Now we’re back with Pelesh, the mortal who counts coins and beats Ratcatcher at social combat.

Pelesh had become increasingly convinced that the prince might decide to begin including the members of his staff in his nightly amusements, which ranged from the simply debauched to the debauched, terrifying and lethal.

Okay, that’s sort of approaching how a social monster serving the Lover should act, but not if it’s unusual. He’s worried that either he’ll get murdered during an orgy or someone else will come in and kill the Prince during an orgy and then kill everyone else for good measure. He thinks up a great plan to fix this, but then the Prince invites him to supper and he panics. We learn the Prince does this sort of thing periodically and it seems to always be one-on-one.

The prince was a man who permitted himself few luxuries, but a fine table was one of them.

If you’re the Lover’s, decadence is generally your thing, and if you disagree, you’d presumably disagree hard enough to want to avoid any decadence just in case she was right about her whole slippy slope deal. Moderation is not something easily managed in Creation. Plus, food is a particularly gratuitous luxury for someone who doesn’t technically need to eat, so it’s weird this would be the line.

Plus, he’s also got awesome horses and a specially sculpted throne to look like a crashing wave and on the throne are nice pillows for lounging. He’s not exactly Stannis here.

He’d raised the issue of the prince’s expenditures for wine, exotic spices and rare fruits before, and the prince had simply noted that the money was his to spend, not Pelesh‘s.

Aside from the fact I can’t see the Prince of Shadows having even this good of a relationship with his underlings, what about the part where they’re all going to be dead soon so there’s really no point in scrimping? Or the part that if the Prince runs into money problems he can just go murdering until that’s fixed?

We learn today’s food involves a goose and expensive blood oranges from Chiaroscuro. Yeah, transporting those over land from South Africa to Alaska or whatever the ridiculous distance works out to is probably a bit much for oranges, but come on, that’s really not all that impressive on the scale of things. You could be eating dragon king babies or something. Also, Chiaroscuro’s industry is selling the superglass rubble of Chiaroscuro, stuff like blood oranges probably comes from other areas.

On rare occasions the peeled orange rinds would reveal diamonds and other shining gems, or so the stories went.
Pelesh had long since decided that the story was a cover made up by some smuggler who’d decided that fruit peels would make a clever means of concealment for his cargo

Arg no! Creation actually has magic, dammit! You don’t need a mundane explanation for cool effects, and the south actually does have gems materializing out of nowhere sometimes. If you want the whole everything sucks all the time thing, you could say some smugglers take advantage of this story so that if gems are found, they can avoid getting fined/exiled/hung for smuggling.

Anyway, while Pelesh has had dinner with the Prince before, but he doesn’t usually bother actually talking.

Usually, the prince’s mere presence was assumed to be enough.

But he loves monologueing! Why would he deliberately be quiet for any reason?

Tonight the prince was garbed in one of the more ornate costumes that Pelesh had seen, a black doublet with flared sleeves and red-and-gray piping, matching hose and black silk slippers. His nails had been lacquered black, all save the last one on each hand, which was red. A thin band of iron sat on his brow, resting just above the mark which proclaimed his power and his loyalty to the dead gods, and a long silver earring that bore a tear-drop shaped ruby hung from his left earlobe.

See! That’s the sort of ridiculousness you get from abyssals, not “the only extravagant thing I allow myself is eating some goose with oranges and wine”.

The prince neatly skewered a piece of goose on one of his long, red-painted fingernails, and popped it into his mouth.

This is more just weird. I wonder if it’s the result of him actually being of pretty low birth and having to make up a lot of the aristocratic behaviors he’s currently indulging in.

Anyway so he knows everything including the idea Pelesh wrote down in his room not long ago, and even brings the paper to them now because the Prince has nothing better to do with his time than this sort of grandstanding.

Pelesh finally tells us that his idea was that the Prince should stop sulking in the castle and go ride out a-slaughtering.

You might even go to that temple where Ratcatcher found the boy and take it for your own. Surely another act of desecration will win you more favor.. . below.”

I think Ratcatcher desecrated it good already, Shamblemerry finished it off, and for that matter, it probably was already halfway to a shadowland given all the ghosts underneath. Actually, that last part might be more relevant, if it’s close enough he should go there just to make sure the new shadowland is under his control. Shadowlands are valuable things.

Speaking of, we now jump to Shamblemerry. She’s found some new chamber and some guy’s ghost tells her to leave. More ghosts surround her. Shamblemerry rightly points out that hello, she does horrible shit to ghosts as easy as breathing, but the ghost is all “but you’re not in the Labyrinth this time!” which is totally irrelevant. At most, if she’s somehow still in Creation despite every sign pointing to this being a shadowland, she’s got problems respiring essence – but the ghosts have way more problems! Abyssals aren’t just favored for having solar-level capabilities, they’re favored for being able to function way better in Creation than ghosts.

