After the gates of Troy were thrown open for the Achaians,
Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, murdered Priam at his family altar of Zeus and then took Andromache, Hector's widow, as a prize.
Ajax the Lesser dragged Cassandra, Priam's daughter' away from the statue of the militantly virgin goddess Athena in her temple and violated her
Menelaus captured and mutilated Deiphobus, third husband of Helen, leading to his death
Odysseus, hero of the Odyssey, threw Astyanax, infant son of Hector, from a high place down onto rocks
The royal women were apportioned as prizes, except for Priam's daughter Polyxena who was sacrificed on the tomb of Achilies. Cassandra would be given to Agamemnon and promptly murdered along with him upon their return to Argos by his wife and her lover, because he sacrificed their daughter to Artemis in order to be able to leave to go to Troy and possibly replaced her with this girl of the same age. (As a ghost he would complain about how his wife being unfaithful was proof that all women were liars and couldn't be trusted)
The city was burned to the ground, and the slaughter and other terrible things can be guessed.
Tantalus served his own son to the gods to prove he could trick them.
Lycaon did exactly the same thing
Atreus, father of Agamemnon and Menelaus, served his brother the bodies of his brother's sons because they couldn't agree who would become king.
Procne served her husband Tereus their son Itys as revenge for him raping her sister and cutting out her tongue.
It isn't like the annals of myth aren't filled with people who did horrible things who were nevertheless honored or main characters.
The thing is at the time of writing those myths, the horrible things they did was part of what made them heroes. They we're punishing Troys royalty for their crimes against Greece, and none of the actions they took would be seen as anything but more extreme versions of actions that armies actually did.
Given that context what they did wasn't shockingly horrible millennia ago as those actions would be today.
In the context of exalted, saying that some first age celestial found a way to transfer youth from one person to another that made eating younger people a thing, then that could be taken as an example of how decadent the first age was that the delibarative allowed baby eating to be a thing that happened at the height of madness, when mortals stopped mattering as individuals unless they were an exalt of some form.
I'm in the camp that in the age of sorrows, baby eating should either be something she does for practicle reasons or because she's crazy.
It could be a sign that she's insane by mortal standards, and regards not eating babies as a weird dietary preference some people have like person who would eat any fish but salmon. She'll respect that some people aren't a fan, but for big events, she could introduce them to it to expand there pallets.
Or it could be tied to a practical benefit that makes it something that you could see less scrupulous people indulging in. Like something that adds a few extra years to your lifespan for a little bit of cannibalism. Something that you could see the other organisations in creation indulging in if they thought they could get away with it.
The thing is at the time of writing those myths, the horrible things they did was part of what made them heroes. They we're punishing Troys royalty for their crimes against Greece, and none of the actions they took would be seen as anything but more extreme versions of actions that armies actually did.
Given that context what they did wasn't shockingly horrible millennia ago as those actions would be today.
I'm not sure about that, Plato directly attacks these stories and myths in The Republic about them being a bad influence on children in The Republic. Some things never change.
Sigh. I mean, that's not quite as bad as this discussion made out, but it's still fundamentally exactly the thing ('this person eats babies at the negotiating table, purely to get a rise out of her debating opponents') I've been arguing is tacky, edgelord trying-too-hard writing. I wish Vance had left it at "but I think odds are you've heard rumors." and leaned hard on that angle. I'm really surprised he's saying this at all, and I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he's abiding by some behind-closed-doors discussions with H&H about what material to grandfather in, but even if that's the case, it's still just a different flavour of bad.
The thing is at the time of writing those myths, the horrible things they did was part of what made them heroes. They we're punishing Troys royalty for their crimes against Greece, and none of the actions they took would be seen as anything but more extreme versions of actions that armies actually did.
Given that context what they did wasn't shockingly horrible millennia ago as those actions would be today.
A few points:
1. Homer went out of his way to make it clear that the Trojans were noble and defending themselves and their families in contrast to the often poorly behaved Greeks. Heroditus, recounting the origin of the conflict explained that wife stealing had been something the Greeks and the Asiatics had been doing for a while and it never really got punished, so the whole thing was an overreaction rather than some terrible crime against Greece.
2. The gods made a point of ensuring a bunch of victorious Greeks died before getting home as punishment for all of this. Ajax was about to be stoned for the sacrilege before he took shelter at the same altar he had pulled Cassandra from. Tantalus got a special and ironic punishment in the Underworld for the stunt he pulled. The Minotaur ate ten youths and ten maidens each year and was a terrible monster for it prior to being killed.
