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Dynasty of Dovak	By : JohnDoe Category: +A through F > Exalted RPG Views: 4983 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter List
- 92
- 93
Session 84 – End of Chapter 9 – Ganan (300XP 240DX, 293/238 spent; 20WhP 89GP 39SP), Jinabar (300XP 240DX, 276/232 spent), Gifty (???XP ???DX, ???/??? spent)

The Dragon-Blooded return to Shining Kren having wiped out the local Dune Folk population, but with half the number of demons they set out with and Jin badly mauled. Our heroes approach via the main tunnel car door, which they first used to enter the city by. Jin seeks out a healer, and Gifty busies herself with her own business.

Alinos Kerin calls Ganan aside to take a report on the situation. She is surprisingly calm when he reports that the tunnel is now completely collapsed.

“Well, these things can’t be helped: our forces are here to clear a collapsed tunnel – if they’re not going to be torn apart by a giant spider, I consider that a victory.” Kerin considers Ganan for a moment, “It’s true, you know, what your Outcaste said: our matriarch doesn’t trust you. She doesn’t dislike you, understand, it is simply a matter of good business. I am pleasantly surprised.”

Ganan nods, slowly, “I do not possess the skills expected of a Dynast. Matriarch Alinos cannot look past my failure. But that does not mean I do not possess skills.”

Kerin smiles and leans back casually, “Such as?”

Ganan shrugs, “If you want subterranean monsters killed, I can do that. I am not a scalpel.”

Kerin spreads an open palm, “You are hammer.”

Ganan bows.

Kerin muses, “This is not a task suited to a hammer. You will stay close to me and act only on my direction.”

“With respect, madame, I disagree. Our forces are the only Dynasts here – all sorcerers. There’s no risk of my causing a social scandal. If we are in close proximity, I am bound to say or do something that you don’t like. And finally, there is no telling what other dangers this tunnel is hiding. You should continue to use me, and my hearth, as your vanguard. We are best suited to take on the unknown, and we can ameliorate the damage caused to House Alinos assets.”

“In other words: use you as a human shield?” Kerin and Ganan exchange a look of understanding, “Very well. Though… I didn’t realize you were a Sworn Kinship.”

Ganan shakes his head and blushes, “It’s only an expression.”

****

The next few weeks settle into a predictably monotonous pattern. With the tunnel ahead completely caved in, the Alinos venture can afford to clear the section closest to Shining Kren without incident. Jin convinces Jadeborn workers and interested Underfolk to join the effort clearing the tunnel: it’s not an easy task, but as days give way to weeks more and more people become interested in joining the effort. Ganan works during the “day” clearing rubble by hand: the presence of one of the Dragon-Blooded in the tunnel is reassuring for those afraid of being ambushed by subterranean monsters. The sorcerous army of elementals and demons grows day-by-day – their appearance is off-putting to the Jadeborn and the subterranean humans, but their work proceeds with increasing swiftness.

By the end of the second week, the stretch between Shining Kren and what was the acid pool has been completely cleared – even the smallest pile of rubble swept away, leaving the tunnel immaculate.

Gifty spends a lot of time overseeing the demonic workforce. Things seem to run more efficiently when she is directing the labor, and the Alinos sorcerers are more than happy to delegate away any actual work between the arduous summoning rituals – the better to enjoy the luxuries of Shining Kren.

****

“How is the eye?” Ganan asks without looking up. He is directing Earth elementals to brace the partially collapsed tunnel over what was the acid pool, whilst Gifty directs Hopping Puppeteers who are rebuilding and reinforcing the tunnel’s foundations.

“Still missing,” Jin responds. The life support systems of her armor have helped accelerate her healing, but they have not regrown the eye she lost in this very section of tunnel fighting the spider behemoth. “Dragonlord Kerin wants an update.”

“Firstly, why did she send you? Secondly, why did you bother come?” Ganan scoffs, having no intention of stopping work to deliver a report.

“I was bored. And I was bored.” Jin answers, ticking off her fingers. Not being a sorcerer or a member of House Alinos, and still carrying serious wounds from the battles in the tunnel, there hasn’t been a lot for Jin to do in the city. She has managed to send covert messages to her Archons, working out of the Lap to investigate the mysterious goings-on in the city, whilst she is stuck under the mountain… but so far Mott’s investigation has uncovered nothing, and Jin cannot leave Shining Kren to go and help. She continues, “And much as hearing you talk about architecture is boring, you see my dilemma.”

