SO.

Precisely one year back, I inflicted the first chapter of this on you.

At the end of last year, I warned you of my plan to continue each Friday.

And there were delays, but today…

Today my threats come to fruition. Today, we continue Children of the Dragons.

Remember: It’s your fault for voting for Dresden and Unwind. You brought this on yourselves.

In the days after the town’s entire population had been slaughtered, Qut Toloc acquired a reputation as a haunted place. Travelers who’d stopped in seeking shelter or a meal found instead piles of scorched bones, livestock dead in the streets, and a desecrated temple. Walls stained with blood and offal provided no clues to the fate of the inhabitants, save that it was violent and sudden. The temple’s fate was just as mysterious, as the idea of the Immaculate Order abandoning a holy site was almost unknown. Yet here the temple stood, its doors hanging off their hinges and birds nesting in the sanctuary. No industrious monks repaired the damage; no devout ones prayed in the corridors.

Evidently, the idea that the monks of the area could’ve died to whatever wiped out the rest of the town is so conceivable they don’t even think to double-check to see if the monks are just too dead to fix stuff up.

Yes, yes, it’s probably trying to say that it’s weird that new monks aren’t dispatched, but it gives the timeframe as “days after” and is talking about what the first people to come to it see. So, do people expect the monks to be aware of this stuff even before anyone’s gone there to find out?

Actually – maybe. The ones directing this stuff are fate ninja. You could actually do something clever regarding how the sidereal’s attempts to show off and build up the legend of how awesome the Immaculate Order is, it results in a situation where people expect the world of it and treat any minor hiccup as a catastrophe that no doubt is the first sign of the apocalypse. Sids are a bit too busy trying to track down the explosion of new solar essences to be doing their routine checks that everything’s good at each Immaculate temple and can no longer do their cute trick of sending replacements who arrive the very day they’re needed. The local peasantry’s faith is shattered into a million pieces and they begin worshiping demons because why the hell not UP IS DOWN LEFT IS RIGHT DOGS AND CATS SLEEPING TOGETHER.

Sage mapmakers modified their wares accordingly. Those whose products had been so detailed as to show Qut Toloc now removed it; those who’d ignored the hamlet before now marked it as a dangerous, ghost-ridden place.

But that kind of stuff would require writing that’s a trifle more thoughtful, and so instead we get “if TOWN MARKED ON MAP, then ERASE ALL MENTION; if NOT TOWN MARKED ON MAP, then MARK AS GHOST DOOM.”

Itinerant priests began using tales of the destruction of Qut Toloc as abject lessons in their sermons, and the Thousand Gods turned their faces away and would not speak of it when asked.

I see the gods have grown by an order of magnitude since last time!

This section amuses me because this actually works really well with the divide between the known and secret history of the world. This is absolutely what should be presented here, but at the same time, it’s really just that the gods don’t know what’s up and are trying to play up how ~mysterious~ it is so no one realizes they’re not actually half as great as they claim to be.

Of course, then it goes on to claim that now it’s a name bandied about far and wide by the tale-tellers and wags of Creation. and like, is one village somewhere in Canada really going to be known throughout every village in every country of Africa? Creation is significantly bigger and at a significantly lower tech level. If people across the world aren’t going to care about the one village when they have satellite cellphones, explaining to the various barbarian tribes of the northwest ice wastes what it is and why they should care is gonna be a doozy.

Which, of course, is why the treasure hunters immediately found the place irresistible. They expected to find beasts to slay, relics of the First Age for the taking, and treasure and glory scattered on the streets of the village like shells on a sandy beach.

Ah, and D&Dxalted returns. The general Scavenger Lands area is meant to allow for more D&D type adventures, but they don’t actually have “adventurers” in the traditional sense, because Exalted uses the tiered structure rather than balanced one. Roving bands of 4-6 adventurers “treasure hunters” skilled in monster slaying and corpse looting aren’t a thing because you can’t work your way up from giant rats to titan-slaying. If you’ve got an actual problem, you make it the Realm’s problem and have their actual exalts deal with it. Successful treasure hunters also known as scavenger lords, because their thing is finding and making off with scraps, not glorious battle against mighty beasts.

