It’s back to Holok and sentences that take forever to get to the point. Today: Ketchup and the Isle drink fancy delicate tea, Holok is rustic and likes crappy rustic tea. Why is it the only thing people are willing to go fuck aristocracy about is stuff that’s really just cultural? Anyway, point is he’s enjoying some properly rustic nettle tea right now, blah blah better than you.

There’s Guild people here, and we’re reminded the Immaculate Order is feuding with them. Also, no one else is too pleased by Holok.

The Immaculates were seen as an extension of the Realm out here, and while Holok knew that in the main that impression was correct, he still felt it was rude to take that sort of thing out on individual priests. After all, most of them had been four generations shy of conception when the Order had tied itself to the Scarlet Empress’s political program, and really had no idea what was going on behind the scenes.

…so? The Immaculate Order is very currently an abusive arm of the Realm that harasses the Guild simply because they’re a rival economic power refusing the Scarlet Empress’ divine ownership of everything.

It’s like the author thinks it’s some rivalry where their ancestors had a grudge that’s no longer an issue, and not that they’re the two biggest powers in Creation currently fucking with each other.

Holok then admits that even if we accept his nonsense about the rank and file of oppression vs exploitation being uninvolved, he’s kind of completely fucking not that.

at least until recently

Jesus christ you were there when the sidereals joined forced with the Scarlet Empress and helped write the Immaculate texts! The fact your boss is slightly annoyed at you does not mean you can wash your hands of that you stupid egotistical fuck!

and where Kejak still lurked.

Oh, but the mortal who doesn’t know shit and is just used to find/kill when it’s necessary, it’s okay to blame him.

In a sense, that almost made it appropriate for him to take some fashion of abuse

In another, even more accurate sense, sense, every reason they’d give for hating an Immaculate priest is completely true when applied to him, and also there’s a good dozen other reasons to hate him they don’t even realize apply because he’s helped rewrite history.

God I hate Holok.

He’s given some crappy rice by a cranky server and starts chowing down as everyone watches and holds their breath.

It wasn’t until Holok was halfway through the bowl that he realized that everyone in the tavern was watching him expectantly.

Worst. Sidereal. Ever.

He decides now is time to chat about who tried to poison him, not that he’s going to cause a fuss or anything. Sadly, the poison was on the chopsticks and he switched them to a different pair, so he wasn’t poisoned. We’re apparently supposed to just accept that if he wasn’t so smart he’d have been dead by the instakill poison, because that is totally a thing exalts have to worry about.

Anyway the crowd is equal parts furious and terrified. I don’t know why the latter part, but the author makes it clear they’re jumping every time Holok shifts. It really kills any sympathy he gets from the fact they tried to murder him – he comes off as a bully, and they come off as scared people just trying to defend themselves.

The guy in charge makes a move to try to scare Holok off instead.

Holok frowned and looked down. He was perhaps six inches taller than the caravan guard, and the man’s attempt to intimidate him was frankly ludicrous.

And aside from the whole bully problem, this could be an interesting note – Holok grew up in the heyday of the Shogunate, which is a lot better than the current Age of Sorrows. Maybe he’s taller than everyone around him because he lived back when there was food and health care.

It was all he could do to keep from laughing. “You want the money you paid the serving girl to poison me back?”
The man opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. He looked as if he’d just stepped on a rake, tines up. Holok felt laughter coming again, and this time couldn’t restrain it. “Oh, Dragons!” His guffaw boomed out over the table. “You mean to tell me that you were actually going to say that?

…no, because that’s a non sequitur. This doesn’t even make sense. It’s like the author wants his character to be witty by being smarter than the other guy, but can’t think of anything that actually fits.

Then Holok admits to himself he was deliberately baiting them all into a fight as the brawl begins, which involves him throwing his chopsticks through two people’s throats as an opening move because morality is something for non-protagonists to worry about.

We get another battle that resembles the fight Yuyu and Dace had against the brain eating chaos fairies, only with a greater power difference. It’s just as gory and if anything more detailed in its cruelties. There’s an early offhanded mention of shoving one person into the fire, for example.

He hopped down from the table, the breeze from his robes brushing away the sand from the bag he’d punctured earlier. His latest assailant wasn’t so lucky, as her feet slid out from under her as she leapt forward and tried to land in a fighting stance. Her eyes met Holok‘s for a moment, wide with panic. He shook his head at her, said “Sand’s such a nuisance, isn’t it?” then lifted his left foot and stomped down, once. There was a rigid crunch, and then Holok moved on to a new opponent.

And this is part of the sidereal curse, I suppose. The curse was greatest on the solars, true, but that’s not the only reason they saw it only there and not in each others’ eyes. The first edition sidereal book has this lovely bit about how their curse is the subtlest and so isn’t represented mechanically. Instead, the person running the game should simply use more positive language whenever the characters deal with other sidereal. The bigger the group, the better everything is, the more obviously right everyone is.

After five millenia of the sidereal curse, is it any wonder that he’ll pick up the paper of Holok’s latest murder of a tavern with the same fond smile as he did of Holok bruising a few thugs? And was Holok truly a monster from the start or is this what happens when your peers are primed to look kindly upon your actions?

