Monday was... not so good

So... I'll be back on Thursday.

Just hiding around here messing with Dragonrealms (training Talliska in serpents and vipers now. Owie, viper poison! But I've gotten lots of combat and skinning ranks!) And poking at RPoL posts (I keep making charsheets for games that don't run... helps me practice learning Ex2 rules, I guess).

Other than that I've been coming up with a new idea for a RP for Jon and me. Actually, it's not new so much as a... retelling of something old.

More or less, I'm trying to rewrite Exalted Ryshy's history. I left ADoA and I don't want to mess with anything Col or the other players created, but I still like that particular version of the character and her history. So I'm doing a sort of "Belladonna Revival", I guess you could say.

Lethe and Twilight; After the Long Night

After the long night, your eyes are twin shadows
After the long night, you are a breath in my arms
Ephemeral and fragile - tormented within
Porcelain, bruised with the remnants of sin

Beloved for all ages, I cradle you to sleep
My promise, my devotion, I will forever keep
And guard you 'til the day
You are fit to wear the blade
Taught in my likeness to uphold your dignity

Until then, I bid you rest softly with me
Your worries and fears given solace with me
Your torturous thoughts diminished in dreams
As we face the sunset of your captivity -

And the springtime of our revival

I've never really been able to let go of Ryshassa. Not ever since I first created her... She just has too much importance to me. So much that I've come to realize that I can't just put her into games lightly. She is a very personal character to me, symbolizing a great deal of my insecurities and self-loathing, which is rather inappropriate to express in most games with others. I wish I realized that sooner, but at least I understand it now.

The same goes with Jon and Alexsei. We're working together so we can continue to write and plot and conceive of our characters' growth even after ADoA. I've had somewhat of a conundrum about that for a while, because I think the story of Ryshassa and Alexsei (and, in relation, their predecessors, Sophia and Lonan) would be less awkwardly told in a version of Creation of our own conception. I realize that it is rather indulgent of us, and by no means will I say that the way we tell it is "better" or "worse"... it's just... "ours".

On the other hand, I consider the spirit of what Ryshassa went through in ADoA to be at least somewhat a part of the character. I will have to pretty much wipe out everyone she *met* in that game (which saddens me... I liked many of the characters there) because I don't want to end up using anything others have created -- besides the Exalted writers, anyway. But, things like her history as a scion of the Realm and the daughter of a cruel and sexually abusive woman, her rescue by Alexsei, her training as an exceptional healer and her subsequent marriage, only to be stolen from him and nearly broken into a slave ultimately owned by a Deathlord... those are things that I still feel are part of her experience as a character.

So, then comes the difficulty of conceiving a similar, but not TOO similar version of the events, so I can have her psychologically in roughly the same place she was at the point I left ADoA. I've decided to use the Eastern direction and the Mask of Winters for this purpose. As well as an insidious secret society within the Realm that wishes to "use" the Mask as a pawn to take on the Scavenger Lands as the Empress once wished, only to end up used in return for daring to gamble with darkness. The secret society is likely headed by an elder Sidereal of rather, um... questionable morality, and Ryshassa's mother Sydrea is a member of it.

Keep in mind that I am not usually one who plays the Realm as the "evil" that many vindictive and vainglorious Solars (or their players, anyway) tend to see it as. At the very least, they believe themselves to be in the right, and it is Chejop Kejak and his Bronze Sidereals that planted the idea in them in the first place that the Solars and other Exalts are Anathema. This secret society I am conceiving of are... well, they are Dynasts that have truly lost their moral ground. Perhaps originally motivated for reasons that would serve or protect the Realm, or at least themselves, they are ultimately misguided or tempted -- whether subtly or obviously -- into somehow aiding the Mask of Winters's goals.

The scenario is as follows: when Ryshassa Exalts, Cynis Sydrea plots to have her own daughter delivered to the Mask as a fitting servant to his cause... or a pet, if he prefers. Except Alexsei ends up intervening, and stealing Ryshassa away from the Realm first, bringing her to his home in Sijan (yeah, Sijan instead of Gethamane, since we're in the East). This infuriates her -- even though Ryshassa is now Anathema, she considers Ryshy HER Anathema, and does not want anyone else possessing or even killing her without HER permission.

Well, unfortunately Sydrea has allies in *very* high places, and is eventually able to have her current location tracked down (likely by previously-mentioned secret society leader). It's this knowledge that she sells to the Mask... not realizing that the Mask of Winters has his own reasons to get a hold of Ryshassa and Alexsei. He knew them in the First Age, when they were Sophia of Anthegenia and Lonan, who became the feared Sunslayer upon his beloved's death. So he rewards her gift highly, and sets off to separate the two: to take Ryshassa as his own, and slay Alexsei utterly.

(Oh, and to note, I'm going to make Sunderer of Veils one of the Mask's Abyssals. In Exalted Ryshy's original history, I believe he was one of the Lover's... well, no more. I did create him myself so I at least feel all right reusing that character.)

Unfortunately for the Mask, anyway, the ambush set upon Alexsei and Ryshassa only manages to cripple him badly, not kill him. He loses Ryshassa, though, and he also loses a large amount of his own ability. Basically whatever is done to him reduces his Essence, and causes him to be both physically and spiritually unable to fight until he can retrain and recondition himself to do so. It takes years, though. And in that time Ryshassa stays with the Mask... and well. He and his subordinates use every trick in the book to keep her subservient.

The one thing I find particularly cruel about this version of their story is that Ryshassa will really only have been with Alexsei for no more than a year... maybe a year and a half?... before she's retaken. I figure that could account for the time it takes to track Alexsei down (who IS aware he has enemies and is trying to thwart any attempts to find them) and for the Mask to send his agents to evaluate Alexsei's abilities to defend his beloved. So. Ryshassa is actually a captive of SOME sort (first to Sydrea, and then to the Mask) for almost her entire life.

I'm not sure I LIKE that, but I don't know how else to make it work, either. On the other hand, Ryshy is likely to live for centuries AFTER this, so after some time her terrible childhood and young adult years will be a footnote. I like to think that will be true, anyway.

But then again, a person's formative years tends to have a strong impact on how they turn out. Ryshassa will be quite unstable, I think. But not without strength. I'm not doing this so she will end up consumed by the abuse she has weathered... It's more like a chance for her to overcome it, finally, the way she (and I, in my own way) was never really able to before.

That said, I'm not actually going to start this solo game with Jon during Ryshy's captivity. I would fear that rewriting all the gritty details of her abuse and trauma would only serve to undermine my purpose (as I'd likely get way TOO much into enjoying the abuse -- yes, even if I'm the one writing it!) So I'm going to start the game after Ryshassa has already been saved. Nonetheless, I expect simply the memory of what happened to have a great impact on the both of them, and provide a great deal of impetus for intensely emotional scenes. I... just don't feel I can trust anyone but Jon to help me make this concept a reality, and so it has become a personal project, for the two of us.

Oh, and one more thing: no, of course Alexsei didn't save Ryshassa on his own. He did have help, but in this case the help came from elsewhere. It's our chance to use other characters of ours, like Atmadja and Iluun, Suurnis and Mellauna... others as well, I'm certain. They're characters we always wanted involved in Ryshassa and Alexsei's story, but never really got the chance to (well, B&B just doesn't count, because -- darnit, it SUCKED!)