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Exalted Questions Thread

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rogthnor said:
What's argyle like though?
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As a mortal, he was a very community-minded man who spent his entire life in the village he was born in, and was much beloved. He wasn't one of the elders, or the cunning-man, but he was nonetheless a major pillar of the community: he helped deliver newborns, he donated a good chunk of every harvest to the communal stockpile, he helped with negotiations with the new god of a nearby forest when the old god departed, and he was a sort of unofficial assistant to the village's cunning-woman. He married young, had three sons by his first wife, and then remarried to the thirdborn daughter of a neighboring settlement to help his people solidify diplomatic relations without having to offer up someone more important.

He believed that there was an order to his days, and he raised his sons to share that belief. The world was harsh, but the Maidens saw that its path trended toward peace and just rule: no man who gives himself to the common good, freely and without expectation, works in vain.

Then Lookshy showed up and laid claim to the land they lived on, and their elders were put under the command of a provisional governor who established crippling quotas. Argyle managed to finagle a meeting with the governor, certain that there had to be some sort of misunderstanding, some means by which both the Lookshyans and his own people could benefit from each other.

The provisional governor curtly informed him that his village mattered not a whit to Lookshy, save for the resources that they could extract from it. They had been permitted to maintain their barbaric excuse for a culture, permitted to remain in their hovels and consider themselves freemen, permitted to try and demonstrate that they could provide what Lookshy required of them without having to be placed under proper, effective management. Their current status was an incredible luxury, as fine a demonstration of the Dragons' mercy as could be found, and it would persist so long as doing so was less costly to the Shogun than sending in proper agricultural overseers along with a scale of soldiers to ensure obedience.

In less flowery terms, Argyle was basically told that his village was an incomprehensibly tiny cog in the machine of Lookshy, and if they didn't meet standards, then the governor would be happy to give them firsthand experience of what being a Lookshyan helot was like. If he wanted to help his people, he should go figure out ways to increase productivity and make sure everyone toed the line.

Argyle did the stupid thing, tried to press the issue, and ended up annoying the governor enough to end up in the Lookshyan provincial equivalent of a prison cell, which is a pit about five feet wide and teen feet deep. Then the governor sent a secretary to explain his sentencing: namely, that Argyle's sons were currently occupying the other "cells", and that if he wanted them to live, he'd give a speech to the village explaining why Lookshy was right and he had been wrong, and then go serve his sentence of ten years' hard labor without comment.

Argyle gave the speech. He was taken away from the only place he'd ever known, and put to work in the fields under horrendously shitty conditions. Despite the fact he was already in his 40s when the sentence began, Argyle made it the full 10 years, and then spent another 15 months making his way home. All that time, he'd been sustained by the hope that his sons were waiting for him, that his people had survived this horror with their souls intact, just as he had.

But he'd taught his sons too well; they'd been executed as seditionists within a year of his imprisonment, and the settlement had been deemed "rebellious" enough for Lookshy to take them in hand. Foreigners now lived on the land his neighbors had worked, while the original occupants were steadily worked to death in the fields.

His sons hadn't been given a funeral, and when they rose, their vengeful spirits were summarily dealt with by a Lookshyan ghost-breaker. Everything he'd known and loved was gone. Nothing he could have done would have changed it, and all he'd accomplished by trying was that they'd suffered and died alone, while he lived on.

As he lay, shivering and broken, in a ditch on the edge of town, a voice called out to him. He need not be alone. His people's destroyers need not go unpunished. The world was broken, but he could become a tool to help fix it. The Maidens were callous and uncaring, but he could help build a world where peace and justice reigned, and there was an order to men's days.

He accepted, not even bothering to look at the being addressing him, and then there was darkness. In that darkness, a colorless fire shone, and sang to him, and its song revealed to Argyle a vision of unimaginable beauty. A Creation built upon order, and harmony, and inescapable, absolute hierarchy. A Creation where none could defy the wheel of karma, where foulness could never overwhelm fairness.


(More tomorrow, since I have to go to bed.)
 
