#Probably running a blackmarket in the crossroads

[chaoticfvckingdisaster]

I need sora and ronin as morally ambiguous metal arm buddies rn

[keptin-indy]

Exalted: Saigoth Gates 11

The circle hits Essence 2!  And starts a good old fashioned dungeon crawl, complete with dragon.

The next morning saw the group discussing the logistics of their journey after West discovered that his faithful Stormwind Rider was bigger than it had previously been, but not quite big enough to carry the entire circle.  Mazatl volunteered to take the slower agata and meet up with the others in the Lap.  To avoid notice, the first group would set down outside the densely farmed region surrounding the city and hire a cart from a local to take them in the rest of the way.  Krait mentioned incidentally that he was both from the Lap and wanted for theft from the brother of the new emperor.  West exasperatedly dyed Krait's hair and made him a disguise.  Once the group arrived at the city, they found it bustling and prosperous with token guards stationed around to protect the happy populace, including some dematerialized spirits of varying sorts stationed at major crossroads.  Being the center of a new empire had been good for the Lap and the more civic-minded party-members lamented the necessity of taking out an obviously effective ruler.  The group rented rooms at an inn, where Krait summoned a couple of perroneles for both Twilights over the next couple of nights and explained what he knew about how the Lap and the Ragaras there functioned.  Half of the group was horrified by the system of indentured servitude, but less so when it was framed as compulsory military service.  Shashaka was delighted by the forested game preserve on the Penitent’s arms and West wanted to encourage the illegal industry around blackmarket chatchkes.  Ragara Aluru was known before his coup to be both a terrible gambler and a corrupt politician who used him position to pay off his gambling debts, but neither trait seemed to be at play in his rule anymore.  He only rarely made public appearances, leaving the day to day running of the city to Cathak Sigip, one of the other former co-satraps.  Much less useful was the other co-satrap, Peleps Tuchet, who was useless politically but very popular with the people for his approachable manner and excellent parties.  Additionally, the Lap technically still had a king, Vellish Makatrie III, who was now even more of a puppet ruler than he had been under Realm rule.  Shashaka scouted the grounds around the palace, a converted administration building rather than a fortress, and found it to be largely unsecured, with guards at the major entrances and dematerialized demons milling about as backup, but still many obvious ways inside for someone of her skillset.  West suggested attending Cathak Sigip’s court to get the lay of the land and find more information on their quarry; Naran wanted to go directly to the head of the Penitent, where they suspected the control room for the Sword was; and Krait wanted to slowly summon his own demon army and have them quietly replace the existing demon army.  The last suggestion was given the consideration it deserved (e.g. none) and the circle settled on scaling the two-mile-tall statue to look for a door.  

The party crept its way through the restricted game preserve (with the Night caste ironically coming closest to being caught), but the light of the full moon was too bright to risk riding an agata upwards, meaning they had to climb (with Shashaka basically carrying West the whole way).  After the long ascent, they were rewarded with an amazing view of most of the South, slightly marred by the two dematerialized blood apes who watched, but made no move to attack.  West plotted the lay of the dragonlines and found them to be unnaturally ordered into intricate patterns.  Krait suggested the most likely place for a door in a giant statue from the age of Solar rule to be at the castemark, at which point the apes attacked and were summarily dispatched.  Ardor volunteered to check out the forehead since Shashaka had been slightly injured by the apes and discovered that the featureless rock responded greedily to the gift of her essence.  She gave a significant amount to the statue and was rewarded with the opening of an impossibly bright portal like a Zenith castemark opening and shedding its light upon the entirety of the direction toward the Pole of Fire, lighting up the sky like a small sun.  With any chance of stealth destroyed, the circle quickly jumped through the doorway into a warm, sunlight-filled meditation room sized for something much bigger than mere humans.  Something like the dragon that put its head through the door they’d just entered through and demanded to know  who and why such mortals had entered this sanctum.  West was extremely deferential to what he recognized as a directional censor, but Krait was offended that it would call them mortals and Naran set about making friends as usual, though he refused to give his real name.  Naran observed that the sanctum did not belong to this dragon and that the circle had evidently done him a favour by opening it and deserved a little consideration for that.  The dragon begrudgingly agreed and introduced himself as Wong Bongerok, Censor of the South.  During this discussion, Ardor wandered around the huge room and discovered a dragon-sized writing desk and a human-sized scribal assistant’s desk, as well as a bare, 200 foot tall pillar and a stairwell leading down.  She waved Krait over to look at the desks and he discovered mortality reports from the Great Contagion and a letter summoning Censor Swan Dragon to fight a sudden incursion of Rashka.  The chamber did not appear to have been touched since.  Naran secured Wonk Bongerok’s goodwill for him personally and permission for the circle to explore the Penitent while the dragon privately celebrated finally getting his claws on the seals of office he’d been denied for so long.

As the circle made their way down the spiral staircase that served as the Penitent’s spine, they found themselves growing heavier and more sluggish.  West explained that the Penitent’s chakra points were laid out like a real human’s and their descent down the spine brought them closer to the gate of Earth at the base of the spine.  Once they reached the chakra itself, filled with ancient machinery, the weight became oppressive and painful, so after an examination of the mechanisms, the group retreated to where it was merely uncomfortable to discuss their options.  West said he could work the machines in theory, but that control of them had been disabled, likely from the hearth room of the manse, if manse it was.  He did have the ability to release the earth lock on the control room, meaning there were probably four more locks at each of the corresponding chakra points (wood at the crotch, water at the stomach, fire at the heart, and air all the way back up at the throat, leading up to the control room's "logical" location above the Penitent's head), each guarded by the same concentrated elemental energies that made the Earth one so painful, and that they’d need to disable them all to reach the central command.  Unfortunately, the circle-member most able to deal with such energy was Mazatl.