 
Anima: Black light boils down from the sky, edged and intertwined with the red of old wine, the green of shadowed ivy, and an ancient rotted blue. The light gathers to create the impression of black-walled catacombs full of unsettling color; everywhere is the deep, slow throb of a monstrous beating heart.
 
Intimacies
Defining: "I'll save them. I'll save them all."
Major: "No one should have to die in terror or live in despair."
Major: "There are dangers fit for the Exalted: we should face them, that our lessers need not."
Major: Creation (Curiosity)
Minor: "Knowledge shouldn't be forbidden."
Minor: Silence Like Flowers Growing (Loyalty)
Minor: Heaven (Boredom)
 
Goals
Find pieces for the Great Work.
Explore the myriad wonders yet remaining in the Age of Sorrows.
Unravel the mystery at the tangled heart of the Divine Threads.

 

Character Concept

Nightfall is a slender man, his once-color of pale gold now wintered to something colder, warm russet hair sharpened to a bloody spill. He's tall but stoops, a lifetime of craning down for a better view reflected in his curving spine, and his voice is dry and quiet without being soft. Old shadows linger around his eyes, the way he smiles often but seldom laughs, the dull scent of blood and autumn that follows him everywhere.

A scholar of life, his passage through death has estranged him from a formerly clinical nature and opened him to the doomed beauty of the necromancer's art. There's more than a little of the maniacal in him now, carefully shackled by the tatters of his human nature to serve his greater purpose. That purpose is the resurrection - after a fashion, for true life can never again be fashioned from death - of his people, a nameless tribe of savants and foragers who had eked out a meager living in the war-scarred wilds of Heaven.

The Story of Nightfall

Such wilderness is ancient beyond reckoning and lovely even untamed as all things of Heaven are, but it is far from safe - forgotten temples to dead or distant gods creak with malevolent traps, wards, and sleepless guardians; the spawn of the unknowable ancients wander overgrown orchards, driven by alien dreams. Nightfall - then Ket - came with his people once to a labyrinth of uncertain origin, and beneath it found softly-glowing mushrooms that their sages knew promised health and vigor. A promising place to shelter and settle, at least for a time.

But there were other things in the dark, and beneath the reach of the light of Yu-Shan Ket's tribe died to feed them. Ket died too, more or less, frantically applying his craft as an apothecary to salve wounds beyond staunching and ease pain beyond meaning. But a voice spoke to him in the dark, and asked him: would he bargain the life of the world for his own? Surrounded by the death of all he had ever known, it did not seem, then, so terrible a pact. What more was there to lose?

So he lived, more or less, and from the bodies of his people he coaxed awful strength, conquered the things that had killed them, and found the center of their maze-bound hive - a strange, slow-beating "heart," a great shape of soulsteel and pale blue leather, within which he could hear faintly a susurrus of familiar voices, lost in some endless night on the other side of life and death both. Even Exalted, the breaking of that heart has proven beyond his power. When he ventured forth into the great city - nearly an ending, but for the swift and giddy patronage of the Convention on the Dead and, more quietly, the machinations of Jupiter and Nara-O - he found none among artisan-gods, gods of ruin, or those who governed death who could offer him succor.

But Nightfall in the Ruins of Paradise Reveals No Dawn Was Ever Promised has other patrons in lower places. And they had ideas aplenty. It made a terrible sense, as soon as they whispered to him. A heart, of course, yearns for a body...

Potential Plot Hooks

The War of Worms and Flowers

The intrigues of Heaven and the Underworld are endless, twisting shadow-games two realms with only an arbitrary understanding of one another play for uncertain stakes and purpose. The Convention on the Dead seeks knowledge and, perhaps, amiable relations with the sprawling result of the broken cycle of reincarnation; the dead yearn for frustrated destinies and the blessings forever denied them. Deathlords advance wicked schemes and Heavenly agendas see ghosts crushed mercilessly where Fate cannot abide their interference.