GardenerBriareus said:
As a mortal, he was a very community-minded man who spent his entire life in the village he was born in, and was much beloved. He wasn't one of the elders, or the cunning-man, but he was nonetheless a major pillar of the community: he helped deliver newborns, he donated a good chunk of every harvest to the communal stockpile, he helped with negotiations with the new god of a nearby forest when the old god departed, and he was a sort of unofficial assistant to the village's cunning-woman. He married young, had three sons by his first wife, and then remarried to the thirdborn daughter of a neighboring settlement to help his people solidify diplomatic relations without having to offer up someone more important.

He believed that there was an order to his days, and he raised his sons to share that belief. The world was harsh, but the Maidens saw that its path trended toward peace and just rule: no man who gives himself to the common good, freely and without expectation, works in vain.

Then Lookshy showed up and laid claim to the land they lived on, and their elders were put under the command of a provisional governor who established crippling quotas. Argyle managed to finagle a meeting with the governor, certain that there had to be some sort of misunderstanding, some means by which both the Lookshyans and his own people could benefit from each other.

The provisional governor curtly informed him that his village mattered not a whit to Lookshy, save for the resources that they could extract from it. They had been permitted to maintain their barbaric excuse for a culture, permitted to remain in their hovels and consider themselves freemen, permitted to try and demonstrate that they could provide what Lookshy required of them without having to be placed under proper, effective management. Their current status was an incredible luxury, as fine a demonstration of the Dragons' mercy as could be found, and it would persist so long as doing so was less costly to the Shogun than sending in proper agricultural overseers along with a scale of soldiers to ensure obedience.

In less flowery terms, Argyle was basically told that his village was an incomprehensibly tiny cog in the machine of Lookshy, and if they didn't meet standards, then the governor would be happy to give them firsthand experience of what being a Lookshyan helot was like. If he wanted to help his people, he should go figure out ways to increase productivity and make sure everyone toed the line.

Argyle did the stupid thing, tried to press the issue, and ended up annoying the governor enough to end up in the Lookshyan provincial equivalent of a prison cell, which is a pit about five feet wide and teen feet deep. Then the governor sent a secretary to explain his sentencing: namely, that Argyle's sons were currently occupying the other "cells", and that if he wanted them to live, he'd give a speech to the village explaining why Lookshy was right and he had been wrong, and then go serve his sentence of ten years' hard labor without comment.

Argyle gave the speech. He was taken away from the only place he'd ever known, and put to work in the fields under horrendously shitty conditions. Despite the fact he was already in his 40s when the sentence began, Argyle made it the full 10 years, and then spent another 15 months making his way home. All that time, he'd been sustained by the hope that his sons were waiting for him, that his people had survived this horror with their souls intact, just as he had.

But he'd taught his sons too well; they'd been executed as seditionists within a year of his imprisonment, and the settlement had been deemed "rebellious" enough for Lookshy to take them in hand. Foreigners now lived on the land his neighbors had worked, while the original occupants were steadily worked to death in the fields.

His sons hadn't been given a funeral, and when they rose, their vengeful spirits were summarily dealt with by a Lookshyan ghost-breaker. Everything he'd known and loved was gone. Nothing he could have done would have changed it, and all he'd accomplished by trying was that they'd suffered and died alone, while he lived on.

As he lay, shivering and broken, in a ditch on the edge of town, a voice called out to him. He need not be alone. His people's destroyers need not go unpunished. The world was broken, but he could become a tool to help fix it. The Maidens were callous and uncaring, but he could help build a world where peace and justice reigned, and there was an order to men's days.

He accepted, not even bothering to look at the being addressing him, and then there was darkness. In that darkness, a colorless fire shone, and sang to him, and its song revealed to Argyle a vision of unimaginable beauty. A Creation built upon order, and harmony, and inescapable, absolute hierarchy. A Creation where none could defy the wheel of karma, where foulness could never overwhelm fairness.


(More tomorrow, since I have to go to bed.)
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That's an awesome backstory! Totally going to steal it for my One Piece Campaign
 
rogthnor said:
That's an awesome backstory! Totally going to steal it for my One Piece Campaign
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That was Part 1.

Now for Part 2.

I'll admit right out the gate that this part isn't as... well-defined as its predecessor. Some of that is my own lack of knowledge on the specifics of Exalted's geography & sociopolitics, some of it is the fact that Part 1 is an easier story to codify.

To put it simply, Argyle got drunk. Drunk on his own grief, drunk on the status and authority suddenly handed over to him, drunk on his vision of the Whispering Flame's schema, drunk on the incendiary rage he felt toward Lookshy.

