Last time, timeline questions and lava everywhere.
Unforgiven Blossom had ridden as far as Varsi, where she’d traded everything she’d taken from the bandits for river passage, good food and a healthy amount of jade.
Except she made a big deal of how she wasn’t taking things from the bandits because she didn’t want their ghosts chasing her.
Anyway, we continue to not have anyone using the actual common currency of silver, but at least there’s no gold coins popping up. God, I hate when that happens.
I don’t think having them be wealthy works very well, though – people preying on a few lost souls stumbling through a shadowland should be desperate, not well-paid. Aside from the fact this just goes against the general aesthetics of the place, people who get a lot of money tend to go spend the money, not keep doing the risky thing that might get them killed. It’s kind of like how professional hitmen tend not to have huge bodycounts.
This gets into the lack of a dynamic world. There were two instances of the world seeming dynamic in the first book – once when discussing that the Wyld Hunt’s offscreen failure will ruin the sense of invincibility the sidereal have cultivated, which barely even counts, and once when Wren suggested the extra bandits around Nexus were a sign of the times getting more lawless. We don’t see any of the economic underpinnings of this world.
The people she killed – why were they preying on shadowlands people? Was it because the other areas had strong enough police forces/militias to drive them off? Or are a lot of going through the shadowlands, and it’s the easiest place to pick off travelers because of the harsh environment? Why are travelers going through shadowlands at all, is it simply that it’s set at an inconvenient point (like a mountain pass) or are they fleeing from something else? There’s either a very large number of them or at least some of them are wealthy, yet they seem to be easy prey, which seems like it suggests refugees who had enough time to grab their worldly possessions but not enough time to go another route. This all suggests plenty of unrest, but…
She’d treated herself to a palanquin ride to the river, and thence boarded a ship heading north. Those who bore her rejoiced at the task, for an old woman was no heavy burden, and she paid better than the notoriously fat merchants who normally made use of their services.
…there’s no sign of any unrest here. She’s back to a static setting. She’s not hiring from a newly swollen labor class of refugees who can’t get better work and have to accept whatever wages they might make. She’s not hiring laborers who are struggling because trade is disrupted and the fat merchants who hire them normally are either dead or staying home. Everything here continues to turn as it always does. They’re miserable and underpaid, but that’s just how it is.
I’m not even going to credit the fact that at least she’s paying better, because this all just seems like the standard thing where the fantasy stand-in gets all the cool perks of servants but it’s okay because she’s so great and they love doing it for her.
She finds a guy captain who we’re informed is not part of the Guild. The book seems to go out of its way to present non-Guide merchants for whatever reason. Also, she asked her bearers to pick the best ship and one guy tried to present his brother’s ship instead, so when she pays them (yes, we’re jumping around in time again) he gets coin taken from the men who had accosted her in the shadowland. It still bore their psychic stink, and Unforgiven Blossom wanted to be rid of it as quickly as possible. She was no Exalt and no sorceress, but she could read omens like few others, and she read death here.
So…is this the stuff she looted from the corpses themselves, despite saying she wouldn’t? Or did she sell the belongings but not whatever currency? Because she goes on to at least warn the guy to pass it along quick, but surely the rest of the items are just as cursed.
When the captain gets there to see her, he flips out about how great she is, because obviously the tirty year old mortal astrologer of a superbyssal is super-important in her own right.
Why are you traveling this way? You should have an honor guard, and palanquin bearers better than the riff-raff who escorted you on board.
“Your ostentatious display of wealth and power was nowhere near as ostentatious as you deserve!”
Anyway this goes on for a bit. He finally goes away, then later a sailor shows up to make sure she’s satisfied with the room and also he’ll have sex with her if she feels like it. Equal-opportunity prostitution! Of course, we still naturally continue with her saying she’s not interested and him being all oh that’s good because old women are hideous and then she’s quietly offended because all women define self-worth around appearance BUT HEY IT WAS A GUY THIS TIME I’LL TAKE IT.
