Exalted: The Tale of the Hollow City

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The Tale of the Hollow City:
Following their success at the Three Sisters Dam, the Circle found themselves in Crystal's bar.

Soaring Currawong, one of Belar's advisors burst through the door out of breath clutching a parchment. He breathlessly explained that this was one of many posters that Belar's guards had torn down across the city, and "You NEED to see this..." The Witch Queen Belar!

''With the aid of her monstrous servants Belar has assassinated the rightful rulers of the South and East, Heartsong and Thales, and seized total control of Marrul Vaar! Even now her demonic henchmen walk amongst us, at liberty to pursue their abominable schemes. In the guise of a servant their ringleader has the ear of their mistress and disseminates the witch-queen's orders to her henchmen! First they walked amongst us in the guise of friendship, bringing tainted gifts while opening the door to their fellow demons! They threw down our temples and slew our god and replaced it with decadent “art” for the amusement of the bourgeois and indolent upper class! They rampaged through our streets soaking the walls with blood! They seek to overthrow our industry and steal your livelihoods! And even now the horrors of the Wyld – unspeakable amalgamations of man and beast – stalk our streets, paving the way for the carnage that has so recently engulfed the peninsula to overwhelm us too.'' "This cannot be permitted. Do not let Marrul Vaar become the Devil's Throne – a hollow city only fit for monsters and ghosts!"The parchment was written in a cultured and educated hand on good quality paper, but was clear propaganda against the circle accusing them of meddling in the city. Accusing each of them of being monsters, though thankfully the caricatures were crudely drawn so didn't actually resemble the circle too clearly. .

After a brief discussion, the circle split up. Hephestia and Tokumei making their way to Bellar's palace incognito, Reeds went to handle his business affairs and Daxi tried to create his own counter-propaganda and to find out who posted it, and Crystal would use her newly-opened bar to gather information.

Reeds, upon making contact with his business associates, discovered that "the carnage that has so recently engulfed the peninsula" referred to in the poster was some form of Wyld-based disaster up the coast in the Grey-Eye Peninsula between Marrull Vaar and Zhaojun, and that refugees from the peninsula were sacking and burning their way Westward across the Cinder Isles, forcing the islanders to flee to places like Marrull Vaar. The local sea-traders were therefore dumping their cargos such as wine and other trade goods at a steep discount in order to hasten their flight. "At this rate Reeds," said his friend Ho Chi in a sinister echoing of the Sister of the Ram, "soon you'll be the greatest merchant in the whole Southwest."

Daxi meanwhile kept his eyes and ears peeled on the crowds as he worked on his posters, overhearing the troubled whisperings of a city in fear, not only of recent events, but of Belar's growing might... and the fallout of the Circle's recent adventures on the surrounding villages. But what particularly caught his notice was a certain argument about the lighting of the stone lanterns around the city, and how certain lanterns appeared to be being left darkened. On purpose, perhaps? Unable to discern an immediate pattern to the unlit lanterns, Daxi resolved to investigate them further as he made his trip that evening.

While all this was going on, Tokumei and Hephastia snuck their way into Belar's palace, for fear of further drawing the suspicions of onlookers that they were the "demonic servants" of the "witch queen" Belar. A council meeting was in progress, and the topic was dire: a Cholera outbreak, far from the first the city had faced, had sprung up in a district of the Northwest slums. Dwelling upon the squalid conditions that the poorer majority of the population had to live under, owing to the stagnant swamp water that they lived on, drank from, bathed, laundered and defecated into, Tokumei and Hephastia put their minds to work and came up with a plan to aid in the relief efforts, and to potentially harness the Manse's apparent water-producing properties to create an aqueduct system that might help the city (and perhaps repair their reputations). Belar arrived shortly thereafter, but while she was responsive to the potential plans she was understandably on edge owing to the accusations of the poster campaign, and her mood darkened even further upon hearing of the Circle's exploits with the Dam and Gigagles. She agreed to discuss the plans with The Council without mentioning the Circle's involvement, but was heard issuing a cryptic order to one of her servants as they left: "Tell Iron-Face "Yes, all of them, Money is no longer an object."

As the evening drew on, Hephastia left the city (via boat; again to avoid disturbing the city any further) and Reeds aided in the evacuation. Tokumei headed to the centre of the outbreak to issue her plan to the people co-ordinating the emergency response to the Cholera outbreak. As she returned, however, a figure behind her rang a bell... and Tokumei remembers nothing more. Under the cover of Dusk, Daxi began his investigations, only to be distracted as a small gang of the Goisagi, affiliates of his hated enemies The Lintha Pirates and a relatively uncommon sight in Marrull Vaar, passed by. Considering them the more immediate threat, Daxi followed them as they prowled the city, seemingly sizing the area up for some unknown purpose.

