The signs posted in front of the tombs and Manses of Denandsor:
WARNING!
The area is a CLOSED MILITARY REGION by
order of the Immaculate Preceptors of the Church of
Pasiap and the Shogun of the Dragon-Blooded Bakufu.
This region contains structures whose autonomous defenses
were created by the SOLAR ANATHEMA!
DO NOT APPROACH
BEYOND THIS POINT!
This area’s automated defenses HAVE NOT BEEN
DISARMED OR BYPASSED! In addition, the forces
of the Bakufu have deployed their own defenses to
contain any remaining undiscovered threats and to prevent
trespass by Anathema cultists.
TRESPASSERS WILL BE KILLED!
If you perceive any activity in this region, contact
the district’s Office of Residual Menaces in Kurogu
IMMEDIATELY! Entering this area is a Grade 1 offense
punishable by summary execution! Undue study of
this region is a Grade 3 offense punishable by transportation
to remote hard labor!
Security Personnel: This is a threat level A area.
The defenses of this area will not respond to standard
commands or hailing. Under no circumstances may you
enter without specific explicit authorization from the
Bakufu and guides from the Office of Residual Menaces.
Exalted: FoB - IC: Random Things
Last edited by Avilister on Fri Jul 25, 2008 10:16 pm, edited 2 times in total.
A First-Age Leaflet found printed on magical paper that will not burn - found posted on one of the buildings of Denandsor:
The Shogun advises you that Anathema have been
sighted in this sector. Dragon-Blooded enforcers are on
maximum alert in this vicinity in order to safeguard your
well-being and the integrity of your property and goods.
Help the Shogun help you by following the recommendations
below:
1. Remember, the infernal Anathema can take
over the bodies of those you know — even loved ones.
If a loved one exhibits the signs of Anathematic possession,
do not hesitate to inform the authorities! However
similar this foul doppelganger may seem to your loved
one, know that the soul of your loved one has been
destroyed by the invading demon and that it is up to you
to prevent the demon from twisting the body of your
loved one into a foul and unnatural mockery of its
former state. Should you see anything that indicates
that someone you know has been taken over by Anathema,
seek a Dragon-Blood immediately!
2. Non-Terrestrial anima banners are to be reported
at once! Remember that it is better to err on the
side of security than to provide one of the Anathema with
the time he needs to summon the full power of his dark
infernal gods.
3. Be on the lookout for the demonic Caste Marks
of the Anathema! If you do not remember what these look
like, refer to the illustration on page 389 of your civic
responsibilities guide.
4. If possible, relieve the Anathema of any advanced
weaponry it possesses prior to involving the
authorities. Do this only if you can avoid drawing undue
attention to your actions.
5. Know that any who die while taking decisive
action against the Anathema will be rewarded by the
Great Elemental Dragons. All such blessed martyrs
shall reincarnate immediately as Dragon-Blooded from
noble families.
6. Remember, all that stands between our peaceful
Shogunate and a world overrun by the power-mad Anathema
is your unflinching vigilance. An alert Shogunate is a
free Shogunate. The enemy is listening.
The Shogun advises you that Anathema have been
sighted in this sector. Dragon-Blooded enforcers are on
maximum alert in this vicinity in order to safeguard your
well-being and the integrity of your property and goods.
Help the Shogun help you by following the recommendations
below:
1. Remember, the infernal Anathema can take
over the bodies of those you know — even loved ones.
If a loved one exhibits the signs of Anathematic possession,
do not hesitate to inform the authorities! However
similar this foul doppelganger may seem to your loved
one, know that the soul of your loved one has been
destroyed by the invading demon and that it is up to you
to prevent the demon from twisting the body of your
loved one into a foul and unnatural mockery of its
former state. Should you see anything that indicates
that someone you know has been taken over by Anathema,
seek a Dragon-Blood immediately!
2. Non-Terrestrial anima banners are to be reported
at once! Remember that it is better to err on the
side of security than to provide one of the Anathema with
the time he needs to summon the full power of his dark
infernal gods.
3. Be on the lookout for the demonic Caste Marks
of the Anathema! If you do not remember what these look
like, refer to the illustration on page 389 of your civic
responsibilities guide.
4. If possible, relieve the Anathema of any advanced
weaponry it possesses prior to involving the
authorities. Do this only if you can avoid drawing undue
attention to your actions.
5. Know that any who die while taking decisive
action against the Anathema will be rewarded by the
Great Elemental Dragons. All such blessed martyrs
shall reincarnate immediately as Dragon-Blooded from
noble families.
