Jukashi I really need to talk to you about my character, you signed and off while I was GMing my saturday game before I could finalize some things about my character so I could write my post. I will post as soon as I can talk with you!

A question for Jukashi. Would Gant know the relevance of the lunars' tattoos and figure out that there are three of them in the camp by observation alone? He does have a pretty high Lore skill.

>>316618

He would certainly have reason to suspect them. Other little clues such as moonsilver arms and armour would probably convince him even more!

I'm basically asking folks to say what I should know about them in-character at this point.
Do note that admitting to being anathema would likely be unwise, since Tharn appears to be a mortal authority, and I'd imagine that you're all aware that Tarak remains under the control of the Realm, so Tharn is somewhat obligated to deal with anathema as the realm would.
That's not to say he would actually do so, of course, and there's in general not much love for the Realm in Tarak, but the nation is nonetheless nominally loyal, and anathema are not loved any more in Tarak than elsewhere.
This may of course change later in the campaign.

Also you don't need to do some huge work of art post, just post something because right now we're getting not much posts at all in the thread.

Gant appears to be knowledgable about the First Age (or so he has claimed) and has shown a definite interest in relics and ancient buildings (if Tharn's lance was on display at one point, he'll have inquired about it). He carries artifacts with him (more than he's actually shown, though), among them the staff, and a seemingly bottomless bag (it's the cache egg within it that's 'bottomless', however). He claims to be from a settlement called Watcher's Wake, but he's NOT mentioned the fact that he's under a curse... that's not something he would share unless there was a point to doing so. For those with the right knowledge, it's pretty obvious that he's a dragon-blooded.

King Tharn's probably never heard of him, or of Watcher's Wake.

Am I to understand Tarak is actually a Satrap under the Scarlet Empire, though? Or is it more an ostensibly 'allied nation', like Linowan is?

Tarak isn't a satrap. The only Deshan states with fluff are, and Tarak is in that area (though not coastal) but it's one of the ones without official fluff. It's a tributary of the realm, as were just about all nations prior to the fall of the Empress. This will undoubtedly cease to be the case during play some time, but not in the immediate future.

Also I meant that I was providing an opportunity to explain things in-character.

>>316685

Aaaah. Well, I'll take it relatively slow at first. There's a small amount of testing the ground that needs to be done. We're all probably somewhat wary of one another, after all.

>>316682

What you say about them revealing themselves is generally true, but I would add that you're quite far from home and that the Immaculate dogma makes no bones that mere mortals are no match for anathema. If the Lunar players do choose to reveal themselves, there's not much your character would feel able to do about it - at least, if he wants to maintain the illusion of being mortal.

>>316688
Would I not be obligated to notify the wyld hunt?
That's something I really don't want to do, of course. And even if obligated to do so, I wouldn't. But I don't imagine the lunars would know that.

>>316689

Of course you would. But you're not anywhere near them now, see? And given the state of the Realm in the Age of Sorrows it'd take time for a proper Hunt to get to you even if you were in the heart of your kingdom.

Alright so, if no-one's going to continue RPing with each other, I'd like you all to make a Perception + Awareness roll.

(dun dun dunnn)

Doing it in this thread will do, and if you think you can try stunt it somehow you can post that in the IC thread.

I have no dots in Awareness, which gives me an internal penalty of 2, and I have only 2 perception dots, but the way I read the rules is that since I have Essence 3, I still get to roll 'em both. Right?

dice 2d10

rolled 1, 10 = 11

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Oh, right. In the email field. Durp.

rolled [4] [4] [8] [6] [7]

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Right then, three perception and two awareness.

>>316824

IIRC, the penalty for having no Ability dots only applies to mortals. Exalted can roll their Attributes alone without penalty. So that's two successes for you.

Here ya go!

rolled 10, 9, 9, 1, 6, 8, 10 = 53

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Three dots in awareness, four in perception.

rolled [8] [9] [4] [10] [1]

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woops

rolled [5] [10] [3] [7] [9] [3]

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amidoinitrite?

rolled [3] [2] [10] [9] [4] [5] [2]

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Perception + Awareness.

It's time to JOIN BATTLE, wooo!

That's Wits + Awareness, as a reminder.

rolled 1, 3, 10, 1, 5 = 20

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Rollin' my five wits, no awareness.

Jukashi, may Gant have had time to pull out his cloak before the arrows started launching? If not, he does this as the arrows launch, taking however much time you deem necessary.

