GM: Kevan Forbes
System: Exalted, 2nd Edition
Hand’s Account
The next day, uncertain of where we stood, I spied Melani delivering an offering to certain shrine of a certain small god in the temple district. This was the method we had devised for sending messages to each other. With a bowl of rice in hand, I visited the shrine, noticed a letter and replaced it with my own small offering.
Returning to the manse, I looked over the letter, and more importantly the seal placed on it. None other than the Despot himself had signed this letter. How it made its way to Melani and finally to us, most likely only the Despot and Liand know.
As a circle we broke the seal to see what greetings the Despot would send. I cannot remember the details now but his disposition was not hostile, as I had thought it might be, but rather anxious. He is a man with no love for the Realm, but he has no desire to face an imperial legion. He revealed that he was willing to meet with us and make arrangements amicable to both parties. But right now the blood of the realm burned hot in their veins and they would be searching high and low for the Anathema. The despot required three months of our leave. He needed Time for the embers to cool and for the Dragon Bloods to exhaust some of their vengeance on fruitless patrols. He made it quite clear that any communication we made with in before three months had passed would be ignored, or worse yet turned over to the Realm to prove his own loyalty to the realm.
Agreeing that together we drew more attention than apart, my circle disbanded for a time, each of us would depart from Gem and agree not to return for three months time. I was the only exception, the others agreed that having a spy in gem was important, and with the guise of another I would keep abreast of the goings-on inside the volcano city.
Much of my time was spent in meditation, not the serene lotus stance that Howakan or Thunder would take, but instead embracing my own joys and sorrows. The loss of Howakan’s followers and Urasue’s retinue, the shame brought to Shining Thunder for turning against his own, and the shame of the rest of us for singling him out as the reason for our downfall. I had many fears that my circle would not honor the pledge. I knew Wind would not stray but I could not be certain of the others, each drawn by their own passionate beliefs, beliefs I was not sure they could reconcile. As the sun rises however there is always new hope. As I reached out to find tranquility I found my essence drawn to the heavens, away from the Shackles of creation. By the end of my time alone, I was closer to the power of the first age than I had ever been.
The only of my circle that I saw during this time was Timeless Wandering Wind as we both spent time with the Benhari. However, while I roamed back and forth between Gem and the oasis, Wind was cloistered inside, working on some grand project I would not see for some time. After I had spent a month with the Benhari, I felt that I had picked up enough of their tongue to communicate on basic level. More importantly, I learned enough choice words that when I smatter them with a pidgin of Flametongue, I had the perfect dialect for my next persona, a nomadic traveler from south of Gem: Benhari Sattar.
As the days between our return was fewer, I worked with Wind gather our Circle. All returned on time except for Thunder. My heart froze awaiting his return.