 

Histories Like Fishing Line

Mortals in Yu-Shan are not ultimately native to it, however many generations their line might have walked its streets: perhaps Nightfall's people have history in the world below, or perhaps their divine origin was a god who brought them there - favored gardeners in some older age, maybe, or simply guests who strayed too far from the Celestial City's light and became progenitors by accident. Perhaps the relationship is less benign: descendant of thieves who sought the Peaches of Immortality and were banished, or the cult of a now-forbidden god scattered into the wilderness with their divinity's condemnation.

 

The Heart's Untold Tale

Nightfall wants to bring his people back (in a way) from the strange and malicious heart-thing that swallowed them, some hateful craft from the dawn age of the world, when the ancients experimented and knew no boundaries to their strange sciences. To this end, he's trying to make it into the core of some arbitrarily-complex necromantic project, but a body needs PARTS. Artifacts, behemoths, fae wonders, the strange produce of demesnes and a thousand unique miracles litter Creation, and the mad dreams of the Neverborn have a way of hinting which might prove useful in his quest.

 

Character Goals

Aside from the above, Nightfall is the scion of a wandering people, now taken from him; he has no home anywhere in Heaven, Creation, or the Underworld's cold halls. He doesn't know it, but Jupiter might: in his secret heart he craves a place that is truly his, that he could be of, and the Divine Threads offer a sense of camaraderie that is perhaps a first step along that path. As well, what better way even unknowing to search for somewhere to one day settle than with an organization that sends him all over everywhere?

OOC Goals

A game of rotating adventures and vignettes and opportunities to explore Creation sounds amazing. I love the setting of Exalted and its bizarre corners, from the strangely heroic death-cults of prison-turned-city Fortitude to Wolf's Paw, the city whose people are subjugated beneath the tyranny of intelligent wolves.

I also like the idea of getting to play a character whose humanity is the battleground of his bosses in Heaven and his masters in the Underworld, a man without real loyalty to either side but who is nevertheless forced to balance their competing interests.

 

Roleplaying Sample!

Nightfall never even made it to the gates of Yu-Shan.

He had been walking for days through ruined vineyards and across curiously geometric streams when the accident happened: the rotted boards of a thousand-years-abandoned teahouse he'd been scavenging gave way, simple as that, and the wine cellar beneath was vast with its long-ago need to cater to the thirst of gods of revelry, gluttony, or drink itself. When he hit the ground, he snapped things. For a bleak hour he thought he might die.

Dread power burned in him then. It was a struggle, but not an impossibility, to do what needed to be done - to set bone and stitch split skin, to perform surgery without tools - but the power that burned IN him soon burned THROUGH him, and rose in a conflagration of Abyssal might into the sky. The Aerial Legion responded swiftly: by the time of his namesake, he was being hauled out and surrounded by tiger-faced gods of war and steel-skinned gods of resilience. And also by others: a feather-cloaked man with a dozen crystal spectacles layered one atop the other; a shriveled old woman with moss for hair and beetle-black eyes; a person Nightfall cannot remember who came cloaked in green starlight, wearing also a deep frown in greeting.

He was unprecedented. Unthinkable. And yet, some in that company argued, it was just as unthinkable that the opportunity should be squandered. There were those in Heaven who knew something of the lands of the dead, the vast powers that had claimed many of them; there were even a few who had heard fell murmurs of the Exalted knights they employed. But murmurs were all. Nightfall was flesh and blood and bone, bewildered, and...potentially...amenable.

In truth, it wasn't much of a choice - the law of Heaven did not permit his wanton murder, but it was clear enough consequences could be conjured should he have refused the Convention on the Dead's offer to make him their guest in exchange for - dialogues. Discussions. Studies. Only lightly invasive, he was assured.

It didn't matter. Nightfall was raw with loss and arrogant with power and even as the gods spoke in one ear, the Neverborn whispered in the other. None of it made much sense to him.