I’ve always felt Desus should really be the cautionary tale not of how solars can get away with shit but of how completely twisting people’s responses so you’re worshipped for whatever abuses you feel like committing would turn anyone into that. And sidereal may not be solar-grade monsters, but all that means is it might take a few hundred years longer.

Incidentally, another pair of guards attempt to use slings, which you may recall from my comments back in Hunger Games are a very low class weapon and further the sense that Holok is someone with sickening power toying with them for his own amusement.

For some reason, someone shouts a warning to Holok and this means he manages to dodge another attack he hadn’t noticed. Lamentations! Then the same person kills Holok’s attacker! None of this is what I wanted.

Anyway, it’s Unforgiven Blossom and she wants to travel with him and he’s all why the fuck should I bitch after she kind of saved him twice in the last few seconds, so she shows the +1 dagger.

Would you like to learn where and how I obtained this?”
The priest rolled his eyes. “No, I have no curiosity whatsoever about how you came up with a piece of orichalcum that size in this late day and age. Of course I want to know, woman.”

At least Yuyu’s entertainingly horrible. Holok has nothing at all going for him.

Anyway, therefore they leave together. Oh, Unforgiven Blossom. You weren’t really the best character, but you could be fun. Why have you betrayed me like this?

Well, on to Wren, who’s just

came up out of the dark as if all the hounds of a particularly unpleasant hell were on his tail which, upon reflection, he suspected was only a slight exaggeration. The Labyrinth was not technically one of the hells

You know, if it wasn’t for the fact it doesn’t make any internal sense I’d wonder if this was all an extended joke about the fact Hell is Malfeas and the neverborn are called the Malfeans and a lot of people would confuse the two as a result. For this reason it’s gone from the second edition, though personally I don’t have trouble with it and liked the reasoning. (Malfeas was the king of the primordials, therefore the dead were his subjects.)

Wren tries to talk up how dramatic collapse of the dead god’s tomb was but honestly author, if you thought of more details just scroll up, find the scene, and stick them in there. Also he totally did not collapse any neverborn’s tomb. If anyone could collapse a neverborn’s tomb they’d be doing it right now. The fact the tomb-bodies remain above the void, unable to enter it, is the entire underlying problem.

The tears he’d made in his own chest had proved to be startlingly shallow, and Wren wondered where all of the blood had come from. He’d been certain he was shedding his heart’s blood on the floor, and to find that so little had done so much was a trifle disturbing.

So apparently he got two charms – one makes lethal damage produce a holy effect, the other apparently makes your blood multiply or does some healing effect Wren wasn’t aware he activated.

I just hope he didn’t pick up that charm that lets you designate anything that annoys you a Creature of Darkness. Comboing that into your holy blood charm would super broken.

Wren also explains that he’s pretty sure he didn’t actually harm the whatever it is, because even essence six brokenness your PC will never approach still can’t beat anything else in the setting. But it was still a great idea that had no drawbacks, because that is absolutely what should happen when you attempt to solve the problem of the neverborn with violence. I mean, it’s not like the fact they only exist as a malicious world-destroying force is because of people solving problems with violence the first time means anything, right?

He’s chased by some of the things that serve it.

He’d dispatched them all, though, with a single-minded ferocity that left Wren wondering how much of his tempter’s assessment of his true self had been accurate.

All of it. Look, if you want to realize this is bad and work at it I’m completely behind you and believe you can change, but you are not perfect as you are right now.

And so, he’s found the edge of the Labyrinth, which is also the edge of the underworld because apparently they’re exactly the same thing, sucks to be you, ghosts!

Anyway, he pulls desperately at the trap door but it won’t open, despite the fact he’s a solar and he can play hackysack with elk. Lot of drama and angst. Then he tries pushing.

The stone rose as if it weighed nothing at all, and Wren stared up into the light. “I will, almost inevitably, be damned,” he said, and looked around himself one last time. There was no one. Apart from the sterile corridor, there was nothing. “Unconquered Sun, protect your servants from themselves,” he prayed

Ha. Haha. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

But anyway, he finds it isn’t actually sunshine and daisies the way it seemed from underneath, he’s still in some cold tunnels. He explores a bit, wishes for light, then remembers XP-dispenser-god means he now knows how to glow.

The gray stone was washed almost white by the radiance, and he could see now the intricate pattern of painted sigils that encircled the walls well above the height of his head. He could also see a flash of reflection from something higher in the tomb, and lifted his eyes to see what it could possibly be. A lantern, he suspected, or perhaps gilt on the ceiling.
Instead, it was a sword.
It hung there, suspended by nothing and impossibly huge. Gleaming in the golden light, it somehow seemed even more golden itself, and it chimed faintly in the light. It was as long as a man was tall, with a slight curve to its blade and a double fistful of rubies set in its hilt and guard.

The +1 sword, at long last.