6. Remember, all that stands between our peaceful
Shogunate and a world overrun by the power-mad Anathema
is your unflinching vigilance. An alert Shogunate is a
free Shogunate. The enemy is listening.
A FRAGMENT OF A FIRST AGE SORCERY MANUAL
KEPT AND STUDIED AT THE HEPTAGRAM
(Stored in the original reader Jade Sage left the Heptigram with)
Not even the Heptagram’s most distinguished instructors
of sorcery or First Age lore can ascertain the meaning of the
text or its particular context. This fragment is commonly
presented to beginning students as an example of the worst
complexities of First Age artifacts and texts.
…refine the luminance engine as necessary to reach
the requisite value of z. Unless the engine is properly
calibrated, the diascendent assemblies will not manifest,
stemming the polychromatic bloom, and the attempt will
fail. Attaining the requisite value of z may take a few
moments and cause a brief subduction of the Essence zone.
This is normal, as is a slight seismic surge. If the subduction
endures for more than a single enhanced rotation, the
luminesce engine may be the result of substandard sorcery
and must be sanctified by a Solar plenipotentiary agent or
discarded altogether.
Once the diascendent assemblies have manifested,
you will note the presence of a small gemlike metastructure
between the two. So long as the metastructure is diaphanous
and cyanochromic, it is acting as a coupling nexus
between the two. If it is not doing so, increase the
countertension on the hyperion keys until it is. That
radiant metastructure is the undulance knot. Do not touch
the undulance knot! Any interference with the undulance
knot will result…
[The fragment ends here.]
KEPT AND STUDIED AT THE HEPTAGRAM
(Stored in the original reader Jade Sage left the Heptigram with)
Not even the Heptagram’s most distinguished instructors
of sorcery or First Age lore can ascertain the meaning of the
text or its particular context. This fragment is commonly
presented to beginning students as an example of the worst
complexities of First Age artifacts and texts.
…refine the luminance engine as necessary to reach
the requisite value of z. Unless the engine is properly
calibrated, the diascendent assemblies will not manifest,
stemming the polychromatic bloom, and the attempt will
fail. Attaining the requisite value of z may take a few
moments and cause a brief subduction of the Essence zone.
This is normal, as is a slight seismic surge. If the subduction
endures for more than a single enhanced rotation, the
luminesce engine may be the result of substandard sorcery
and must be sanctified by a Solar plenipotentiary agent or
discarded altogether.
Once the diascendent assemblies have manifested,
you will note the presence of a small gemlike metastructure
between the two. So long as the metastructure is diaphanous
and cyanochromic, it is acting as a coupling nexus
between the two. If it is not doing so, increase the
countertension on the hyperion keys until it is. That
radiant metastructure is the undulance knot. Do not touch
the undulance knot! Any interference with the undulance
knot will result…
[The fragment ends here.]
Two excerpts from books collected by either Jade Sage of the Oaken Bow, or Avilister:
From the patrician textbook Wonders of the Lost Age,
excerpted from the limited edition including commentary for
Heptagram students.
During the First Age, the Anathema created many
kinds of life by abusing Essence to construct aberrations
— beings that had parts of various different animals combined
together in them. These terrible creatures were often
able to breed true, and many of the terrible beasts that are
scourges of the Threshold in the Second Age are a result
of these terrible experiments. From the eight-tailed mole
hounds to the simhata lion-horses, these fi erce beasts blight
Creation to this day.
Obviously, this is laying a great deal that came afterward
at the feet of the Anathema. It is certain that the Shogunate
conducted many experiments in the creation of life, some successful,
especially in the early period after the destruction of
the Solar Deliberative, but the Shogunate-era Dragon-Blooded
never proved the equal of the Anathema in the modifi cation
of living things to suit their wills.
Clearly, the destruction of Solar-created life was a major
priority for the early Shogunate, but it had nothing to do with
the immoral nature of creating life (though such artifi cial life is
currently taught to be offensive to the Immaculate Order).
The problem, which led to many purges, was that it quickly
became evident under close scrutiny that it was not only the
mechanical wonders of the Solars that were so dangerous.
Many of their prodigies were found to possess programming
on a fundamental level that rendered them hereditarily loyal
to the Twilights, the Deliberative and the Solar Anathema.
As a result, it was considered necessary to destroy them as
a form of prophylaxis.