The actions were exactly as shocking then.
3. It was extremely important to tell the entire story of these people, good and bad. Kleos, what was said about you, is the only form of immortality mortals were going to get and so you keep them alive by telling their story, all of it. They were not celebrating these actions by repeating them, they were telling the full tale of the people who did the great things of the past.
3. It was extremely important to tell the entire story of these people, good and bad. Kleos, what was said about you, is the only form of immortality mortals were going to get and so you keep them alive by telling their story, all of it. They were not celebrating these actions by repeating them, they were telling the full tale of the people who did the great things of the past.
I'm not sure about that, Plato directly attacks these stories and myths in The Republic about them being a bad influence on children in The Republic. Some things never change.
Kaiya, I've been going 'round this circle of pointing out to you the unacceptability of rejecting articulated arguments with "just because you dislike it doesn't make it bad!" for actual years now, ever since you started that rhetorical tack with a literal screaming capslock tantrum. I've now put in the work of several lines of debate on this topic, and seeing you again respond by lazily going back to the same watering hole is something of a final straw, so I will be blunt:
If you are going to call me out with a quote, please put up an actual argument. Otherwise, kindly save yourself the time and fuck. off.
EDIT: To everyone else, I apologise for lowering the tone of the discussion like this, especially one with such a history of becoming ah... heated. I'll try to recuse myself from the thread for a few days to allow people to talk more amicably.
stop@Imrix your beheaviour in this thread is not acceptable. You have been issued a 25 point infraction and two week threadband for violation of rule three. Please be more considerate of other posters.
@Kuciwalker and @Sanctaphrax - don't cut each other's arguments up into tiny pieces when replying to them. You have both been issued staff notices not to spaghetti post.
Now, for something completely different, I have a peculiar request. Does someone know of a "simplified" version of Exalted? Not a simplified setting primer or something like that, an actual simplified version of the game. I would be content evn with a conversion in some simpler system (Savage Worlds, PbtA or the like). My usual group has just finished a campaign, so we're in search for something for the next one. A couple players want to play Exalted, but they found 2e and 3e a bit massive to learn.
Now, for something completely different, I have a peculiar request. Does someone know of a "simplified" version of Exalted? Not a simplified setting primer or something like that, an actual simplified version of the game. I would be content evn with a conversion in some simpler system (Savage Worlds, PbtA or the like). My usual group has just finished a campaign, so we're in search for something for the next one. A couple players want to play Exalted, but they found 2e and 3e a bit massive to learn.
Okay, so I'm in a game. It's a round-robin, and I'm first up for STing. Game is set in the East, and I am not as cognizant of the lore about the East as I perhaps should be. I'd like to set it somewhere that isn't the Scavenger Lands, just because it feels like everything starts there. (And the circle will probably wind up in Nexus anyways at some point.)
Doesn't help that as far as I can tell 3e doesn't have anything on Rathess, Mahalanka, or Volivat.
I actually have the basic rules for this game, and it's definitely a strong candidate. It also helps that we all came from D&D, so it would be easy to learn the game.
Now, for something completely different, I have a peculiar request. Does someone know of a "simplified" version of Exalted? Not a simplified setting primer or something like that, an actual simplified version of the game. I would be content evn with a conversion in some simpler system (Savage Worlds, PbtA or the like). My usual group has just finished a campaign, so we're in search for something for the next one. A couple players want to play Exalted, but they found 2e and 3e a bit massive to learn.
There's also Qwixalted, which is a homebrew of 2e that greatly simplifies...pretty much everything, based off/inspired by the simplified rules that the 1e Quickstart used.
There's also Qwixalted, which is a homebrew of 2e that greatly simplifies...pretty much everything, based off/inspired by the simplified rules that the 1e Quickstart used.
They go a fair bit beyond that. They've got guidelines for Limit Break, anima banners, Solar anima powers, Alchemical Charm-swapping, weakening Godbound to represent Terrestrials, and making Skill Words for Solars. Plus a full Fate Word for Sidereals and a full Shapeshifting Word for Lunars.
Does anyone know what happens to an Abyssal's body when they Exalt?
