Last time, sues, sues everywhere.
Today we check in with Pelesh, the mortal who ran rings around Ratcatcher the semibyssal.

The prince himself slouched on his throne, eyes dark with fury. He wore all of his armor save his helm, which rested at his feet with his mace, and small gouts of scarlet flame danced around the chamber in time with his words.

He always gets such great descriptions! That’s really the greatest failing with this book as Exalted promo material. The author only does this for NPCs. The Prince of Shadows is supposed to be on of the signature abyssals, but instead we’ve got Ratcatcher while the series keeps acting like this guy is a deathlord.

Pelesh explains he’s terrified because his boss, in cliche’d villain fashion, has been murdering his way through loyal employees out of frustration with one disloyal one. And it’s the wrong cliche villain fashion, dammit! Falling into rages and just killing people just isn’t impressive. He should just coolly execute half his people for clearly not being good enough to be in his employ.

(Interestingly, not a single mention of torture here.)

and sent most of the other deathknights and servants of note out on various errands of diplomacy or mayhem.

This would suggest that deathknights are included in the group of “people he’s slaughtering out of frustration”. Even assuming deathknight = abyssal OR nemissary doesn’t help, because nemissaries are, you know, already dead. All you’re doing is fucking up the expensive corpses they use, which were technically your property already. It’s like smashing the furniture.

“My prince, on your orders, I unsealed the chamber in the dungeon where you had placed the dagger for safekeeping. The stone upon which it had been placed was still present, as was the cushion upon which the dagger had rested. The lock to the chamber appeared to be unmarred, and only you, I, and Unforgiven Blossom even knew of its existence. However, the dagger itself was missing, and in its place rested this.” He drew forth from a pouch at his belt a clumsy iron replica of the missing blade. “She no doubt left it behind when she took the real one, though I know not why.” Pelesh paused briefly, then added, “There were footprints in the dust on the floor. Small ones.”

???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

So…he realized the knife was missing, then ordered someone to check if the knife was missing? And his mortal money-counter and mortal scryer are the two highest ranked people in his employ, who he habitually chats with about where he’s storing super artifacts despite it being a secret from literally ever single other person in the place?

Also, it’s really Pelesh who has every opportunity here. He’s told the guy thinks it’s missing. He’s the one who examines the room and helpfully reports that he even found the exact footprints in the dust to match another servant who just left and can’t defend herself.

And indeed, all he asks Pelesh is if Pelesh thinks it could also have been some other person who isn’t him, and Pelesh insists to target Unforgiven Blossom.

A sudden thought struck the prince and he whirled, his brow furrowed with concern. “Could Wren have returned? Might this be his doing?”
“No, my liege.” Pelesh dared to lift his head, and saw what might almost be worry on the prince’s face. “The door to the underworld has been triple-bmed, and guards placed before it against the unlikely eventuality of Wren’s return. Nothing’s passed that way since Wren fell.”

Also, to go with Yuyu, his fellow baby solar Wren is someone superbyssals fear. This appears to be what passes for PC empowerment – you’ll still be instakilled by flower snakes, but at least the human NPCs will tell you they suck even more, unless you’re an abyssal, in which case you’re pathetic scum.

Exhausted, the prince flung himself upon his throne, the cushions and furs draped across it only partially dampening the clang of armor on stone.

Poor baby. He probably tired himself out with all the killing.

Anyway, some bats arrive.

“Did you hear what you must do? Find where my wandering flower has run to and watch her. Tell me where she goes and whom she sees. A beautiful blossom cannot hide in this barren land. Go!”

There have been a lot of flower references like this and it’s getting rather annoying.

He brought his hands together over his head, and a clap of thunder shook the citadel to its very foundations as he did so. The bats spiraled upward, shrill voices swearing fealty to the prince in their secret tongue, until they once again reached the shadows of the room’s ceiling, where they vanished. The prince stared up after them, and when the last had merged with the darkness, he smiled.
And when he was quite certain he was alone, he began to laugh.