“This isn’t architecture, it’s civil engineering.”

Jin shrugs, “Engineering, dungeoneering, bore me.”

Ganan sighs, “I’ve reinforced the floor and we’ve got plenty of materials to reinforce the tunnel, fill the hole and blast a new roof.”

“Wait… blast?”

Ganan grins, “Blast.”

****

Filling the base turns out to be easy. Blasting turns out to be less dramatic than hoped: the Jadeborn provide alchemical charges, and Ganan expertly uses them to clear the tunnel, before personally shoring up the structure (-10SP: 6GP, 4SP).

****

Work continues to excavating the corpse of the Tsuchigumo. This is more difficult: the cave-in isn’t stable, and despite the best efforts of the sorcerous workforce the tunnel continues to collapse as material is hauled away. As the entire tunnel is blocked, it’s practically impossible to reinforce the tunnel as they go, and the spider behemoth’s corpse is too soft to bore through without collapsing under the weight of the rock above.

“Isn’t this literally why we decided to do this with a magic army instead of a regular army?” Jin complains bitterly.

Gifty shakes her head firmly, “No, we decided to do this with a magic army because House Alinos doesn’t want to overcommit. Plus, a regular army would have been eaten by that spider.” She inscribes sigils into the face of the rock as she talks.

Jin cocks an eyebrow, “Sure… so why don’t we have a magic doodad to do this?”

Gifty rolls her eyes, “I am the magic doodad to do this. We have Earth Elementals. We don’t have spider-god elementals. If we keep excavating, the cave in might become visible on the surface, and we don’t want that.”

“So why you? Don’t we have any other sorcerers?”

Gifty fixes Jin with a pointed stare, “Sorcerers? Sure. Sorcerers who are expert archeologists? Sure, probably. Ones that are better than me? Please.”

Jin jerks a thumb over her shoulder at Ganan, who is breaking rocks with his fists, “It just seems like his thing.”

Gifty goes back to work, “Why? It doesn’t involve blowing anything up.”

****

Gifty’s miracle to clear the blockage takes time to manifest. Over the next few days, Jin takes some of the more warlike bound demons and sweeps the tunnels – looking for signs of burrowing in or missed passageways that might expose the work crews to attack.

Shining Kren is a functional and dour city. It is not without amenities, but equally it is not a tourist destination, and the city holds little interest to Jin. Sweeping the same empty tunnels, however, also does not provide much entertainment.

Alinos Kerin has mostly settled into a routine of writing coded reports to the Blessed Isle and sourcing the materials needed for the works. The Alinos sorcerer corps is essentially autonomous at this stage, summoning to meet the needs and predicted needs of the project as they come up, rather than requiring direct oversight, and Jin is able to set up a meeting without much fuss.

Jin gives Kerin a salute as she enters the room in the sorcerer’s tower given over as the expedition leader’s office.

“Two hundred miles down, two-thousand-four-hundred miles to go.” Jin says by way of greeting.

Kerin studies Jin for a moment, “Only five hundred miles to Paragon. The intelligence reports suggest the tunnel is mostly intact beyond that point: we just need to exterminate the filth living in the tunnel and close any bolt holes they’ve cut. The last two-thousand miles will be quicker than the first two hundred.”

“Sounds like we approached this problem from the wrong end,” Jin shakes her head.

“No, this is the way to do it,” Kerin shakes her head, “Your Outcaste tried to go the other way – the tunnel is too long to defend, any treasures we excavated would be vulnerable to the Dark Brood, and the Jadeborn would be disinclined to help us if they had no benefit.” She pauses for a beat, “Once we have secured Dari, I see no reason why I cannot turn control of this expedition back to you. Provided, of course, nothing goes spectacularly wrong.”

Jin nods, graciously, “We’ll need a couple of sorcerers to help convey the workforce down the length of the tunnel, but I would be happy to mop up once we have secured our prize.”

Kerin pours two glasses of something dark and strong, and passes one to Jin, “Then here’s to nothing going spectacularly wrong.”

****

Days pass. Gifty’s runes ignite a flame hot enough to burn through the cave-in, boring a wide tunnel, leaving the rock surface as smooth as glass. The workforce of elementals and demons continue to clear the rubble from the tunnel, and the Alinos sorcerers continue to swell their numbers – including novel, luminescent creations, that can light the darkness of the tunnel. Evidence of Dune Folk habitation persists for a few dozen miles beyond the Tsuchigumo, but there are no further Dune Folk attacks.

