Well, that and Schrodinger's cat.
LaTeX:
\[i\hbar\dot{\Psi} = H\Psi\]
General Exalted Thread
- Thread starter Aleph
- Start date
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
She sounds like the kind of thing you summon when you really want to fuck up a Siddie.
Or the realm.
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
For a while I've had a character concept for an Eclipse that summons demons, then instead of binding them either convinces them to work for her or to stay away from her realm in exchange for being free. So she summons the Tangerine Usurer then gets him to run her empire's bureaucracy, she summons that monkey jesus soul and convinces her to go against Nexus or Lookshy or something, and so on.
Sima's plan is to win by timeout, in the hope that time is a cycle and when the Ages have come around once again then Oramus will slip his bonds and be free once more. She believes it cannot be impossible that the knots that tie Oramus' broken wings will ever be undone, because if it was impossible then Oramus could slip loose of those bonds. No, there must be the faintest, most infinitesimal chance that they can be undone for them to hold him, though it will take so long that the Pole of Earth will wear down to sand and the Sun will burn out and the Loom of Fate snap.
And she has patience. She existed for uncounted timeless infinities before Cytherea stirred from slumber. She can endure ten thousand years of captivity and more.
In the meantime, she will act to enforce slow, lingering revenge upon the treacherous gods with all the patience and fury of a demon princess whose power-set is optimised for causing bad omens and calamities and momentous events. She still does not believe that the Exalted were her true foes - and they are mortal and their lives will pass. She can wait for them to die - and all the guilty ones have. But the gods who did this to her still remain.
(Amusingly, this is probably one of the few "Yozi escape" plans that I'd actually say could work. Mostly on the grounds that... uh, the only way it'll ever come into play is if someone decides to run a WoD crossover and the oWoD is end of an Age where all is returning to the beginning once again - the Dark Souls 3 of their universe.)
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- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Clearly she should take the form of a mammoth in a three piece suit and cane
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
... Mammoth Mogul?
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
There's an arc in which he decides that those plucky heroes thwarting his plans time and again won't live a century while he is immortal, so he could just settle down, outlive them, and conquer the world once they're gone.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Did it work? Or did we just get a new generation of heroes?
The decision in question is why he's no longer a current villain, but instead basically a mob boss hero's concerned about saving the entire world from his former competition can't worry about, and even occasionally get help from.
- Location
- Virginia
If we're posting alternate Exalted shards...
Earth, twenty years after the end of the Primordial War.
The sky has a second sun, Ligier, whose whose green light pales against Sol but still shines five hundred times brighter than the North Star.
He is cloaked in the atmosphere of a dead planet, in which Adorjan rages - a perpetual blood-red hurricane that could contain Earth thrice over and flays any of the Malfean sky-cities that fall into her.
In his orbit is bound Kimbery, whose icy surface conceals an ocean full of toxins and acids and alien life.
In this place all the surviving Yozis are confined.
In the Oort, creatures stir. Wyld things once frozen by imposition of the Sun's law throughout the heliosphere are free with its retreat. They gather to ride their comets and invade the planets laid bare.
Much of the Earth's surface is poisoned by nuclear fallout or Yoziformed into an alien hellscape.
The seas have risen tens of meters. Some of humanity's greatest cities shelter behind massive seawalls; others lie underwater.
The broken nations and alliances of Earth maintain a fragile modern order in their carefully sheltered Blue Zones and attempt to pacify and restore their lost territories.
But funds for reconstruction do not flow freely; social welfare, domestic infrastructure and a budding arms race all demand their share. And citizens are only willing to pay so many taxes.
The Coalition armies and fleets once defeated the Primordials under the command of the Sun's Chosen and filled with ranks of the Earth's. They have dwindled into almost nothing now that the threat is over. The heady dream of a united humanity, so vivid in the days immediately after the war, now belongs only to a few idealists - and some who are paranoid that the Yozis might escape their Oaths.
They still have a monopoly on space-based nuclear weapons, though. As long as that treaty holds, they may yet keep the peace.