The chain of events, to my understanding, goes like this:
Solar-Worthy Act ---> Failure ---> Death* ---> Receive Black Exaltation ---> Appear in the Underworld ---> Meet Your Deathlord
If that's correct, then what happens to the Abyssal's body between Steps 4 & 5? Does it just get dragged down into the Underworld by ghostly hands, or sink into its own shadow or something? Does the Exaltation make a new body for the Abyssal to inhabit in the Underworld?
If that's incorrect, then what does happen?
* I mean, technically the Exaltation grabs you at the last possible moment before your souls decouple and you properly die, but still.
Does anyone know what happens to an Abyssal's body when they Exalt?
The chain of events, to my understanding, goes like this:
Solar-Worthy Act ---> Failure ---> Death* ---> Receive Black Exaltation ---> Appear in the Underworld ---> Meet Your Deathlord
If that's correct, then what happens to the Abyssal's body between Steps 4 & 5? Does it just get dragged down into the Underworld by ghostly hands, or sink into its own shadow or something? Does the Exaltation make a new body for the Abyssal to inhabit in the Underworld?
If that's incorrect, then what does happen? * I mean, technically the Exaltation grabs you at the last possible moment before your souls decouple and you properly die, but still.
Uh, nothing happens to you body, you keep it.
IIRC it's less "Appear in the Underworld" and more "You Deathlord appears before you like Luna does with Lunars", then they probably tell you to get your ass to the Underworld so they can get you kitted out properly.
They go a fair bit beyond that. They've got guidelines for Limit Break, anima banners, Solar anima powers, Alchemical Charm-swapping, weakening Godbound to represent Terrestrials, and making Skill Words for Solars. Plus a full Fate Word for Sidereals and a full Shapeshifting Word for Lunars.
Does anyone know what happens to an Abyssal's body when they Exalt?
The chain of events, to my understanding, goes like this:
Solar-Worthy Act ---> Failure ---> Death* ---> Receive Black Exaltation ---> Appear in the Underworld ---> Meet Your Deathlord
If that's correct, then what happens to the Abyssal's body between Steps 4 & 5? Does it just get dragged down into the Underworld by ghostly hands, or sink into its own shadow or something? Does the Exaltation make a new body for the Abyssal to inhabit in the Underworld?
- Die in your time of greatest need/greatest heroism
- At last moment of life, offered Black Exaltation
- Take the Last Breath
- (Optional - Kill the bastards who just killed you, not applicable for all Abyssals)
- (Optional - Deathlord can use your Monstrance as an arcane link so probably appears in your dreams or as a hallucination-message)
- (Optional - Calls you to meet them)
As far as content goes, this was a shorter, more focused/abbreviated session due to time/preparation constraints. It lacked some of the scope I personally liked to see, but it was still well-paced and a good balance of mechanical and character challenges.
Now, this is the second major brush with the 2e medicine rules, and you'll notice that we have a bit of a discussion on their formatting in the 2e book. This just goes to show you- when writing a game book, clarity is king!
Overall, the main thrust/goal of the session is politicing with Xandia, and healing the three special-cases patients in the Torchkeeper's hospital. We go over the Conviction rules in the log so I don't feel the need to over-explain them.
But, I will point out that intimacies can be created or eroded without rolls, and often are if the storyteller is consistent in tracking them. My personal experience as ST generally runs an NPC as a plot device or mouthpiece for information, a failing of mine. Aleph however has a much better record of memory and notekeeping, meaning that she can track things like Xandia's off-camera fluctuating commitments and ideals.
Getting into the meat of the session, an important note to make here is that Aleph is tracking 'soft' events. Inks has made claims to treat the untreatable, to solve medical mysteries and generally be Awesome... and she spared no effort to keep this hidden. She's made a bold statement and now the world is reacting to it.
Used here, this 'sets up' a potential positive or negative consequence- if Inks fails, she gets a reputation ding, if she succeeds, her reputation goes up!
But the underlying point is that Exalted, 2e especially, tries to hammer home that actions and consequences matter, and that you cannot assume that you act in a vacuum. This is why I dislike 'hypercompetent stealth intrigue' characters, because their MO is to let nothing 'stick' to them. The best kind of 'stealth' character in my mind is one who is using their stealth to Do things, not prevent complications.
Of course, complications are a problem, because presented poorly, they eat up valuable screen time and prevent players from achieving goals. Related to this is the idea of scope/goal creep.