Whilst there are no more attacks, there are numerous holes in the sides of the tunnel: burrows of underground beasts and the like. Gifty directs the demon army to shovel the rubble from the tunnel into these burrows, then collapse them, and Ganan spackles over them (3SP). The process is much quicker than hauling rubble back to the city.

Jin’s Jadeborn recruits slack behind the demon vanguard as the number of connecting tunnels increases, fearing ambush, but this only lets the demons push forward faster. Alinos sorcerers scoop up fangs of workers to bus them ahead on Stormwind riders, yet still no attack comes.

Supply lines start becoming an endeavor that Jin has to plan for – Shining Kren being hundreds of miles away doesn’t slow the conjured workforce, but the Dragon-Blooded and the human workers need water, food, and rest – and the Alinos sorcerers are loath to do anything that isn’t conserving their strength to summon more workers. Jin plans rest stops and supplies, keeping the volunteer workforce as close to the city proper as possible, whilst sending the demons forward.

The density of the rubble grows as they progress making it nearly impossible to pick through. The inhuman strength of the demonic workers and the magic of the earth elementals comes into play as they shift boulders that would take human workers weeks to break-up and haul away.

Our heroes meet on the furthest point forward of the tunnel.

Ganan chisels a gap in the rubble then works with a Jadeborn pickaxe, breaking up the rocks for the workers behind them to clear away.

Jin speaks, “Does anyone else think this is going too easily?”

“Maybe,” Ganan says between splitting rocks, “If you did some work. You wouldn’t think. It was so easy.”

Jin makes a dismissive gesture, “I am still healing. What with not causing a giant cave-in that delayed our progress by a week and all.”

Ganan snorts.

Gifty leans back on the rocks, “You’re, what, wondering why the Jadeborn didn’t kill the Tsuchigumo and rout the Dune Folk by themselves?”

Jin responds slowly, “Don’t get me wrong, that spider was a worthy foe, and the Dune Folk army, with their sand swimmers, were formidable. But the Jadeborn have an army. Hiram had a damn Siege Strider. By the Dragons, they managed to recruit a Lunar!”

Ganan “A baby Anathema that we easily dispatched. And having seen the Jadeborn fight, I’d wager the three of us could burn Shining Kren to the ground. They’re protected by a thick wall, nothing more.”

“Your arrogance is stunning.”

Ganan, affronted, “I didn’t say I could burn Shining Kren, I said we could do it. The three of us. I’m sure they’d eventually bring me down if I attacked alone.”

“Moving swiftly on,” Jin says diplomatically, turning to Gifty, “Do you buy that we’re the first people powerful enough to kill that spider behemoth?”

“So far, this does seem like the kind of thing that the Jadeborn could have handled without us. But we are only a quarter of the way there. And you’ve seen the burrows into the tunnel: the Dune Folk probably formed a nice buffer, keeping the worst of the underground creatures away. So far, all we’ve done is clear a tunnel to nowhere… and it’s cost you an eye. I can see why the Jadeborn haven’t been willing to commit.”

Jin shakes her head, “It just seems too… easy…”

Ganan draws his weapon and takes a fighting position.

Jin follows suit, “What is it?”

“Genre savvy.” Ganan grunts.

Gifty doesn’t look impressed, “I don’t think that’s how that-”

From between the cracks in the rocks, dozens centipedes – an inch thick and eight inches long – like great, wriggling, sausages, pour forth.

“Well, it’s not that-” Gifty starts. The ground starts to tremor under their feet as a queen sandswimmer, twice as long and wide as the Dune Folk’s riding beasts, bursts forth from the ground, with thousands of the smaller centipedes, following in its wake in a great swarm.

Gifty sighs, “Oh, alright.” She mutters as she draws Abrojo.

****

The sandswimmer queen shakes the ground causing Jin and Gifty to fall to the ground. Jin rises on a plume of fire essence, finding her feet before she even hits the ground. The creature rounds on the downed Gifty, snapping at her with its venomous fangs. Gifty barely manages to bring Abrojo up in time to deflect the blow.

Ganan takes aim at the queen, his tetsubo starts to vibrate with barely controlled power.

Jin screeches a warning “You’ll cause another cave in!”

Ganan grins, “That’s kind of the point.”