The Solar Deliberative was formed in the last days of the war to design and implement the Great Curse that rendered the Primordials mortal and the Surrender Oaths that would shield them from it - at the price of being bound.
It will not convene again. Even the suggestion is anathema. Humanity and the Terrestrial Exalted do not want to become the playthings of a few hundred demigods.
The above setting is mostly shades of Mass Effect and the Command & Conquer series, although the Ligier-Jupiter bit is obviously from Arthur C. Clarke.
The Primordials are similar to Reapers in many respects - they are nations or corporations rather than singular entities. In this setting they invaded Earth, most of them having starship-bodies that landed and deployed armies of demons, conquering or collecting or indoctrinating humans as their individual goals required.
Their war began in earnest when they discovered humanity could effectively fight back - sufficiently concerted attacks (generally with nuclear weapons) could kill their component-souls and possibly even entire Primordials.
The sun, and every planet or moon with a liquid core contains a powerful intelligence-spirit running on, basically, the fluid dynamics. One Primordial, Autochton, devised a way for the Sun and the Earth to endow humans with power and convinced them to carry it out (for both were fond of humans in their own ways).
In the Sun's case, this produced a small, fixed number of Exaltations, of great power, but also permanently diminished it - the simpler, more rational natural law it maintained in the Solar system was weakened. Thus comets are no longer just frozen Raksha being boiled alive as they approach the sun - they are invasion forces.
In the Earth's case, the Exaltations are weaker, more numerous, and can be granted to anyone so long as they are on the Earth's surface - although being somewhere where the Earth's elements run strong helps a lot. It is not yet known whether or not the Terrestrial Exaltation is directly hereditary - although many of the second generation are children of first-generation Terrestrials, there's no definitive evidence that this isn't just a case of the necessary talents and heroic virtues being correlated across generations.
Another result of (well, a prerequisite for) the Terrestrial Exaltations is that the Earth is much more elementally active now - there are more volcanoes, hurricanes, rain forests, etc. Humanity is slowly figuring out that geomancy is A Thing.
In terms of spirits / souls, the metaphysics works like this:
- Souls are part of most intelligent creatures.
- They are unique and uncopyable, and generally must exist in some kind of substrate - biological brains produce souls, Yozis have a number of them bound in various physical bodies, and planetary / stellar intelligences have them - but ordinary computers do not and cannot. Computers with special types of quantum circuits, however, can support souls, but these data in these circuits is uncopyable (via the no-cloning theorem ~waves hands~), and can only be transferred.
- The cutting edge of human science is learning to produce "data-spirits" - powerful artificial intelligences that live in these quantum circuits.
- Sufficiently Advanced Science and/or Charms could enable to souls to be extracted from one substrate and placed into another.
- First Circle Demons are mass-produced biological robots. They have souls but can't dematerialize or materialize.
- When Second and Third Circle demons survive destruction, it's because they upload themselves somewhere else just before dying, not because they're just unkillable by default.
- In general materialize / dematerialize isn't a thing - some spirits can exit their material bodies and exist in a sort of free state, but this causes the original substrate to just collapse into a catatonic state, and to "materialize" again they need to reenter it or find some other preexisting body.
- The Great Curse didn't make the Primordials killable - they already were - instead, it made their deaths inevitable, so that they would necessarily die of old age. The Great Curse was designed so that if the Primordials submitted to the Surrender Oaths they would be shielded from it.
- The Exalted don't need the Great Curse to become insane with power - humans have always been capable of that all on their own.
In terms of gameplay, the setting is supposed to give you the opportunity for a Modern / Scifi type game, but also to let the characters go without or even *invent* many of the staples of Exalted. For example, the Exalted do not yet have Sorcery - if a player wants to be a sorcerer, they're going to have to actually go and discover it or wrest the secret from the Yozis. The magical materials do not yet exist - but there are systems for how you might discover them. Artifacts / hypertech do not exist - unless you make them.