He journeyed into Malfeas in a triumphal procession, and the majesty of it blinded him. He was shown to his estate, introduced to the Citizens who would now serve as his attendants & viziers, and the struggle to fortify his new village against all who would harm it consumed his reason. He heard the wisdom of the Yozis and his masters' Unquestionable brilliance, and was deafened by their rhetoric.

And when he saw the horror of Hell, when he saw the abuses and corruption and injustice that reigned within the Demon City, he turned away, and did not ask questions. Each reminder of the truth drove him deeper into his devotion to the Yozis, justifying it all as proof that the Green Sun Princes were needed to restore the true order of things.

A decade after Exalting, he would prove integral in the Infernal conspiracy which reduced Lookshy to ashes. With Sorcery and hellish power, he blighted their farmlands, spread plague among their soldiers, butchered gods of field and stream and granary, and broke and twisted the helots into a rabid infernalist horde, before sending them to their deaths so that the Lookshyan pacification forces could be weakened and drawn into ambushes laid by the rest of his Circle. Where he walked, the soil turned to silver sand. When he spoke, seeds of the All-Hunger Blossom crawled into the minds of listeners and devoured their will to resist.

Gunzosha died at the hands of their own children, or returned home to nothing but smoke and ashes, or were twisted into slaves of the Reclamation and sent back to their ranks, ready to betray their former comrades at the bidding of the Infernal Exalted. Argyle's soul feasted on the death and destruction he had fostered, and under the tutelage of his Circle's Fiend, began to nurture a Malfean child-soul within himself. By the time Lookshy's capital came under attack, Argyle was regularly being deployed separate from the rest of his Circle thanks to having one Second Circle deva and a menagerie of First Circle devas on tap, and planning to celebrate the utter extinction of Lookshy's Dragonblooded dynasties by ascending to the Celestial Circle of Sorcery.

Here's where things get... hazy and indistinct. The outcome, I know fairly well: Argyle's Circle gets obliterated by the Fiend, who fucks them over as part of a larger plan he's cooked up with his Past Life, who was part of the Black Nadir Concordat and has some interesting ideas on how to make use of the Infernal Exalted and their proto-Primordial nature. Argyle only survives by being on mop-up duty while a summoned Unquestionable facefucks what's left of Lookshy's capital as the finale of a year-long siege, and ends up taking out the Fiend (who was basically his unofficial mentor) to stop some serious Necromancy shit from going down with the Lookshyan arsenal and the harvested souls of his Circlemates.

Argyle comes out of the fight physically whole, but utterly shattered psychologically: losing the other members of his Circle was a blow to his stability, but the Fiend systematically dissecting all the ways he's become as bad (if not worse) than the governor who ruined his village and pointing out the many, many imperfections of the Yozis themselves as they fought left him desolate and consumed by horror and self-loathing. He retreats back into his holdings in Hell, cashing in goodwill with his patrons to score Urges he can fulfill without leaving the Demon City.

He spends two or three decades like this, going walkabout through Hell in between work to keep his patrons happy. During this period, he immerses himself in all the atrocities he previously ignored, meets with a variety of Yozic souls of his own volition instead of letting his original patrons introduce him as they deem fit, and begins actually communicating with his Unwoven Coadjutor*. He seizes the Circle of Sapphire early on in his self-imposed quest by vowing that he will never again allow those he trusts, admires, or fears to overrule his conscience.

Meanwhile, his first subordinate soul (dubbed "Ozymandias" for the moment) is sulking inside Argyle's Inner Empire, raising up armies and fucking with his slowly-growing number of siblings in a quest to ensure his servants are worthy of him - and being mightily irked by his greater self's sudden squeamishness. The souls that form during this period are a mixed bag, and largely concern themselves with managing their fiefdoms inside Argyle's nascent world-body rather than engage with a man who's currently standoffish, distracted, and unable to cope with the responsibility of their existence. Tensions grow to the point where Argyle's Inner Empire falls into a perpetual state of civil war, as the turmoil in his heart becomes manifest through his lesser selves.

(Last part in a bit; I'm going afk)



* A demon of unknown species who once worked as an architect & engineer for an Unquestionable, until his ego and intense dedication to the purity of his craft ended up putting him in a punishment sphere. He was selected for use as a Coadjutor after surviving for over 700 cries of the tomescu inside the sphere without begging for death, meditating in grim silence even as it scalded his flesh away or drowned him in toxic Kimberian waters.