Jin lashes out at the Dune Swarm, smashing dozens of the crawling lava to ichor. Hundreds more seem to take their place, in an endless tide. She pushes her way through the swarm and strikes at the queen. Her blow rebounds harmlessly from the creature’s armored exoskeleton.

From her position prone on the ground, Gifty kicks up at the queen. Its elephantine bulk is hard to shift, but the Dragon-Blooded giantess, manages to turn the creature to the side as her anima ignites in a roaring bonfire of flaming essence.

The Dune Swarm pours over Ganan’s lanterns, snuffing them, and bites at the Dragon-Blooded with dozens of hungry mouths as the tunnel is plunged into darkness. Ganan takes Earth Dragon Form as the giant insects swarm over him.

In the light of the Dragon-Blooded’s animas, Jin strikes out at the swarm, battering the many biting mouths away from her with long, sweeping strikes. Her own anima ignites into flames.

The swimmer queen rears its piercing legs and hammers them down on Gifty in a flurry of piercing blows. Gifty rolls from side-to-side, interposing her giant blade as she dodges the giant beast’s blows.

Ganan charges at the queen and batters the giant beast back with his tetsubo. The tunnel shakes as the blow connects and the enormous creature is battered back.

“For the record, I am not on board with deliberately causing a cave-in!” Gifty grumbles as she rises to her feet, ignites Abrojo in roiling flames, and sweeps her blade through the mass of the Dune Swarm. She roasts as many of the centipede creatures as she batters.

The Dune Swarm, given by its primitive hive intelligence, throws itself against the trio of Dragon-Blooded again, but the elemental warriors leave no holes in their defenses.

The lashing flames and flying rocks of the Dragon-Blooded’s animas tears the Dune Swarm apart.

Ganan launches himself at the Sandswimmer Queen, bringing his tetsubo down in a titanic overhead strike that drives the beast into the ground. The tunnel shakes, then collapses in on itself. Jin and Gifty throw themselves back as tons of rock fall from above, burying Ganan and the creature.

****

“What’s the etiquette here?” Gifty says, looking at the giant rockpile, “This seems like a natural stopping point… but, I mean, it’s early in the day, right? I feel like we could get more done?”

Jin lets the wind carry her words to her brother, “Gan, are you alive?”

There’s a short pause before Ganan responds, “Yes.”

“Well…” Jin muses, “He’s still alive. So, if you were thinking of killing me and stealing the treasure…”

“Given that he’s buried under all that and not getting out any time soon, let’s not take that option off the table.” Gifty responds, completely deadpan.

“This might be a faster way into the city,” Ganan broadcasts as he looks around.

Ganan is in a wide-open cavern, beneath the car tunnel. It’s lit only by the shining, white light of his anima. It seems to be a natural formation, caused by water erosion, as an underground river flows along the cavern floor.

The sandswimmer queen, dazed but not defeated, finds its feet and burrows into the solid rock, leaving behind a large bore tunnel, not unlike the dozens of holes into the main tunnel above, as it retreats.

Jin relays that information to Gifty, who begins summoning a Stormwind Rider.

“Where are you going?” Jin asks.

“Back down the tunnel, pick up some Earth Elementals so we can dig down to father. Faster is better.”

“Better for us, sure, but we still promised the Jadeborn that we’d clear this tunnel. Which means clearing… that.” She gestures at the total cave in blocking their path.

Gifty finishes her spell and rides away from Jin, calling over her shoulder “Sorry, can’t hear you over the sound of the wind! I’m sure that’s a really good point though!”

****

Gifty rounds up some elementals who easily dig through the floor, whilst she races back down the tunnel and rounds up a gang of demons. The tunnel down complete, Gifty and Jin climb down to where Ganan is waiting below, then Gifty resummons her Stormwind Rider, and the trio race along the open cavern.

After only a couple of hours of travel at sorcerous speed, with no rubble to clear or cave-ins slowing them down, the Dragon-Blooded come across the ruins of Dari. At first, it’s only a few piles of rubble: opalescent stones, shrouded in something that reflects the light of Gifty’s blade. Then the stones become walls, and the walls become buildings. The “something” that surrounds the stones rises to a thick mist. And then the Dragon-Blooded find themselves in a city: a beautiful city made of strange, shimmering, white stone.

“Welcome to the Lost City of Dari,” Gifty smiles to herself as she steers her sorcerous conveyance through the streets with deliberate purpose.