The ability spread I've been thinking about is:
- Dawn: Command, Drive, Engineering, Firearms, Logistics, Melee, Pilot, Survival
- Zenith: Athletics, Command, Expression, Integrity, Media, Occult, Presence, Survival
- Twilight: Academics, Computers, Drive, Engineering, Investigation, Medicine, Science, Occult
- Night: Athletics, Awareness, Computers, Investigation, Larceny, Pilot, Socialize, Stealth
- Eclipse: Academics, Larceny, Logistics, Markets, Media, Politics, Presence, Socialize
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Lemkh, the Beast With Blade-Blood
Demon of the Second Circle
Indulgent Soul of the Scar of Empires
There are demon lords who are fine crafters, imperious warlords, effete lovers. And then there is Lemkh. Lemkh prowls the lowest dive bars and most stinking slums of the Demon City, fighting in alleyways and arenas alike. There is no pleasure for him in rule or dominion over others; he cares only for the moment of the fight which sets the blood racing and the pulse pounding. He is strong, he draws joy from pain inflicted and pain received, and though he is no scholar there is a certain base cunning in him that has led others to underestimate him.
Lemkh is not a man, nor is he a swine nor a porcupine nor a tyrant lizard, though he partakes of all of these in his nature. He stands three yards high at the shoulder with long arms, and his tusked mouth is full of rows of brass teeth. His skin is covered in tarnished brass scabs which look like scales from a distance. The Beast With Blade-Blood drinks nothing but the ichor of his fallen foes and eats nothing but the weapons of the fallen. He eats well; so well, in fact, that he has a paunch. His hunched back is covered in protruding blades, but these weapons point outwards.
Within Lemkh's veins run axes and swords and spears and knives and every kind of sharp implement. When he is wounded, a gushing torrent of bladed death surges out to clatter down upon the streets of Malfeas. Lemkh knows how useful this is, and so flagellates himself daily to keep a thick sprouting of scab-spears covering his back. His scales are the worn-down stubs of former blades, snapped off. In the fighting-pits of Malfeas he is more than willing to accept a axe-cut to the chest in return for five blood-spears impaling his assailant, for he knows that he will feast on them and grow whole again.
Despite his lack of desire to rule, lesser demons are drawn to him. They snatch up the fallen weapons he bleeds. These blood-blades call to them, driving them into a frenzy. As long as there are fresh foes for them to fight then they will fight by his side, but the blood-thirst overcomes them in time and so his followers become part of a great swirling melee with no friends at all. This suits Lemkh just fine, for there is more pain and more food for him.
Oddly enough the Beast with Blade-Blood has a certain sympathy for the underdog. He dislikes slaying the weak and unarmed and will spare them unless exceptionally bored, though even drawing a knife removes such exemption. When he sees a Malfean domain oppressed by a master he takes a dislike for - and this dislike may be for reasons as petty as the choice of banners, for he tends to search any reasons to war against the powerful - then he opens his veins and arms the populace. Then he throws himself into gleeful battle against the soldiers of the lord, feasting and killing with wanton abandon. Octavian has a mighty bounty on Lemkh's head, and the Beast makes sure to give the Quarter Prince reason to remember him through massacres and atrocities against the Prince's occupying forces.
Sorcerers call upon Lemkh for one reason at all, and that is for killing and bloodshed. If a sorcerer swears an oath that his service will just be required for a single battle, then the Beast with Blade-Blood does not even contest his binding. Indeed, he considers his trips to Creation to be a gleeful vacation where he can taste new kinds of blood and crunch on delectable steel blades.
Lemkh gains a point of Limit in any scene he does not shed any blood - whether his own or the blood of others. He can squirm through the cracks of the Demon Realm and into Creation whenever at least a hundred blades are left to rust in pools of blood. The blood and blades alike coalesce into his looming shape.
