Last time on filler filler, Ratcatcher dreamed and Wren introspected.

Ratcatcher’s waited for night and then found some guy’s field.

A quick glance showed that the farmer was apparently cultivating a healthy crop of weeds, but that was the peasant’s problem. If he’d had enough time, Ratcatcher reflected, he’d have poisoned the well just to show his irritation with fools like this one, but time, it seemed, was of the essence.

There is something terribly charming about Ratcatcher. He has opinions on your farming! He’s a little like Mordecai, only he sucks.

Anyway. So. He’s there because he knows the Prince is super impatient and so he has to take a certain shortcut. And since he’s an Abyssal, a certain shortcut always means going through the Labyrinth.

The regular underworld is just dead and full of ghosts and occasionally ghostlike things of ectoplasm. It is to the Labyrinth as, hm, as regular snowyfog Silent Hill is to Nightmare Silent Hill. If you don’t know Silent Hill that won’t make sense to you, but if you don’t know Silent Hill that’s frankly the least of your worries. What are you doing here? Find a Let’s Play. I enjoyed <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdOv2Wuan20&feature=plcp&context=C40f9ff2VDvjVQa1PpcFNdYb7lMfaW2hOhueHBt369sdfaVY5VO7I=>though it’s not without its faults.</a>

The Labyrinth is closer to the neverborn, or possibly part of them. The entire underworld was created by the neverborn, or more specifically, the act of making the neverborn created it. Their tomb bodies lie in the center of the Labyrinth, where it opens into the void of oblivion. Point is, nasty place.

Ratcatcher explains that to further the Silent Hill connection, the Labyrinth itself is a constantly shifting maze of horrors.

Stable paths through the maze were few, and the landscape constantly changed. Stone tunnels could suddenly become deadly swamps, and rains of glass and blades were common. Mindless, ravening things stalked the halls, as did servants of the dead gods and other things that dwelt within. One had to know one’s route very well indeed, or risk either straying into the domain of a hungry power with a taste for trespassers, or getting lost and wandering the maze for all eternity

This is not an accurate summary. There are no stable paths in the Labyrinth at all, and so knowing the route is useless. The closest it gets is that you can use underworld divination to make a map before leaving and hope nothing major changes on the way.

Anyway, finally, we see a legal spell.

Ratcatcher reached the end of his chant. For an instant he held the blade aloft, then drew it through the air in a vertical slash. There was a horrific, tearing sound, and the tear he’d cut in the fabric of things simply hung there. A cold wind blew forth from it, heavy with the breath of the grave. Occasionally it shimmered, and faint cries could be heard beyond it.

That’s Piercing the Shroud, a Shadowlands Circle spell, or the lowest level necromancy. (There are three total circles, mirroring sorcery, which hm, kind of suggests three might be the number for things that fuck shit up.) The time to cast is ten minutes minus one minute per dot of occult, but the minimum occult to know first circle spells is three, so the maximum casting time is actually seven minutes. A strict reading here would suggest that means Ratcatcher has no further points because he finishes the chant, but it probably just means that he’d chanted long enough to open the way regardless of what the total time was.

It’s interesting that this is our first actual bit of magic. The books have scrupulously avoided charms so far, and I think it’s telling that when the author does use the setting’s magic he goes for a literal spell instead. Again, he’s far more comfortable with D&D flavors of fantasy.

Now, what does this tell us about Ratcatcher? Well, for one thing, he’s got to be essence three, which also proves he’s an Abyssal. To understand essence scores, the best way to is to remember this: an ordinary mortal has an essence of one. If, somehow, a mortal gains further essence, they can only go up to essence two. Reaching essence three will transform them into a god. (Fun fact – if you’re ghostblooded, reaching essence three is instead fatal and you turn into an essence three ghost for your trouble.) Essence three literally doesn’t fit in a mortal. It’s that much greater.

And all essence scores aren’t created equal. Solars are designed on the principle of being able to beat the shit out of higher essence things. So an essence three Abyssal is a force to be reckoned with. Depending on who you listen to, the Solars that murdered the creators of reality were essence two to three.

