Exalted RPG: Judgment

So in my most recent Exalted RPG session we switched to a different Storyteller and also allowed a lot of game world time to pass. Yesterday's post details part of what my character did over the break, and introduces a new character (the mouseman Lunar Exalted, Li).

So a long time ago our characters encountered a powerful Solar Exalted named Bringer who was possessed by an evil, spirit-eating sword named Judgment that is bent on breaking into heaven and laying waste to all the "slothful" gods. (As my character Leggit works for Heaven, he knows that this means essentially all of them, heh.) Bringer claims to have an army assembled in an underwater city and that he is nearly ready to assault Heaven. We wrote Bringer off as a nutjob, though admittedly he did kill a bunch of the giant shark spirits we were trying to befriend. Leggit filed a report in Heaven about him anyway, and Light, the Solar Exalted in our group, arranged a meeting with him for a year later in hopes that he'd learn a way to free Bringer from the sword in the meantime.

Well, a year went by and Bringer didn't show. He did however show up on our hidden island and nearly killed one of our friends. Needless to say, now it's personal. Leggit goes up to Heaven to follow up on his initial report and finds out that Bringer, Judgment, and a giant underwater city disappeared from the loom of fate sometime ago. Bringer's story about an army in an underwater city suddenly seems a lot more credible.

So our group goes out to a black jade trading island near where the underwater city is supposed to be and we investigate. It seems there has been a sudden increase in black jade demand. (Black jade can be used to make magical armor, just what you'd want if you were equipping an army to assault Heaven.) Leggit uses a Charm, Serendipitous Voyage, to ensure that a vessel arriving on the island sometime in the next day will be fated to head to the underwater city. We stopped there, so hopefully next session we'll get to the city and lay the smackdown on Bringer and his army!

Exalted RPG: Collaborative Creative Writing

So one of the players in my Exalted RPG, and I wrote a story for what our characters were up to between sessions. We did most of the writing together in Google Docs. Google Docs allows multiple people to view and edit a document at the same time. So we were able to start from an outline, each work on different sections, watch the changes being made by each other in real time and adapt and shift our own parts of the story accordingly. It was an interesting and fun experience in collaborative creative writing.

Here's the story we ended up coming up with (I've added [bracketed explanations] for some of the terms and places from the Exalted world setting):

Going by the information discovered from Marlina's trips to The Neck [The Neck = medium cluster of islands in the middle of the West], Li is investigating the rumor that Wavecrest ships [Wavecrest = large island nation to the south of The Neck] have been capturing slaves from The Neck to give as tribute to the Realm [Realm = continent in center of Creation controlled by Dragonblooded Exalts]. As a former slave himself, Li feels obligated to stop this. Unfortunately, he is a little too late and the islanders have already been rounded up and placed on the slave ship.

Knowing that he alone can't take down a fleet of armed men, Li transforms into a small gray mouse and boards the ship. From listening in on conversations and from reading the captain's log, an entire fleet of slave ships is preparing to leave Wavecrest in two months. Li knows that this would be the perfect opportunity to end the slaving operation and to harm Wavecrest, the only real Realm bastion in the West.

***

In the guise of a sea gull, Li flies back off the ship and back to Suryadvipa [Suryadvipa = small newly created, and populated island on the Western edge of the Wyld; also, our base of operations]. He brings this information to the circle. Light and Dorean are too busy working on plans for an artifact, but Marcus and Leggit are both interested. Marcus, being a defender of humanity, would love to get the chance to bring justice to Realm slavers. Leggit is interested in the operation for more political reasons. By disrupting the slave trade, he hopes to bring tension between the Realm and Wavecrest. Perhaps enough tension that the Wyld Hunt teams [Wyld Hunt = Dragonblooded Exalted teams that kill other types of Exalts like us] will retreat from the West for a bit.

The group plans to ambush the slaver fleet. Leggit will lead the ships while Li and Marcus will free the prisoners and slay the captains.

***

On the night of their voyage the Wavecrest slaver fleet sets out for the Realm. Unbeknownst to them, waiting in their path is the Suryadvipa fleet. Under cover of night, Leggit walks out onto the water (using the hearthstone borrowed from Light) leading a group of water elementals to create a dense fog bank between the slaver fleet and the Suryadvipa forces. Li, Marcus and Leggit's familiar Ati set out through the night fog in a small boat heading for the slaver ships. Marcus goes from ship to ship, drops off Li, then finds and assassinates the crew's leadership.