This is often considered to be one of the worst “sins”
of the Shogunate. The fact of the matter is that this decision
was undertaken after a number of uprisings and sabotage
events rendered it evident that the issue was not related to
individuals and would not be settled even by mass behavioral
modification. In addition, while many of these beings were
sentient or nearly so, most demonstrated a profound lack
of spiritual components. They were not reincarnated, did
not descend into the Underworld — they were, in fact,
merely fleshy automatons, cut off forever from the cycle
of reincarnation and from ultimate communion with the
Dragons. These unnatural beings were better off extinct,
rather than living a tortured, soulless existence with no
hope of an afterlife.
The means by which these beings were created was
constant and explains why so many of them can breed
— parts of various animals were disjointed by black
sorcery and knitted together again by similar magics.
During the process, other sorts of sorcery would sustain
the pieces and the donor beasts, so that the portions
of animal were sustained as if they were still attached
to the original animal. After the magic knitted these
animal portions together, the creatures produced were,
of course, often confused and sick, as they were the
independent, still-living parts of the various animals
that had provided the tissue. Then, the various donor
animals would be kept alive through sorcery until the
composite creature could be bred with another such
creature of the opposite sex and offspring carried
successfully to term. Then, when true creatures were
created, the sorcery supporting the original hybrids
would be terminated, and they — and all the donor
animals — would die, and the offspring would be bred
as the progenitors of the race. To provide variety, the
Anathema breeders might do this hundreds or thousands
of times to populate a new species. In other cases,
host organisms would have specially prepared artificial
genitals grafted on in the place of their own. These
practices were exceedingly inhumane, revolting and
offensive to the Dragons, and it is because of them that
the Immaculate Order forbids such experiments.
Again, obviously, the reality was somewhat different. The
processes described for creating patchwork creatures was in fact
used, but it obviously is not effi cient and required powerful
sorcery that not even all of the Anathema could muster. It
was used by a few eccentrics. The process of grafting artifi -
cially pre-prepared genitals onto beasts that are to be used as
incubators for the young of other beasts is still practiced by
some agricultural sorcerers in the Realm today.
ESSENCE’S EFFECT ON CELLULAR
TRANSPORT MECHANISMS
Excerpted From Introductory Organic Mechanisms
and Essence Flows, Third Edition
…Key to understanding the specifi cs of Essence’s
effect on cellular transport is the fact that at no point
do actual Essence interference effects take place. One of
the most common misapprehensions of the beginning
student is that, in order to enhance activity, Essence
motes will be bound into the cellular transport chain at
some point, usually during three-sugar synthesis, in the
place of bound sugars.
Of course, nothing could be further from the case.
Motes are an indivisible unit, and, like all Essence, they
interfere with the physical world only rarely. However,
the effects engendered by the release of bound Essence
motes from the Exaltation or sorcerous construct provides
potential physical energy, which, when directed by the arms
of Essence-channeling forms or constructs, fl ows through
and enhances various physical processes.
The archetypal effect is the provision of regeneration
through the form of the war-optimized Lunar Exalt.
While the roots of this process are poorly understood,
taking place as it does inside the black box of the Exaltation,
it sets the benchmark of efficiency for such
effects. During the war-transformation, the Exaltation
cycles Essence internally, with the effect of increasing
the energy released by the disunion of three-sugar
transport modules, but not altering the mechanism
— in this as in many other mechanisms, Essence follows
the path of least resistance, performing the most
subtle miracles possible under the constraints. This
accounts for the supernatural character of the Lunar’s
war-form capabilities in general, and the Exaltation
can clearly be seen to demonstrate adaptations to the
various demands of the war-form, most specifically in
the healing process.
Obviously, the process extended by the Deadly Beastman
Transformation is incomparably effi cient — even
against the other salutary effects on health provided even
by the Lunar Exaltation, nothing can compare to its relative
costlessness. More extreme forms of healing, which
bypass the cellular process, typically require much more
Essence to flow through the designs…
From the patrician textbook Wonders of the Lost Age,
excerpted from the limited edition including commentary for
Heptagram students.
During the First Age, the Anathema created many
kinds of life by abusing Essence to construct aberrations
— beings that had parts of various different animals combined
together in them. These terrible creatures were often
able to breed true, and many of the terrible beasts that are
scourges of the Threshold in the Second Age are a result
of these terrible experiments. From the eight-tailed mole
hounds to the simhata lion-horses, these fi erce beasts blight
Creation to this day.
Obviously, this is laying a great deal that came afterward
at the feet of the Anathema. It is certain that the Shogunate
conducted many experiments in the creation of life, some successful,
especially in the early period after the destruction of
the Solar Deliberative, but the Shogunate-era Dragon-Blooded
never proved the equal of the Anathema in the modifi cation
of living things to suit their wills.