What made sense came later, in the quiet of a celestial tavern's hastily-prepared guest suite:

"You want to know how to save them," said the robed god of secrets known only to one from a place Nightfall could not quite see. "And I do not know that. But if they could not be saved at all, perhaps that is something I would know, so there is hope, I think, in that. Perhaps not enough. But there are other things you could learn. There are others who have walked where you would walk and such records are distasteful here: vaulted, but untreasured. Secrets even your master - oh yes, I know of them - couldn't share with you.

I know where keys are kept and whose debts make them blind. I can offer you that. And I know one more thing: I know already, by glimmers, you are coming to regret the deal you made.

Make a deal with me. I can't promise you any greater hope - no dawn is ever promised, and what you dream is impossible - but you are of the Mighty, now, and may yet accomplish impossible things.

Which is what I would ask of you."

There was silence then, and in it Nara-O departed, for he needed no further answer: the secret spark in Nightfall's heart was clearer to him than anything spoken ever could be.

And so the Divine Threads entangled Nightfall in the Ruins of Paradise Reveals No Dawn Was Ever Promised: and so the bearers of life eternal won the service of a knight now lost to life.

Edited by Viatos (see edit history)
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CHARACTER SHEET

Attributes

PHYSICAL SOCIAL MENTAL
Strength •• Charisma •••• Perception ••••
Dexterity ••••• Manipulation Intelligence •••••
Stamina •• Appearance •• Wits ••

Languages: Riverspeak, Old Realm

 

Abilities

Caste

Craft (Architecture) •••
Lore •••
Medicine ••••• (The Dead)
Investigation •••••
Occult ••••• (Necromancy)

 

Favored 

Brawl ••••• (Claws)
Socialize
Survival •••••
Stealth •••••
Larceny •• (Trespassing)

 

Unfavored

Presence •••
L
inguistics

Merits

Artifact •••• (Twice-Forsaken, a set of soulsteel articulated plate)

Familiar • (Shadow of Wings, a traditional vampire bat)

Backing •• (Silence Like Flowers Growing; this Merit is loyalty-contingent)

Contacts ••• (Ghosts and cultists in thrall to Silence Like Flowers Growing; this Merit is loyalty-contingent)

Language • (Riverspeak; Nightfall's native tongue is a rural dialect of Old Realm)

Mentor ••• (Silence Like Flowers Growing; this Merit is loyalty-contingent)

Whispers ••••

 

 

Charms

Craft

Frenzied Forge Within (complete basic and major projects within a few seconds to an hour)

 

Investigation

Crime-Unveiling Wickedness (get pinged if something or someone is worth investigating)

Uncanny Detective Practice (Guilt-Sensing Eye) (instantly profile a character with extra benefits)

Depraved Heart Sympathy (profile a character who isn't present by examining evidence of their actions or their belongings)

 

Larceny

Death Claims All (steal things automatically unless opposed by magic)

Iniquitous Verdict Assurance (conceal evidence very well, and mundane attempts to investigate always fail)

 

Medicine

Flesh-Mending Discipline (allow supernatural recovery from wounds over time; the living must rest to heal, the undead can act normally)

Dance of Writhing Maggots (treat serious and crippling injuries, including amputations and aggravated damage)

Necrotic Graft Technique (add an undead graft that grants mutations. slightly more effective on undead)

Life-Mocking Assembly (either raise a humanoid undead or add various generic bonuses to the undead)

 

Occult

Ivory Circle Necromancy

  • Shaping Ritual: Collector of the Skull Diary
  • Control Spell: Blessure of Bloody Respite (create a portal that opens onto a large sanctum for activities. As a control effect, the portal can be hidden inside a coffin, casket, or similar vessel and moved around with the imbued object, as well as lasting indefinitely. If Nightfall stays in one place for too long - the example given is sleeping - the air around him begins to bleed.)
  • Other Spells: Assassin's Pyre (adapted Virtuous Guardian of Flame) (creates a hovering flame that becomes a defending sword in combat)

 