Demon of the Second Circle
Indulgent Soul of the Scar of Empires
There are demon lords who are fine crafters, imperious warlords, effete lovers. And then there is Lemkh. Lemkh prowls the lowest dive bars and most stinking slums of the Demon City, fighting in alleyways and arenas alike. There is no pleasure for him in rule or dominion over others; he cares only for the moment of the fight which sets the blood racing and the pulse pounding. He is strong, he draws joy from pain inflicted and pain received, and though he is no scholar there is a certain base cunning in him that has led others to underestimate him.
Lemkh is not a man, nor is he a swine nor a porcupine nor a tyrant lizard, though he partakes of all of these in his nature. He stands three yards high at the shoulder with long arms, and his tusked mouth is full of rows of brass teeth. His skin is covered in tarnished brass scabs which look like scales from a distance. The Beast With Blade-Blood drinks nothing but the ichor of his fallen foes and eats nothing but the weapons of the fallen. He eats well; so well, in fact, that he has a paunch. His hunched back is covered in protruding blades, but these weapons point outwards.
Within Lemkh's veins run axes and swords and spears and knives and every kind of sharp implement. When he is wounded, a gushing torrent of bladed death surges out to clatter down upon the streets of Malfeas. Lemkh knows how useful this is, and so flagellates himself daily to keep a thick sprouting of scab-spears covering his back. His scales are the worn-down stubs of former blades, snapped off. In the fighting-pits of Malfeas he is more than willing to accept a axe-cut to the chest in return for five blood-spears impaling his assailant, for he knows that he will feast on them and grow whole again.
Despite his lack of desire to rule, lesser demons are drawn to him. They snatch up the fallen weapons he bleeds. These blood-blades call to them, driving them into a frenzy. As long as there are fresh foes for them to fight then they will fight by his side, but the blood-thirst overcomes them in time and so his followers become part of a great swirling melee with no friends at all. This suits Lemkh just fine, for there is more pain and more food for him.
Oddly enough the Beast with Blade-Blood has a certain sympathy for the underdog. He dislikes slaying the weak and unarmed and will spare them unless exceptionally bored, though even drawing a knife removes such exemption. When he sees a Malfean domain oppressed by a master he takes a dislike for - and this dislike may be for reasons as petty as the choice of banners, for he tends to search any reasons to war against the powerful - then he opens his veins and arms the populace. Then he throws himself into gleeful battle against the soldiers of the lord, feasting and killing with wanton abandon. Octavian has a mighty bounty on Lemkh's head, and the Beast makes sure to give the Quarter Prince reason to remember him through massacres and atrocities against the Prince's occupying forces.
Sorcerers call upon Lemkh for one reason at all, and that is for killing and bloodshed. If a sorcerer swears an oath that his service will just be required for a single battle, then the Beast with Blade-Blood does not even contest his binding. Indeed, he considers his trips to Creation to be a gleeful vacation where he can taste new kinds of blood and crunch on delectable steel blades.
Lemkh gains a point of Limit in any scene he does not shed any blood - whether his own or the blood of others. He can squirm through the cracks of the Demon Realm and into Creation whenever at least a hundred blades are left to rust in pools of blood. The blood and blades alike coalesce into his looming shape.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
So I've been thinking about Craft, and Exalted, but mostly Craft, and I think I've hit upon something that a lot of people haven't quite realized.
Exalted is not a game. Exalted is a metagame.
What I mean by this is, comes down to the idea that the 'game', the real nuts and bolts 'fun' part of Exalted is not in the resolution mechainics, be it Craft or Social or Combat, but in the consequences and results of those actions. In a very real sense, the game is the cooperative storytelling aspect, the creation of a chain of decisions and consequences that follow from player action. All the core mechanics are, on paper, meant to facilitate that.
What I realized about Craft, setting aside it's mechanics, is what it's supposed to do in context of Exalted 'meta'. If the 'game' is described as "Rock the boat/Throw Stones in the Pond/Build-or-destory sandcastles", then the role of the Crafter is not specifically 'building', but instead drawing narrative aggro.