Let’s consider some things an Abyssal can do with Shadowlands Circle spells.

Well, you can create a shadow monster with a minimum fighting ability of three and physical stats of three in a setting where three represents the highest level of talent normally possible in an area, and also it’s immune to all physical damage save fire, and also it has no real form so it can travel through cracks to find its prey. The only limit is you can’t just send these after whoever you feel like, you need to see your target.

You can raise a legion of zombies and skeletons. You can create items that will absorb and release hungry ghosts. You can summon ghosts. You can sew and rivet together an unholy monstrosity of dead flesh and animate it to do your bidding.

Or, like Ratcatcher, you could not do any of those things because you’re fucking boring. I would spam the hell out of the shadowmonster one and be followed everywhere by my skeletal legions.

And that’s just the spells. Occult skill also works for regular charms. Occult 2/Essence 2 qualifies you for a charm to see dematerialized spirits like, say, the god of a place that’s hiding from you. But when would that ever come up! Occult 3 lets you learn a spell for stabbing them while they’re dematerialized. And if you have Occult 5, and really, Ratcatcher, you’re an Abyssal using necromancy, you’d damn well better have five, you can do aggravated damage and then murder it with ease. And if that’s not good enough for you? Why, with the same Occult 5/Essence 3 skill, you can also learn a charm to make that into something that does your essence levels of aggravated damage per turn minus the spirit’s essence level as an automatic area of effect that runs until someone dies. At essence three, that’s a nine yard radius. The only way to escape the attack is to materialize. So as soon as he saw the spirit trying to rearrange trees, he should have thrown this up.

While we don’t know his skill in any other area, it should be mentioned that you only need essence two in order to get two perfect defenses. That’s where, in Exalted, you just flat out take no damage because you say so. The Sidereals have the most hilarious one, where they dodge the entire concept of being around you in the first place, and Abyssals tend to go LOL GHOST for their dodge charm. (They also have a essence three option under a different ability where they liquify into gore and reform.) Perfect defenses are, as the name implies, perfect. The Unconquered Sun can come down to punch you in the face and you can LOL NOPE that. The Sea That Marched Against The Flame can throw her entire infinite body of acid at your face, and LOL NOPE. This doesn’t mean you’ll win – you have to expend energy to activate one and you’ll probably run out of that before Kimbery runs out of acid (hint: never) but it means no halfway competent exalt should ever be thinking they’ll be instakilled by anything. Defense beats offense in Exalted.

That’s why Ratcatcher was a semibyssal. It makes no sense that he’d be terrified of the Prince of Shadows, because the Prince can never effortlessly kill him. It’ll always be a fight, and Ratcatcher would at the very least have a relatively good chance of fleeing it. If he’s a brand new exalt, one could assume he didn’t have a perfect defense, but no new exalt is essence three.

The only way to make his character work would be if we assume he exalts, then someone immediately stuffs an endowment on top to get him up to three before he has any experience, and also if we erase the fact he’s supposedly a strong fighter (because the perfect parry is in melee, so he’d be picking that up along with all his stab-good charms). He’d have to be a necromancy focused character all along who knew jack about combat.

But a necromancy focused character would have useful skills, and someone with an endowment of essence is hardly disposable. It’s clear that the story means him to have minimal ability in this area. Perhaps the writer looked at the fact scores go from zero to five and assumed three was the normal minimum for people, instead of the normal max for mortals? More likely they didn’t even consider the requirements.

Let’s all take a moment to picture how much more awesome the story would be with Ratcatcher throwing around void essence to tear apart gods and responding to attack by turning into a puff of smoke, because it’ll never happen.

Anyway, that’s all he does this chapter – open a door and walk in. There’s really no reason to make this a chapter of its own. I don’t mind it – at least he’s finally doing something – but there’s no reason not to just stick it in front of the chapter where he’s actually in the Labyrinth.