(Although why couldn’t he have just been relieved because he assumes deathlord servant sex would probably involve blood and perhaps outright death? That’d be my biggest worry.)
But anyway she thinks he’s okay so she’ll tell the captain so he’ll praise the sailor so the sailor will be happy and work harder.
She was quite certain that his assistance would be required at some point on the trip downriver, and found herself hoping quietly that it wouldn’t cost the earnest young man too dearly.
Even if he inevitably dies a messy death at least it’ll be for pragmatic reasons, so overall, Unforgiven Blossom is being pretty decent this section.
Anyway, later she’s done magic to make a perfect sketch (made from ink MIXED WITH BLOOD yay) of somebody who’s a priest.
The man’s expression was captured perfectly, a mixture of nobility, pragmatism and brutality.
Uh…I can’t think of any nobility, but of Wren and Holok, Holok’s been less gleeful about harming others, so I’ll go with him.
Blah blah description of how she made it jesus christ book just tell things in order.
Anyway, later she gets a map and has the sailor from help her out with a ritual. We again get this told in backwards order. She soaks the map in various oils, lights it on fire, and this creates an ash version of it. She does all this without blood despite the fact this sure looks like it should require essence and mortals can’t use essence. Plus, murdering a rabbit first would have helped explain why it’s supposedly creepy.
Pieces of it were moving, shreds of ash flowing like rivers and riding over the miniature landscape like birds.
So now she burns the portrait.
This is a form of divination not often practiced, and with good reason. Too much talking ruins it almost every time.
1) Why did you invite him to watch then?
2) So what if talking ruins it most magic is done in private why would that even be a factor? Most mortal magic requires slaughtering a goat at least, having to not chat a ton is really no big deal.
Anyway, white ash now forms the guy’s path. I’m not sure what’d happen if he’d behaved like a proper sidereal for a minute and ducked into Heaven – interruption in the path? Plus he should just be immune to all this since, you know, sidereal. Maybe if we assume he’s been in the same resplendent destiny this whole time – that’d even explain why she seems to be getting such strong signs, since resplendent destinies are sort of like the BOLDCAPS of fate. So now she knows he’s in a flyspeck town. She thanks the guy for his help (?) and says tell no one else because they wouldn’t understand (??) and he agrees and sprints away in fear (???) despite nothing being scary or objectionable about the ritual.
So anyway, she’s left near the town which is apparently not situated close enough to the river to actually be reached by boat (no explanation why) and she rewards the sailor with a charm of amber that hides you from spies.
“Your captain has one as well. They both come from the tomb of a man who is far better off dead, and whose ghost I tormented for five days and nights to learn where he kept his treasure.
You did no such thing, you’re a mortal, your purpose is scenery or energy drinks.
Also, so not only are you running all over Creation to the point random smuggler boat captains know you well, but also you’re tombrobbing and ghost torturing? When did you have time for all this? How did you even do it?
Then we switch over to the other underworld character, Ratcatcher. He’s been found by the caravan and the physician there (another woman!) checked him out enough to figure out it was a giant bird that landed on his chest that tore out the eyes, but not enough to notice he lacked a pulse and his wounds no longer bleed.
The caravan mistress
! :D
eminently practical, ordered more guards to take bows, and that any large birds that flew near the caravan were to be shot down, plucked and roasted. “Eyes,” she reasoned, “cost money.”
They’re a practical and money-conscious people, so they calculate how much all their help was worth and dock it from the guy’s stuff, then they strap his quietly raving ass down and get back on their way.
He wakes up lucid and pissed off. It’s apparently been three days, which means they’ve been pouring water and probably gruel down a corpse’s throat for three days without noticing anything odd. The healer fills him in about what happens and also he can’t see because his eyes are gone.
“My eyes? Again?
So he definitely doesn’t have any manipulation excellencies, because that was a beautiful botch right there. He then starts trying to claw the bandages off and backhands the doctor across the wagon when she tries to stop him. I can’t see any problems with the plan of pretending to be the guy whose body he’s in at all. Luckily, the woman appears to think it’s understandable (probably because of all the crazy) and lies when someone calls to ask if anything’s gone wrong. But she yells at him for making her lie and says that the guy will beat the shit out of Ratcatcher if he finds out Ratcatcher hurt her, because I guess she can’t just punch him herself.