As a tiny mouseman with streaking silver across his body, Li sneaks down into the slave holds of the ship. As he picks the locks of the manacles he says, "I am Asdon, God of Mice. The gods do not want you to become slaves of the Realm, so I have come to rescue you. Ships are on their way and they will take you back to an island paradise if you choose. When you hear a horn blow three times, you must storm the decks and take out the crew. Be strong and brave, for the gods are with you this night. Now I most go and free your friends." After that, Li moves up and on deck to find Marcus. Marcus picks up Li and jumps to the next ship to continue freeing the slaves. Ati follows Li iand Marcus immaterially and when the last of the ships have been reached Ati uses Hurry Home to return to Leggit's side. Leggit organizes the fleet into battle positions and at the blow of his horn a coordinated ambush on the slaver fleet begins.

Caught surprised in the night fog, without leadership, and with the slaves revolting, the slaver fleet quickly surrenders. Those who are willing to start a new life in Suryadvipa are welcomed. The freed slaves who do not come are returned to their homes, the slavers who do not are killed, and the slaver ships are added to Suryadvipa's fleet with some modifications.

***

Wavecrest finds their main tie to the Neck (the slave trade) abruptly severed and must scramble to come up with the realm tribute which was to be the large shipment of slaves. Wavecrest's ability to investigate the incident or retaliate is delayed due to their dealings with the Realm.

In the meantime Dorean and Li spread anti-slaving propoganda to those barbarians in the Neck who actively traded slaves to Wavecrest. Thus providing a further barrier for Wavecrest in re-establishing their interests in the Neck.

RPG Friday: Exalted Game Update and RPG Links

So today is RPG Friday and I have a couple of things to share. First, I discovered from reading RPG Blog II an RPG forum which I've joined and has been kind of fun. It's called The RPG Haven.

Second, I had another game day of my Exalted table-top RPG. The person running the game (the 'storyteller' or 'ST' in Exalted terminology) is unfortunately going to stop so we'll be switching to a different ST. I hope the game survives the transition as it has been a lot of fun.

Last time we had just saved a newly Exalted Solar from dual threats of a rival barbarian island and a Wyld Hunt team. This time we managed to convince the Wyld Hunt team to join us. (We made them an offer they couldn't refuse... namely sinking their ship if they didn't cooperate.) And all of us together went into the volcano to fight the Raksha (a chaos entity) inside and cleanse the volcano of the chaos-taint. My character very nearly died (should have actually, but the ST was nice) though he did manage to hit the Raksha with an Arrow of Reason before he went down, which allowed the rest of the group to actually damage the Raksha. (yay!) Unluckily for us, cleansing the chaos from the volcano triggered a violent eruption and we just barely were able to evacuate the island in time.

So all in all, it was a fun session.

On a regular life note, I've been dealing with having my door repaired for the last two days and have been busy trying to get research finished so I have missed some posts. I didn't cook anything this week so no "What's Cookin Wednesday" anyway. :( I'll probably make pesto and chicken again tonight, like I did for St. Patrick's Day since it was so yummy, maybe I'll get a better picture this time.

Well, my equipment has probably finished sterilizing in the autoclave so I should probably go check on it, so that's all for now. Take care!

RPG Friday - A new Exalt

So my Exalted role-playing game day got moved to Tuesday this week (not sure why) but it was a fun session. Our group got a hot tip from the fate planners in Heaven that a new Solar Exaltation was going happen soon on a particular island and our group was sent to investigate. Turns out the island is inhabited by crazy barbarians who worship the volcano on their island and sacrifice captured enemies to it. They are also cannibals and got highly offended when one of our group members refused to dine at their feast (my character).

As if that wasn’t enough to worry about apparently the hot tip we got from Heaven got spread around a bit and a Wyld Hunt team was also alerted to the coming Exaltation and was dispatched to the island. (The Wyld Hunt are Dragon-blooded Exalts who hunt down Solar exalts and kill them. Most Dragon-blooded think that Solars are demons and threaten the stability of creation.) The Wyld Hunt team began circling the island in their ship, presumably waiting for the exaltation to occur. We debated having our Solar flare his anima to trick the Wyld Hunt team into thinking that the exaltation was happening and then ambush them but ultimately decided that the essence expenditure of the battle that would inevitably ensue could tangle fate to the point that the exaltation prediction might end up not coming to pass.

In the end a rival island came and attacked, led by powerful fire elementals (from the volcanoes on the nearby islands). The chieftain’s wife Exalted protecting the village’s children from the elementals, and the Wyld Hunt team sprang into action. Their sorceress casted a tracking spell that summoned a wind hound to hunt down the new Exalt, and our sorcerer responded by bringing a meteor down from the sky into their ship… twice… ha! They had a water aspected Dragon-Blooded on board that put out the fires and shored up the damage and when we stopped the game they were in a panicked retreat. We have yet to decide if we are going to pursue or just let them go and hope that we can convince the newly Exalted Solar to come with us before the Wyld Hunt team comes back with reinforcements.