Presence

Barrow-King's Authority (raise zombies with Defining Loyalty for 1m, mindless undead have Major Loyalty if no one else controls them)

 

Stealth

Flawless Assassination Style (Join Battle with Dexterity + Stealth)

Shadow Cloak Technique (In dim lighting or darkness, become impossible to notice for casual observers)

Edited by Viatos (see edit history)
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BOOK-KEEPING

Bonus Points (15):

  • 1 on Craft 2 -> 3.
  • 2 on Investigation 3 -> 5.
  • 2 on Medicine 3 -> 5.
  • 2 on Occult 3 -> 5.
  • 2 on Brawl 3 -> 5.
  • 2 on Survival 3 -> 5.
  • 2 on Stealth 3 -> 5.
  • 2 on Lore 1 -> 3
  • 1 on Presence 2 -> 3

 

An Abyssal who yet serves a Deathlord receives that Deathlord as a Mentor and five free Merit dots divided between an assortment of specific backgrounds; for Nightfall, this is split between Backing 2 and Contacts 3. Should he leave the service of Silence Like Flowers Growing, he would generally also lose these Merits.

Edited by Viatos (see edit history)
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EVOCATIONS

Twice-Forsaken, soulsteel articulated plate 

The necromancer-kings of the Rotting Lotus gave awful form to endless accursed ambitions; at the apex of their power was the construction of the Horizon Despair, a citadel of horrors cobbled from the wreckage and mass grave of an atelier-manse of the ancient world. Their monstrosity crawled and collected, birthing nightmares from the death and destruction its scrabbling claws lifted to its slavering undermaw, and in time Horizon Despair took wing, daring even the distant kingdom of Heaven. But this affront was too far: its advance first stalled by the Aerial Legion, the great citadel was ultimately pierced through by a falling star, sundered, and slain. Its corpse-ruin was ejected from Yu-Shan: it fell through Creation into the Underworld, a shattering defeat that heralded the Rebellion's coming end - its sterile wreckage to one day yield a perfected design in the peerless construct Juggernaut.

Little touched by necromancy passes gently except by a necromancer's deliberate will; and gentleness was not the will of Tzadal the Accursed, architect and sole survivor of the doomed endeavor, who hid within a broken tower-phalange and wept to see his dream no less destroyed, along with his lover, his children, and any hope for his own future. He turned his art to the little that remained, constructing from his hideaway a mourning cenotaph to immortalize his loss. Yet as he labored, the work of his hands resisted him - too haunted by its former purpose, too hungry for a victory that could never come. Every soul he hammered into the metal strengthened its will and denied his, and in the end a whispering madness overtook him, and he performed a final, frenzied abhorrence.

It was not until he had finished the armor he never meant to make that Tzadal realized what he'd done. And he wailed with the knowing.

Twice-Forsaken has been worshipped as a symbol of unknown potential by the Empty Throat tribe; it was worn by the scavenger Ixaj, a Dragon of Heaven, who used its power to search for and surround the Seven-Orchards Thief. Most recently it was born by the mortal necromancer Varmorant the Scribed, at terrible cost to unlock its attunement, as he delved a forsaken labyrinth of Yu-Shan's unmapped wilds known to ages past as the Black Spiral. He never returned from his search.

The armor is a work of bleak grandeur, its design suggesting in miniature the citadel of its origin. Crenellated spires of soulsteel and polished marble create an imposing silhouette, draped everywhere with banners of black silk that fully shroud Twice-Forsaken. When they flutter aside, they reveal the armor's uncanny passengers: clinging gargoyles made from soulsteel and moonsilver, both chiropteran and verminous in appearance, with uncomfortably bright eyes of green jade. There are eight in all, one for each of Tzadal's children. The gorget holds a hearthstone slot; another is hidden between parapet-ribs along the side.