Ratcatcher almost replies that he’ll murder them all but manages not to, which for him is pretty impressive subterfuge.
Oh, also he can seem some vague shapes. Considering he could see pretty fine as his eyes rotted out of his last body, it’s really more surprising that his sight is so bad.
You will want to cover the gaps, though. They look nasty, and that won’t help you with women.” She giggled, then, and Ratcatcher shuddered. From her voice, the physicker was at least in her mid-30s, and women of that age who giggled tended to be overprotective spinsters. He sniffed, once, and was gratified that he didn’t detect the telltale odor of cat urine.
Ugh, book. Really?
So he says he’s not into women and bets he can use the gaping sockets to scare people into better deals, and luckily this is apparently exactly like who the guy used to be and she’s all wow you are totally this guy.
“Same old Faithhl Hound. Nothing to you but the deal.” She paused and clucked to the horses, urging them to move again. “I always thought that was a pity.”
Dumbfounded, Ratcatcher lay back down and tried very hard to think about anything else, anything at all.
…hearing about Yuyu sounds good. How about what’s up with Yuyu?
And no we’re stuck. She gives him broth, he spits it out, etc.
He’d walked for days, always pursued by cawing raitons which he’d done his best to ignore. Water he found by stumbling into low creeks, and pasture for the animals came when they stopped and would go no further, and he could hear the sound of chewing.
Since he only needs the water for the animals, can’t they just find it the same way they do food? Also, we were told these animals were so emaciated and exhausted they couldn’t even must the energy to graze, yet now they’re able to take care of themselves?
He’d gone a little mad then, Ratcatcher suspected. He’d heard the prince’s voice telling him where to go, and he’d obeyed, because obeying his prince was something he was used to doing, regardless of whether doing so made any sense or not.
Again, all this would make so much more sense if the Prince was sleeping with half his staff.
Anyway, so he questions the woman he supposedly knows well about the caravan he’s supposedly part of.
He also learned a great deal of caravan gossip, including the rumor that the caravan mistress took only other women as lovers, though Clever Tiger had not been approached herself, she confided with a giggle.
Hey look, homosexuality! Being treated as weird and something to keep a secret, but still, look at it existing.
This just raises further questions about why Ratcatcher doesn’t just say he wants to fuck the Prince of Shadows, but hey.
There was a great deal that was said about Ragged Fox, whom she imagined as some sort of suitor
He sounded precisely like one. This seems to just be the whole idea that women who think men like them are always delusionally vain, because self-esteem is wrong.
Ratcatcher’s vision improves.
Soon he could make out the difference between Clever Tiger and the always-pursuant Ragged Fox, though their faces as yet were blurred, and their forms seemed oddly decrepit.
That seems like it might be going somewhere interesting.
He goes on to say that also he’s trying to keep his body from rotting, which apparently is done by staying out of the water..
though Ratcatcher was worried that the damage to his eyes would spread rot sooner rather than later.
Book, just so we’re clear, you’re aware skin doesn’t make your body rotproof, right? Ratcatcher is currently rotting. He’s been rotting for two or three weeks straight. Additionally, he’s been drying out for those two/three weeks, unless he’s been drinking water and somehow having that spread out through his body despite all the processes meant to govern it being gone.
I’m going to assume Ratcatcher-the-nemissary bought charms to preserve his body but not regenerate damage, so the water bloating and fish wore his body down to the point there wasn’t enough left to keep going, but his current body still looks like it did upon death.
Anyway, on to Wren, who’s still alive, as expected, but hasn’t been stuffed in a monstrance yet, which is surprising. He’s just tied up, and with leather of all the pathetic things, but he can’t break them despite being a solar because he apparently has a really, really low strength score. He’s on some flat altar and also naked, because why not. Oh, and the stone slabs are five feet off the floor, so like more-Rathess-than-Rathess, we have stuff that’s oversized for people. Also there’s doors and he can smell rust and blood, therefore the doors must be iron. So he’s got super senses but can’t break leather. Wren may be built worse than Ratcatcher.
