Let’s celebrate Freedom Explosions by more of this despite it not being a Friday.

Last time, the Prince of Shadows traveling! Today, Ratcatcher bumming about the Prince of Shadow’s castle, which he explains is basically empty.

While ghosts and other unliving functionaries still scurried along the halls, not speaking to any save their unliving brethren, most of the living servants- and all of the prince’s most trusted ones-were gone.

I suspect this is again some sort of echo from regular D&D – the idea that even necromancers prefer the living for actually traveling around doing stuff (or have to pretend not to be a necromancer when out if you don’t want paladins smashing your hed in) with while leaving the monsters behind to guard the dungeon. The fact the ghosts and such only interact with other dead is likely based on the fact the D&D version are crazy monsters tenuously controlled by magical orders and not basically the same person as before.

Thing is, the deathlords and death knights’ public face is completely different! They’re all about the superiority of death. Their diplomacy is about showing off how great (…or hot…) dead servants are, their cults are about how great death is, and their shows of force are about how much death they can apply to a given problem. If anything, it’s the living they’d leave behind to watch things. The main thing the abyssals have going for them is that unlike the solars, they have enough of a support system that they can flip established society the bird.

Their chambers were empty, though their possessions still remained. Even Pelesh had gone-the fat little men had told the truth on that score-and dust coated stacks of ancient coins on the wizened little man’s unoccupied desk.

This is weirder. Apparently no one locks doors. I’d suggest the Prince may have just terrorized people into not fucking with each other’s stuff, but the squishy servitors just said that they were guarding Ratcatcher’s stuff against theft and he seemed to find that reasonable. The implications of this are that there was a very hasty exit, except we know it wasn’t and besides, “most of the living servants” being gone means some of them are still there, so nothing too deadly could’ve happened.

(Also, I don’t believe there are any shadowland effects that generate dust super fast and given dust is actually a byproduct of life processes, if anything dust generation should be far less than usual. Maybe Pelesh threw a sack of flour into the room so he could leave everything out without people being able to move stuff around secretly. A proper exalt still could, but Ratcatcher certainly isn’t one.)

And also, Ratcatcher says there’s just a weird scared feeling everywhere and makes a good case he’s not just being a wuss about this by being wholly upfront that normally there’s something like that but it’s because of the Prince, not just a nebulous fear effect for no reason. It’s obviously something important given how much time is spent on emphasizing it, except I’m pretty sure it never goes anywhere or amounts to anything. Much like this whole series!

Ratcatcher tries to be proactive about figuring out wtf and heads into the throne room.

All of the tapestries were there, though dim now with dust.

Either Pelesh was throwing a lot of flour or the author thinks dust autogenerates as soon as enough people leave.

There was no devastation, no damage. No enemy had sacked this place and hauled off the prince’s treasure.

I have no idea what the though process here is. We’re given no reason before now to think Ratcatcher would assume this and we also know what actually happened, making it all the less likely we’d have alternatives on our mind. Ratcatcher was even told that the Prince just left plus we know there’s still plenty of servants to ask. I’m left to assume it’s just trying to emphasize the fact the Prince left peacefully, but why is this a big point? Is there a why? Was the author just writing whatever came into his head because holy fuck deadlines shit shit shit?

He goes on to observe the Prince’s weapon and helmet are gone and He considered the absences to be a good sign. continuing to act like there’s a big concern about what happened, then tells us that the thick dust isn’t so thick that years and years have passed, so…like, a year’s passed? Really?

Briefly, he considered seating himself on the throne, but decided against it. The prince had a way of knowing such things, he was quite certain

Say, by seeing the obvious marks in the dust. Seriously, the only possible explanation for the dust is to tell if anyone fucked around where they shouldn’t. Showing the Prince’s claws are still deep in him, Ratcatcher instead dusts the cushion, motivated by an urge to maintain some sort of propriety in the midst of abandonment.

He turns to go and sees a marionette. You probably don’t recall, but actually, last book there was a point made about the Prince being unimpressed by a puppetshow and deciding assaulting the puppeteer would be more entertaining.

Puppets are, of course, great for symbolism, so this one has smashed legs, “half” the strings cut (so still halfway attached to the control bar, though that’s not explicitly stated despite how much implication you can wring from a word like “control bar” in this context), it’s a jester and its face was a painted mask that reminded Ratcatcher uncomfortably of his own.

Since this chapter is somehow about being really, really baffled and concerned about stuff that isn’t, Ratcatcher goes on for a bit about how shocked he is that, in the center of the Prince’s castle, he finds what looks like a professionally made high quality puppet and not some child’s toy, because obviously children running around the throne room happens a lot more often than professional entertainers.

Whoever had made this had not wanted to abandon it, Ratcatcher realized. Here was another, smaller mystery within the larger one.

Even if we hadn’t gone through the very scene with the puppeteer, the idea something a person didn’t want happened in a place that has a professional torturer on the entertainment staff isn’t noteworthy. The big mystery here is why the chapter thinks this is a big mystery.