Around this time, Tokumei awoke in what seemed to be the back room of an Opium den, held apparent hostage by five strangers from lands far removed from the Wreckers Coast. Their leader, a softly spoken woman, apologised for abducting her but cited the growing rumors about the Circle's dangerous behaviour and claimed that she was running out of time."

"My name is Mei Fang," she told Tokumei, "and I need to know - where is "Dirty Bull" Meng?"

At her new Inn, her poetry group were preparing for the nights entertainment.
Two groups of Dragonbloods came in with high spirits. The Hearth of the Jade Cliffs and three members of The Broken Talon minus Iron-Face. They ordered drinks from the bar and celebrated when a messenger came in. Crystal overheard that Bellar had accepted the offer to hire both groups on an ongoing basis, which prompted them to buy a round of drinks for everybody including the messenger. The leader of the Jade Cliffs and Laughing Blade, were apparently former war-buddies, and the whole group appeared rather... amorously inclined towards each other.

Tokumei's Evening
Having been addressed by Mei Fang, Tokumei responded saying that she didn't know where Meng was, but that he had gone away a few weeks ago on business but didn't tell her specifically where. Mei Fang revealed that she was his Lunar wife who had also been a childhood friend in this life. She was dispirited to learn that he had already left. But Tokumei suggested that she could just contact him with an infallible messenger. She passed on the message asking him to come to a shack North of Marrull Vaar to meet her. One of the Lunars apologised revealing that the nightmares that the Solars received were his work. They also shared that they had been tracking Meng across most of the continent for a long time and that there was a recent Wyld incursion in the Cinder Isles. Eventually they introduced themselves and let her go, Tokumei inviting them to formally meet the Solars when they are ready to do so. They also revealed that she was being controlled by means of a hand bell and other houses used similar techniques with the colour yellow and orders given in rhyme.

Daxi's Evening
Continuing to tail the members of the Goisagi who were wandering through town, Daxi decided to intervene when the three thugs attempted to accost a recently-freed Tokumei, who was attempting to ignore them and continue on her way. Daxi snuck up behind them and when he threatened them, they quickly became compliant especially when Tokumei joined in summoning her firebird.

At first he was willing to scare them off, but they mentioned a leader by the name of Foxfire and the two of them decided that they would like to meet Foxfire. So walked with them. However the thugs tried to split up. Tokumei collared one and Daxi picked up one and threw them in to another, incapacitating both. After this they became much more compliant and led the way to their beer-garden-like hideout. The leader appeared to be playing chess with another person. He and Tokumei exchanged a few words, expressing that his thugs should not harass people any more and she and Daxi left. Although Daxi mentioned that these were affiliated with his hated enemies the Linthan pirates. But at least they had a look at some faces and the three thugs were beaten up by their own people.

Hephestia's evening
Meanwhile she had taken her new apprentices Sung and Wong up river to teach them surveying and make preparations for the creation of the aquaducts. They were able to work without interruption.

Reed's Evening and a meal at the house.
Reeds was coming home from a meeting with a friend, a fisherman named Spider Bones, and agreed to drop them off on Snails when he noticed Tokumei and Daxi moving with the thugs towards their hideout. Daxi signalled for him not to intervene. So he waited and once the situation with the thugs had concluded Tokumei and Daxi came back out and also caught a lift, as did Hephestia, Crystal (Who had been drinking heavily with the Dragonbloods) and her two apprentices Won and Sung. All of them started to move back to the estate where Tokumei cooked a meal for the group.

She managed something incredible with simple ingredients and everybody was full by the time they stopped to speak recapping their days.

Hephestia explained to her students that the group were Solars and put their mind at ease that we didn't intend to enslave or eat them and wanted to help.

Hephestia recounted how she first exalted after the death of her husband and her service to Ninegala and an apprentice. Her drive and ambition to do what she could to help others.

Reeds told of his own exaltation, when the Suns grace allowed him to survive a dangerous area of swamp and retrieve herbs needed to save a friends life. Crystal and Daxi were less forthcoming and Tokumei recounted her escape from slavery.

They were all reminded that Jagganath would be visiting tomorrow and that the Dam would need attention soon. They spoke about the need to increase education.

Wong and Sung however asked for the day off as tomorrow was due to be a momentous day.

Tokumei and Hephestia delivered Jaganaath's gift of a box of seeds to King Belar and Tokumei offered to stay and help with the food the next day and Tokumei and Daxi went with Reeds to the warehouse. She crafted a box to securely contain the dangerous obsidian dagger that they had retrieved from the dam.

