The camp was set in a dry valley between two low hills, and offered as much luxury as the country north and east of Reddust could provide. Pelesh had fretted long and loudly over the possibility that they had set up camp in a flood gully, and pointed hysterically to the heavens on no fewer than six occasions to point out clouds scudding low overhead.
The core problem of Pelesh is he’s in the wrong subgenre. This sort of attention to what life is like traveling is really good – if you’re showing the humble details relevant to humans like the reader. But, nothing about abyssals should ever be humble. They more than any of the exalts should be above this kind of thing. Other exalts can deal with life’s problems easily, abyssals just shrug and remind everyone they noped out of dealing with life at all. The Prince of Shadows isn’t in any danger, and if Pelesh drowns, the Prince of Shadows shrugs and reanimates his corpse.
A character like Pelesh should either be in the mortal-only side of things, to contrast with the exalts, or a servant to one of the other exalt types to illustrate how they interact with the mortals they live with/are in charge of. Ie, a Dragonblooded might grudgingly do the minimum for their servants because they like having people around to cook them meals. A solar might decide to live dangerously and then whoops you’re dead sorry. Any non-abyssal exalt might also use their powers to do something to block a potential flood, showing the capacity they have to improve the lives of those around them when they bother.
An abyssal not only won’t give a fuck, but even bringing it up for them to not care about clashes with their aestetics. Same for Pelesh’s actual job of financial management. The world’s ending and they’re the ones killing it, who cares about responsible investments?
We’re told the Prince just finds it funny then after an hour gets bored and tells him to shut up (which, as his name isn’t Ratcatcher, he manages), so then he sits around twitching waiting for a flood, and also the expedition is enormous with forty people, half of which are living, AND a ton of animals because I guess the Prince can’t use necromancy since otherwise he’d have undead, untiring horses instead like a reasonable person. Also, multiple wagons of stuff, some of which is just trade goods because by god pretty economic concerns are an important part of abyssal stories.
The prince had not wanted to bring the wagons. He’d wanted to ride out with a few companions, set a few towns to the sword, and ride whither the spirit moved him.
And yet he isn’t. Because Pelesh is able to win social combat against exalts. The guy argued strenuously for the wagons, and noted that without them, the prince would not be able to travel in the luxury which he preferred. Not only did this work, but it worked so well that they got this far before the Prince even registers that the guy made an argument in the first place.
But, this is the Prince of Shadows, the semideathlord to our semibyssal, and now that he realizes, and in the process realizes that Pelesh has apparently been winning an awful lot of social combats (Arguing with the prince, telling him what he really wanted) and that this is total bullshit. He’s not fucking Ratcatcher here, mortals do not get to call the shots. Showing just how epically Pelesh won social combat, all he plans to do is have a stern talk with the guy.
He looks over the camp again. A bunch of stuff, including A younger slave tended to the horses and horse-like things that the prince and his servants rode, feeding and watering them while warriors shouted encouragement, or laughed when one of the steeds nipped at her fingers. Still no word on what the things like a horse are besides not a horse.
The Prince continues to chip away at Pelesh’s hold on him. When he gets up, one of the slaves Pelesh argued for comes over helpfully and is rebuffed.
The thought struck him that he didn’t used to need slaves like that when he rode out. Perhaps he didn’t need them still.
And with that, the Prince has just shrugged off whatever effect he was under. He heads off to tell Pelesh he’s burning all this useless shit. He does not just gut the guy, showing that Pelesh still has the upper hand.
Incidentally, our description of the guy is that he’s quite old (why aren’t people dying from being in shadowlands?) and His hands constantly brushed the reddish dust from his sleeves and trews, but ineffectually, and once the cook had caught him trying to steal water in which to wash his garments. which is yet another detail that should never be coming up in an abyssal section. They’re above mortal concerns. If mortals try to make them give a shit by proxy, they fix the problem with zombies.
At least once the Prince shakes off the mindcontrol what we get is properly abyssal, burning all sorts of valuable/useful things because they’re not immediately relevant, including the cook.