Suddenly, the puppet moves! And winks! Ratcatcher totally falls for the jumpscare and drops the puppet. But did he just imagine it????

now it lay, unmoving, on the floor, and surely a mere puppet couldn’t have moved on its own?

YOU LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE MAGIC IS REAL.

Again showing the Prince’s influence, Ratcatcher goes on to say, Not here, in any case, where things only moved at the Prince of Shadows’ whim. And that could’ve been a good point except we’ve just spent this chapter whining everything’s dusty, which is pretty much the opposite of the idea that the Prince controls utterly everything, plus the Prince doesn’t even like Ratcatcher and we know he lets his living servant fuck the guy over, so why not a puppet too?

The puppet then begins to move. It tries to grab for his foot, Ratcatcher backs away, it crawls toward him.

It moved impossibly quickly, faster than it had any right to

I do like the dreamlike quality of a lot of this, but it’s so ridiculous here! Exactly how fast are possessed marionettes supposed to crawl, Ratcatcher? Did you do studies?

and for a long moment Ratcatcher found himself dancing across the throne room floor to get away.

I guess the point of this is really just to make it clear that even post upgrade, Ratcatcher is still the buttmonkey.

The book explains that yes, the idea a couple bits of carved wood are a threat is ridiculous and really, it’s not the puppet itself but the fear effect that’s everywhere.

Even in the prince’s throne room, especially in the prince’s throne room, this thing simply should not be.

Why he continues to be certain that the Prince is strongly opposed to creepy puppets making an idiot out of someone he doesn’t like, on the other hand…

With an effort, Ratcatcher mastered himself.

That’s right, he had to burn willpower to not run away from a puppet. He bravely stands his ground and crushes it. Somehow this makes it scream – and yes, I do think there’s a distinction between making something move that has joints but nothing powering them and making something scream without a single one of the components needed for it. Ratcatcher, less interested than I in what’s going on, just stomps harder.

“You,” said Ratcatcher in between savage blows, “don’t.. . belong.. . here.”

My comments about the Prince’s influence aren’t just a matter of trying to spin out an explanation for bad writing. Social effects in the game are powerful and disfiguring things. We mostly hear about that when it’s the brain eating chaos fairies doing that brain-eating thing, but they don’t hold a candle to an actual exalt.

Socially minded exalts should be warping the people around them in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. And given solar-tier exalts are particularly about brute-forcing a solution, they should have the most damage. So, the Prince’s people would act reasonably normal when around him, because all his orders and influence are based on them being around him, but the effect is still running 24/7 and hitting situations he didn’t concern himself about.

Why does Ratcatcher keep coming back to the fact it’s not supposed to be here? Same reason as dusting the pillow, probably – he’s obsessed with the Prince and so he’s also into defending/protecting the Prince’s stuff, but in the absence of the Prince himself, he’s getting fixated on nothing much and generally acting like a dog trying to make a nest in the couch until its owner comes back.

Anyway, it stops moving and he leaves and slams the door, BUT THEN slowly and deliberately, it began moving once again. Even in the dark, it knew where it was going. Inch by inch, it pulled itself toward the prince’s throne. On its face, the painted smile grew wider.

That sure sounds like it’s important symbolism! Will it ever come up again? Pretty sure no.

But hey, we are finally going to get an answer on what a “like a horse” is. Sadly, it’s a disappointing one.

something that, to the untrained eye, looked like a gray gelding with gear and supplies. A closer observation would have revealed certain inconsistencies, such as the bright red of its eyes and ears, or perhaps the fact that it had cloven hooves

So…it’s a goat with poor vision. SPOOKY.

I wonder if fantasy authors are so mired in cloven hooves references that they’ve forgotten that devils only have them to as a reference to actual animals. And also if they’re so undereducated they don’t know that unicorns are also famous for being in the cloven-hooves club. (The abyssal rode a horrific steed, with cloven hooves and the tail of a lion!)

Other things with cloven hooves are cows, deer, and sheep.

Now, this is salvageable. Cloven hooves can be pointy, which can then be exaggerated into clawed or bladed. And we can then build on that when we ask “what is like a horse but not a horse, specifically in some horrific abyssal way and not some bullshit about partial albinism?” Making herbivores show carnivorous traits is generally a good one – the idea of flesh-eating horses is fundamentally creepy despite it not actually being a big deal. In a less magic setting, I’d actually suggest considering the fanged deer as a semi-plausible stock to breed your larger beasts of burden out of – but as it’s Exalted and this is supposed to be the unnatural group’s animals, plausibility is actually a drawback. I’d go with needle teeth like a snake, and while we’re here, the inflatable, poison-filled fangs. There’s no reason a horse should have that. Alternatively, keep the grass teeth and have it chewing on bones anyway, as the only thing creepier than herbivores with carnivorous traits is herbivores with regular old herbivore setups that are dead-set on eating you anyway. A thing that looks like a horse except for the fact it’s slowly masticating a bunny is perfectly abyssal and fits with the idea this thing really does resemble a horse outwardly and no better description can be given.