But

“You’ll not let me go, not after I’ve seen this. What are you hiding?”
“Something you’ll never see,” it answered, and placed its hand on her brow. It was cold, colder than even the catacombs, and Shamblemerry screamed. She could feel the very life draining out of her, could see the ghost in front of her becoming more solid and shining more brightly.

Good god does the author hate the idea of PCs being able to do anything.

She manages to retain precisely enough agency to flee, but now she’s being hunted, and instead of wondering wtf this is impossible Shamblemerry acts like her only power over the ghosts is that she’s higher up in the neverborn hierarchy and not how her inherent superiority lets her curbstomp them, so omg ghosts not following orders from the deathlords she is now powerless!!!!

They had betrayed the Abyss, the most profound treason imaginable. They would pay, she decided. They would pay, and she would exact the price. She would make these hunters the hunted and strike them down, and then she would rip the door of that mausoleum from its hinges and take what it hid for herself.
And then, maybe then, she’d venture up the stairs to see if Holok was still waiting.

So on balance, maybe it’s better we don’t get female POV characters at all.

Then we jump to dear sweet Ketchup. He recounts the news: something in Sijan, as if Ratcatcher’s jump into the river was a big deal; revolt in Varang disrupting trade; Lintha pirates and rumors they’re approaching the Blessed Isle. Also, a minor report from Port Calin of a crusading monk who was supposedly waging a one-man war against corruption on the city’s docks.
…
Ballads of the Monk of Humble Anger, as this mystery fellow was being called, had already begun circulating, and bands of citizens upholding his supposed ideals had taken to patrolling the docks themselves.

God Holok you are the worst sidereal. But Ketchup is amused, possibly just by the fact this is impossible because the sidereal kind of broke reality around them and now people can’t remember them properly. It could be a sidereal effect if what Holok did was actually impressive BUT there was no description of the guy, but neither is true.

Then on to Wren, who’s surrounded by robed and hooded figures all murmuring to each other how great he is and how cool this is and they’re so glad just to see him walk in the door to chat with their beloved dead gods.

the titanic stone door carved with the sigil of twin serpents devouring the sun and moon

This is a huge missed opportunity. The Unconquered Sun and Luna are both actual enemies of the neverborn, and so are the five maidens. It should be sun, moon, and five stars. This just comes off as your usual doomsday business.

Anyway, despite canon being that you have to go stare into the void, Wren’s just in some boring room that’s even got an actual fire that’s only producing some heady smell and not, like, being a reverse fire that just makes stuff colder or sending darkness out rather than light.

upon that altar slept a god.
The figure was vast, so huge that Wren wondered how the stone of the altar could support its weight. What he could see of its frame was roughly human, in the same way that a child‘s first attempt at woodcarving is roughly executed. Its skin was the color of deep, dirty water and its nails had grown and curled to tortured, horrid lengths. Some turned back upon themselves and pierced the flesh of hands that were taller than he was

EH.

There’s a reason the best book of the whole line is Games of Divinity. It’s because Exalted’s take on demons is really, really good. The primordials didn’t just create humans, they created reality – they created the concept of creation itself. The surviving yozi have been maimed horribly by their conflict with the exalted host, and yet even diminished they are vast and defy comprehension. The extent to which the yozis are connected to humans is that they know we’re the ones who killed or maimed them, and they can barely even understand that, just that the gods betrayed them somehow using humans.

And that’s the yozi, who are still alive, still mostly functional, and have had millennia dealing with humans afterward. The neverborn are so deranged the yozi don’t even want to deal with them, and need their solar ghost allies to even interact with the underworld in a more coherent fashion than just driving ghosts who get too close insane and having them tear at each other for the rest of eternity.

They’re not just huge sleeping guys.

There was a rumbling sound, and one of the thing’s fingers twitched, barely. I SLEEP. WE ALL SLEEP. BUT WE ARE NOT IDLE WHILE WE SLUMBER.

No, you don’t sleep! You’re in constant screaming pain! You can’t even communicate with others coherently! You guys can’t even manage your own exaltations, it’s your solar ghost friends who run the “will you damn the world to survive a little longer y/n” interview, and going by how resonance works you aren’t even consciously aware of the resulting exalts, you just lash out at anything registering as too alive.

Wren’s all oh yeah Ketchup totally told me all about the whole dead gods thing despite that making no sense in conjunction with the Immaculate Order and also being totally irrelevant, but I didn’t know they talked!