Furthermore – they’re just not idiots. If a place had no cool stuff prior to a tragedy, it probably doesn’t have cool stuff now. While a sizable number of disasters probably do have First Age relics at their heart, it’s usually because someone picked up that relic and successfully used the fuck out of it, in which case it’s not still there for the taking. (And if they exploded themselves in the process so it is, it’s probably not something you wanted!) And most of the time, it’s a “someone” and not “something” issue, because while ordinary humans may not be able to get much power, Creation makes up for it by packing that power into all sorts of other creatures.

Most of the time, if everybody’s dead, it just means everybody’s dead. The scavengers that come are going to be coming to loot the village itself and maybe, if they’re very brave, make an attempt on the shinies the temple had. (Speaking of sids and cute tricks, I’d bet that by now it’s common knowledge that reality itself seems to conspire to make horrible stuff happen to anyone who loots temples.)

Anyway long story short this chapter is about Wren, who’s boringly repeating what Yuyu already did with the cataloging of our favorite semibyssal’s movement through the temple. Despite being very different characters, Wren says the same stuff but now instead of fresh blood it’s old and there’s some spiderwebs and birdies.

If Kejak ever saw this, Wren decided, a lot of monkish heads would roll immediately. If the heart of the temple was such a disaster, the Unconquered Sun alone knew how bad the rest of it was.

There’s a god of knowing any secret that only one other person knows, therefore it’s relatively impossible for anyone to “alone” know something. While I fully admit the god thing is just a hilarious gotcha, using the Unconquered Sun as if this is basically monotheism and he’s your go-to on everything is less so. Unconquered Sun doesn’t know jack and it’s one of your patrons that covers secret knowledge. It’s easy to remember because her name is literally the Maiden of Secrets.

Once again we see how trying to write to generic fantasy, likely because everyone involved was just concerned about getting the books done and out the door, makes for a horrible product. So little of what we see is actual worldbuilding. Almost all of it is find/replace on a copy of a copy of a copy of a generic story base, with any understanding of why these elements were originally used long gone.

“Ratcatcher,” he whispered. No one else could have done this. The odds against it were too great. The man who’d dragged him, a prisoner, to the Prince of Shadows’ dungeon had carved himself a bloody place in the war against the heavens here.

Okay so, anyone who knows 2nd edition knows there’s 300 solar(oids) and 300 lunars. First edition, to make this even more hilarious, did not have hard numbers so while there were ~300 solars, there were ~400 – ~600 lunars to go with them, so while not all of them are going to be combat speced, there’s still an awful lot more than “no one”. Then there’s the fact that there are a few non-exalts in the general strength ballpark, and we’ve got easily a thousand without even getting into the people he shouldn’t know exist or the practically infinite and disturbingly easy to summon demons.

Now, perhaps Wren is thinking of the fact that easily a thousand is going to be spread extremely thin across all of Creation, for the same reason it was silly to think random islands of the West know some flyspeck town here was wiped out. But he knows Ratcatcher answered to somebody, and that this somebody viewed Ratcatcher as one of his lesser servants. That’s one known guy and his unknown number of additional Ratcatcher+ servants. It’s a pretty big claim to assume that of all of them, only Ratcatcher has the specific fighting chops to manage this.

Then at the same time he thinks that he’s part of the war in heaven too, therefore he suddenly thinks that wow he’s operating at a new scale, then explains that he maybe only told the dead god pretending to be a neverborn to fuck off because he didn’t even understand the scale, then finishes off with a bit of dickery in Even Idli, treacherous, vicious Idli was simply too alien to be comprehended because if you pretend people aren’t people, it means never having to wonder if you did anything wrong.

But this, this brought it home. Ratcatcher was perhaps the lowliest of the creatures he’d striven against thus far, a vain, arrogant, sadistic toady.

And yet, apparently the only one capable of this show of force.

With a chill, Wren realized what sort of enemy he’d made in Ratcatcher. His survival of the duel in Unforgiven Blossom’s chambers now seemed like a fluke, a joke played by the Unconquered Sun.