Oh, and there’s a seven foot statue, slender and angular far beyond the point of attractiveness. Its eyes were large and it showed no visible sign of either sex, though if he had been forced to guess Wren would have wagered it depicted a female.
Why…? Oh, and also it has six fingers.
He can hear something giant breathing. His supersenses let him know it’s coming from behind the door with the statue.
There could be no doubt. Something huge and awful lay slumbering beyond that door, though with the way sound traveled in the Labyrinth, it might be next door or a thousand leagues away. The two, he decided after a moment, were not mutually incompatible.
Wren has a very interesting idea of what no doubt means.
He keeps talking to himself and someone yells for silence.
The voice that rang out through the chamber was rough, giving the impression that its owner was unaccustomed to speech. It was accented in a style that had rarely been heard since the days before the Empire, one which Wren recognized only because it was echoed in some of Kejak‘s more florid pronouncements.
This is frankly underselling it. Exalted isn’t one of those settings where everyone speaks the same language and there’s some slightly more old-timey language the vampire aristocrats still use. When Ketchup starts raving, it’s in languages that have been dead for hundreds of years. It’s like if the pope started suddenly speaking gutter Latin because he was alive before Christ was born.
Anyway, the original language of Exalted is Old Realm, which it’s possible Wren knows on the basis it resembles High/Low Realm that’s spoken on the Blessed Isle and it’s the language all gods know, but on the other hand, it’s an ancient language he has no reason to learn and Wren already’s complained he spends more time being sent to deal with shit than even learning Immaculate teachings.
In conclusion if Wren recognizes whatever language Ketchup starts raving in, it shouldn’t be for being “florid” but the exact opposite – he’d be seeing Ketchup reverting to a birth tongue that’s only seen ceremonial use for the past few thousand years. For that matter, the language ancient sidereals learned had likely diverged from the pure Old Realm set down by the primordials and instinctively known by the gods, because human languages change as they’re used.
Also, this is all so much more interesting than saying Ketchup sometimes talks in marginally more archaic versions of whatever the current language he was speaking in is. Arguably, the guy should keep his mouth shut about languages he shouldn’t know precisely because it’s so obviously weird, but he’ll be dead soon, his incredibly long life’s work he sacrificed everything for is falling down about him, and he’s probably running out of fucks to give. I mean, Ketchup’s so overworked he’s relying on Wren, some random heroic mortal! He’s got to be stressed enough to scream in his native language a few times.
Where were we? Right, so the statue was talking in Old Common to tell him to STFU. Wren decides now is a good time to chat and claims he totally already knew the statue could talk and what does his new friend want to talk about and what’s your name new friend?
Statue does not have a name and does want Wren to STFU.
“But everything has a name,” Wren protested. “Bees, trees, women, pieces of animate statuayyyeeaaarrgggh!”
Instead of just smacking him with the spear it’s carrying, it used the spear as a magic wand to make the apparently magic leather bindings tighten temporarily. Really not feeling it, book. Let’s go check one of the necromancy books…
Creating a weapon of mephitic desolation involves particularly difficult necromancy. Five healthy children no older than 10 must be ritually slain and their lungs taken out through the back of their rib cages and stitched together into a large bellows. Their throats must then be ritually desecrated and carefully tuned to the quavering disharmonies favored by the Malfeans, and on each of their small teeth must be etched one of the 97 glyphs of annihilation. The bodies are then stitched together in a circle facing out from the lung bellows and animated through the necromancy spell Walking War Machine (or better). Necromancy is required in this instance. Nemissaries will not do. The necromantically animated lung bellows pushes air through the dead throats, and five ghostly musicians possess bodies and take up soulsteel forks with which to torment the small bodies into singing threnodies for all Creation. On those cursed and trembling voices is carried the horror of disease.
That is the sort of thing that happens in the underworld. And Wren’s upset because some leather got a little tight?