At any rate, he'll already have 4 motes committed for his armour and 5 motes committed for the staff, and he'll spend 2 motes total to open and close his Cache Egg to get the Wings of the Raptor, then use 11 motes to attune and activate them, putting him on a total of 22 motes spent/committed. He'll use 10 personal essence and 12 peripheral to do this. Having used 12 peripheral essence, his anima flares brightly and will start damaging stuff around him for 1 lethal damage per nine ticks... but hopefully this won't matter much in the air.

Thanks to the combination of the Windhands gemstone and the Wings of the Raptor, Gant will be at Dodge Defense Value 6 and won't suffer from defense or onslaught penalties to Dodge or Parry. He'll mainly try to Dodge any arrows headed his way.

I'm not sure if I have much of a move action left after finding and attuning to the wings, but if I have, tell me, and I'll start flyin' Gant around. Already have a plan in mind for his next action, beyond being a glowing "shoot me" target.

P.S. Meant to write "Elysius' armour" not "Elicia's". Sorry!

rolled [9] [8] [1] [6]

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>>317172

He'd have had time to put on his cloak, certainly. However, attuning to an artifact is a process that usually takes about 20 minutes. That's one of the drawbacks of artifacts: if you want them ready to use whenever, you have to accept a reduced pool of essence for everything else.

I'd let you say that you were attuned already. That would mean the essence you're spending now would be only 12.

>>317180

Ah. In that case, yes, he would have attuned himself to everything before-hand, accepting the constant loss of all 10 of his Personal essence pool motes.

Even though the Wings give me a rather good move, I think I'll let the others do their actions before Gant does anything other than just fly up and get an overview of the situation. Though he will try to scout out the largest group of clustered enemies for later aerial sorcery bombardment (Titan's Icy Breath should be excellent for this). Is that another perception+awareness with bonuses due to the fact that they're shooting fire arrows, or what?

For that matter, how long does Titan's Icy Breath take to cast? I can't recall, and I don't have the books where I'm at right now. I believe it should be page 166 (or thereabouts) on the Black and White Sorcery scroll.

rolled 2, 10, 2, 6, 7, 7 = 34

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Three wits, three awareness.

rolled 4, 6, 7, 3, 5 = 25

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3 wits, 2 awareness

ps going to china tomorrow, I'll post today but idk how frequent i will be able to participate til i get home

Ahem. Guyyyyys?

Y'gotta do something! If not, I'll just go save the entire camp on my goddang own! I will, you know. Just watch me.

I basically have no idea what to do right now.

Well, look at it this way; your army is under fire from an enemy hiding in the jungle outskirts of your camp. Obviously, you need to deal with this enemy somehow, or else you won't have much of an army much longer!

You could spend your time gathering men together (through proxies and messengers, which you'd probably have at hand), so that you can command and/or lead them into assaulting the ambushing enemy (using your War skill+whatever appropriate ability it is one uses for leading large groups of warriors).

If you're feeling very Exalted-y, you could also call for your horse, equip your lance and charge bravely into melee on your own/with the other exalted. You could even, if you wanted, just state that you wait and see what all the other exalts are doing and how your men deal with this crisis on their own. Your choice. Just write a post stating that you do it.

Honestly, though, don't forget you're basically in command of an army of your own, and that there are rules in the core book for fighting big battles. With the number of arrows in the air here, I think we're dealing with a large enough force that a heavy-handed response is appropriate, so it is my advice that you organize your men, and get ready to kick back once Gant's softened them up for you.

Well, we can't really get going until everyone's rolled to Join Battle: once that's done I can work out where everyone stands in the Ticks and we can start with the action.

Been a bit of a wait, though! Maybe I should just roll for people and get on with it.

>>317224

If that's what keeping us waiting, you certainly should! Initiative is just a formality most of the time, after all.

what the hell is going on

>>317382

Seems like a couple o' players aren't posting actions (or rolling for initiative, hem hem Drake), and thus the game has ground to a halt and nobody's bothering to pick up the pieces! Now, Jukashi got tendonitis, so updates probably haven't been on the forefront of his mind for a while and not everyone seem to be active anymore (although, I haven't been on IRC for a while), which isn't exactly encouragement to go do anything.

To be honest, I'd like to see this continue, but if the posting speed thus far is an indication we ain't finishing this fight any time soon. I wouldn't blame Jukashi if he just decided to abandon this.

>>317382
A whole lot of nothing, mostly. Damn shame, too.

>>317386

Might help if you made that action o' yours. Or are you still having trouble figuring out what to do?

rolled 2, 4, 7, 4, 1, 7 = 25

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Right then.