Exalted RPG Character Info

So I wrote up a description of my character's familiar for the Exalted role-playing game I'm playing. I decided I'd post that description here for those of you who find role-playing game stuff interesting. My character's name is Leggit, this post really isn't about him though, more-so the familiar. By the way, I used the picture below as an inspiration for the humanoid form. (Image Source)


Leggit's familiar is a spirit-bird named Ati. The familiar-master bond has a strong resonance between Leggit and Ati and this allows a psychic link allowing Leggit to share Ati's senses at will at a distance up to several miles. Ati has several other abilities owing to his spirit nature. He can travel instantly from anywhere to Leggit's side, materialize and dematerialize at will, and shift between his bird and humanoid form at will. However, the instant travel as well as the materialization drain a large portion of his essence temporarily. (Essence being the term for magical energy in Exalted.)

Bird Form:
Ati in his bird form appears as a raiton - a type of omnivorous scavenger bird found often at battlefields. He has a three foot wing span, a toothy beak, black feathers and black eyes. Rations will eat most anything, from carrion to fruit, eggs and small animals, but since becoming a familiar Ati has been elevated from his previous embodiment to that of a lesser spirit and no longer requires food for sustenance. He is capable of eating if he so chooses and occasionally still steals eggs for amusement.

Humanoid Form:
Ati in his humanoid form is thin, short (about 4 feet tall) and wears a crisp white Nehru vest. Black feathers cover most of his body with the exception of a pointed crimson patch at the peak of his head, an elongated creamy white beak and goldenrod talon-like feet.

His arms are more winglike than human arms with feathered skin connecting at his side just under the rib cage out to what would be his wrist. These wing-arms do not afford him full flight capability but he can use them to get a boost when jumping and can also glide effectively from a moving start. His wing-arms do not have true hands, but rather, widely splayed finger-like feathers with a small opposed claw. He can maintain a weak grip on small objects with these "hands" and can has enough control to manipulate a writing implement with just passable legibility. His talon feet are capable of a stronger grip and more dexterous. He is capable of carrying a load with one talon and walking with the other and does so with a sort of hop-glide aided by bursts from his wing-arms.

In conversation or when focusing on something his head cocks about with an unnerving suddenness, a very bird-like habit, even while his small blood red eyes remain fixed on a target. His manner of speech is a quick and curt staccato with a slight clacking accent. The overall effect on his demeanor is that he seems somewhat peevish and expectant, anxiously awaiting a response or command.

Exalted Role-Playing Game

So I have been playing a pen-and-paper role-playing game called Exalted with a group of friends for a few months. The game is about a world with highly powerful supernatural people called Exalts. The world has the technology of roughly the middle ages. There are different types of Exalts that correspond to the different celestial bodies. The sun, the moon, and the stars. My character plays a Sidereal Exalted (an exalted of the stars). These Exalted are responsible for guiding Fate and Destiny in the world and work from "heaven". This world is flat and at the edges of this world is the Wyld, which is a chaotic wasteland of a different element for each direction (air, wood, fire, water). Entities of pure chaos live beyond the borders and can shape the world around them to their whim. So anyway, the overarching story for our game is that we are fighting these entities (called Raksha, or Fair Folk) to claim more land for the world from the chaos. In our session tonight we were trying to get people from a small island to come live in a city we've establishes near the water edge of the Wyld. (When people from "Creation," as the non-Wyld part of the world is called, live near the Wyld it can stabilize the chaos and bring new land to the world.) So we were able to get the inhabitants of the island to come with us, and also the giant shark spirits that protected the island to come with us too. We lost some of the shark spirits in the process though. The next course of action for our group will be to try to get more Exalts to come to our island so that we can get more powerful.

So yeah, that's the role-playing game I play. I'm sure to most people that don't know much or anything about role-playing games, that made absolutely no sense. I may want role-playing games to be a major topic of this blog though, so I figured I should start somewhere talking about the one I play. If there's anyone out there reading this that plays Exalted I'd love to hear about your experiences. Also, sometime down the line I think it might be fun to have a play-by-post role-playing game.

Well, that's all for now. I may post updates on the game's progress as time goes by. We usually play weekly so it'll probably be about that often. In the mean time I'll hopefully post about other things as well. I got a little busy this week though, so I haven't been posting as much.