He initially gravitated toward Argyle because he could grok the idea of being a builder/nurturer and community loyalty, but then his new "coworker" went bugshit nuts, and he quickly gave up on trying to communicate with a grief-maddened berserker in favor of exploring the Inner Empire. More on him later.
 
GardenerBriareus said:
That was Part 1.

Now for Part 2.

I'll admit right out the gate that this part isn't as... well-defined as its predecessor. Some of that is my own lack of knowledge on the specifics of Exalted's geography & sociopolitics, some of it is the fact that Part 1 is an easier story to codify.

To put it simply, Argyle got drunk. Drunk on his own grief, drunk on the status and authority suddenly handed over to him, drunk on his vision of the Whispering Flame's schema, drunk on the incendiary rage he felt toward Lookshy.

He journeyed into Malfeas in a triumphal procession, and the majesty of it blinded him. He was shown to his estate, introduced to the Citizens who would now serve as his attendants & viziers, and the struggle to fortify his new village against all who would harm it consumed his reason. He heard the wisdom of the Yozis and his masters' Unquestionable brilliance, and was deafened by their rhetoric.

And when he saw the horror of Hell, when he saw the abuses and corruption and injustice that reigned within the Demon City, he turned away, and did not ask questions. Each reminder of the truth drove him deeper into his devotion to the Yozis, justifying it all as proof that the Green Sun Princes were needed to restore the true order of things.

A decade after Exalting, he would prove integral in the Infernal conspiracy which reduced Lookshy to ashes. With Sorcery and hellish power, he blighted their farmlands, spread plague among their soldiers, butchered gods of field and stream and granary, and broke and twisted the helots into a rabid infernalist horde, before sending them to their deaths so that the Lookshyan pacification forces could be weakened and drawn into ambushes laid by the rest of his Circle. Where he walked, the soil turned to silver sand. When he spoke, seeds of the All-Hunger Blossom crawled into the minds of listeners and devoured their will to resist.

Gunzosha died at the hands of their own children, or returned home to nothing but smoke and ashes, or were twisted into slaves of the Reclamation and sent back to their ranks, ready to betray their former comrades at the bidding of the Infernal Exalted. Argyle's soul feasted on the death and destruction he had fostered, and under the tutelage of his Circle's Fiend, began to nurture a Malfean child-soul within himself. By the time Lookshy's capital came under attack, Argyle was regularly being deployed separate from the rest of his Circle thanks to having one Second Circle deva and a menagerie of First Circle devas on tap, and planning to celebrate the utter extinction of Lookshy's Dragonblooded dynasties by ascending to the Celestial Circle of Sorcery.

Here's where things get... hazy and indistinct. The outcome, I know fairly well: Argyle's Circle gets obliterated by the Fiend, who fucks them over as part of a larger plan he's cooked up with his Past Life, who was part of the Black Nadir Concordat and has some interesting ideas on how to make use of the Infernal Exalted and their proto-Primordial nature. Argyle only survives by being on mop-up duty while a summoned Unquestionable facefucks what's left of Lookshy's capital as the finale of a year-long siege, and ends up taking out the Fiend (who was basically his unofficial mentor) to stop some serious Necromancy shit from going down with the Lookshyan arsenal and the harvested souls of his Circlemates.

Argyle comes out of the fight physically whole, but utterly shattered psychologically: losing the other members of his Circle was a blow to his stability, but the Fiend systematically dissecting all the ways he's become as bad (if not worse) than the governor who ruined his village and pointing out the many, many imperfections of the Yozis themselves as they fought left him desolate and consumed by horror and self-loathing. He retreats back into his holdings in Hell, cashing in goodwill with his patrons to score Urges he can fulfill without leaving the Demon City.

He spends two or three decades like this, going walkabout through Hell in between work to keep his patrons happy. During this period, he immerses himself in all the atrocities he previously ignored, meets with a variety of Yozic souls of his own volition instead of letting his original patrons introduce him as they deem fit, and begins actually communicating with his Unwoven Coadjutor*. He seizes the Circle of Sapphire early on in his self-imposed quest by vowing that he will never again allow those he trusts, admires, or fears to overrule his conscience.