 

Attunement: 6m

Type: Heavy (+11 Soak, Hardness 10, Mobility Penalty −2)

Tags: None

Hearthstone slot(s): 2

Era: Rotting Lotus Rebellion

Evocations of Twice-Forsaken

Twice-Forsaken, though conceived as a monument proclaiming sorrow, has abandoned its proposed design: it dreams soft, dark dreams of creeping conquest renewed. Its Evocations are themed around stealthy invasion, the acquisition and animation of corpses, and establishing fortified territory. The armor benefits from the Silent tag despite its bulk, and the bearer awakens Flight of the Belfry at no cost.

 

Flight of the Belfry
Cost: 2m (4m); Mins: Essence 1
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Resonant
Duration: Instant or Indefinite
Prerequisites: None

Erupting from beneath their shroud, Twice-Forsaken's wretched flock pulls and strains at its silken draperies, driven by memory of freedoms now impossible.

This Charm may be used in response to a fall or similar hurtling impact, reducing the effective length of the fall by (Essence/2, rounded up) range bands.

It may also be activated while the armor is unworn for a committed surcharge of two motes; while sustained, this commitment allows Twice-Forsaken to rise unsteadily into the air and lurch as the Exalt directs. It acts as a bound familiar, including the ability to share its senses (which are equivalent to an ordinary human's) but can't travel more than a mile from the Exalt without falling from the sky, inanimate until retrieved. If necessary, it can take physical actions with a dicepool of the Exalt's (Occult); it has an effective Strength of (her Essence), but is far too clumsy to contribute to combat.

Resonant: The armor's unnatural stealth subtracts the Exalt's (Essence) in successes from efforts to notice it creeping about while animated.

Edited by Viatos (see edit history)
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Interesting application. Very poetic, and beautifully written. You clearly have a gift with words. And its a very interesting concept: a necromancer abyssal that wants to somehow bring his people back as a way to make a home for himself once gain. I do think a character whose nature is to wander could do very well in a game like this.

That being said, I am having a really hard time getting a feel for your character. There's not a lot of character shown in the RP sample, and the plot hooks are very vague. Even the plot hooks read as extremely open ideas, like the character would be interested in any aspect aspect of heaven or earth or the underworld or the 1st age. It's a broad range to pull from, which is nice, but it also gives the ST very little to work with.

Again, the writing style is beautiful and paints a beautiful picture. I feel like you probably actually do have a clear image of who your character is and what they are all about. The one character goal I can pull out of the application, wanting a place to belong, is a compelling overarching goal. And wanting to explore fits very well with this game's setting. But I would really like to get a more clear picture of who your character is so I know better of what to expect from them and what to throw at them as the ST.

Some questions I would be interested in the answers to, so I can better understand your character:

  • Who is their Deathlord? And if Nightfall doesn't know yet, what impressions does he have of them so far?
  • Is Nightfall being given strict or lose orders from their Deathlord? Are they obeying or ignoring or fleeing their master?
  • What methods, if any, has Nightfall already tried to get his people back?
  • How does Nightfall prefer to approach a new problem: force, curiosity, knowledge, social flare, trickery, passivity, caution, or send someone else to deal with it?
  • I get that there are motivations he doesn't know about yet. What motivations does he think he is pursuing right now?
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I think I misunderstood the assignment, with apologies, and hope I still have time to course correct.

 

The Character in Greater Detail

Nightfall was a physician to his people, and his people died horribly, and that broke him just a little bit. His driving motivation is their "resurrection," and coupled with the loss it's turned him from what we might think of as a "professional" to a little more of a mad scientist. He wants to explore undeath to figure out what's possible, what's helpful, what's a dead end. In Heaven that'd be a fast track to sanction - not to mention most of the population are spirits without flesh or mortal souls. But Creation is rich with life, and some of it is quite disagreeable to the rest of it, and so long as he's doing what his divine patrons want done, he hopes to have chances to learn and experiment with limited risk of the Hunt stopping him short.