In conclusion, the book is obviously trying to talk up how unbelievably awesome and badass Ratcatcher is, but every time it actually has him on-screen, he’s a total loser.

Maybe this is one of those things where authors can’t write evil people with any dignity because they worry it’ll look like they’re glorifying it, and end up writing these oddly sympathetic losers simply by virtue of how much shit gets heaped on their sadistic heads.

For no reason, he decides to go check out the inner sanctuary because maybe Ratcatcher left it untouched???? For no reason??? Despite obviously thinking it was fucking hilarious to carve everybody up, and the sanctuary being where those hilarious meat chunks would’ve tried to escape???

Shockingly it is a mess of blood.

Feeling sick to his stomach, he turned away. Those who used the word “abomination” should first come here ere ever uttering it again. This, he saw, was a true abomination, not what he had become. This was the real horror.

Done by a fellow exalt (specifically formerly of your very patron’s type) who was encouraged by another fellow exalt (specifically your very patron’s type). This is a bad, bad attempt to make this point.

And then by the power of failing to edit he realizes that very point!

For the first time, he felt he truly understood why, on a day in the dim and distant past, Kejak and his advisers had felt it necessary to call the first Wyld Hunt.

So yeah, what you became totally did this, and in fact totally did this so much that the entire religion based around murdering you while calling you an abomination exists in the first place! But also it’s wrong for people to call you an abomination when they should realize that no, this totally unrelated thing is the only real abomination!

He continues to not get it by whining how unfair it is that the Wyld Hunt will try to kill him too, and in fact, double unfair!!! will blame him for this despite how totally obvious it is he didn’t do it, and by totally obvious he means that the killing was done in the past and he’s there in the present therefore it is totally impossible he could’ve been there in the past, because ???????????? CLEARLY PEOPLE ARE SO PREJUDICED AGAINST HIM!!!!!!

A quick glance around had told him that there were no bodies needing to be buried and no souls needing their way hastened. That, at least, was a blessing.

And he doesn’t think anything’s weird about that, because he’s a dumbass.

Honestly, given the place has been looted, it seems very possible that the bodies still need burying and the souls very much need some help, because unless you think Ratcatcher cares deeply about proper funeral rites, the most likely explanation is necromancy. It’s possible that smarter looters thought to avoid hungry ghosts by dealing with the bodies, but the monks might not be pacified that easily when you’re desecrating their home. It’s a lot easier to just stick to daytime looting.

He then forgets all this and decides to just head into the village and get some food and water, because obviously, a bloody temple that’s been looted will have a perfectly normal village.

He felt a sudden heat on his brow, and amended his wish: a village of the blind, or foolish.

Well, as the population is currently him, wish granted!

Now, as we know, the real reason why there aren’t monk corpses everywhere is because the Wyld Hunt dealt with them. The Wyld Hunt may be the antagonists but they serve an important social function of dealing with stuff that’s extremely dangerous and regular humans don’t want to deal with. And when he sees the charred corpse pile, he guesses as much only to think that it doesn’t make sense the temple would still be a wreck. He disregards the possibility of looters, which I think is pretty plausible. Like I said, the monks might keep harassing you even if you do bury them, but the rest of the town can be pacified easily enough and I think looters are also more likely to just plain feel bad about the random townspeople.

None of the explanations seemed satisfactory. He took a step closer to the pile of charred bones and frowned. Did it even matter? he wondered.

It does. The bodies are burned, but still pretty identifiable. If looters, this minimal effort might have nothing sinister behind it, but if Immaculates, they should’ve done a better job and they shouldn’t have stopped there, meaning something interrupted them.

While we know that the Immaculates did, in fact, halfass the job here due to the leadership of one shitty sidereal, they did it in part because of the whole sudden zombies thing.

If it looks like new people tried to deal with something terrible but didn’t quite finish, that strongly suggests something terrible is still around. And as they didn’t throw the animal corpses on the fire and those are instead picked over by scavengers, there’s absolutely no way to be sure that there aren’t a few unburned human corpses in the mix, a trifle fresher than the first wave.