Inks has been away from Gem for about 2.5 months now, maybe 3. Remember Creation has a 15 month year, but that's still a decent amount of time. Once I realized I could be greedy, I decided that I at least wanted to TRY to secure all the named Coxati lords as trade partners or even Allies on Inks's sheet. This means that I am going to spend more session time and dramatic time in Coxati than I originally expected, but the potential rewards are huge.
But related to this scope creep is that I've had to wildly adjust my experience plans, up to and including buy more Survivial Charms so I can eat up the months travel between Coxati states.
'Doing things' is an important element that players and storytellers need to tutorialize to each other. being cagey, unwilling to put your neck out, is the antithesis of plot. Aleph has rewarded me metatextually every time Inks overtly states 'I'm going to take over Gem', because even just saying that is has an objective effect on how people interact with her.
To the point where if Inks can convince people that she can do it, they very well may support her! Or oppose.
Of course, like any promise of 'I'll pay you back when I make it big!' it's the 'Make it big' part that's the challenge.
Anyway, back to medicine! The actual challenges were interesting, and I was very pleased that Aleph allowed me to be clever regarding the giant lady. I had no charm that would really fix her, as Flawless Diagnosis only gave me a 'Can't fully diagnose' response. From that we reasoned out her poor diet, and instead of trying to solve it with Medicine, I solved it with Bureaucracy.
The man with the creeper vine infection was an interesting challenge, and off-channel Aleph confided in me that this was a good difference in Keris vs Inks- It's a fact that other characters/other games influence any given player group, so this is normal and true. Keris's thought would have beend to save the cuttings for later, but like I said earlier with scope/goal creep, I already had enough on my table.
Of note that I sort of missed the significance of was that when Maleb inducted Aleph into the order with the ceremony, it was symbolic but meaningful- this is a concrete Thing that can now be invoked or leveraged, possibly up to and including a Background (that Aleph might want to think about?)
Finally we move on to Priscia- and to really underscore this, in 2nd age Creation, any kind of internal surgery is Difficulty 5 minimum. Flat out. So on paper you want 10d to even attempt it, but more seriously you want Attr 5, Ability 5, Specialty/Style +3, tool bonus, aide bonus and if you can think of it, thaumaturgical bonuses. This is before getting into Artifacts and Charms.
You'll also note that most Solar Medicine Charms are about Applicability, not boosting pools- that's what an Excellency is for.
On the roll itself, it was a near thing, but Inks succeeded and we treated what is conventionally considered the un-treatable, a brain tumor! Note that in reality, a god with the right Charm could have done the same thing, but gods are quirky and expensive, and one powerful enough probably was not known to Xandia and her court.
So here's where Aleph got one over on me. She laid several breadcrumbs that I was too tired or too tunnelvisioned to follow up on. Maleb's deferrence and obvious attention paid to Priscia, beyond that of a medical practitioner. Then Xandia's insistence on being present during the surgery.
All of this paid off when Xandia and Inks met after the surgery, and I realized that I'd been played- artfully so. It was one of the most fair and honest challenge-failings I have ever experienced, and I applaude Aleph for pulling it off. In essence, I was not thinking like a political actor when I could have been.
But either way, Inks has saved two lives and improved one other, and has earned significant goodwill with Xandia. The rest of the session meandered into a discussion of politics, and as you can see I got so stumped I could only ask to roll for a hint on how to proceed.
As an addendum, Aleph also went out of her way to give me experience for focusing on medicine actions/challenges. I'm not 100% sure why, but i suppose you could argue that this was a 'two session story', in that I was introduced to the challenges last time, and finished them up this time? If she persists, it would incentivize me to medicine more.
But that concludes the postmortem of Session 32- next time we hopefully will finish in Xandia and move on to Moto!
Oh, @Shyft. It amuses me greatly that "the GM tricking you" is something that you find surprising, or at least worthy of comment. My asshole of an ST does it frequently as a matter of course and then gloats about it.
But yes, Xandia's little scheme. Now, Inks largely laughed this off, and @Shyft more or less followed suit, but it's worth digging into what Xandia did here. First of all is the simple fact that she tricked a polymath genius Perception 5 Solar Exalt. And she did it the proper way - the Usurpation-OK way, to bring that haunting spectre of a keyword back up - by simply arranging matters such that Inks never had a reason to go looking, and also that if she did, she'd find something convincingly plausible, sufficiently complimentary and genuinely true enough that it would satisfy and distract her ("you're a really good medic so we want to learn from your knowledge / you've made a lot of big claims and now we're expecting you to show us your stuff").