Whilst they were there, Hephestia tried to train Reeds in swordsmanship, but when he touched her weapon, golden light poured from his hands and unlocked the hidden power of the artefact.

Meeting many visitors
Waiting for their guests, Hephestia, Daxi and Reeds were at the warehouse when a pair of women approached. One in her mid-twenties (Mei Fang) and older stronger looking woman (Horizon's Teeth).

The following morning Hephastia, Daxi and Reeds were hanging out at the warehouse as Mei Fang and Horizon's Teeth arrived as per Tokumei's invitation. Through conversation the Solars learned that Mei Fang and Meng were originally from Delzahn, far to the Northeast along the Inland Sea, and that on her travels Mei Fang had recruited her circle from the Diamond Road (Horizon's Teeth) and An Teng (Gharial-Who-Lies-In-Wait). Reeds bombareded them with questions. However most pressing was the news of events from further North up the coast.

They confirmed that a fleet of ships under the banner of the Bronze Tide were on their way, under the leadership of a person named Lukha Palash, who were fleeing ahead of a fair folk incursion originating in the Grey-Eye Peninsula. Those fleeing had banded together and were aggressively raiding and sacking the coastland areas that they passed through, currently stalling at the island of Baruntulga. As the migrant fleet flees, the Fair folk seem drawn to follow behind them.

They moved over to Crystals bar where she was cleaning up after the Dragonblood festivities of the previous night.

Hephestia came to get Tokumei, but she was occupied by the arrival of Jagganath. Bellar's new Dragonblooded guards were on alert and watching. However after Jagganath made his way through the city with his guard on foot, it threw off arrival plans, which Tokumei tried to correct for. Fortunately, Tokumei's food and Jagganath's charms managed to ensure that the meeting was positive and friendly.

During a lull in the meeting Jagganath took Tokumei aside, revealing the reason he had travelled on foot was to assess the state of the city and its people. His conclusion was ominous - warning Tokumei that the people were uneasy about the political uphevals going on, and many were outright scared of the Circle and their perceived role as the "power behind the throne", Jagganath gave Tokumei some advice: "A sickness is never its own cure."

While this was going on, the rest of the party were at the docks, where the recent influx of refugees had flooded the streets with refugees desperately looking for sanctuary and security. Reeds met with a man named Cladatious, the captain of a ship full of refugees from Jheroth, an island on the Northern end of the peninsula that was now troublingly close to the Fair Folk's armies. They had brought a chunk of the Great Ocean Road, a First Age (or perhaps older) pathway that ran along Jheroth, and the "bird man", a local shaman in training that was below decks in a state of great distress.

Fish and Speeches
Reeds and Tokumei went down to speak to Bird Man, who revealed to them that his training had required him to retire to the mountains and take medicines that opened his perception to the spirit world, but being evacuated ahead of the possible invasion meant that he was overwhelmed by the thousands of gods and spirits around him and was without the ancestor spirits who could have guided him. With every grain of rice, plank of wood and strand of rope aboard the ship teeming with spirits he was on the verge of a breakdown until Reeds talked to him and offered him some comfort.

Hephestia came back and with a piece of wood carved a likeness of the Skyfather from the mask he wore and used it as a focus to give her sight in to the spirit world. With that she was able to share his vision of the spiritual world and talking him through it, she came up on deck and saw Skyfather overseeing things. She reassured him and gave the Birdman focus. She spoke to Skyfather on his behalf and he asked if his home was alright, Skyfather mentioned that their Neighbouring island is full of flowers but they have not bloomed. The birdman revealed that they had brought the chunk of the Great Ocean Road in the hopes that Skyfather would be bound to it and escape destruction (or worse) if the Wyld consumed Jheroth. Skyfather appeared to appreciate the carving Hephastia offered him as a gesture of respect and cast a large fish up on to the deck, which Hephestia caught and Tokumei later salted for dinner.

Eventually Tokumei came down as they were concluding things and informed them that Jagganath was about to start his speech and they found a vantage point in a nearby cafe from which to listen. It was an interesting speech about justice that seemed to energise and even physically sate the crowd. Tokumei was a little worried that this could be an ideal opportunity for an assassination and so asked Daxi to head down to stealthily make sure there were no issues. However Daxi and Reeds both spotted groups of suspicious young men at each of the entrances to the public square. They had shaven heads like the priests that used to run the quarter in which the speech was being held.

They sprang in to action. Tokumei stealthily passing by the priests and overhearing their conversation. They had some people on the edge of the square and other groups further away, with runners moving between them. she overheard that they were going to blow the place up, but not how. She told Daxi on her way to the stage where she passed this information on to the Dragonbloods and made sure Jagganath got the message, then went back to tell the rest of the circle.

