Salty
Shadow Cabal Assumptor Supreme
- Location
- Sun, Moon, Talia
- Pronouns
- I/Me
God of <X> is a job, not a species.
General Exalted Thread
Peanut-007
Hat or Hair? America decides.
- Location
- Maryland, United States of America
Huh. I really should have known that since Celestial Bureauacracy and unemployeds gods are a big thing but for some reason I got it in my head that things just spontaneously generated gods.
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I think the Least Gods spontaneously generate, but that's stuff like the God Of This One Specific Teacup, or God Of That Leaf Over There In A Pile Of Identical Leaves.
Which also went the way of the dodo, thank God.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
if you people start an edition war over least gods i will literally murder you
In other news, @TheOneMoiderah is an artist, and he is an artist on Sufficient Velocity.
And he is a really good artist who makes really cool art for prices that are frankly too small for the sheer life, vibrancy and quality he fills his works with. He is responsible for works such as:
As you can see, all these pieces are extremely well-made, characterized by a unique, vibrant style, full of striking colour and action. It also has buff women, cool armour, awesome weaponry and much much more, but most importantly, it can perfectly contrast the epic and mythic with the gritty and mundane. In After the Hunt, our protagonist is an almost Witcher-like figure, she's clearly experienced because she looks tired and almost bored, but the gore spread around and on her cheek indicates so much more; almost an orgy of violence.
So go check him out, and go check out his art, and pay him good bucks to get rad pictures of rad stuff. Because he's good and letting his skills go to waste not drawing cool stuff is a sin.
In other news, @TheOneMoiderah is an artist, and he is an artist on Sufficient Velocity.
And he is a really good artist who makes really cool art for prices that are frankly too small for the sheer life, vibrancy and quality he fills his works with. He is responsible for works such as:
As you can see, all these pieces are extremely well-made, characterized by a unique, vibrant style, full of striking colour and action. It also has buff women, cool armour, awesome weaponry and much much more, but most importantly, it can perfectly contrast the epic and mythic with the gritty and mundane. In After the Hunt, our protagonist is an almost Witcher-like figure, she's clearly experienced because she looks tired and almost bored, but the gore spread around and on her cheek indicates so much more; almost an orgy of violence.
So go check him out, and go check out his art, and pay him good bucks to get rad pictures of rad stuff. Because he's good and letting his skills go to waste not drawing cool stuff is a sin.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
Gods aren't bound to their posts like that; if you wreck a god's domain, he loses a lot of power (and probably most of his prayer income), but it isn't immediately lethal.
In a perfect world, any god whose domain was destroyed or rendered irrelevant would submit a notice to Yu Shan, whose bureaucrats would then find a new job posting for him to be assigned to. In reality, there's no shortage of unemployed divinities.
With your example, it'd be likely that the god of the vanishing martial arts style would take a keen interest in reestablishing it, because that's how he starts rebuilding his power base. Whether he actually gives a damn about the martial art itself or just sees it as a means to an end is up to you.
A domain that's left untended for long enough (without getting eaten by the Wyld, or turned into a Yozic demesne, or otherwise royally jacked up) will, in theory, eventually bring a god to manage it. If Yu Shan received a notice of the unclaimed domain, they might send an existing deity to take up the position; however, if that doesn't happen (and it often doesn't in the Age of Sorrows), then the Loom generates a god to oversee the untended domain. The vast majority of gods originate from this automated generation process, which is part of why they tend to have a different sort of psychology than mortals.
To my knowledge, the only other source of new gods is either gods deciding to bone down with each other (not exactly common, since gods can be prima donnas and a new god in the area could screw with the parents' resource flow) or a sufficiently Essence-rich mortal achieving apotheosis (there's a more-or-less stillborn TMA in my scratch notes whose god is the person who invented the style, elevated to divinity by the act of establishing their school).