If I judge aright, Theta and Drake are the ones who haven't made their Join Battle rolls. I guess I'll make them, then - and you'll just have to trust that they are what I say they are, since I don't want to make multiple posts for multiple rolls - I'll be making too many dice throws to clutter up the threads with them all. Uncertainty is the price they pay!

Adrianna gets a mighty 6 successes, while Hikaru get a much less mighty 0 successes.

While I'm at it, Gant and Guarana get 1-dice stunt bonuses to their Join Battle, but neither one gets any additional successes. You may take 2m for your pools, though, if there's any space. So the count as we start is:

Tick 1 - Adrianna
Tick 2 -
Tick 3 - Unknown Attackers, Elicia
Tick 4 -
Tick 5 - Gant, Tharn, Tharn's followers
Tick 6 - Guarana
Tick 7 - Hikaru

You make your action when your Tick comes up, and if you go at the same time as someone else you both act and the results of your actions happen simultaneously. I'll make periodic updates of the Tick list here in the OOC thread.

During combat, include a "signature" at the bottom of each IC post that includes the Speed and DV penalty of the action or actions you're making, as well your current DV, mote pools, your temporary willpower and a listing of whatever bonuses or penalties your character is operating under. If you're uncertain what kind of Action the thing you want to do is, or about anything else, ask here before you post IC.

Let's go!!

... By which, of course, I mean "Let's go tell Theta that he needs to make an action."

Excellent. Adrianna takes a Guard action, meaning she can "hold" her action until she's ready. Next up is Elicia, and the Unknown Attackers.

Awesome! Good to see things running again.

I've already got my action planned, all I need is to write it up. I'll wait for my turn in the order though.

rolled 3, 7, 7, 3, 8, 8, 6, 6, 5, 10 = 63

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Ok errybody wish me luck. Rolling Charisma+Performance, 5 CHA, 0 Performance, First Charisma Excellency.

Ball is in Jukashi's court now. Let's see what these mysterious attackers are going to do in the face of Elicia's phenomenal charisma.

Anyone who intends to try and spot/catch the interlopers hiding in the chaos should roll Perception + Awareness to do so.

rolled 9, 8 = 17

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Perception+Awareness, then. Which... is really just my perception. Still, here goes!

>>317461

Two successes! You can feel free to say you attempt to attack one or trip one up or talk to one or whatever it is you choose to do, if you like.

>>317462

Oh, I just wanted to see if I saw them. I have... bigger plans.

rolled 10, 8, 7, 6, 3, 9, 2, 6, 3 = 54

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Alrrrright! Gant will move up to the enemy archers and cast Titan's Icy Breath, a spell from the White and Black sorcery book, page 66. Area affected is 10 yards by 10 yards and 100 yards long, from in front of the caster; I'm assuming our enemies lined up (more or less) to fire at the camp, so this should be good. Here's the relevant text from the book:

"Roll the sorcerer’s (Wits + Occult) and add a number of automatic successes equal to her Essence, as an attack against everyone in the spell’s area. Characters cannot block this attack, though they may dodge it. The spell has a raw (lethal) damage of six dice plus attack successes. Anyone who suffers even a single level of damage from this spell has his movement rates halved and the Speed of all his actions increased by one for the remainder of the scene."

I -think- this means that I get 3 successes (for Essence 3) in addition to the whole roll itself, of 9d10. Tell me if I'm reading the rules wrong here, or doing something wrong. In either case, this is going to h-h-h-h-hurt if it goes off well. Here goes!

>>317465

So... eight successes, plus six damage die, best as I can tell. Should I roll them now, or wait?

Ah, well, Sorcery in combat is a little complicated. What happens is that you drop out of combat - that is, you still operate in combat time, but you can't do any of the normal things people can do just by being in combat, like move or defend yourself - and use the Shape Sorcery action (or sequence of actions for the higher circles of sorcery). That's when you spend the willpower and motes. Think of that as "charging up" the spell. Then, once that's done, your next action will be the Cast Sorcery action, which is when you make all the rolls, assuming that you haven't been prevented from finishing the spell. Then you have to roll to Join Battle again to see how long it takes you to act again.

I note that you say you move in the actual post, but you wouldn't be able to do that, so I'm just going to assume you hover, which I will allow you to do. Also what you should have done is saved the end of that post for the Cast Sorcery action, which you'll be doing later - if you haven't been interrupted during the casting.

>>317479

Well! I clearly am new to exalted. If I'd known how cumbersome combat casting was going to be, I might not have taken Sorcery at all!

Done is done, though. Gant will move to the spot indicated (however many ticks this takes) and place himself hovering out of easy melee reach, THEN try to cast his spell (going by what I rolled earlier, unless you want me to reroll).