I’m not entirely convinced he even has a plan, I think he’s just chewing scenery.

But that’s a surprisingly fitting transition to Ratcatcher, who is more of a chew toy.

Ratcatcher explains that low on the pecking order he may be, but he’s still able to murder some dudes off camera and has totally left some quality carnage. In doing so, the whole city’s in alert. Good going.

He explains that the first guards to show up took the whole walking corpse thing in stride. He refers to this as revenants, because that’s the D&D monster. He then goes on to further confuse things by describing the types as including walking dead and nemissaries, despite one being a near-mindless corpse either raised by a necromancer or failure to properly bury it, neither of which should be happening here; and the other being established spirits who presumably know better than to float into a random room of Sijan of all places when there’s plenty of corpses everywhere that aren’t guarded.

Then to further muddy things:
“You’re probably confused,” the man at the front of the herd of pikemen said, the ornate stitching on the shoulder of his hooded black tunic indicating that he was most likely the leader of the squad. “It’s all right,” he continued in soothing tones. “You’ll just want to stand there and relax until we can get a necromancer down here to send you where you belong. In the meantime, just be calm. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Which doesn’t fit well into anything, although surprisingly, not a bad fit for Exalted! People can become ghosts without realizing it’s happening very easily.

Instead of playing along, Ratcatcher is bitchy.

“He’s aware,” the captain said to his men, who murmured in response.

Well…yes? The higher soul only separates from the lower after three days. It’s the lower soul that’s a raging animal. If he’s only just died, of course the higher soul’s there to chat with. And if it wasn’t, soothing tones are useless, it’s a raging animal and it’s going to rip your face off.

Ratcatcher continues to threaten and hiss even as he says that hey, looks like these guys think he’s docile and that would be an advantage.

He tries the old shriek-and-fall-over trick, and the captain calmly reminds everyone that they have a procedure and it’s to not fall for this trick. They stay back and wait for the necromancer to confirm.

“But, captain,” the man said, leaning closer, “He’s not moving. My cousin Resplendent Chrysanthemum had one like this. The corpse just fell over, never moved again. It was like magic.”

Which is why you don’t need to touch it. Really, he completely deserves Ratcatcher crushing his throat here.

Cue extended fight sequence. The usual one person beating many thing happens, and this time it’s less excusable because the guards are armed with pikes specifically to keep their distance and pin their opponent and yet Ratcatcher still runs rings around them. In fairness, they don’t have much light and so he’s able to hide in the darkness, but what sort of idiots wouldn’t prioritize light? The idiot ball this requires is so big I’m amazed they can hold it.

He wanted to finish this pack of fools. Another two steps and he rose up behind the guardsman, whose halting, measured steps betrayed a quaking fear.
“Captain?” he called out, his voice trembling. “Bronze Sparrow? Aejus? Are you out there?”
“Not any more,” Ratcatcher hissed in his ear as he snapped the man’s neck with savage glee.

But it’s a fun and gruesome romp.

Like with Unforgiven Blossom, the final person gets the drop on him, which in this case involves running Ratcatcher through. Apparently he can still feel pain, something that surprises him.

“That should stop you long enough,” the guard said with some satisfaction, her arms folded across her chest. It disturbed Ratcatcher slightly that what he could see of her was tinged with rot and disease. Her flesh looked soft and sunken, the fabric of her uniform increasingly threadbare with every second he gazed at her. She looks dead and rotted already

So we’re actually doing comparatively well on the gender front – it’s mostly guys, sure, but at least women exist and without being pigeonholed into feminine jobs.

Of course she’s an idiot who just stands there sure she’s won because stabbing a corpse will absolutely stop it, but that’s more intelligent than anyone else in the group so I can’t really hold that against her.

Ratcatcher plays it up, limping and moaning as he walks toward her until he’s in bearhug range.

“A dead man doesn’t care about a piece of wood in him, you know,” he said

But they should know!