Meanwhile, his first subordinate soul (dubbed "Ozymandias" for the moment) is sulking inside Argyle's Inner Empire, raising up armies and fucking with his slowly-growing number of siblings in a quest to ensure his servants are worthy of him - and being mightily irked by his greater self's sudden squeamishness. The souls that form during this period are a mixed bag, and largely concern themselves with managing their fiefdoms inside Argyle's nascent world-body rather than engage with a man who's currently standoffish, distracted, and unable to cope with the responsibility of their existence. Tensions grow to the point where Argyle's Inner Empire falls into a perpetual state of civil war, as the turmoil in his heart becomes manifest through his lesser selves.

(Last part in a bit; I'm going afk)



* A demon of unknown species who once worked as an architect & engineer for an Unquestionable, until his ego and intense dedication to the purity of his craft ended up putting him in a punishment sphere. He was selected for use as a Coadjutor after surviving for over 700 cries of the tomescu inside the sphere without begging for death, meditating in grim silence even as it scalded his flesh away or drowned him in toxic Kimberian waters.

He initially gravitated toward Argyle because he could grok the idea of being a builder/nurturer and community loyalty, but then his new "coworker" went bugshit nuts, and he quickly gave up on trying to communicate with a grief-maddened berserker in favor of exploring the Inner Empire. More on him later.
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Also really, really good.
 
TRANSMUTATION INTO THE IDEAL FORM - TERRESTRIAL CIRCLE SORCERY

Cost: 10m
Duration: Permanent

Things are not the best they could be. The swords are bent. There are cracks in the jar. The painting has blemishes. The smith looks upon the work he has forged, and compares it to a better one, an despairs.

The sorcerer can rectify that.

Speaking the word of the Library of Forms, the space in Yu-Shan which stores the ideal, abstract, form of every single object and substance in Creation. Wave of essence spew from the sorcerer's hands, and wrap around the object or material in question, transmuting it into a greater form. After that, the essence disperses, leaving the transmuted result behind. Lead is transmuted into gold. Quartz into Diamond. Bland scraps into delicacies. A stone knife is transformed into a steel saber. Already adequate weapons are transformed into perfect weapons. There is a limit, however. The spell can only transform things into greater, mundane versions. It can never create artifacts, or things that require sorcery.

Um.... reviews?
 
Accelerator said:
TRANSMUTATION INTO THE IDEAL FORM - TERRESTRIAL CIRCLE SORCERY

Cost: 10m
Duration: Permanent

Things are not the best they could be. The swords are bent. There are cracks in the jar. The painting has blemishes. The smith looks upon the work he has forged, and compares it to a better one, an despairs.

The sorcerer can rectify that.

Speaking the word of the Library of Forms, the space in Yu-Shan which stores the ideal, abstract, form of every single object and substance in Creation. Wave of essence spew from the sorcerer's hands, and wrap around the object or material in question, transmuting it into a greater form. After that, the essence disperses, leaving the transmuted result behind. Lead is transmuted into gold. Quartz into Diamond. Bland scraps into delicacies. A stone knife is transformed into a steel saber. Already adequate weapons are transformed into perfect weapons. There is a limit, however. The spell can only transform things into greater, mundane versions. It can never create artifacts, or things that require sorcery.

Um.... reviews?
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The guts of the spell are pretty sound, but the prose is a little terse (understandably, if I'm remembering correctly that English isn't your first language).

Would you mind if I tried putting together a prettied-up version of the text? It'd probably be some time tomorrow, given the time where I am.
 
Accelerator said:
TRANSMUTATION INTO THE IDEAL FORM - TERRESTRIAL CIRCLE SORCERY

Cost: 10m
Duration: Permanent

Things are not the best they could be. The swords are bent. There are cracks in the jar. The painting has blemishes. The smith looks upon the work he has forged, and compares it to a better one, an despairs.

The sorcerer can rectify that.

Speaking the word of the Library of Forms, the space in Yu-Shan which stores the ideal, abstract, form of every single object and substance in Creation. Wave of essence spew from the sorcerer's hands, and wrap around the object or material in question, transmuting it into a greater form. After that, the essence disperses, leaving the transmuted result behind. Lead is transmuted into gold. Quartz into Diamond. Bland scraps into delicacies. A stone knife is transformed into a steel saber. Already adequate weapons are transformed into perfect weapons. There is a limit, however. The spell can only transform things into greater, mundane versions. It can never create artifacts, or things that require sorcery.