The servants then chat about how Ratcatcher isn’t going to be happy at what he finds, and they know he’ll be mad at them, and they’re trying to make him happy by having the mounts ready, but Very little makes dead men happy, except more death. This is very untrue – ghosts are a dramatic lot, plus abyssals technically aren’t dead. (Admittedly, rather unclear where exactly Ratcatcher lies.) Anyway, the servants continue, he’s going to kill them.

“And then we will return to our other master, and we shall be rewarded.”
“With pain?” Mold’s voice was hopeful.
Mushroom nodded. “Yes. With pain.”

Now obviously this is because masochism is a thing evil people feel and we’re not to think any further on it, but – wtf? They keep trying to placate Ratcatcher to stop him from hurting them, which also reminds us that servants hoping to get hurt are servants who don’t work very hard to succeed, but we’re to believe their ultimate goal is to be tortured as a reward because the neverborn are just generically nonsensically evil and their servants are generic nonsensical evil cultists.

What’s particularly odd here is that the very first book understood that the center of the afterlife is dominated by an all-consuming void and the neverborn agenda is connected to this. Ratcatcher lectures Wren about it. While it’s hard to specifically condemn most of the disconnects between the actual setting and this book’s version because we don’t know how much the author knew when he started writing, we know he knows that nonexistence is a big deal. The obvious reward for a loyal servant is to be chucked into the void – so obvious, in fact, that Ratcatcher was just offered it by the neverborn.

Really at this point my best guess is that actually they’re yozi cultists pretending to serve the neverborn/kinda sorta actually serving in that their yozi masters sent them with the intent of helping out the neverborn. It should be within the powers of actual hell to have some way of tagging and retrieving the souls of loyalists, and “Hey, you’re our servant, so you should do stuff, but also you’re human, so I want to hurt you!” is something the yozi might do.

We then jump back to Ratcatcher who’s decided to keep poking into people’s rooms. Now he’s on Unforgiven Blossom’s. We’re told that somehow the mess hasn’t been cleaned up in the slightest and there’s even still pottery bits from the tea set. Also, the destroyed orrery is still clicking away and that spooks Ratcatcher. It should, actually – this doesn’t at all sound like it fits with the situation we were presented back when Unforgiven Blossom left, where she was still living there for some time and attempts were made to fix the orrery. Maybe Ratcatcher hasn’t actually left the Underworld at all and this is still a dream he’s sharing with the neverborn.

Mushroom and Mold had made no mention of Unforgiven Blossom during their squealing recitation, and her apartments were an empty ruin. That, Ratcatcher guessed, meant that she’d left of her own accord, and not due to the prince’s wishes.

Maybe the fact the neverborn know what went down here is seeping into the dream, explaining how the fact her rooms look like she didn’t have time to clean them up before leaving means she left separately from the rest of the group who also didn’t do anything to clean up their living areas before leaving.

Ratcatcher then finds her work bench, where there’s several orbs that look like they were an attempt at rebuilding. So, she got this far and did that much all without ever turning off the clicking, grinding remains of the main orrery. My dream theory grows more plausible by the line.

He pokes around the scrolls and finds nothing much until he hits a portrait of his earlier corpse face and flips the fuck out about how she’s always better than him.

Ratcatcher drew his sword. A black flame whipped around it now, and another cloak of blackness flared out behind him. This was somehow wrong, he knew, but he didn’t care. The power flowed through him, and it felt sweeter than his first new breath of air.

How is it somehow wrong? Not a clue. He then temper-tantrums his way through the room, breaking everything he can in it and then going after the walls themselves. There’s no sign of this causing anything bad to happen to him save that he’s a bit tuckered out from all his very mature stomping and screaming.

He looked down. There was an unbroken hemisphere of beaten brass by his foot. Mercury, he supposed, or something like it. Somehow, it had survived his rage.
“You’re very lucky,” he said to it, and picked it up. ‘Very lucky indeed. I’ll use you to catch your mistress’ blood when the time comes, and then we shall see what she prophesies. Not much, I suspect. Not much at all.”

More symbolism that I’m pretty sure amounts to nothing.

Mercury is probably the worst one to use here, for that matter. A list of the maidens:

Mercury, Maiden of Journeys. Her color is yellow and her portfolio includes travel, roads and messages.
Venus, Maiden of Serenity. Her color is light blue and her portfolio includes marriage, love, sexuality, joy and all other pleasures.
Mars, Maiden of Battles. Her color is red. Her portfolio encompasses all of battle, ranging from technology to logistics to specific battles. She is generally considered an inferior warrior but superior strategist to the Unconquered Sun.
Jupiter, Maiden of Secrets. Her color is green. Her portfolio is secrets, secretive and a secret.
Saturn, Maiden of Endings. Her color is violet. Her portfolio covers change and endings, whether it be the death of an animal or the Usurpation.

Endings is obvious, as is Battles. Serenity could fit in how much Ratcatcher wants this. Even Secrets with the fact he plans to try prophesying thing and how it’s something he missed in his rampage.

But anyway, that’s it for Ratcatcher (for now)!