Quietly, and hardly with the approval of the Whispers in the back of his head, he's also pretty upset at how little chance his people had. They were clever and brave and had been exploring Heaven's wilds for generations, and they were slaughtered by something they couldn't understand, could not have defended against. It seems ugly to him, to have so little agency in one's own death. All things are Fated to die, on this his patrons above and below agree, but they shouldn't have to die screaming, helpless, and terrified. Whatever tasks the Divine Thread wants doing, they're tasks suited to Exalted might - maybe helping to shape a secret Fate could include heading off some of the nastier ones.

Some Intimacies:

  • "Knowledge shouldn't be forbidden." (Minor)
  • "No one should have to die in terror or live in despair." (Major)
  • "There are dangers fit for the Exalted: we should face them, that our lessers need not." (Major)
  • "I'll save them. I'll save them all." (Defining)
  • Heaven (Boredom; Minor)
  • Creation (Curiosity; Major)

 

Quote
  • Who is their Deathlord? And if Nightfall doesn't know yet, what impressions does he have of them so far?

My pitch for a Deathlord is Silence Like Flowers Growing, one of the unnamed Deathlords left to playgroups to detail or not. Silence is a meditative and glacial-minded Deathlord who believes, at odds with some of her fellows, that struggle and conflict breed life more than they do death - the hot vigor of survival inspires heroism, makes life dear and encourages its celebration. She works to draw Creation into undeath voluntarily - to offer ghosthood and revenance as solace, comfort, and an escape from life's ills. To this end she also improves the conditions of undeath within her dominion, sourcing luxuries and public works, raising the bones of dead cities to new grandeur, and funding ethereal art. She is also, dangerously, a rehabilitator of soulsteel and spectres, easing their madness and clamor into gentle contemplations of eternity and nothingness. In this, her fellows fear she strays too close to heresy; but it is her faith that perfecting painless undeath will one day be worth more to the Neverborn than all the red ruin of all the bright kingdoms in all the world.

In her perfect vision, it will one day seem an ugly madness to live rather than to die, and all that is will pass into undeath, and her methods will reach a point of such refinement that when she shows the fallen titans their once-Creation lifeless and cold, it will be more than a hollow comfort: it will be a chance to settle the hearts of the Neverborn themselves, and her masters will know, at last, sleep untroubled by the nightmare of living.

Quote
  • Is Nightfall being given strict or lose orders from their Deathlord? Are they obeying or ignoring or fleeing their master?

Loose; an Abyssal Exalting in Heaven is unprecedented, and his swift recruitment by the Convention on the Dead and the Divine Threads has lead to extraordinary caution. This is an opportunity for the Underworld as much as Heaven and one his Deathlord's rivals are fiercely jealous of. Thus far, she's been careful: she convenes with him by mortal and ghostly messengers in Creation, delivering her letters or the many tomes she's written on her philosophy, asking only that he redistribute them to those in need after reading them for himself. She grants him use of her resources in the usual fashion; when she has asked more directly for his service, it's been to defend her assets or shepherd those amenable to her message from those who would wrest them to different perspectives.

Thus far, he's served just as requested. He sees her as an esoteric but noble being, and the light loyalty she asks has been an easy burden. He's aware that his Heavenly patrons disapprove, but as of yet there's been no direct conflict of interest.

 

Quote
  • What methods, if any, has Nightfall already tried to get his people back?

He raised their bodies, but of course those are just zombies. He tried to fetch their souls, but the "heart" isn't giving them up, a mysterious plot device too powerful as yet to contend with. He knows they're in there, but he can't pull them free. So, his plan is to give them - and the "heart" - a body. Something that, constructed properly, might offer the lost expression and experience in the world once more, even if it's not...exactly...life, and certainly not life as they knew it. He wants to construct a necromantic monstrosity. Perhaps that's what the "heart" wants, too.

To this end Nightfall is looking for "pieces," signified by Whispers, which are of use towards completing his Great Work. This was meant to serve as an infinitely-reusable hook; the entire project is of arbitrary scope, and the idea was any mission that might bring him into contact with powerful beings, the treasures of the Mighty, ancient places, or even just material wealth could thus be appropriate: where getting paid in traditional terms doesn't mean much to most Exalts, he's engaged in a vast project that'll require all kinds of strange resources from Dynastic jade armor to the body parts of behemoths to ten thousand silver dinars worth of whale oil.