So not to go dredging up the topic again, and explicitly not looking to reignite that argument, given how far it ranged from the point, but here is how you Fix what role Raksi serves in the greater generalities of Creation's elder Exalts.
The foremost problem is her illustrated cannibalism is both too strident of a "monstrous" trait, and also too personal for the groups she is expected to interact with. Too-monstrous on the front that while, yes, myth is rife with bestial shapechangers who hold only the trappings of detached humanity and are effectively Hannibal Lector with magic powers, they are deliberately painted as subhuman and a threat to the protagonist for doing so. One can argue that, for conflicts between Exalted and Elders to have any kind of thematic weight of "this could be You someday," the kind of evils they do should better reflect the kinds of evils man inflicts against man, rather than use that as a vehicle to declare any given NPC a rabid dog with no purpose save to goad the character into killing her on the basis of one extreme quirk which quite frankly dominates the rest of her characterization and strips it of any nuance. This isn't the World of Darkness, where you're already assumed to become a monster one day yourself, so therefore making nice with people holding a similar stripe of subhuman urges is Expected as a matter of course.
Secondly there is the issue of threat posed by this cannibalism, which is the reason why rarely do the folk tales of Baga Yaga and similar figures ever run into someone who is both their equal and means to do them active harm. Fairytale monsters only work in the same manner that ghost stories do, by putting either the protagonist or someone she loves at genuine risk and out of a position of safety and control. But PCs are not children or daring youths imperiled by this nature, but arguably peers to the monster they face, and so someone like Raksi has has no unknowable, unstoppable control or supernatural authority which forces them to either take her flaws as the cost of doing business or not at all. They can simply wrest away her primacy and remove her and these gross habits from the equation to take what they would have asked or bargained for instead. By narratively-demanding she comprise a threat to the PCs as a Monster instead of towards some third party with the PCs intervening in the conflict, the potential for the "nuance" held up as the entire point of the "make deals with objectionable forces" exercise gets drained out by the greater position of the group to be a bigger threat to her than vice-versa.
You've created a situation where the most sensible response upon finding out you are dealing with Sadako is to bring along a Proton Pack. Simply because you can engineer conflict between two factions doesn't mean the story has two sides.
Lastly is the Personal thing I mentioned. Raksi's baby-eating is a trait which may as well not exist unless she meets with a player character. Its an element of monstrosity which both colors every single interaction a PC will have with her by reputation alone, while at the same time influencing Nothing Else about her goals, interests, or impact on the world around her. Its a single bullet-point of Something Weird to spring on anyone not prepared or prior-warned about it, much like Tammuz' rampant misogyny, Leviathan's allowance of institutionalized abuse, Maha's camps, and so on. In fact, this is something which comes up far more among Lunars than anyother splat Elder, where they are required to be more explicitly Terrible than most others, who can at least excuse their awfulness on big-picture planning or organizing some form of mass-scale conspiracy. The Lunar Elders are simply failed people, and delivered with a giant animal-form so that you don't have to consider them or their ridiculous actions as that of a once-human being anymore.
But setting that aside, lets Fix Raksi to make her something more nuanced, while still monstrous in her own way:
All who live in the shadow of the Queen of Fangs know well her many appetites, for she is a creature of tributes, tithes and offerings, seated upon a throne of unimaginable wealth yet never sated by these excesses. She ever hungers for more, but withholds her hand yet barely, content to lurk in her capital of Sperimin where the paths lie overgrown and the vines are thick overhead, knowing her desires will simply be laid at her feet. It is this dreadful influence which is felt throughout her domain, and the peoples who struggle beneath her yoke have devised many epithets for the role she plays as a tyrant beyond the walls and borders.