Pelesh ran here and there through the carnage, directing the men here and restraining them there. Not all of the foodstuffs should be immolated, he could hear the little man trying to explain, and there wasn’t a need to burn’all of the wood just yet. Oddly enough, the men seemed to listen.
But we see Pelesh is still social combat champion. Although the Prince manages a flicker of awareness that something isn’t right here, it’s immediately smothered:
The prince watched, amused. Pelesh was scared again, and that was a good thing. It made him more efficient, and the prince valued efficiency in his servants.
Not only is he failing to recognize Pelesh is a danger and should be eliminated, but the guy’s got his hooks so deep in that the Prince is thinking nonsense about “valuing efficiency”. Valuing efficiency! The guy who orders people not to speak and runs his organization like it’s a middle school pressure cooker, but he absolutely shares a belief in what sounds like Pelesh’s favorate phrase and thinks Pelesh is an exemplary example of it.
Next, some people the Price sent out to look for yet another person come back – if that sounds vague and kinda convoluted, it’s because it’s just setup for what’s next and the author didn’t fuss about setup.
There were three riders, not the six the prince had set out, and they clung to their exhausted horses in obvious terror. Even as the prince watched, the hindmost steed stumbled and fell, throwing its rider to the ground. It tried to rise, whinnying piteously, but it was obvious that one of its forelegs was broken, and it sank back down to the ground. The rider, for his part, staggered to his feet and ran for all he was worth. He was, the prince noted, shrieking, and neither of the other two riders slowed or made any effort to return for him.
So – something is up!
The problem is we’re still not in proper abyssal form.
All of this works as a dragonblooded thing. Dragonblooded cart around loads of mortal servants and slaves, and they have to delegate because when you can’t cheat with undead monstrosities, keeping everyone fed and watered is actually a big job. And as they’re not death cultists, we can assume that generally one aids someone who falls and there must be exceptional circumstances here, while doing so as an abyssal for any reason may make the neverborn slap you right in your stupid, life-loving face.
Moreover, “exceptional circumstances” by mortal standards and “exceptional circumstances” by abyssal ones have too much of a gulf between them. By the time you’re anything an abyssal should care about, you’re probably not something mortals escape from at all. Dragonblooded are still operating close to a mortal framework, so what happens next would make more sense.
Anyway, the people on the horses get there and the Prince of Shadows sees the downed horse in the distance.
Something was standing over it, something huge and hungry. It was a black shape against the blackness, easily the size of the horse it was feeding upon.
If we consider points of overlap between “looks like an animal” and “matters to an abyssal”, I’m pretty sure we’re left with only lunars. Real giant animals, wyld twisted giant animals, fae fake giant animals…none of those are really a big deal. That’s true even in this series, as we just saw Yushuv and Dace fight an entire fae army. But any competent lunar wouldn’t have let most of the people escape, so it’d have to be a situation where the riders were allowed to flee, which somewhat undermines the sense of importance to seeing them flee – it’s no longer a direct piece of information about the situation, it’s information about what the threat wants us to see.
After taking a few bites, it howls and the riders who reached the camp panic harder, and then it starts running.
The downed horse’s rider was perhaps a hundred yards outside the firelight now, the warriors holding the line shouting encouragement to him as he stumbled forward.
The prince put the doomed man’s chances for survival at a hundred to one.
Now, on the one hand, it’s true abyssals really don’t give a fuck about human life. On the other hand, that being so, he must have some purpose for this guy’s continued existence, and also now he kind of looks like a chump for just standing around behind his soldiers. A proper abyssal would murder the thing attacking his property and then his property for being so pathetic it needs his help.
Back at the opening of the first book, he better covered the detached don’t-give-a-fuck thing. He had a bunch of underlings with him, but that seemed to be about amusing him with their antics and squabbles, so seeing one of those guys die like this would make perfect sense. But he wouldn’t just be “it’s some guy” here, he’d be able to tell us who it was and a little about them. Here the only other person with a name seems to be Pelesh. If he was watching Pelesh run and finding amusement in that, it’d mean more.
He was bleeding, the prince could see now. A makeshift bandage was tied crudely on his left arm, and even from his vantage point the prince could see the seeping red stains that had soaked it through.