 

Quote
  • How does Nightfall prefer to approach a new problem: force, curiosity, knowledge, social flare, trickery, passivity, caution, or send someone else to deal with it?

He's an intensely curious person. He likes to understand how things work and isn't above jabbing at them to see what the reaction is, or taking unnecessary risks just to get a more complete picture, but he prefers to endanger himself before others (a mix of altruism and a simple "I can take it" arrogance). Of course, he is an Abyssal and a necromancer - the mindless undead are tools to him, and the affection he feels towards "favorites" is the cool regard for a quality knife rather than the love one might bear a pet - so he's happy enough to employ such measures FIRST (and in case of disaster, have the smoking carcasses dragged back for study) where circumstance allows.

 

Quote
  • I get that there are motivations he doesn't know about yet. What motivations does he think he is pursuing right now?

Well, the big one is looking for things to help his people. The "pieces" described above, but also necromantic lore, servants, or other stuff he can potentially convert towards the purpose (a proper facility would be a big plus if he could find one within sufficiently close distance of a Calibration Gate).

On the down-low? Saving his dead people is one purpose and while it's big enough to keep him moving, it's not enough to fill a life. Jupiter and Nara-O are offering missions, but not exactly purpose. And can you imagine the loneliness? The other Chosen are the only human faces he's likely to see more than once or twice for a long time. It doesn't jive with the Whispers in the back of his head, but he's hungry for company, culture, color - he isn't just curious about the world, he needs to see it. Places that aren't just empty wilderness or the eternal glory of a spirit kingdom.

And on the very, very down-low...well, he's a Daybreak. He's curious, perceptive, and in an uncertain situation. He's grateful to his saviors, but there is a question - why? What do they need the Exalted for that they can't entrust to their many, many ostensible allies in Heaven? What do they want? Any Exalt might have issue with serving an agenda they don't understand, and all the moreso Nightfall, aspected as he is to knowing things and equipped with so many tools to do so. He's looking for evidence of what Nara-O and Jupiter really want with their secret project, and he has Exalted potential to help him find it.

Edited by Viatos (see edit history)
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That's an impressive response, especially given the turnaround time!

Silence sounds like a fascinating Deathlord choice. I do love a good framework to flesh out, pun intended. And given the details here, I think I have a much clearer view of the character. Thanks for answering my questions!

So you want to have your Deathlord know that Nightfall joined the Divine Threads? How much would she know?

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I think she'd at least know he's sort of on sufferance at the pleasure of divine patrons, and probably understands better than he does the fragility of that position. It's probably become clear to her, over time if not initially, that his patrons are not operating through the Celestial Bureaucracy proper, and he's definitely named them.

Now, whether she'd have much context for what any of that means or implies I don't know; Deathlords have a lot of lore but a lot of it is also very old, and Heavenly politics might be outside her sphere of interest or awareness. "The Maiden of Secrets is doing something secret" might not sound like anything on its own, though of course she'd want to know what her deathknight is accomplishing exactly. Maybe she's been keeping careful track of missions and trying to plot out a chart that makes sense on a spare wall in a manse somewhere.

In the Abyssals book, it's noted that not all Deathlords were originally Solars - none of them are definitively identified but it's loosely implied the Dowager was a Lunar and the Baron was a Sidereal (she has an animalistic "war form" and he has a Sidereal Martial Art he developed himself). So it's at least potentially possible Silence DOES have some context that's got her intrigued, but I'll leave that up to your interest.

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Posted (edited)

Various notes!

Abyssal Nature

As an Abyssal, Nightfall counts as undead when it's advantageous (but is living, and needs to eat, drink, and breathe without specific Resistance Charms).

He's outside Fate unless a friendly Sidereal uses a specific Charm to return him to its weave.