And…the neverborn knows Ketchup? Uh, no, the solar ghosts know Ketchup, mastermind of the Usurpation and the reason they became ghosts and ended up agreeing to become deathlords. The neverborn know IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS.

Maybe Wren’s just hallucinating/talking to some deathlord fucking with his head. That really makes more sense, especially since it goes on to have opinions about how good a job a human did training another human and offer to tell him secrets Ketchup kept from him.

Wren, slow on the uptake, thinks that maybe this is Ketchup’s boss. No, Wren, you are dumb. And whatever it is says that they share enemies? What enemies? It says to ask Ketchup and he’d talk.

“What do you mean by that? Kejak doesn’t tell anyone anything.”

Wren you have spent this book and the last not shutting up about all the stuff he told you.

Whatever it is says that if anyone actually knew enough to ask Ketchup, he’d spill everything from the horrible guilt.

AUGURIES SHOWED HIM THAT UNLESS HE STIRRED UP THE POGROM AGAINST THE CELESTIAL EXALTED, ALL OF CREATION WOULD BE SWALLOWED BY MY MAW.

What?

No! The whole idea is that the neverborn are an outside creation threat that doesn’t register of the Loom of Fate so the sidereals can’t take it into account! They murdered all the solars and put them in a box because the solars were going to destroy Creation themselves! That is the central conceit of the setting: you are a returning god-king swelling with power and righteousness, but the people who killed you had some very, very good points.

The only problem with the murder the solars prophesy is that it couldn’t take into account things outside fate. Murdering the solars was supposed to diminish the world but leave what was left safe, but that’s a prophesy made without taking into account the neverborn. THE FACT THE NEVERBORN ARE GOING TO DESTROY CREATION IS A SIDE EFFECT OF THE FACT THE SOLARS WERE MURDERED TO MAKE SURE NOTHING WOULD DESTROY CREATION! Murdering didn’t help!

HE WILL TELL YOU THAT HE HAD NO CHOICE

He will! That is the tragedy of the sidereals.

AND THAT HE BITTERLY REGRETS WHAT HE HAS DONE.

He would NEVER. His entire character is defined around refusing to consider it was a mistake!

AND HE WILL NEGLECT TO MENTION ONE THING: IN THE PURGE OF THE CELESTIAL EXALTED, CHEJOP KEjAK FORGOT TO PURGE HIMSELF.

It didn’t say celestial exalted, it said those golden fuckers who won’t stop breaking reality. It’s debatable what was even going on with their continuing purge of the lunars – it may not have been the original plan but the result of the fact most of the lunars escaped and kept their own culture of fuck those guys going.

I mean yeah, from Wren’s point of view the fact Ketchup is actually an anathema like those he orders killed is relevant, but that has nothing to do with the sidereal’s motivations.

“So what does that mean? You’re going to triumph in the end, and that I’d do better to be with you than against you?”

No, you’re going to do it because they’ll torture you until you lose the will to fight back. You don’t get much by joining people with the end goal of nothing exists ever again.

The whatever it is says that it’s just Wren is soooooo special for exalting “at a late age” (this is not only generally irrelevant but particularly stupid in the context of the exaltations being too locked in a box to have exalted him before) and exalting in the Prince’s keep as if that mattered. Anyway, this all shows that like Yuyu, he’s got a special destiny he can’t technically have because exalts burn off any special destiny they have attached.

Wren says hey, if I’m that important maybe your victory is less than inevitable.

THE VICTORY OF THE ABYSS IS INEVITABLE. IT IS SIMPLY A QUESTION OF WHEN. SUBVERTING YOUR DESTINY MERELY SPEEDS THE PROCESS. I GROW WEARY OF SLUMBER, AND WOULD ONCE MORE AWAKEN.

No, whatever you are, it’s the other way around! You grow weary of existing despite being dead and want it to END. The neverborn are about ENDING. They want to speed this up because every second is unimaginable torture. The last thing you want is to wake up more! It’s bad enough you’re awake when you’re supposed to be dead as it is!

It also says it’s a cooler god than THE FALSE DRAGONS which I assume it means the human versions the Immaculate Order says traveled among people because Gaia’s dragons themselves are pretty damn real.

Wren says yeah he’s pretty done with that.

“I only deal with deities who speak to me directly these days.”
THE UNCONQUERED SUN WILL NOT SPEAK TO YOU HERE.

Or elsewhere! The Unconquered Sun is not really a talky guy. For whatever reason the zenith caste tends to get a short, extremely vague message upon exaltation and that’s it until you sneak into Heaven and smash your way into the Game. He’s not all huggy like Luna, which is why her exalted generally worship her greatness and his exalted tend to not have any idea what the hell is going on.