Functionally, all of the potentially interesting results of Craft, even when making personal gear, come down to how the world reacts to it. If you make say, a Daiklave of Conquest, which on paper is supposed to be a great force multiplier, then other actors should become aware of it somehow. (One of Exalted's systemic issues is that it doesn't explain how to do this, doesn't advise the ST or mechanize this process).
But, 'Craft Plots' aren't supposed to be fetch quests- they're supposed to be Manhattan Projects and codebreaking the Enigma Machines. Intriuge, drama and research. All the existing craft mechanics exist as a clock or timer to pace the actual 'gamist' gear bonuses, but the idea of CRAFT is to draw attention to yourself.
Mind you, this is not wholly locked to Craft- any meaningful trait can be spun into legend and coveted or aspired to- and this applies to several levels and how 'local' you want it to be. A Terrestrial Circle Sorcerer is well known in a local area, hired for their services or carefully ignored because they're so strange. The same applies to an artifact irrigation system, old ruins with first-age tech, second circle demons and so on.
So, if we run with the idea that 'Craft' and similar player actions are meant to draw narrative attention, the 'game' of Exalted is essentially a cycle of of increasingly intense/direct conflict. Player does something, world reacts. Repeat with the world steadily encircling the player or vice-versa until a decisive setpeice occurs. The 'lens' of the game is meant to change, on paper, from wide angle timeskip dramatic action to highly specific, centerpiece scenes. I.E. climatic combat with the regular system.
Thinking about it, the idea of 'Craft' should largely be structured so that when a decisive contest happens, the player HAS their new asset- be it an army, artifact, new spell or whatever fun thing they actually spent time building. A mechanic should exist to pace these things, in order to avoid glutting the game with powerful gear, but by the same token, actually running players ragged trying to get their stuff misses the point.
Exalted is not a game. Exalted is a metagame.
What I mean by this is, comes down to the idea that the 'game', the real nuts and bolts 'fun' part of Exalted is not in the resolution mechainics, be it Craft or Social or Combat, but in the consequences and results of those actions. In a very real sense, the game is the cooperative storytelling aspect, the creation of a chain of decisions and consequences that follow from player action. All the core mechanics are, on paper, meant to facilitate that.
What I realized about Craft, setting aside it's mechanics, is what it's supposed to do in context of Exalted 'meta'. If the 'game' is described as "Rock the boat/Throw Stones in the Pond/Build-or-destory sandcastles", then the role of the Crafter is not specifically 'building', but instead drawing narrative aggro.
Functionally, all of the potentially interesting results of Craft, even when making personal gear, come down to how the world reacts to it. If you make say, a Daiklave of Conquest, which on paper is supposed to be a great force multiplier, then other actors should become aware of it somehow. (One of Exalted's systemic issues is that it doesn't explain how to do this, doesn't advise the ST or mechanize this process).
But, 'Craft Plots' aren't supposed to be fetch quests- they're supposed to be Manhattan Projects and codebreaking the Enigma Machines. Intriuge, drama and research. All the existing craft mechanics exist as a clock or timer to pace the actual 'gamist' gear bonuses, but the idea of CRAFT is to draw attention to yourself.
Mind you, this is not wholly locked to Craft- any meaningful trait can be spun into legend and coveted or aspired to- and this applies to several levels and how 'local' you want it to be. A Terrestrial Circle Sorcerer is well known in a local area, hired for their services or carefully ignored because they're so strange. The same applies to an artifact irrigation system, old ruins with first-age tech, second circle demons and so on.
So, if we run with the idea that 'Craft' and similar player actions are meant to draw narrative attention, the 'game' of Exalted is essentially a cycle of of increasingly intense/direct conflict. Player does something, world reacts. Repeat with the world steadily encircling the player or vice-versa until a decisive setpeice occurs. The 'lens' of the game is meant to change, on paper, from wide angle timeskip dramatic action to highly specific, centerpiece scenes. I.E. climatic combat with the regular system.