All Abyssal animas let them spend a mote to display their Caste Mark, to approximately locate nearby shadowlands, and to grow fangs that allow them to drain 1 mote per level of lethal damage inflicted on willing or helpless living things.

As a Daybreak, he can also vanish into his anima like a Twilight (reappearing in deathly places of power), make a special roll against the Guile of a supernatural being he knows is a supernatural being to learn one useful fact about it, or while burning or above gain a Willpower, add 6 necromantic motes, or add a free full Excellency to a mental roll other than Join Battle.

Whispers

Due to his Whispers Merit, once per "session," you can inflict a -4 penalty on a mental or social roll or a -1 penalty to Resolve or Guile for an instant. In exchange, he can spend a Willpower once a day to help introduce deathly facts, deal with the undead, navigate the Underworld, gain some necromantic motes, or resist influence predicated on hope or compassion. Some Abyssal Charms also let you spend your once-a-day Whispers channel to improve their effects, but he doesn't have any of those.

Necromancy

Necromancy works almost exactly like sorcery and most things that deal with one or the other are interchangeable unless specified.

Necromancy is permitted to "adapt" sorcery spells (except certain categories like restorative or food-providing spells) to be necromancy spells with appropriate aesthetic changes. The reverse is not true; sorcery cannot "adapt" necromancy.

Nightfall's shaping ritual is based around uncovering a diary written across an unknown number of skulls, one of which was attached to a mouldering skeleton slumped across a set of medical tools in the Heart-chamber where he Exalted. He gains one mote (up to 10, last the story) whenever he hears something new about the Skull Diary, a similar relic, a necromantic working or phenomena he could study, and whenever he actually succeeds on an Occult roll to learn more. Separately as part of the same ritual, he gains (Essence + possessed skulls, maximum 15) motes up to once per story when acquiring a piece of the Skull Diary.

 

 

should be able to finish up (artifact decisions and writeup, any questions that occur) tomorrow unless i am knocked out utterly by the shot i'm getting. however, this is unlikely, as prior shots have been mostly okay.

Edited by Viatos (see edit history)
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Alright, I'm pulling triggers, Charm notes are done, I have done my best to convey the necessary Abyssal lore.

The one other thing that's probably of note is Limit.

Abyssal Limit

Abyssals roll one die of Limit for acknowledging their former life, two dice for "going among the living as one of them," which doesn't include disguises, infiltration, or being SEEN as living but instead refers to attitude and forgetting your place is now forever among the dead, and three dice for indirectly saving many lives or directly saving even one life. Abyssals don't gain Limit from betraying their Intimacies, or sparing lives in the name of death's chivalry.

"Death's chivalry" is a sort of code based on things the Neverborn like. It's a carrot, not a stick - an Abyssal is free to ignore the whole thing if she likes, but upholding it in a significant moment can drain a point of Limit. Its main tenets are "better a long torment than a quick death," "the mighty must fall before the weak," and the least-malevolent, "let life be drowned in death" which includes opening Shadowlands but also getting the living to accept the dead into their presence.

Abyssals can also drain a point of Limit when spending downtime either among the dead or surrounded by "the trappings of death," which means at least enough Gothic accoutrement that a Difficulty 5 Awareness roll could notice "this is a very unusually morbid person."

Abyssals do not have normal Limit Breaks, instead either the player or the ST can initiate "expiation" at an appropriate time, rolling 3 Limit dice. Successes drain Limit and also can be used to "buy" options off a bunch of lists ranging from creepy effects to unnatural compulsions I can provide as necessary. If Limit hits 10, this also happens but you roll 10 dice. Note that there's nothing that automatically zeroes Abyssal Limit - if you hit 10, roll your dice, and get 4 successes, you'll lose 4 Limit and go back to 6, so you're encouraged to do the downtime / death's chivalry stuff and/or to expiate often.

 

Finished and submitted for approval, review, and potentially renovation.

@Krivolacarticus

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