The pikes seem obviously designed to pin and keep him at a distance, not to be spears that just run him through. Plus, he already played dead once, so they’d be even more on guard for this sort of thing.

Then we learn the second group who’s arrived is just more pikemen with no necromancer, I guess because Ratcatcher had to get some breaks eventually.

He further seems to have got a few powerups.

at Ratcatcher’s amused command, the very shadows had crept out from under the tables and smothered the torches.

Not sure if that’s supposed to be an abyssal charm or if the DM let him convert all his character’s XP into the equivalent in ghost charms.

Ratcatcher had no idea how he’d called the shadows to douse the torches. He’d simply wished it devoutly, and as if in answer to his prayer, the shadows came. He’d seen the not-dead in the prince’s service do similar things on occasion, and found himself curious as to how many of their powers he was now heir to.

This strongly suggests the latter, despite abyssal charms being a thousand times better than ghost ones so he should be experiencing this as a horrible downgrade in ability. Maybe his character was built really, really badly, back before he knew anything about the system, but now he knows so given the chance to construct a new character with the same resources he can make a combat monster.

He’d been to Sijan once before, to defile the corpse of an enemy of his prince

And as you may recall, defiling some other guy’s corpse was the purpose of the expedition last book that triggered all this. Prince is really into defiling corpses, I guess, despite that being almost as empty a gesture as it is in our world and despite there being so many better other options that in our world.

Point is, he’s got a decent grasp of the layout.

He’s picked up clothes from one of the guards who didn’t die a gory death, and then realizes that the hole in his chest probably won’t heal. No shit. He then goes on to say that he totally knows nemissaries and that they constantly need new bodies, but somehow he’s only at “probably won’t” because he is dumb. It also doesn’t occur to him that this would be a lot easier if he just got out of the body entirely and left as a ghost, what with being invisible and able to go through walls. Even switching to one of the guards would be an improvement, rather than risking another guard seeing him and realizing they don’t recognize him.

He is doing one thing right – he’s headed for the docks before the clusterfuck can get worse.

The next chapter continues our abyssal theme, checking in with Shamblemerry who’s apparently still alive and still needs to eat. She’s been living on rats and spiders.

Twice, Shamblemerry had approached the stairs that led up to the temple where she’d fought the Sidereal priest, and twice she’d fled in fear before her foot touched the first step. He’d toyed with her, she realized. All of her bravado, all of her strength, had been nothing. He’d let her exhaust herself, like a clever child performing for a stem tutor, and then unveiled his own power as casually as if he were performing a morning’s exercises.
He’d left her for dead, then, and that had given her time to drag herself down into the catacombs, where she could wait, and heal, and plan revenge. But every time she thought of facing the priest again, her guts turned to water and her blood turned to ice. She’d known pain at his hands the likes of which she’d never imagined, and the memory of it haunted her brief hours of sleep.

The author is just really terrible at relative power. There’s no degrees – a character is either completely outclassed or the complete outclasser. This would be a huge stretch even for a non-exalt, and even if the fight had gone much, much worse than it did. There isn’t even reason to stay in the catacomb when it isn’t even the safer choice – he knows she’s down there and could just come back to finish her off if that’s what she’s worried about.

Anyway, that was our Shamblemerry update. It serves no point and I don’t know why the author didn’t just have Holok kill her back then if all he planned to do was have her pop in occasionally to say she didn’t plan on participating further in the story.

Then another POV change within the chapter! Now it’s time for Ketchup Carjack.

He’s being annoyed by a hairline crack in his ceiling starmap.

A second, closer look (levitation was, he decided, one of the most practical of his arts)

Only NPCs can do anything cool, remember.

Also no the most practical of your arts is magic spider google.

Anyway, every time he orders it fixed, it reappears as soon as he looks away. Trying to get teams of people to keep staring at it because apparently he’s more concerned about minor imperfections than the fact it’s an omen leads to increasingly weird stuff happening to make them look away.