Thinking about it, the idea of 'Craft' should largely be structured so that when a decisive contest happens, the player HAS their new asset- be it an army, artifact, new spell or whatever fun thing they actually spent time building. A mechanic should exist to pace these things, in order to avoid glutting the game with powerful gear, but by the same token, actually running players ragged trying to get their stuff misses the point.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
but then how am I supposed to sit in an isolated cave with no-one around and use my charms
to turn rocks into orichalcum
and rocks into first age tools
and rocks into blueprints and training manuals
and build an army of totally loyal automatons who conquer the world before anyone can react?
if I can't do that then it's not really craft at all is it
Hakazin
Serpent Admirer
- Pronouns
- She/Her
First, is this sarcasm?
Second, if it's not, then how is it interesting?
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
- Location
- The Land of Memes
It's sarcasm. Revlid's commenting on how a lot of Craft players want to put the plot on hold so they can craft their goodies.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
This thread has joked a lot with Charms such as Craftsman Needs No Tools that allows you to hide in a cave and make nuclear weapons by banging rocks together.
It is very much sarcasm.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
For the sake of accuracy, I'll point out that CNNT still needs raw materials to work with; sure, you can squeeze raw ore between your fingers and make iron bars come out, but you actually need to find a seam of ore before that can happen.
- Location
- Florida, United States
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
SHONEN AS FUCK!
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well yeah, but you can also completely ignore any infrastructure and tool requirements. Solars are human Exalts, and humans use tools and infrastructure to do the impossible.
Aleph
Princess of Stabbity
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Actually, that's really what Craft should look like - iterative. He doesn't bang rocks together and get microelectronics out, he bangs rocks together to make tools that he uses to make better tools that he uses to make better tools. Like how here he uses fire to make a kiln and then uses the kiln to make a clay smelter and then uses the smelter to make metal. CNNT shouldn't let you bypass the need for tools entirely, it should just let you use tools as if they were higher up the ladder of sophistication than they are. Otherwise there's no point in making tools at all, and that's boring, especially when Solars are "human heroes" and humans are fundamentally tool-users.
Edit: Curses, a malicious Sidereal snuck in to pre-empt me. Clearly working under orders from the Bureau of Destiny.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Functionally, the point of CNNT is to allow you to to take Craft actions when you normally couldn't, not obviate infrastructure. You're supposed to use it to make infrastructure. It has the speed buff for two reasons- one is to allow you to attempt 'mundane' craft actions in a reasonable timescale, and then to keep it useful later on. In addition, always allowed to use better tools in conjunction with CNNT.
Unfortunately, the text of the 2e charm is too broad, allowing for abusive behaviors. This is why Oadenol's Codex specified that CNNT counted as a basic workshop. (-2 penalty to all magical crafts). Again, on paper, you're supposed to be much more strict about interpreting what can/cannot be CNNT'd freely.
Unfortunately, the text of the 2e charm is too broad, allowing for abusive behaviors. This is why Oadenol's Codex specified that CNNT counted as a basic workshop. (-2 penalty to all magical crafts). Again, on paper, you're supposed to be much more strict about interpreting what can/cannot be CNNT'd freely.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I like this view of Craft, where you use CNNT to make better tools, that you use to make better tools, that you use to make better tools until you're standing with a diamond cutter and a blowtorch and you are busy making a nuclear weapon (no don't ask me how you make a nuclear weapon with a diamond cutter and a blowtorch), and then you'll teach them all.
And then you interrupt your work for like five years because you need a road to transport Jade from that mountain over there, so together with your Circle's Dawn you conquer that fucking kingdom in the way and make them build a road and mine the shit out of that mountain, so you can have the Jade that you then start building tools for working with jade and then you make better and better tools and repeat this cycle ad infinitum.
And while you're doing this, you get your Night to obfuscate it because you don't want anyone to know that you're working on the freaking Manhattan project (Lookshy project?) right there, and the Eclipse makes non-aggression pacts with a bunch of dudes while the Night makes sure that people who ask too many questions and shines too bright of a light into this whole thing vanish and aren't missed.
I kinda like this way of approaching Craft.