Lover's Oath

What happened was rather embarrassing in both its magnitude and simplicity.

''I slipped. Normally, this wouldn't be a bad thing. But it was over a balcony. In the Loom of Fate. And I did mention that it was right into, of all things, the hub of strands that represents Nexus? After I got detangled from the strands and back on my feet, the pattern spiders and the elder Sidereals involved came to a few conclusions, all of them a royal pain in the ass. The most important one was that all of my resplendent destinies had been altered by an epic romance and had to be resolved before anything adverse could happen to the other nine strands that I had fallen into. In order to fix it, I would have to actually create a relationship with one of the nine, and bind myself and them with the Scripture of the Bride... the Lover's Oath.''

Lover's Oath was a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' Exalted Fanfic Astra Kiseki wrote over one summer as a project to force herself to write for a group. Almost each day, she would write another scene of the first-person-perspective adventures of Leilani, a agent of fate, having to detangle the situation that happened in the opening quote. As things continued, she ends up in the middle of strange plots, having to handle the nine heroes and heroines who are involved with her fate, and just trying to survive in the city of Nexus.

And maybe she'll end up finding her own happy ending.

You want to read it? Here are some links. Warning: it's NSFW.
 * http://www.thefreedomstone.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6250. Warning, you need to join to get into the forum it's on, but there is bonus material and other porn there.
 * For those who'd rather not see the options, and just the whole story? http://rapidshare.com/files/148135928/Stuff.doc.html
 * Can't use rapidshare? Use this: http://www.sendspace.com/file/gt9n1h


 * All There in the Manual - Posts by the author, asking her, and the omake sometimes. She also is working on this trope page. And if you haven't played Exalted, you'll get lost.
 * Color Coded for Your Convenience - Well, Peace and Leilani's eyes are, marking them as Chosen of one of the Five Maidens.
 * Omake - Breaking the Canon Method is pretty much any story-related work after the story itself has ended. Most of it is not canon, but there is porn there too.
 * Multiple Endings - Word of God has openly mentioned each character has a different ending, ranging from the Best to Worst, which has everyone but the winning character dead.
 * Meaningful Name - See Punny Name.
 * Out of Focus - Each plotline focuses on six of the nine characters, which leaves three cast members out of the main ending. On the bright side, the three characters not involved, won't die. They each get a blurb about their futures in the epilogue.
 * Painting the Fourth Wall - To distinguish languages, in the original thread, different colors were used when they actually came up. When someone was speaking the local language with an accent, there was phonetic fuckery involved. In one of the previews, Seatongue-accented Riverspeak is apparently pirate-speak.
 * Punny Name - Several of supporting cast members are names and references. Quello Nonmaika, the owner of a sex toy shop, is the biggest offender: all translated into English, it means That's not a banana.
 * Blue String of Fate - The hero ends up with nine of them unnaturally tied on her before the story begins, and the rest of the story is resolving them.
 * Romance Arc - What the whole bloody story is.
 * Word of God - AstraKiseki on AIM.
 * What Could Have Been - As the story is a Choose Your Own Adventure, several plot lines were set up, but only one got pursued. Astra has mentioned things to explain what has been missed.

For the characters themselves, go to the character sheet.