Last time on you’re here to read about mortals right? Wren walked along, singlehandedly beat up various armed bandits, and exposited about his best bud, Chejop Kejak.

Guess who this chapter’s about!

That seems to be the guiding principal for POV shifts so far. Character A thinks about Character B, then suddenly we’re Character B.

So, Chejop Kejak is hanging out in his room, which is full of green silk. Green is the color associated with the Secrets caste of Sidereals, so Chejop is, ironically, not being very subtle at all here.

Crystal chimes hung from the azurite dome of the ceiling in imitation of the stars and planets; each was hung on a silken thread and repositioned daily by meticulous, fearful slaves. Kejak read the stars from this chamber on occasion, and the punishments visited on those who misaligned his makeshift orrery were terrible and swift.

I think this, and the whole passage in fact, is the inspiration for the opening of the original Sidereals book, which paints him in a very different light and also says he has an orrery on his ceiling everyone thinks he reads.

But Sidereals don’t read the stars. They direct them and occasionally murder them for starmetal. They’re also not huge dicks, because it detracts from the setting if you can accuse the guys in charge of the Usurpation of doing it just so they could get all the cool stuff. They’re already smug assholes who’ve done all sorts of horrible things because they’re sure they know better than you, they don’t need any extra evil heaped at their feet.

Instead we hear about how Chejop’s pulled the tongues out of all his slaves so they won’t make noise and bother him. And he’s wearing all sorts of expensive things, including white gold bracelets for some reason, and also his caste mark is showing. Because why would the secret hidden puppetmasters of the world not come with an easy mark on their face identifying them?

He’s talking to Shajah Holok, who is canon, but I think may have been introduced here based on the timeline. In contast to Chejop’s decadence he’s plainly dressed, drinking water out of a wooden cup, and his bare feet still had some road dust on them. Because appearance is personality, he’s burly and coarse-featured while Chejop’s thin, hawklike and has long fingers, the better to have them in all the pies.

Chejop asks what’s up.

Well, apparently two Dragonblooded houses have their ships attacking each other, which if so, wow, Realm civil war already? That’s supposed to be months off at least. Way to fail, guys. There’s a reference to someone going on a Wyld Hunt against a northern wendigo, which seems like a reference to the Invisible Fortress adventure. The new acolytes all suck. And the deathlords are upping activity.

Nothing about the fact there’s suddenly about two hundred more anathema than usual, about half of which are an exalt type that doesn’t exist? Exaltations are supposed to be eternal, because the idea was that they’d keep respawning as the primordials mowed them down. They can’t be altered or destroyed, everyone knows this. And yet, here are new or altered exalts. A bunch of jumped up ghosts are nothing compared to the fact they’ve got Abyssals working for them.

Instead of realizing how big a deal this is, he finishes by saying that there’s a rumor the deathlords ambushed a Wyld Hunt, but whatever, it’s just some drunk talk. Because he’s really dumb.

Chejop explains that no, the idea the Wyld Hunt is defeatable is bad. He spends two paragraphs slowly laying out that part of the Wyld Hunt’s power is that everyone knows it always gets anathema in the end. Dumbass is just like, okay, but it’s not going to matter all that fast, like the next time there’s a Wyld Hunt. Chejop then spends another paragraph explaining that yes, but there’s going to be more than one more Wyld Hunt. He does not, but should, point out that they’re both thousands of years old and in charge of manipulating popular belief, and how hard is it to grasp that societies change and if they do so in ways you don’t want this is bad?

Holok shook his head. “If you say so. It’s just one tale that no one believes, Kejak. You’re growing anxious in your old age.”
“I’d like to reach an even older one, Holok.

No way.

A lot of Exalted’s initial character crop, especially the big and powerful, have a clear purpose to the setting. The point of the Scarlet Empress is to be the missing lynchpin. That’s why she has to be awesome, because only someone even more awesome could replace her successfully.

Chejop Kejak is the guy behind everything, but he’s not the guy whose fault everything is. When you go to kill the asshole in his bed, he’ll say that everything he’s ever done he’s done for the sake of Creation, and can you hurry up because he only has an hour to sleep before he has to get back to making sure Gem doesn’t explode. And if you’re not interested in a boss fight, he’s going to die somewhere between tomorrow and a few years from now. He was born right after the giant war where the exalts murdered the creators of reality, so he’s been alive from the beginning of human dominance and he’s spent half of it suspecting he’s going to see the end as well.

You’re supposed to look at what he’s done and why he’s done it and ask if you really, really think you can do better. Maybe you can! Maybe you’re paragons of the small-v virtue instead of psychotic nutjobs bound to the Virtues imposed on you by the setting. But you should be flipping through the giant book of pre-Usurpation atrocities he has and figuring out how you’re going to prevent everyone deciding those are awesome if the people who killed the unkillable couldn’t.

Chejop doesn’t say he wants to live to be older. He says he wants the things he’s spent his life protecting to outlive him.

But then, this really doesn’t seem to be Chejop, as he goes on to say:

Without the Empress to command their allegiance, the Houses are turning on one another. With the Houses marshaling for strife, the armies and fleets are neglected, and the territories at the borders discover that they like keeping their tax monies home.

No, the problem is that every house is founded by one of the Empress’ kids and she never gave an explanation for how succession works, so they’re gearing up to fight for the throne! No one likes the eldest living kid and he’s nearing the end of his life anyway, but no one likes the second eldest either because she’s Scarlet Empress v2 – now with extra demons and murder.

And the territories aren’t in trouble because they’re enjoying being ignored. To fund the civil war, they’re being bled dry while the troops in charge of protecting them are being pulled back to defend their houses. Empires don’t die quietly.