Now knowing it is a bomb plot, Daxi looked for places that explosives could have been hidden and noticed that the lanterns that were not being lit at night were, far from randomly as it had first appeared, placed in ideal positions to destroy as much of the surrounding areas as possible. So he went over to one and sure enough found both an incomplete Ofuda that would act as a fuse and a shoebox sized package of highly explosive firedust. As they said, even one package would have been enough to blow apart a city block.

Thankfully the rest of the team also leaped in to action. Reeds used his supernatural sense of smell to sniff out another bomb which Tokumei was able to identify. By now Bellar and Jagganath had left the stage and people were beginning to disperse, but not quickly enough. So Crystal stood up and, seeing the warning that Daxi signaled to her, persuaded the crowd that there was an additional treasure hunt for the packages hidden inside lanterns. Which they eagerly participated in, whilst Hephestia cornered and subdued some of the acolytes before they could detonate the bombs.

Reeds thought carefully about it and realised that there was no way that this was recently imported as this much Fire Dust would have been obvious on the market. So it must have been carefully horded from before the Circle even arrived in the city. Perhaps as a tool of assassination.

Later that day, nearly 20 of the acolytes behind the bomb plot had been rounded up for interrogation in a nearby square and it was Crystal's turn to ask questions.

The bad guys
While Reeds attempted to track down the smell of the Firedust to its source and Daxi co-ordinated the rounding up of the firedust, Crystal and Tokumei took a good-cop bad-cop approach to the prisoners. Crystal trying to threaten them in to giving up the information, whilst Tokumei fed them tea and tended to their wounds. Between the two of them they tried to talk the priests around. True to Jagganath's words they were afraid of the Solars, as they knew the stories about the tyrannical First Age Solars, and feared that the Solars had seized control of the city to enslave its population. The acolytes revealed that the reason Thales' cult had been conducting human sacrifices was to keep the Wyld to the south from overwhelming the city, and it took the two Solars reassurance that they had no plans to cow the city into submission or sacrifice the citizens to sway the crowd in their favour. Tokumei mentioned wanting priest engineers for the dam project and suggested that her putting in a good word for them to be assigned there would be preferable to whatever plan Bellar had for them.

It was then that Reeds came rushing back revealing the location of the hide-out. It was a tenement block where several walls had been broken through to form a single large dwelling with a few disguised guards outside. Daxi snuck inside with an invisibility charm and found that this was the place that Man Fa, daoishi of Thales' cult, had stockpiled the remaining relics and scriptures of their religion, as well as the stockpile of firedust they had prepared in the event that Heartsong or Bellar had ever tried to take over the city. With their plans foiled the conspirators were making preparations to burn their relics and commit ritual suicide. Failing to talk down Man Fa, Daxi prevented him from starting the blaze by throwing a huge barrel of poison directly at his chest. The rest of the circle came in and Reeds warned them to not let anybody get away through the underground tunnels, while Tokumei quickly extinguished all of the fire from the building.

Rounding up these and the other acolytes they had captured, the circle allowed the city guards to take them into custody. Tending to Man Fa's wounds, they reiterated that their goals for the city were benign and left them to consider their offer to become the new staff of the Three Sisters Dam.

Retiring to the Wave of Words bar, the circle contemplated the day's events. Hephestia was concerned about the constant hatred they were receiving, feeling that it would be corrosive over a long period of time. Tokumei reluctantly conceded that the cultists may have had a point, as over the 50 or more mortal generations that a Solar Exalt would live, it was likely that it would be hard to keep the perspective of mortal lives. The circle asked Reeds to keep them grounded and find a way to keep them from going evil. Seeking to finally put their intentions into practice they decided on what they would be working on.

Tokumei would help with the organisation of Hephestia's projects and train up a priesthood to maintain the dam. Hephestia was going to work on the dam and other projects. Reeds was going to go back to see his family, which Daxi planned to get a ship for himself. Meanwhile Crystal wanted to capture the hearts and minds of the city and make them more accepting of the Solars.

Epilogue
Considering their options, the priesthood accepted the circle's offer. Bellar, however, was far from pleased at the potential disaster that had almost come about from her association with the Circle, and her Dragonblood guards refused even Tokumei access to her. Stung by this, Tokumei left for now but advised them to watch out for signs of Bellar's health being in decline, concerned that the poisoning she had incurred from her battle with Heartsong might be affecting her mental state.

For the next three weeks they split up, with Hephestia and Tokumei working on stabilising the dam and constructing the Aquaducts, Daxi going out to purchase a ship and acquire a crew, Reeds visiting the various settlements to the North and Crystal worked on improving her bar.

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