Finally, Ketchup accepts that fact of it is actually more important than making his indoor sky perfect, so he summons his crack astrology squad to study the fake sky as the crack lengthens. They figure out nothing. This may have some connection to the fact he kicks them out again after who knows how little time so he can have the place to himself again.

Involuntarily, his mind drifted to Holok, and he wondered how his old friend-no, not friend; his duties and responsibilities meant that no man could truly be his friend. How his old acquaintance and ally was faring.

See, Holok? Your faction only sees people as objects or obstacles. You are the monster. It is you.

Ketchup Carjack then explains Holok is a sue who always did his best work’when his back was against the wall. The fewer resources he was given, the more he relied on his own considerable talents, and the more determined he was to succeed.

Right.

He then says he doesn’t even expect Holok to get the boy, just accomplish something else cool along the way.

Then a paint fleck drifts down and Ketchup remarks the sky is falling.

Then we switch POVs again, all still in the same chapter! The chaptering system makes less sense by the paragraph. Now we’re back at the Prince of Shadows. At least he’s always amusing.

The evening’s marionette show had singularly failed to distract him from his concerns, and even the screams of the untalented puppeteer provided him with no diversion. It was, he decided, a singularly unpleasant evening.
“Take three fingers and let him go,” he directed. “Oh, and have Pelesh pay him. The full amount. Otherwise it will be impossible to get other entertainers to journey here, much less competent ones.”
His torturer looked up, dead eyes wide and questioning beneath her hood, and paused in the application of a glowing coal to the puppeteer’s left foot. The young man had been stripped naked save for a loincloth and strapped to a granite slab with many leather thongs. In an attempt to raise her master’s spirits, the torturer had been tracing lines of poetry the prince had composed on the offending puppet master’s body. The combination of the torturer’s poor handwriting and the prince’s tendencies for long couplets had, however, rendered this less pleasing in execution than it had been in concept, and now the prince was bored.
With a wordless grunt, the torturer put down both the book of poetry she’d been quoting from and the long tongs holding the hot coal, and reached for a rack holding a palisade of knives and saws. Her hand paused over the many options available, and she looked questioningly at her prince.
“Oh, a sharp one, I suppose,” he said in response to her unasked question. “He wasn’t that bad. And have his equipment loaded back onto his wagon.”

See, that’s some solid villanry right there.

He goes to walk around his castle and think about Unforgiven Blossom, who apparently he’s been following this whole time and he’s decided to just wait for her to come back and also apparently he let her take it in the first place.

He says there’s been no word of the boy. There’s still no reason for him to think the boy matters, mind you – at least after Holok insisted the kid was important he got stabbed good and now has actual reason to want to hunt the kid down. He knows something’s up with the brain eating chaos fairies but they don’t get along so he’s not sure what.

Then the ball from the destroyed orrery representing the planet Mercury despite the setting not technically having planets rolls against his foot and then rolls right back when he pushes it away. He explains this is extra weird because, as a scary guy, when he orders the floors made flat he gets floors that are perfectly flat. Looking into it, he sees Unforgiven Blossom, who he appears to have forgiven twice now, and some guy with a beard (the only guy with a beard mentioned so far is Holok, though I don’t remember if anything was said about Dace’s beard status), and finally the gnawed and tattered carcass of a dead rat. In theory, the fact Ratcatcher is always symbolized by a dead or dying rat should have to do with the fact he’s supposed to catch and kill rats, but in practice he’s always meant to actually be the rat. You know what’d have been a better name? Something like The Rat-catching Rat (more flowery obviously). He’s a rat who’s turned against his own kind (both humans and solar exalts) and one who can probably expect an ironic comeuppance of being killed the same as the rest.

“Oh. Him.” The prince dropped the sphere with disdain.

He has really had a bad time of it recently. First his beloved servant betrays him then his non-beloved servant not turns out to still be around to deal with but is apparently important.

The sphere shatters and then hours later something moves in the mess. What is it? Who knows.