Which is the cue for the local ghosts to start chatting. Wren grabs the sword

Clouds of dust swirled around his feet as he realized an instant too late he was desecrating a tomb

Since when does Wren care about desecrating tombs, book? You do remember his whole plot started with sneaking into a tomb intending to desecrate it good but it was empty?

He wants them to show themselves, and the ghost reminds him it can’t appear with his anima glowing. Zenith animas count as natural sunlight, which can hurt Creatures of Darkness, which all ghosts automatically are. You know there’s some late 2nd edition bullshit about the Unconquered Sun picking some heroic ghosts to be sun-aligned and that is such stupid bullshit, the whole point of the Creature of Darkness designation is that it sounds really legitimate and then you learn it’s just a tag reality sticks on certain classes of thing and in fact there’s a wyld mutation that does nothing but stick the tag on you because you got unlucky.

See, whether or not these ghosts are good, whether or not they serve solars or the Unconquered Sun, they’re ghosts and they’re automatically listed as Creatures of Darkness because of that, just as no matter how horrible the zenith, they’ll be able to pay a few motes and blast them with holy effects. Just like Five Days Darkness can love solars and the Unconquered Sun and still be listed as a Creature of Darkness because he’s the sun’s shadow and reality says so! That’s just how things work.

Wren, of course, hasn’t had any change of heart about burning people’s faces off, he’s just too scared to attempt it and prefers to try retreating instead.

What do you want?” “To let you out.” The voice was measured and calm; a bit calmer, Wren realized, than he was himself. “I serve the sword, and the Unconquered Sun, and I would be most upset if you starved to death inside that tomb.”

So while this book has been wrong about many things and chosen poorly about many more that would be revealed later, it does understand that being a bad person and being seared by the sun’s holy light have nothing to do with each other, which is more than can be said for the people writing the third edition of Exalted.

Interestingly, the ghost then decides to play chicken with Wren:

“As proof of good faith, however, I will release you before you dim the light, and thus risk destruction for myself and all those who serve here with me. The decision is, of course, up to you.”
The door started to swing open, and Wren could see out into what appeared to be a large stone chamber beyond. He caught a faint glimpse of more skeletons, broken weapons, smoothly carved stone. Faint, piteous screams touched at the edge of his hearing. The door swung open wider.
“Damn you,” said Wren, and swallowed the light back into himself.

This whole bit is nice. If only Wren could be like this all the time.

Cut to Shamblemerry, who’s apparently been fighting/fleeing/chasing the ghosts this whole time trying to get back to the chamber.

Some of her powers, she found, remained to her, and these were effective enough against the ghosts that she could hold her own.

She’s also continuing the merry tradition of not being clear on if she’s an abyssal or nemissary or what. What do you mean, some powers remain? Because if you’re just low on motes, you can use motes for anything so it’s more “some power remains” while the way you talk makes it sound like you’re saying you can spam a couple powers but have lost access to most of the others you normally rely on, which is what I’d expect most abyssals players to say if they had to rebuild their solar-level PC as some nemissary. Shamblemerry seems like she was built halfway competently, after all, so it’s not like Ratcatcher where anything would be an improvement.

But anyway since she sees the light she figures now is a good time to charge.

Back to Wren, who’s now seeing the materialized ghosts. I’m still not clear who the ghosts are, since to my understanding they’re the army that was used to murder the solar here – forget if they were a proper dragonblooded host or a mortal army led by some dragonblooded, but either way. And we don’t get that explanation now either, because the author seems to have forgotten that’s an issue. Instead, the recap just says:

“So you’ve been guarding the tomb since it was created, or more accurately, what it held

Have they? Why? Guarding only seems like it’d make sense if they didn’t want new solars getting the weapon that killed them in droves when they tried to kill the last anathema, but they’re apparently super positive about solars getting the weapon that killed them in droves, and we’re just skipping over the explanation for the last bit.

Then they recap last book at each other until they finally mention there’s a way out, because apparently Wren was seriously considering the possibility there wasn’t despite them saying they wanted to let him out so he wouldn’t starve just a bit ago. Anyway, they won’t let him go until there’s more exposition. They have to tell him about how cool the sword is and how he’s got to get the +1 dagger back too.

“The sword is not: for you. It is for the boy. You are simply its keeper until he is ready.”
“Marvelous. I get to be the practice dummy for history.” Wren turned away in disgust. “You mean to tell me that my grand and glorious destiny as an Exalt, one who roused the dead gods themselves out of their beds, is to serve as fetch-and-carry man for a boy who’s already fumbled away his first magical weapon?

Wren makes a good point about how terrible this whole plot is. Authors, listen when your characters start telling you you’re an idiot.

“Rest assured, your labors will be quite sufficient.

I have no idea what this means but from context I’m guessing that he’ll get more fun destiny suffering.

So, at least, I have been told.”
“Told? By whom?”
The ghost spread his hands in a gesture of benediction. “By the Unconquered Sun, of course.”

Bullshit. He’s busy with his heroin xbox and even back when he was talking, he was never the prophesy guy.

Then, thank the neverborn, Shamblemerry shows up and demands a Join Battle roll, ending the conversation as we shift to combat time.