When the sky eater takes flight, it is the product of a nightmare. The lines and dimples in the soulsteel plating open into dozens of gaping, toothless mouths. Those along the vehicle’s top side inhale the sky above them as dozens more open across the bottom to scream it out below. The voices are carefully tuned and resonate together like a choir of the damned.
Creating a sky eater requires hundreds of ghosts to be painstakingly Moliated and soulforged together so that they share one “lung” that surrounds the passenger compartment. The Lion himself sees to it that the ghosts whose mouths appear on the top of the vehicle constantly feel like they’re drowning. Those on the bottom are always in fine-tuned agony. Ghosts the Lion particularly dislikes are slated for inclusion in his next sky eater
Maybe you should be more grateful no one’s made you into an eternally suffering chunk of plane yet.
Wren decides that now it’s no longer hurting him with its spear wand of leather control, he should discuss at length how much he understands it doesn’t have a name and his thoughts on how pronouns will do. Shockingly, this just makes it do the spear thing again. This time it’s worse! Then it stops and says he’s there to learn, so Wren decides he should talk more and asks what about. It finally uses its spear to whack him directly while saying he’s here to learn pain and obedience, as one does.
So my theory is they’re out of monstrances at the moment and this is just something rigged up quickly while they grow a fresh one for Wren. Whatever deathlord has him is hoping to slightly speed up the process by making Wren marginally more miserable prior to stuffing him in the torturebox, but was too busy to actually set anything up so they just told the statue to be a dick to Wren until the torturebox is ready.
Anyway, it explains he’ll serve the dead gods and Wren cries quietly because, in addition to having a shitty strength score it seems he thought it’s okay to make mental your dump stats and his MDV is in the toilet.
We’re then told that Wren can totally stay quiet and has done for weeks as a training thing, and also knows that being quiet can be tactical. We’ve seen none of this in Wren’s behavior and that doesn’t change, because the author figures that as long as he says Wren can totally be quiet, it’s okay that he goes on to say that his next move was to refuse to shut up no matter how much the statute smacks him. But it doesn’t touch his face because as a main character he must remain pretty. Finally, he realizes that this is just giving it a reason to torment him and at last he shuts up.
It became equally clear that it was only permitted to exercise its wrath against him if he transgressed certain codes
This, though, seems extraordinarily unlikely since it gives him control over his situation and, more importantly, the deathlords aren’t Lawful Evil. A major component of their suicide cults is the idea that life is suffering and nothing you do can change that.
But whatever, if it means Wren shuts up I’ll take it. The statue ends up mad about this, because obviously someone with no patience is a great choice for a jailer, and starts yelling at him to start talking.
“I was charged to punish you until you learned the lessons the dead gods wish to teach you, Eliezer Wren, and I will not fail in that duty. You were to have learned the value of submission and the rewards for doing so. You were to learn the value of imposed silence, and the joy of the privilege of speaking when granted permission to do SO. You were to have held your spirit up to me so that I could test its mettle and break it, and reshape you so that you might serve.”
Weird statue thing, do you not get that this kind of takes time? He’ll eventually start babbling because humans don’t do quiet well, you just have to shut up and stop throwing a temper tantrum at how utterly he’s beating you by being quiet.
Maybe this isn’t a deathlord’s plan. Maybe it’s just another random bit of the Labyrinth being crazy and therefore incompetent. Honestly, that’s pretty scary too – you know they need you alive, but they might forget.
Anyway, Wren glares at it and has this long conversation via his eyes about how he’ll never lose and it’s just some dumb stone robot who’ll get smashed for failing so hard, which sends it into a bigger rage and it decides to murder him. Its disobedience makes it explode.
It thought it was teaching you a lesson in silence. We were teaching you a lesson in power. You learned the appropriate lesson.”
They’re not Lawful Evil. They’re definitely not Stupid Evil.
Ignoring me, mysterious cloaked and gnarled figure heals his bruises and cuts Wren loose, then gives him some clothes and says he gets to meet a god tonight.