Um.... reviews?
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So! I'm working on that rewrite I promised, but I found this while digging around; is this anywhere close to what you're aiming for?

EarthScorpion said:
Wondrous Transmutation
Price: 1-3 dot hearthstone; Circle: Emerald; Anchor: Artefact 2+ (Alchemy equipment)
Target: Object or Character
Spell Duration: Instant; Casting Duration: 12 Hour Ritual
Essence Aspect: Special; Favoured Aspect: Special

It is said that the Anathema devalued hard work with their magics, turning lead into gold at a whim. Modern sorcerers know such feats are indeed possible with the correct tools. Through careful mixes of acids, ground-up hearthstones, salts and stranger reagents, the sorcerer-alchemist can transform base materials into other things.

Ritual: The sorcerer requires access to a workshop set up for alchemy, as well as a thematically appropriate Artefact which can be used as part of their ritual. The ritual involves the careful dissolution and rendering down of a hearthstone in a way which does not violently unleash the trapped essence, followed by the application of the reagent to the object or character that the sorcerer wishes to transmute. The substances a sorcerer can create are dependent on the essence aspect of the hearthstone used as the price. For example, Solar essence is required to produce gold, while Fire essence can be made to make rubies and Wood essence make emeralds. Necrotic hearthstones are required to make the strange wonders of the lands of the Dead, while hellish essence is needed for the ores of the Demon Realm.

Mechanics: This spell permits the sorcerer to transmute the composition of an object or a character to a single homogenous substance. The sorcerer rolls their (Intelligence + Craft (Water)) at a difficulty equal to the (1+ the Resources value of the final object), paying the Price of a one-dot hearthstone. As a result, it is much easier for an alchemist to turn lead into brass rather than gold. He may not create mundane substances with a Resources value greater than 5. He might be able to transmute a boulder to tin or iron, but he cannot turn it into solid gold.

If he attempts to make a magical material with this spell, such an act is Difficulty 6 and has a Price of a three dot hearthstone. This creates an amount of the magical material worth Resources 4. Additionally, the magical material forms as tiny fragments within the transmuted object, which must be carefully purified and cleansed with thaumaturgical ritual before they can be used for anything. Attempting to pass off unpurified transmuted jade as mined jade is a capital offence in the Realm, due to the dangerously unpredictable effects that it can cause.

Effects: With a success, the alchemist has successfully transmuted the object into a form as described above. On a failure, the object is still transmuted, but the end product is impure dross of the Storyteller's choice. Should he fail the roll by three successes or more, he experiences a dramatic failure producing something hazardous or otherwise unexpected. Very rarely such a failure can still have productive results - yellow jade is an example of such an anomaly.

If used against a living target, the character must be kept Inactive and restrained throughout the ritual. The results are resolved as a Shaping attack against the target. Mortal characters die instantly as they are transmuted. Enlightened characters take (sorcerer's Essence) dice of aggravated damage a tick which ignores armoured soak, until they either die, the spell is countermagiced, or they are freed from their restraints. Damage inflicted by this spell can inflict disabling wounds even against characters who heal as Exalts, with the Crippling injuries representing extremities or organs that were alchemically transmuted. Otherwise, the same conditions of success and failure apply as above. The origins of more than one behemoth come from a failed alchemy experiment.
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I'm aware that the specifics don't match, but it'd help to get a clearer picture of what this is intended to do.

At present, my rewrite is handling this as a spell that you use so that you can buy things from rubbish sales for cheap, and then upgrade them into fancier formats to work around having to pay full price for top-shelf work. You get a crate full of shoddy leather jerkins, zap them with the spell before handing them over to your minions, and now your minions get to have high-quality protection without you having to empty your purse.
 
QafianSage said:
What system of sorcery is that using?
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It's one of Earthscorpion's homebrew systems. Basically, you tie Sorcery spells to dots in a Background.

For example, to cast Food From the Aerial Table, you could anchor to your Cult, which means the spell has to be conducted as part of a huge ritual where all your cultists congregate and smother you in displays of reverence/obedience/affection, rising to a fever pitch where you essentially use the power of how hard they all believe in you to manifest a feast out of sheer sycophantic fervor.