Dari is not laid out like an underground city, indeed, it looks like it should be built above ground. Suddenly the layout of the rubble on the approach to the city makes sense – as if it were farm buildings in open fields. And the tops of the buildings look shaved, destroyed by some ancient and terrible artifice. Cracks in the buildings, and the uneven ground, suggests the city fell into its current resting place, rather than being built here.

“That’s my favorite niece!” Jin crows, “I never doubted you for a moment!”

“I have two other daughters, you know!” Ganan says indignantly.

“And they have equal opportunity to earn my love by leading me to a First Age ruin to loot. I mean plunder. I mean… steal the treasures of… on behalf of House Alinos and the Realm?”

Gifty grins and holds her tongue as she weaves them through the streets.

Jin cranes her neck up, trying to work out where the city would connect to the car tunnel above, but the light of Gifty’s sword casts only eerie shadows into the gloom. “Where are we going?” she asks, as it becomes clear that Gifty is steering towards… something.

“I may not have been entirely honest with the two of you,” Gifty confesses, “There’s an artifact here that I want. I can… I can sense it.”

“That’s great,” Ganan says, “Can you sense the ancient and terrible guardians that are going to jump out and try to kill us?”

“Call me a hopeless optimist but look at these ruins. I don’t see vast spider webs. I don’t see glowing red eyes peering at us from the ruins. I feel like we’re in the clear here.”

Ganan looks over to Jin, “Is she trying to kill us?”

“There it is,” Gift points at what can only be described as a mausoleum, situated at what looks like a prominent interchange, she sets them down just outside.

Jin makes a face, that the others can’t see behind the faceplate of her armor, “Really, that?”

“Huh,” Ganan grunts.

“Huh?” Jin asks, “Give me a hand here.”

“There are a lot of spirits here.”

“Is… that… unusual?”

Ganan shrugs, “Not really.”

Gifty has already started up the stairs to the mausoleum.

Jin shakes her head and follows Gifty, “Why are you so weird?”

****

The mausoleum is a large structure, immaculately decorated. Moonsilver murals seems to shift under the eye, showing fantastic scenes celebrating some long-forgotten heroes’ life. The murals are indistinct in the torchlight, but even so, it is clear they are celebrating one of the Lunar Anathema.

Our heroes make their way to a grand coffin in the middle of the room. The elaborately preserved body of a hansom man lies preserved under glass in what looks like a pool of liquid moonsilver. The man’s hands are clasped around a silver orb the size of a grapefruit.

“Ganan, you think you can get that out without losing a hand?” Gifty points at the orb.

Ganan lowers the end of his pickaxe into the coffin. Blades of moonsilver form from the pool and slice the steel tool to pieces in an eyeblink – preventing the tomb from being defiled. Ganan frowns, “Give me a second to work on it.”

“Great, Jin, watch the exits. If this place is filled with spirits, the last thing we need is to be ambushed, right? I’m going to head below.” Gifty starts off into the gloom.

“Below?” Jin queries, but Gifty doesn’t respond.

Ganan places his hand on the ground, “There’s a chamber below us.” He confirms.

Jin looks after the retreating light of Abrojo: it seems Gifty has found a spiral staircase at the back of the room, which quickly takes her out of sight. The only light source out of sight, the brother and sister are plunged into darkness. Ganan seems unperturbed, working in the dark. Jin is unsettled, extending her weapon, ready to fight foes she can’t see.

Minutes pass, then Ganan starts to drum his fingers on the side of the coffin. Jin can’t see what he’s doing, but after nearly twenty minutes of finger drumming, she loses her patience.

“What are you doing!” She hisses into the darkness.

“I’m trying to get this orb.” Ganan responds in his normal speaking voice.

The volume causes Jin to jump. She takes a couple of calming breaths, then ignites her anima, casting a gentle red glow over the room.

“Actually, that’s helpful,” Ganan nods, “You couldn’t have done that earlier?”

Jin ignores him, “What is taking Gifty so long? I’m going after her.”

“Whatever,” Ganan says with indifference, “I’ve nearly got this.”

Jin shakes her head and makes for the back of the room. The low light of her anima is barely enough to see by, but she finds the spiral staircase which leads to the room below. Slowly she descends the stairs.

“Gan! Come at see this!” She shouts at the top of her lungs.

Ganan ignores her. “Almost got it…” he mutters to himself.