But as this ominous horror doesn’t occur to him, instead it’s time for a bleh bit of actual conflict with mortals.

He hears hooves and explains that oh no, two people, looters?

The leader was bearded, burly, and heavily armed. He wore riding leathers that had seen better days, and a necklace of tyrant lizard teeth. There were throwing knives prominently visible on his armbraces, not to mention other bits of metal. A hat that was red with road dust slouched on his head, and there was a wicked-looking short blade strapped to his thigh. He looked around with mild interest, methodically scanning the square.
The second rider was a woman, tall and wiry. A wicked scar ran down her right cheek, pushing her across the border from plain to ugly. Her black hair was tied back with a silver clasp, and she wore leathers much like her partner’s. Not for her, though, were the numerous blades her companion favored. Instead, a short bow hung from her saddlebow, and a full quiver was strapped to her back.

Awful lot of ugly women in this. I feel like it’s done for a purpose but I’m not sure what. Maybe the author felt it’d emphasize how sucky Creation is? She’s also stated to seem like the more competent of the two.

Anyway, these are some adventurers treasure hunters.

They call, saying that if he comes out they won’t hurt him. Wren, rather than giving us a straight answer on if this is probably true just snickers to himself about how haha like they even could, because he’s a solar now and they’re monsters.

“Look, there’s enough treasure in that temple for the three of us. Come out and we’ll cut you in for a share. Keep hiding and you’ll get nothing.”

Wren considers maybe telling them it’s already been looted, but claims that while he’s got no issues with looting, What he did object to, however, was the profession’s notoriously homicidal attitude toward interlopers, competitors, claim jumpers and witnesses.

There is no attempt to justify why this would be true. It’s just to set up the fight scene.

With luck, the two would soon grow bored and either wander off or head into the temple, and then he could raid their camp for supplies and vanish.

But clearly it is they who are the bad ones.

Unfortunately, his refusal to come out and identify himself makes them suspicious and annoyed, and they say if he doesn’t come out they’ll hunt him down. This is a lot more reasonable than his insistence he stay hidden – they just want to have some idea who’s here with them so it doesn’t turn out to be some asshole chaos fairy or whatever who’s going to suddenly knife them in the back.

They track him to a house and the guy attacks, but Wren is a Immaculate-trained solar who just got powerleveled to essence six last book.

Before the debris had settled, Wren was on him. One hand slapped the flat of the man’s blade, knocking it away. The other came in under his chin in an open-fisted punch to the base of the throat. The man gurgled, half spun, and collapsed.

Another charm then warns him of a surprise attack and he dodges the woman’s arrow and does some backflips.

“Bright Crow,” the woman called

Fucking everyone in the scavenger lands is called Bright or Crow, and I guess this proves that those are the first two words that come to mind when trying to make an adjective animal name.

She realizes he’s on the roof and decides to do the old burning arrow trick. This is because random encounters never run away from you no matter how obviously outclassed they are or how many resources it’ll consume for no benefit.

As a PC, of course, Wren informs us that, He could, Wren realized, simply run at this point. There was nothing to be gained by prolonging the conflict, and much to be said for moving on as rapidly as possible. But the woman’s casual attempts to exterminate him rankled, and her partner’s clumsy bravado was irritating. They had begun this, not him. There was nothing wrong with finishing it.

There is absolutely something wrong.

Simultaneously, this is absolutely a pitch-perfectly right bit of PC-reasoning.

He goes on to try to metagame with the sound in the bushes making someone look that way, but people know the trick, so in fact they’ll look the other way, therefore he throws it then goes that way, which is what happens when you have a trope that’s become completely divorced from anyone with a grasp of actually trying to move around in a conflict. Rocks in the bushes are not the only possible source of noise! The whole thing underlying the trope is that people make noise when trying to move! No one finds escaping people by ignoring all noises!