This is a really good way to lie to someone smarter than you, because it means they rarely think to look beyond the surface layer in the first place, and if they do, they find something that looks more or less like what they expected and gives them something else to go and do which will additionally feed their ego or make them feel accomplished or otherwise satisfy them. It's a game of smoke and carrots with no sticks, and as can be seen here, it works. There's also the paired option of, if they get suspicious, letting them pierce the surface layer and discover your guilt... for a lesser crime that justifies whatever made them suspicious but doesn't merit much punishment, which is used to great effect in a number of works of fiction and is a reliable standby for a reason - for example a child who witnessed the parents of her and her friends murdering someone in the basement as a cult sacrifice being caught out on having snuck into the house by incriminating evidence... and tearfully confessing that she'd snuck in to raid the liquor cabinet for a teenage inauguration to alcohol.
This is how you should lie to a Solar. Because that makes it a plot thing and a roleplaying thing and a drama thing that you might even potentially attach mechanics to in a more developed social system. And it lets me showcase that yeah, Xandia is Int 5 too. She's just as clever as Inks is when the latter isn't boosting herself with glorious sunlight brain-overclocking.
RAW Judge's Ear Technique makes this a lot harder, of course, especially because it's a scenelong and thus you don't have to worry about spending motes to check every single statement and ping everything for half-truths or lies by omission instead of sometimes letting something slip by simply because you don't have a reason to activate it. This is, to my mind, a fault with RAW JET which should be remedied by cutting it down to Instant. But even then, even with an explicit truth-detection Charm in play that's being used to check your every statement, you can still get away with this kind of method if you're clever and lucky and they don't phrase their questions perfectly by deflecting and avoiding areas you don't want investigated and revealing ablative secrets that lead the questioner away from the core one you want hidden. This is how Keris has managed to sneak secrets and heresies and schemes past smarter, more politically adept characters who have the Infernal version of JET on multiple occasions. It's a really good way to play a liar, and lying-focused magic (of which there is surprisingly little in the game canon) only makes it stronger.
So, Xandia successfully pulled off this little deception. Next question; why? Well, as noted in the session aftermath itself, it meant she invalidated any attempt by Inks to hold it over her head - and the fact that she did it also suggests that she will oppose any attempts by Inks to cash in on the gratitude for having done it. Xandia managed to wrangle this one as a freebie, and as such she's not going to let it count as a debt owed (or in mechanical terms it won't count directly towards buying her as an Ally). Indeed, it's worth serious consideration into what she would have answered if Inks had discovered the ruse and tried to leverage Priscia's life for political concessions. Would Xandia have conceded, or would she have refused to capitulate even if it meant the life of her lover? This is the kind of stuff that may have occurred to Inks just from sheer Int 5 reflection, and will definitely pop up as big urgent questions to Pipera if and when she learns about the whole affair.
The medicine scenes were good! I had fun with these, showing off how hard high-end medicine can be, and Inks has comfortably won a reasonably high-level Backing from the Torchkeepers cult - though not quite as high as she'd have got if she'd taken Xandia's offer a while ago and jumped ship from Gem. There's definitely potential for her to turn the group into a regional cult if she puts multiple Major Project actions into it, and she's definitely in a position now to push for that sort of thing. As well as Backing she's also got her first serious regional Reputation background. The reason for the extra xp this session was because while she's worked miraculous healing before, both on Ajjim and Piercing Sun, this display was unprecedented in its publicity, its severity and its patients not already being bullshit demigods who are exceptional in their own right. This gives me many more opportunities for Plot, since Inks' reputation as a miracle-worker doctor and surgeon and healer is now firmly established - though I'm not going to actually give it to her for a while because, lol, Reputation is word-of-mouth and rumour and they only travel as fast as messengers do, which means they use the Long Distance Travel Rules to spread~
(I consider this a feature, not a bug, because as we saw while travelling to both Etiyadi and then Xandia, Exalts with even a moderate focus can beat mortal times easily. So if you commit HORRIBLE WAR CRIMES somewhere or get a MASSIVE BOUNTY on your head, you can feasibly beat the speed of your spreading Reputation to a Key Plot Location if you hustle.)
Some things never change.