You could also anchor the same spell to Backing (Green Sun Prince), in which case the spell represents you invoking your authority over the estate you have in Hell - across the sands of Cecelyne, your mansion's stove roars to life, ingredients are dragged from cupboards by swirling anima-mists, and the cooks run for cover as the estate itself leaps to do as its master bids. Of course, this also means that when the food arrives, it will probably be distinctly... Malfean.

The general idea is that it incentivises Sorcerers to be decadent god-kings, since they get more spell access if they build cults, seek political office, forge alliances with spirits, recruit minions, lay claim to manses & demesnes, and grab up Artifacts like demented magpies.

Of course, it also means that the PCs can systematically hamstring an enemy Sorcerer by slaughtering his cults, destabilizing his reign, sabotaging his alliances, killing his minions, destroying his manses, and stealing his Artifact bling.
 
RESURRECTING THE FALLEN CITY
Cost: 30sm, 2wp
Circle: Solar

The sorcerers stands in the midst of rubble of a silent city, with a harp in his hand. Plucking the strings, he sings the songs that City Fathers sing as they move to a new city. Plucking the strings, the melody trick creation into thinking that the city is whole. Seeing an aberration, the Essence of Creation rushes into correct what it sees as the lack of a city where there should be one.

A light flashes, and a perimeter of white fire burns outwards from the sorcerer's feet, and as it passes through, destruction is reversed. Shattered cobblestones, are transformed into pristine streets. Burnt-out museums and archives are refilled with books and shelves that had been reduced to ash and kindling. Broken up buildings are rebuilt, as if built yesterday. All forms of mundane damage are repaired. The spell is ritualistic, and requires the sorcerer to cast continuously for 24 hours. If he breaks, then the repairs disappear in a flash of light.

However, this cannot repair sorcerous infrastructure , such as manses and artifacts. Also, although it will repair every single thing, it cannot repair damage to the land that is too massive, such as if a massive sinkhole had swallowed half the city. The sinkhole will have to be filled before the city can be fully repaired.
 
If it's a ritual spell you don't roll for sorcerous motes. Cost is just "Ritual, 2wp". It needs to take longer than one whole day to repair a city.
 
greensun said:
Sorcery is exceptionally powerful in the modern era; Death of Obsidian Butterflies can still wipe out a large portion of a fighting force, including damaging light vehicles or low flying aircraft like an VTOL's or attack choppers going low, Demon-Summoning is still one of the most powerful spells in the game, a gun isn't going to you much good against Blood-Ape who has a dodge Excellency and who does agg damage to mortals (though heavy ordnance does level the playing field, but that was true even in base Creation) furthermore, in the age of mass surveillance and wire-tapping, Infallible Messenger provides a means of communicaion that's largely immune to mundane surveillance.

Not to mention that even in the modern era has famines and droughts, Summon the Harvest and Water from a Stone spells are still very powerfull and useful.

And that's just Terrestrial Sorcery, the higher levels are going to be just as powerful, if not more so, in a modern era. Teleportation is still absolutely fantastic, even in an era with modern transport, and Third Circle Demons are still city killers.
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I think people underestimate just how powerful modern weapons are. Death of Obsidian Butterflies deals potentially lethal damage in a 30 x 100 meter rectangle.

The casualty radius of a modern hand grenade is 15 meters. In other words, your sorcerer has the power of... three hand grenades. Furthermore, unlike a grenade, which produces fragments that can penetrate a fair bit, Death of Obsidian Butterflies can only deface stone. It'll bounce against even unarmored vehicles, let alone an armored attack helicopter (which, by the way, will be firing precision-guided ordinance beyond your visual range, from kilometers away). People tend to drastically underestimate just how ludicrously lethal modern weapons are compared to medieval ones.

Like, cultures which had extensive, long-standing expertise with bows for hunting and warfare basically gave up their bows for firearms very rapidly, because even primitive, slow-firing firearms had ludicrous instantaneous lethality compared to bows (and weren't exactly inaccurate).
 
MJ12 Commando said:
The solution is of course to use them in special forces raids. Nothing could go wrong with this.