This seems to be there to emphasize the desperation, but it actually raises more questions instead. See, this would must be from something else. If they were attacked and then fled, no one else could’ve bandaged his arm and I don’t think he could’ve managed even a crude one himself while riding breakneck. My best guess is they ran into something else first then were ambushed by this thing latter.
He also drops his sword to run faster, which disappoints the Prince as the sword might have lent the man’s death some dignity. But not really, because it’s not like he’d even get a chance to get it out when he’s getting pounced on. Also, it’s not like death has any dignity. I don’t expect abyssals to value pragmatism, but they shouldn’t be impressed by the worthlessness of posing before death either.
Fifty yards outside the firelight now, barely forty from the line. Hope streaked across the man’s features as he put on a final burst of speed. The shouting from the men in the line rose to a crescendo as he streaked forward.
Bonecrack’s sense of timing, on the other hand, I have no complaints about.
There was a shriek, a short one, and then the man’s upper torso flew one way while his lower was going another, and a spray of blood and offal filled the air.
There was a second’s shocked silence, then the men edged forward. The wolf, if wolf it was, looked back at them.
“Come between me and my prey and you’ll all be next,” it said, thickly but unmistakably.
Which terrifies the troops and now they actually start backing up and the Prince finally registers that this is reflecting badly on him and so gives a shit about intervening.
Summoning the power to him, he leapt into the air. His cloak of Essence flared out behind him, leaving a trail like an illuminated comet behind him as he descended.
He landed before the line, between his men and the beast. Violet lightning slithered around him, and marked his footfalls as he strode forward.
“These men are mine,” he said softly.”“Do not presume to claim them in my presence.”
That’s proper abyssal behavior! Well, referring to them as “bodies” or something would’ve been a bit better, but pretty solidly cool regardless.
Bonecrack recognizes this, despite the fact abyssals are a new weird thing, and is all “oh hai noble ally” but then starts saying he should’ve watched his stuff better if he didn’t want it eaten, and he’s all hey fuck you they were doing something I wanted.
(Also, he says, I found six playing at being Sijanese in the hills north of here, and the stink of new death was on them. What does that mean? I haven’t a clue! Sijanese are those people running the giant necropolis that Ratcatcher reincarnated or whatever in last book. “Playing at” would be…doing elaborate death rites?)
Being called a dog pisses off Bonecrack, who says hey you’re small and I’m still hungry, so stfu if you don’t want to die. The Prince of Shadows doesn’t even care because why should he and demands to know who it is and what it’s doing here, at which point it decides fuck conversation join battle!
With a snarl, it hurled itself at the prince, who nimbly sidestepped and swatted the beast on its haunches.
It’s basically Other Ratcatcher.
The battle doesn’t make much sense. After doing this, the mortal fighters the Prince is carting around for some reason start attacking it, and it naturally takes them apart. The Prince observes this, then slowly walks over, with every second meaning another few people are dead.
He concentrated for a moment, and his hands glowed with sullen light. “A good dog knows when to heel,” he said, and struck. There was a sharp, sizzling sound, and the smell of burnt hair and meat.
This would be crypt bolt, requiring lore, which is something he must have to be necromancing all over the place. A character whose design makes sense!
Bonecrack decides not to realize the fact he’s getting hit by charms means he’s out of his depth here and tries to bite, and, further suggesting that the Prince is really not the powerhouse everyone thinks he is, one of the still living soldiers jumps in the way of the blow. Frustrated, Bonecrack shouts about sending the Prince to hell, as if that’s a place anyone cares about.
His hands caught the beast’s fur over its heart, and a second’s thought was all it took to send searing pain through his fingertips.
While this could just the Prince spamming crypt bolt, there’s another charm that fits the description better.
INCOMPARABLE AGONY TECHNIQUE
Building on the principle of Unsurpassed Interrogation Method, this Charm allows a character to torture victims with the force of her preternatural will. The Exalt’s player must make a Conviction + Essence roll, resisted by the victim’s Willpower + Essence. For every success rolled beyond the victim’s, the Abyssal can psychically inflict one level of unsoakable bashing or lethal damage or remove one point of temporary Willpower from the victim’s pool.