He goes on to say that the empire is only held together by the Order and the Wyld Hunt, which is putting the cart before the horse. The empire is held together by a lot of people with weapons beating up everyone else. The Order is there to keep the population relatively placid and allow the Realm to control a larger area than it could otherwise, and all of that is simply to have a big enough base for the Wyld Hunt, because killing Solars who come back is the most important thing.

Holok grunted and shifted on the cushion. “If you say. I’m a simple man, Kejak, and I have been for as long as I’ve had a beard.

“Yes,” grumbles Chejop. “So could you drop the Resplendent Destiny already and stop this ridiculous roleplaying? We both know that looking like a peasant doesn’t actually make you stupid. Save playing to the masses’ preconceptions for the masses.”

But being a simple man he’ll go do what Chejop says despite apparently still not grasping the obvious. He’s clearly here for exposition, but I’m not sure why he keeps not understanding after that. Maybe it’s to make the reader feel smart for getting it when he doesn’t.

The walls they walked past were adorned with mosaics, each depicting a scene from the Order’s scriptures. Here the Five Dragons coiled protectively around the throne of the Realm; there the Empress personally slew a chaos-spawned monster with a howdah of Fair Folk lords on its back.

They’re not the fantasy Catholics.

So, the two walk for a while and reach a bunch of meditating First Coil priests.

‘There is something here I want your opinion on. It troubled the illustrious Mouth of Peace, may her enlightenment shelter us all, and so she sent the problem to me.”

The only reason you can’t see Chejop’s mouth moving when she talks is that he’s mastered ventriloquism. It’s not clear why he’s annoying his companion with all this pretense.

He calls over the monk, who’s the one who brought the message from Shooshpap. We are reminded she’s ugly. I see this crop up in stories a lot. It’s like the author thinks they’re defying convention by making a female character who isn’t pretty, but it’s weird because she’s often the first/only one given such a description (all the guys get various positive adjectives) and the description is often disproportionate for her incredibly minor role.

There was magic in that voice; there always had been. Fifteen centuries ago it had been enough to start a war against those ordained by the heavens.

No, I think what started the war that was when the Sidereals said, “Hey, guys, you seem to be about to break reality with all the magic.” and they said, “Really? Thanks for telling us, we’ll get right on seeing how much more it’ll take to explode. Just let me finish remodeling my garden made of eviscerated servants.”

Much is made of her devotion and how stupidly devoted she is, and then she gets done telling them about it.

Naturally, none of the other seers has seen anything.

Chejop’s terrified of whatever was buried in Qut Toloc, as if non-deathlord ghosts are a huge deal. Even the deathlords suck as a general threat, their menace is mostly limited to the underworld.

They debate whether Chejop thinking Wren can accomplish things is weird. He may be but a man, but he is a most resourceful one at that, and profoundly attached to his own continued survival. No, Chejop, he’s a mortal. Exalts are the ones who bend reality with resourcefulness and wanting hard enough.

But the proof that this either isn’t Chejop or he’s gone insane is And besides, he has no idea whom he really serves, other than the Order because for fuck’s sake Chejop, he knows your name, and every real threat to Creation predates the Usurpation and knows it too. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t know you’re a Sidereal because they do.

Anyway, Chejop says Wren’s busy and can’t follow up on this thing, though. Holok says who then? It’s got to be someone who knows what they’re doing. Great advice, says Chejop. I’ll tell you my decision tomorrow.

Morning came, and with it came a message for Holok from the Most Enlightened Chejop Kejak. It read, simply, “I look forward to your observations of the Qut Toloc shrine,”

That’s what you deserve for the dumb peasant act, Holok.

This chapter is the one that’s furthest from the low-tech D&D stuff, yet it’s also the one where the Exalted part is even more flimsy than usual, probably because Exalted has plenty of times it overlaps with a D&D setting but this is about a specific place, institution and characters.

So, the way this would go in Exalted would be Chejop informing a Sid that the loom was showing a massive snarl in the area and go see what the hell’s gone wrong before more divination start showing a divide by deathplosion error when trying to find anathema, because they can’t keep a lid on this long. Their secondary goal would be to stamp out rumors of a Wyld Hunt failure by running around pretending to be someone involved, and of course to track the source of them down in case it’s a Gold faction plot.

But what if the Sid secretly is a Gold sympathizer, supporting the (properly managed) return of the Solars? Or it turns out their close friend is behind it? Or it’s not a rumor at all and they walk into a pissed off Solar circle that eats Wyld Hunts for breakfast? Or it’s a pissed off Solar circle with a Gold Sidereal telling them about how the rest of the Sids are trying to remurder them so kill on sight and also the Sid is their close friend? (There’s only around eighty to ninety of them at any given time and they all work together, so any time they clash, they know everyone involved.)

Or what if they walk into an Abyssal circle (because they’re the well trained and outfitted Wyld Hunt murderers) spamming necromancy and after going FUCK I WAS NEVER HERE and finding themselves in a brawl in Nexus instead they limp back to Heaven and attempt to explain that no guys it wasn’t Solars, something’s really wrong here but the loom isn’t turning up anything because the Abyssals keep going back to the underworld so they’re outside of fate.

And then the convention on deathlords says that it sounds like they should add more people to the committee! Because it’s not like Sidereals make exponentially worse decisions in larger groups! They know because everyone got together once to decide if they should ever follow up on that and decided that it would be a complete waste of time.

Later, the Abyssals blow up Gem. The First and Forsaken Lion marches his uncountable army of ghosts in war machines constructed of bone and viscera through the resulting shadowland breach into Creation, bearing down on the crumbling Realm.