Clearly, the destruction of Solar-created life was a major
priority for the early Shogunate, but it had nothing to do with
the immoral nature of creating life (though such artifi cial life is
currently taught to be offensive to the Immaculate Order).
The problem, which led to many purges, was that it quickly
became evident under close scrutiny that it was not only the
mechanical wonders of the Solars that were so dangerous.
Many of their prodigies were found to possess programming
on a fundamental level that rendered them hereditarily loyal
to the Twilights, the Deliberative and the Solar Anathema.
As a result, it was considered necessary to destroy them as
a form of prophylaxis.
This is often considered to be one of the worst “sins”
of the Shogunate. The fact of the matter is that this decision
was undertaken after a number of uprisings and sabotage
events rendered it evident that the issue was not related to
individuals and would not be settled even by mass behavioral
modification. In addition, while many of these beings were
sentient or nearly so, most demonstrated a profound lack
of spiritual components. They were not reincarnated, did
not descend into the Underworld — they were, in fact,
merely fleshy automatons, cut off forever from the cycle
of reincarnation and from ultimate communion with the
Dragons. These unnatural beings were better off extinct,
rather than living a tortured, soulless existence with no
hope of an afterlife.
The means by which these beings were created was
constant and explains why so many of them can breed
— parts of various animals were disjointed by black
sorcery and knitted together again by similar magics.
During the process, other sorts of sorcery would sustain
the pieces and the donor beasts, so that the portions
of animal were sustained as if they were still attached
to the original animal. After the magic knitted these
animal portions together, the creatures produced were,
of course, often confused and sick, as they were the
independent, still-living parts of the various animals
that had provided the tissue. Then, the various donor
animals would be kept alive through sorcery until the
composite creature could be bred with another such
creature of the opposite sex and offspring carried
successfully to term. Then, when true creatures were
created, the sorcery supporting the original hybrids
would be terminated, and they — and all the donor
animals — would die, and the offspring would be bred
as the progenitors of the race. To provide variety, the
Anathema breeders might do this hundreds or thousands
of times to populate a new species. In other cases,
host organisms would have specially prepared artificial
genitals grafted on in the place of their own. These
practices were exceedingly inhumane, revolting and
offensive to the Dragons, and it is because of them that
the Immaculate Order forbids such experiments.
Again, obviously, the reality was somewhat different. The
processes described for creating patchwork creatures was in fact
used, but it obviously is not effi cient and required powerful
sorcery that not even all of the Anathema could muster. It
was used by a few eccentrics. The process of grafting artifi -
cially pre-prepared genitals onto beasts that are to be used as
incubators for the young of other beasts is still practiced by
some agricultural sorcerers in the Realm today.
ESSENCE’S EFFECT ON CELLULAR
TRANSPORT MECHANISMS
Excerpted From Introductory Organic Mechanisms
and Essence Flows, Third Edition
…Key to understanding the specifi cs of Essence’s
effect on cellular transport is the fact that at no point
do actual Essence interference effects take place. One of
the most common misapprehensions of the beginning
student is that, in order to enhance activity, Essence
motes will be bound into the cellular transport chain at
some point, usually during three-sugar synthesis, in the
place of bound sugars.
Of course, nothing could be further from the case.
Motes are an indivisible unit, and, like all Essence, they
interfere with the physical world only rarely. However,
the effects engendered by the release of bound Essence
motes from the Exaltation or sorcerous construct provides
potential physical energy, which, when directed by the arms
of Essence-channeling forms or constructs, fl ows through
and enhances various physical processes.
The archetypal effect is the provision of regeneration
through the form of the war-optimized Lunar Exalt.
While the roots of this process are poorly understood,
taking place as it does inside the black box of the Exaltation,
it sets the benchmark of efficiency for such
effects. During the war-transformation, the Exaltation
cycles Essence internally, with the effect of increasing
the energy released by the disunion of three-sugar
transport modules, but not altering the mechanism
— in this as in many other mechanisms, Essence follows
the path of least resistance, performing the most
subtle miracles possible under the constraints. This
accounts for the supernatural character of the Lunar’s
war-form capabilities in general, and the Exaltation
can clearly be seen to demonstrate adaptations to the
various demands of the war-form, most specifically in
the healing process.
Obviously, the process extended by the Deadly Beastman
Transformation is incomparably effi cient — even
against the other salutary effects on health provided even
by the Lunar Exaltation, nothing can compare to its relative
costlessness. More extreme forms of healing, which
bypass the cellular process, typically require much more
Essence to flow through the designs…