The drumming of his fingers on the crystal coffin have caused ripples in the surface of the moonsilver. Rhythmic timing has caused constructive interference in the waves – making the ripples bigger, and bigger. Now waves of moonsilver crest the inside of the coffin, rolling back and forth, pulling the orb from the corpse’s fingers. The orb rides the top of the waves, edging closer and closer to the top of the coffin, as the deadly moonsilver defense system turns against itself, delivering the orb rather than defending it.

“Seriously, Ganan! You really need to see this!” Jin shouts from the chamber below, backing up toward the staircase. She half-runs back up the stairs back to Ganan.

The moonsilver orb rocks back-and-forth near the top of the open coffin.

“Use Calumny to knock it out!” Ganan shouts excitedly.

Jin whips her wrackstaff across the top of the coffin and connects with the moonsilver orb. The priceless artifact clatters to the floor.

Ganan pouts as he picks the treasure up and carefully examines it for damage, “Do you know what this orb is!”

Jin grabs his hand and half-drags him to the staircase. They descend together and find themselves in another room.

“Oh. Wow.” Ganan says simply.

The room is lit with dull orange light. It seems to give off a low hum. Where the room above is beautifully decorated with marble and moonsilver frescos, this room is one of brass and iron: great cogs and metal pipes line the walls. It reminds Ganan of the Imperial Manse, only where those cogs turned and those pipes hissed, the machinery here is still and lifeless. Dead. Except for the tubes of glowing gas, mounted in the ceiling, that provide the unnatural light.

At the center of the room is… a figure.

Perhaps another body. Perhaps a statue. Perhaps something stranger.

The figure is shaped like a man, but a man carved from clay. Great plates of white jade are grafted to the clay. An oversized crossbow is grafted to the man’s left arm, and a sword is clasped in his hand. The figure stands vertical, but is surrounded by glass, much like the dead body upstairs. Ganan and Jin circle the figure slowly, examining it from all angles.

“He is… I mean… It is… dead… right?” Jin asks carefully.

“He doesn’t look alive.” Ganan concedes, the male pronoun feeling right, “I mean, this is a mausoleum. And Dari has been lost for over a thousand years… I’m pretty sure he’s dead.”

The jade face of the figure looks surprisingly expressive. It doesn’t look alive, being too perfectly still… but it doesn’t look dead.

“What is it?” Jin asks, “I mean… is it a… construct? An android of some kind? Like a Brass Legionnaire? The city is pre-Shogunate, there’s a Lunar upstairs, this is some kind of Solar built… thing? Like that Jerah robot, Eyem?”

Ganan looks around the room, “Not a lot of Solar iconography. This seems… older? Maybe like the mausoleum was built on top?”

“Which only further reinforces the idea that this thing is dead, right? You don’t build a mausoleum on top of something that is alive?”

Ganan examines a small control panel on the front of the glass encasing the clay-and-jade figure. He works some of the, old and rusted, controls but the panel is completely dead and unresponsive. “Where’s Gifty?” He asks suddenly.

From beneath them is a piercing sound. The roar of a wounded predator. The ground shakes.

Ganan looks sheepish, “I guess there’s another level below us?”

Jin points out another staircase, and the pair race for it. Sounds of twisting metal come from below them. They race down the stairs and find themselves on the mausoleum’s final level.

This level is huge. Much larger than the levels above, clearly extending below the surrounding buildings. It is lit by the same fluorescent orange tubes as the level above. It is also more heavily damaged, with great rock piles pouring over the floor, the walls buckled and bent. Cupboards and workbenches ring the outside of the room, their tools spilled over the ground – some of which imperishable and looking like new, but most rusted scrap and rotten mulch. Multi-level walkways surround vast chains of orichalcum and moonsilver, which, until recently, clearly bound something within a cage of adamant and jade-steel. Something sixty-feet fall. Warding sigils, such as might be used to bind demons, are inscribed on the walls in Starmetal – all of them have been defaced (some, clearly, centuries ago, others look like they were hacked apart by a giant flaming sword five minutes ago).

Jin clears her throat, “Gan… you ever been inside a Warstrider bay?”

“Uh… no…” Ganan admits, “But… I imagine it’d look something like this… only…”

“Only with a Warstrider in the cage there?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to ask that question you asked upstairs again?”

“‘Where’s Gifty?’”

“Yeah.”

The path of the Warstrider is clear. The bars of its cage are bent, and great footsteps head directly for a now closed blast door, clearly too heavy to lift.