Now, it goes on to clarify that The Charm only affects a single restrained or willingly motionless victim within 5 yards of the Exalt, severely limiting its combat application. but all the charms we’ve seen don’t follow the mechanics precisely. And Bonecrack makes one last attempt to attack, gets smacked in the face by this, and…
With a yelp, it rolled onto its side and lay there, panting. “I yield,” it said, weakly.
Sure sounds like the Prince was hitting willpower directly.
Crypt bolt does a ton of damage (2L per mote, up to Lore+Stamina motes. Assuming 5 lore for the Prince then even if he’s got stamina one that’s twelve damage) and it’s aggravated damage against anything wyld-related which the book suggested Bonecrack may actually be. So, he badly injures Bonecrack, imposing penalties (Exalted totally has a death spiral setup to combat), then switches to destroying willpower.
Furthermore:
His face utterly without expression, the prince rose to his feet.”“You don’t have much choice,” he said, and placed his foot on the beast’s throat. It shuddered once, but did not move.
No concern that this is a trick. Bonecrack already stupidly started a fight with an abyssal, and kept stupidly fighting after the first attack did a ton of damage. This isn’t a creature that you can expect will be smart enough to recognize a superior foe, but the Prince seems certain that he’s won. Why? Because he just stabbed Bonecrack right in the willpower track. Bonecrack can’t muster the determination to do anything now.
Anyway, he then demands again the thing’s name, and Bonecrack confirms it’s Bonecrack. The Prince actually recognizes this name for some reason, and even lampshades that he has no idea where and also it doesn’t matter.
Bonecrack, underlining what I said about being really stupid, grumbles out that it’s here on a hunt for some oathbound prey, and yeah that sure is totally irrelevant to the fact it killed a bunch of the Prince’s property but it felt like it, so yeah.
The prince spat, deliberately, onto its muzzle. “You claim nothing that I do not grant you, dog. Do you understand me, Bonecrack? I can destroy you whenever I please.”
And yet…
“Mighty one,” it said, and its voice was wheedling, “there’s no need for us to work at cross-purposes, I think. You have the look of the hunter about you as well. Perhaps we can hunt together.”
As I said at the beginning, this whole thing works with dragonblooded much better. Because Bonecrack is now going to start bargaining, and the Prince is going to agree, despite the fact he easily beat it and it can’t possibly have that much value to him. Bonecrack agrees to serve the Prince for the shared hunt and not attack the Prince personally unless attacked first, which is one hell of a loophole, and that the Prince can get everything but the kid’s soul.
and perhaps a small offering of goodwill now to seal our bargain.”
The guys who managed to ride into camp. Bonecrack whines that food is needed for healing, despite the fact there’s still a perfectly good dead horse out there that’s just missing a bit of stomach. There’s also all the cooked dead people from the Prince’s decision to start burning things. Now, if Bonecrack is fae, it can’t actually “eat” in the conventional sense and it’s only mauling live prey that’ll give it any sustenance, but we’re not told that and Bonecrack seems to be eating actual meat.
The prince considered the matter. Behind him, his surviving men shuffled uneasily. The beast would be an ally of uncommon power
Pretty common power, honestly, and also you already beat it and you already literally have your foot on its throat and issued an ultimatum to either be useful or die on the spot.
It is wholly abyssal to be willing to condemn anyone you feel like to death for some minor gain, but much less so to bargain with such pathetic inferiors – plus, this is why abyssals generally don’t ride around with regular humans in tow, the morale fallout of this is going to be super annoying. A dragonblooded, on the other hand, has a lot less to work with. If some fire aspect fought this guy to a standstill then considered negotiations, it’d be pretty reasonable.
My best guess here is this is related to Pelesh. Whatever he’s done to be able to win social combat with the Prince must be a broad suggestibility enhancer.
(Also, the Prince further lampshades how huh, this thing is hunting some solar kid connected to all the other stuff…must be fate because it sure would be stupid and contrived if this was just coincidence!)