But he told the GM his brilliant idea so it works. And as he just explained, he’s not going to just leave but instead he tries to snap her neck with a kick and goes into somewhat questionable detail about how she would have died followed by saying that somehow, something happened to deflect the blow! She’s got a necklace:a small white stone hanging from a golden chain which is a First Age charm against the strike of the hand and no don’t use the word charm the word’s already in use now I’m stuck wondering if you mean its magic mimics an actual charm or just mean it’s a shiny magic thing.

Now, you may notice that this is on a gold chain, which makes it solar-associated. However, when he loots it in a minute he’ll remark that a rumble in his gut warned him against donning it. This suggests that its original purpose was specifically defending solars, which would mean it should be from the Shogonate timeperiod.

Whether or not the Shogonate counts as First Age or Second Age… Well, to quote the wiki I just double-checked this on, Savants debate whether the Shogunate era properly belongs to the First or Second Age. This is the kind of thing that makes it a nightmare to figure out what PCs should actually know.

It makes a sense for the Shogunate to claim to be First Age – they can take credit for most of the cool stuff and either compress the period celestial exalts were in charge into the same period as the primordials or present a situation where the Dragonblooded were always in charge and the solars tried to usurp things. If they’re going to stick to the same basic timeline and just present their version, though, which the writers mostly went with so that people didn’t have to remember two completely different timelines, the thing after the massive world-changing revolution that cast down the monsters and led to Dragonblooded control is pretty obviously a new age and there doesn’t seem to be any reason for the Dragonblooded to have wanted to actually argue for being a continuation of the same structure that they were simultaneously engaged in a massive propaganda campaign painting as ultimate evil.

The real problem is that they wanted to do a three age setup where now is the dawn of the third age, but there have been three big points already – the Solar age, the Shogunate age, and the Scarlet Empress. While Dragonblooded Shogunate -> Dragonblooded Empress doesn’t seem like much of a transition, in between life and Creation itself were almost destroyed. And maybe comparatively the Solar -> Shogunate period was less horrible a transition, but it involved the genocides of enormous numbers of entire species IN ADDITION TO the unspeakable death toll of the initial actual conflict.

In conclusion, she must be referring to a Shogunate piece of comparative shit as First Age, which kind of undermines the First Ageyness of the brag. And if the intent was indeed that an anti-punch talisman is kind of weaksauce, then that’d have been far better conveyed by allowing people the vocabulary to talk about Second Age artifacts as ancient wonders in their own right.

Also, we’re repeatedly told that she’s really good at speed-firing the arrows and her form is just incredible, now culminating in for a brief instant Wren wondered if she’d had Immaculate training. This seems to mean that literally, Wren thought it for an instant then decided he didn’t care. He won’t go on to say that there’s any additional ways she falls short, or that yes, she definitely is, or that her non-archery behavior is otherwise at odds, or even that the unlikeliness of it outweights how much her abilities otherwise resemble that. It’s just there to say that she’s very good like this other very good thing.

Anyway he shatters her bow and takes her down effortlessly as he’s been effortlessly doing everything, then smugs a bit about how dumb she was for trying. She tries to get free.

“That was stupid. Not as stupid as your friend, whom I don’t expect will ever speak again, but fairly stupid nonetheless.

So even his takedown of the other guy without killing him wasn’t at all merciful, it was just that he did a single strike and it happened to do an incapacitating without killing level of damage and why bother with a second hit?

She then totally unreasonably assumes that the guy who indicated he could totally slaughter a town is the guy who singlehandedly slaughtered this town, and isn’t convinced by his offhanded and obviously totally fine with the basic idea response of nah I was totally somewhere else at the time as it happens.

One thing Wren does still have in his favor is he doesn’t seem actually interested in killing. With her helpless, he decides to just knock her out and shove her body to the next hut where her companion is.

The man she’d called Bright Crow cowered back in a comer, and Wren shot him a look of disgust. A disgrace to the trade, this one was, and possibly better off dead.

The series continues its firm anti-victim stance. Mangled people now afraid of you? Well, that just proves how right you were to rain violence upon their worthless head.

He then takes both their laden horses even while remarking how this will definitely fuck them.

Behind him, the fire grew. Wren ignored it.

SOLARS, EVERYONE!