Jin slaps Ganan with the back of her hand on his chest, “Come on, we can get out the way we came in, try to track her from above.”

Ganan nods and the pair race up the stairs. They don’t notice a blinking orange light on the figure of clay’s control panel.

The mausoleum’s upper level is now bathed in brilliant moonlight. Every detail of the frescoes on the wall can be made out, depicting the Lunar in the coffin as they do battle with a brilliant array of enemies in a shifting variety of forms. It is also immediately clear that the entrance is now closed and bared to them.

A voice, tinny and metallic, but still recognizable as Gifty’s is speaking to them.

“By now, of course, Jin has told you about our incident in the tunnels…” Gifty’s voice begins.

“Oh, she tried to kill me.” Jin quickly whispers.

“And I know you’ve had your suspicions for some time. Let me assure you: I take no pleasure in this. Don’t misunderstand me, I have dreamed of killing you since I was a little girl. But getting to know you over the past weeks… I can’t blame dad for keeping you from me. I can’t hate you anymore. I can only pity you. I have my mistress’s prize because of you, and if it were up to me, I would let you live. But unfortunately, my mistress demands that you die.”

Ganan wags a finger in thought, “Do you think ‘her mistress’ might be…?”

“Sondok? Yes. Catch up.”

“This mausoleum was designed to be proof against the magics of the First Age. There is no way in or out. You will starve in here. Or, rather, my poor aunt will starve in here, you’ll eat her corpse, and then you will starve in here. Sondok will be most pleased with such a torture for you.”

Ganan snaps his fingers, “It was Sondok!”

“Seriously, bro, catch up.” Jin chides.

“But… call me sentimental. We are warriors, you and I. You deserve the chance to die fighting. I know this paltry force wouldn’t stop you at your full power. But I promise you, a quick and glorious death fighting Blood Apes is better than starving to death after you eat your sister. Plus, if you kill the workforce, it’ll take longer for the Alinos forces to reach you. So… either option is fine.”

“Dragonsgift! Get back here right now!” Ganan bellows.

“Also, this is a recorded message. I can’t actually hear anything you’re saying. Die well.” The broadcast system clicks and turns off as two dozen Blood Apes materialize out of thin air.

“We’re killing these fools and starving to death, right?” Jin says as she stands ready for battle.

Ganan pulls out his tetsubo and squares off against the demons.

****

The battle is fierce, but eventually the last demon falls.

There’s a banging noise from outside of the mausoleum.

Jin rushes to the moonsilver lined doors and listens. Something large is on the other side trying to break in. She pulls a confused face. “You think that’s Gifty come back to finish us off?” She asks.

“We can only hope.” Ganan says, leaning on his tetsubo, “Can you break us out of here?”

Jin examines the shifting moonsilver seals on the door, “Yes…” She says, after a moment’s consideration, “Gifty’s voice. That didn’t sound… moonsilvery. It sounded… mechanical?”

Ganan nods, “This is an Autochonian facility that has been repurposed by the Lunar Anathema.”

Jin nods back, “So, the facilities core systems – door locks, for example – they’re going to be based not immediately in front of us, but below us.”

****

The Dragons head back down to the level below. Jin carefully examines the equipment, including the new blinking orange light on the control panel. She clears her throat:

“This thing is definitely dead, right?”

Ganan makes a definitive cutting gesture with his palm, “Definitely.”

Jin sucks her teeth, and removes her helmet, “Okay, then I’m pretty sure I can open the doors and get us out of here… just… don’t freak out.”

“‘Freak out’ about what-?” Ganan begins, the last word dying in his throat as Jin dons Lady Magnificent’s Visage and starts working the manse’s security controls.

There’s a clunk. A grinding noise from beneath them. All of the manse’s doors start to open – internal and external.

Lady Magnificent looks up in satisfaction, having overcome the impenetrable security system of a First Age manse. Both she and Ganan see the same, tiny, movement.

From inside his glass stasis chamber, Alchemical Champion 314 opens his eyes.

****

Ganan spends 7DXP to train Resistance 5.
Ganan is retired as a player character. Ganan’s player takes ST role.

This Exalted Third Edition game is over. Thank you for following Dynasty of Dovak!

The story continues in two weeks’ time with Essence of Dynasty, an Exalted Essence game that picks up where this game leaves off. http://games.adult-fanfiction.org/story.php?no=600091560

314 is introduced as a player character.
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Dynasty of Dovak