Last session ended with the group planning on ticking off Tepet Jeht to the point that he would attack them out of rage. As they made their way from Lord Tepet's chamber to Jeht's, a large, broad man burst out of Jeht's room and roared back, "You promised me that scroll, Tepet, and I'll take it or your life!" He then stormed past the group, seething. However, Shiver caught his scent and it was not human.
Ignoring this for the time being, the group entered the chamber. Papana sneaked up on Jeht, who was in the middle of grandstanding for his minions. By degrees, the group riled Jeht up, until Eric fired the last shots that sent Jeht over the edge: Comparing his business practices to Wal-Mart's. Enraged, Jeht flung fire at the group, who challenged him then to a battle of honor. Papana took the lead on this fight. The battle strongly favored Jeht at the beginning. He managed to take down Papana's first health stock within the first two rounds of combat. Papana then made a moderate comeback, until the two started trading blows without too much disparity between success. However, Jeht charged up his Overdrive a little faster than Papana.
Jeht dropped back into a pulled-away stance, his two hands hovering from each other and cradling the air between them, about the size of a man's head. "You think you're so strong, Mugen? You're not the only special one!" Crackles of golden energy sparked around his hands as an orb of pure sunlight grew in the space between his hands. When it expanded fully, Jeht roared, "HEAVENLY DESTROYER BLAST!" He thrust his hands forward, and the ball detonated with solar radiance.
All objects within the room were shattered, and all occupants knocked down, badly injured. When the debris had settled and people had managed to blink the sunspots from their eyes, they found that Jeht was nowhere to be seen. As if he had simply vanished.
Eric's first instinct was to go and check the Scroll: safe and sound. Shiver then joined him and the two decided to stake out the room and guard the Scroll in case Jeht had not been vaporized and wanted to steal the Scroll. Eric had a spark of inspiration, and swapped the Scroll with a fake. Papana, on the other hand, trudged up to his room and crashed onto the bed to sleep off his injuries.
In the dead of night, Shiver was woken by something. He did not know what, but he did not wake up without good reason. Soon enough, a smokey figured materialized out of the shadows. Shiver waited until the shadow had reached three-quarters of the way between the door and the desk that both sheltered Shiver's wolf form, as well as the Scroll in its glass box. Shiver then transformed into his mighty spirit werewolf form, sending the desk into splinters. Eric woke with a start, and the shadow hesitated. Shiver dashed for the door, surging right past the shadow, to block the exit. The shadow seized its opportunity and sprinted forward, grabbing the Scroll, and leaped headlong through the window. Shiver and Eric looked at each other in surprise, then gathered at the window. Within moments, they heard a voice scream "Son of a bitch!" The voice undoubtedly belonged to Jeht.
Having decidedly ousted Jeht, the group set about promoting Magdeline as the next leader of House Tepet. They made great progress, convincing many of the higher-ups to abdicate their position to her during the next hierarchy structuring at the winter solstice.
Afterward, they decided to reward themselves by taking a look at the Scroll. As they opened it, white lettering on the gold leaf glowed with inner radiance. Ancient sigils explained the three lines of characters showing the process of martial techniques, one of which Papana realized was the same as his own Heaven Thunder Hammer, while Eric observed that one of them closely matched the technique Jeht had attempted to use. They summoned a Tepet scholar, who translated the sigils:
"The first line reads...Destroyer of Heaven." indicated the technique Jeht had used. "The second...Fist of the Heavens," pointing to the technique that matched Papana's. "And the third...cancel the ending." This third technique was confusing in its process; it appeared as if the Mugen picked up another being and hurled it into a third. "And the fourth line: From the Sun this Scroll draws power. Unto Sun shall it return."
"So, Jeht learned a Mugen technique from this Scroll?" Eric asked.
"Learned, maybe. But he didn't understand." Papana observed quietly.
[Mechanically, the Scrolls of Power allow an Exalt to learn additional Overdrive Techniques, even those of other Exalt types. While Jeht had learned the physical aspect of the Technique, he hadn't internalized what it meant to use the Technique and to be Mugen. Finally, using the Scroll in this way would cause it to vanish...and rematerialize at certain sacred sites. No one decided to use the Scroll, however, though Wade was very tempted to pick up Cancel the Apocalypse, which would have allowed him to hurl an opponent into another and damage them both. However, the Technique would've began at 1 dot, and they didn't want to risk upsetting the mission.]
The group then decided to follow Shiver's curiosity concerning the man with the strange scent. Shiver managed to track him down, following the scent to a zoo. The scent became muddled, but Shiver pushed through the obstructions, arriving at the gorilla enclosure. Sure enough, a mighty silverback paced menacingly, and gave Shiver a dark glare when they locked eyes. Communicating on threads of ki, the two exchanged enough information to agree to meet again at night. Before they left the zoo for the day, Shiver slipped into the wolf enclosure and asserted his dominance over the softened pack.
That night, the trio returned to the gorilla enclosure. The silverback leaped over the tall fence, transforming into his human form and slapping on a pair of athletic shorts. He admitted soon enough that he was an Okami, like Shiver, and his name was Crush, the Relentless. Where Shiver was sent to Earth to combat needless violence, Crush was sent to bring down the self-righteous. In fact, Jeht had been his current target, and the Scroll was going to be a reward for a job well-done. That, and he planned to increase his strength through it. The group was not about to part with it, and Crush wouldn't take no for an answer. So, he summoned his gorilla allies and then transformed into a massive 10-foot beast of pure brawn. Shiver then called his new wolf minions and the two groups faced off.
Read the next session here!
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