Choice of clip absolutely intentional.
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Tactical role entirely intentional, too. You're right - they are "light chopper" demons, which means they're fucked when facing any kind of organised resistance and the psychopaths would only be willing to carry a team of six seal-demons into battle.
 
GardenerBriareus said:
Oh hey, I remember those guys! Anyone else remember who wrote them up?
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Urgh. I should have a bookmark....

Here:

General Exalted Thread - Megathread - Pen & Paper | Page 1697

MJ12 Commando said:
I think people underestimate just how powerful modern weapons are. Death of Obsidian Butterflies deals potentially lethal damage in a 30 x 100 meter rectangle.

The casualty radius of a modern hand grenade is 15 meters. In other words, your sorcerer has the power of... three hand grenades. Furthermore, unlike a grenade, which produces fragments that can penetrate a fair bit, Death of Obsidian Butterflies can only deface stone. It'll bounce against even unarmored vehicles, let alone an armored attack helicopter (which, by the way, will be firing precision-guided ordinance beyond your visual range, from kilometers away). People tend to drastically underestimate just how ludicrously lethal modern weapons are compared to medieval ones.

Like, cultures which had extensive, long-standing expertise with bows for hunting and warfare basically gave up their bows for firearms very rapidly, because even primitive, slow-firing firearms had ludicrous instantaneous lethality compared to bows (and weren't exactly inaccurate).
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So.... boost the damage, or make sorcery spells based on new tech?
 
MJ12 Commando said:
I think people underestimate just how powerful modern weapons are. Death of Obsidian Butterflies deals potentially lethal damage in a 30 x 100 meter rectangle.

The casualty radius of a modern hand grenade is 15 meters. In other words, your sorcerer has the power of... three hand grenades. Furthermore, unlike a grenade, which produces fragments that can penetrate a fair bit, Death of Obsidian Butterflies can only deface stone. It'll bounce against even unarmored vehicles, let alone an armored attack helicopter (which, by the way, will be firing precision-guided ordinance beyond your visual range, from kilometers away). People tend to drastically underestimate just how ludicrously lethal modern weapons are compared to medieval ones.

Like, cultures which had extensive, long-standing expertise with bows for hunting and warfare basically gave up their bows for firearms very rapidly, because even primitive, slow-firing firearms had ludicrous instantaneous lethality compared to bows (and weren't exactly inaccurate).
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I like Ex3's range bands a bit better for this, tbh, but yeah. Terrestrial Circle Sorcery isn't where I'd let Sorcerer outdo modern artillery.
 
the sorcerer isn't dangerous because his terrestrial spells are leaps and bounds beyond modern weapons, he's dangerous because he doesn't need to carry modern weapons that can be taken away or detected. If some dude walked into a government building with an RPG and a bandoleer full of grenades, they'd be stopped and questioned at gunpoint by security guards and police. A sorcerer can just walk into a building and spend a few seconds wiggling their hands and suddenly everyone in the lobby that isn't blessed by the gods is dead or dying because they've been slashed by a thousand obsidian butterflies. Someone can just be chilling on a balcony in plain view of a parade while the pope rides by and then toss out a flaming bird that blows up the popemobile.
 
Unbanshee said:
the sorcerer isn't dangerous because his terrestrial spells are leaps and bounds beyond modern weapons, he's dangerous because he doesn't need to carry modern weapons that can be taken away or detected. If some dude walked into a government building with an RPG and a bandoleer full of grenades, they'd be stopped and questioned at gunpoint by security guards and police. A sorcerer can just walk into a building and spend a few seconds wiggling their hands and suddenly everyone in the lobby that isn't blessed by the gods is dead or dying because they've been slashed by a thousand obsidian butterflies. Someone can just be chilling on a balcony in plain view of a parade while the pope rides by and then toss out a flaming bird that blows up the popemobile.
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Accelerator said:
In other words, the ultimate insurgent?

With the above demons for backup?
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Not to mention they can create new mundane diseases. Terrestrial 3, Finesse 5 is probably what you'd need to create an extremely fast-acting, hard-to-communicate disease that makes someone's organs turn to mush or whatever.

Or an extremely lethal, slow-acting, easily communicated disease if you're a psychopath who wants to set the world on fire. Though tbh you, uh, probably want to be damn careful while doing that, as non-Exalted Sorcerers can't exactly Excellency the resist disease roll.
 
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