If you want to stick to gods that’ll chat all the time, the neverborn are actually your guys! Pick up some whispers and enjoy the endless screaming on the edge of your hearing.

THE UNCONQUERED SUN HAS GIVEN YOU NOTHING. WHAT POWER HAS THE SUN SHOWN YOU? WHAT GIFTS HAVE YOU BEEN BESTOWED?

Very true, actually. The exaltation runs on its own. The Unconquered Sun can’t give it or stop it. But instead of explaining this is actually true, it stops there and instead offers to do horrible things to his enemies.

Wren is suspicious of why he’d be rewarded so well. God damn it Wren it’s obvious they’re really powerful but need avatars to channel it. Also

Knowing it was impossible made the fantasy instantly less appealing, and said much about those doing the temptation.

What says much about him is his primary objection to the power trip that’s all about doing incredibly horrible things to people who aren’t even particularly bad is that he doesn’t think they can deliver on it.

So whatever it is shows that it can give him power. It’s horribly painful.

YEARS OF TRAINING, YOURS IN AN INSTANT.

So first Yuyu is just inherently superpowered, now the other solar gets handed a pile of XP because by god this will not be a story about what your solar can do!

THE POWERS OF THE ZENITH CASTE ARE YOURS, PRIEST. THINGS YOU WOULD NEVER HAVE LEARNED ON YOUR OWN, AND THINGS THAT WOULD HAVE TAKEN YOU A HUNDRED YEARS.

The game caps essence at 5 until you pass a hundred, so I’m going to assume Wren is now essence 6. No other reason to be specifying a hundred years to accomplish it.

This further suggests it’s actually one of the solar ghosts, because they’re the ones who know solar charms. It doesn’t have to be one of the zenith solar ghosts, since they were all powerful enough that they presumably knew all the charms, but the Bishop of the Chalcedony Thurible seems a good fir for this anyway, aside from this behind far from where he hangs out.

Anyway, to actually pledge service he’s got to give up his name, of course, and whatever it is says that this is what he really is anyway, because YOU ARE A WARRIOR AND AN ASSASSIN. who KILLED MORE THAN YOU NEEDED TO and is pleased by death. Nice of the book to remember that’s not really a positive trait!

“That’s not true.”
ISN’T IT? WHY SET THE TRAP IN THE TOMB, THEN? YOU DIDN’T KNOW WHO FOLLOWED YOU. THE FACT THAT IT CAUGHT SOMEONE YOU THOUGHT OF AS AN ENEMY WAS MERELY A HAPPY ACCIDENT.

Possibly the Bishop of the Chalcedony Thurible makes a very good case, Wren.

Wren’s all NO NEVER THAT’S NOT ME while admitting that yeah the trap setting was kind of utterly shitty and he had no reason to do it but he enjoyed it, and he realizes that what’s being said is true but he doesn’t want it to be.

I AM MALHAVOSH, FATHER OF SNAKES AND LORD OF MURDER

Dammit what part of no names is so hard to understand! The neverborn do not have names anymore, that’s why you have to lose yours too.

I was expecting this to be Wren realizing he should be better and turning his back on who he actually is to improve, but instead he seems to just be holding on out of sheer spite at the idea of being someone else’s servant. It’s okay to be a murderous psychopath but by god he’s nobody’s slave. But then he remembers he’s somebody else’s slave already! Remember that god from the first book? He hasn’t settled the debt there. See, all the more reason the abyssals should’ve murdered the god at the time.

Anyway, because of this he refuses whatever it is and says to take its stupid gift back, which it obviously can’t because that’s not how endowments work, so he decides to rip out his heart to give it back, and luckily this somehow activates a Holy effect on his bloodsplatter. Wow, it’s sort of like it made no sense to teach him zenith charms and not, say, necromancy. Or at least a different set of charms than the ones based around resistance and Holy.

Hooded whatevers come in to stop him.

Wren, however, was in the air, a nimbus of light around him. He could see the temple spread out before him, the recumbent form of the dead god and the weaving rows of the benches. Only now did he understand that they were a sigil, that the very way in which the room had been arranged was a sink for power. No more, he vowed. No more.
He hung in the air for an impossibly long moment, his bloody palms pressed against the chamber’s ceiling, then began to fall. Again, he tore at himself and again the blood scattered, the stone melting away under its very touch.

I have no idea what he’s doing here but apparently he successfully manages to leverage self-inflicted lethal damage into holy effects. Maybe this is supposed to be because he’s out of motes or something?

Anyway, so he destroys the temple. Noooooo if he leaves the underworld we’ll stop getting updates on whether or not it looks like Silent Hill today!