She is Raksi, the Scourge Upon the Young. All know the Lunar Queen's tithe, 'One yearly son for Sperimin's armies, or one yearly daughter for Sperimin's libraries.' Few make this offer willingly, knowing that her hunger seeks to bleed the disparate communities dry as aging hands and minds toil to keep culture and family alive. So many withhold out of defiant pride, despite the nightmares which stalk the treelines and darkened streets after the sun drifts low. Blood-curling howls pierce the late night hours, grunts and thumps against locked doors, bestial tracks and claw-marks riddle the unpaved roads and houses in the months following a successful birth, the rising pitch and intensity turning a time once of celebration into one of fear and suspicion. Chieftains meet and argue, insisting the other pay the price, debating ideas of lotteries, responsibilities, to no avail.
Then, after months of harrowing stress and close encounters, the menace evaporates overnight, leaving behind only an empty cradle and a mother's sorrow. The community grieves as one, saying the Queen of Fangs has taken the child, to be eaten in her hunger as a distancing but gentle lie. For it is too difficult to acknowledge what the weeks of tension and strain has caused one among their people to do, what has been willingly offered up to the Lunar's agents out of fear, to assign blame for capitulating to the whims of a force beyond mortal control or reasoning. Sometimes both mother and child are found missing come morning, though running towards Raksi's domain or escaping her, perhaps even fleeing the village itself, none can truly say with certainty. The pall of silence reigns again over both the wilderness and the people, and uncomfortable peace remains until the year passes, and next child of omen is born.
She is Raksi, the Devourer of Minds and Hearts. The great vaults and libraries of Sperimin house the greatest repository of knowledge in the span of the Southeast, and everyone knows well the legends of the Lunar Queen's ever-consuming curiosity for intelligence and trivia alike. How she may grant an incredible boon to any who can brave the humid jungles and dangerous beasts to bring her something which she did not already know, and countless madmen have flocked into the tangled undergrowth on misguided pilgrimage, seemingly to foreseeable deaths at the hand of disease, accident and misfortune.
But the truth is more clever and cruel, for with the Queen of Fangs' blessing many find their way eased in safety and comfort, and though her court looms large with power and spectacle, generosity readily bestows any petitioner with the knowledge they wish... but always too much, and too quickly. This gift sours the thoughts of seekers with Raksi's own infectious ambition, twisting compassionate quests for unknown cures into relentless crusades to discover true immortality, and investigations into the sciences of the past into terrible abuses driven by scholarly fervor. Of those who possess an unquenchable greed comparable to her own, she keeps them close and lets run free amid the glories of Sperimin, to catalogue and compile its innumerable mysteries for her benefit, and none are ever seen again.
She is Raksi, the Beast who Traffics in Skins of Men. There is one game of which the Queen of Fangs never tires, when an envoy arrives on foot or horseback to the outskirts of a destitute village, singing highly in her praises. Clad in ape pelt and silver jewelry, sometimes carrying a disturbingly familiar cast of feature, the envoy speaks of the greatness of Sperimin's comforts, the wealth and finery of its courts and the might of its defenders. At how this beleaguered community could too know this wonder, the majesty in service, all for the price of the annual tithe. More daughters must equip Sperimin's standing guard, more sons must translate Sperimin's cryptic ciphers.
This too is seen as Raksi's mischief come to seed the people with despair, anger and questioning resignation, leading to sudden and uncharacteristic violence. Laws and morals cast aside, the messenger is beaten to death with fist and stone as an effigy of the Lunar Queen's overbearing demands, torn apart by dogs and thrown into a deep grave though all present know another will come. Another always comes eventually, despite the blood on their hands and the troubling feelings in their hearts, how stress and oppression conspire to make beasts of men. Raksi toys with their defiance and relishes this fraying unity, and sometime soon, she may well capitalize upon it to consume them all. The traditions, history and legends of the peoples, the failing cultures and beliefs held onto for so long despite all odds, may disappear forever as another neatly-filed record into lofty Sperimin's halls.
The foremost problem is her illustrated cannibalism is both too strident of a "monstrous" trait, and also too personal for the groups she is expected to interact with. Too-monstrous on the front that while, yes, myth is rife with bestial shapechangers who hold only the trappings of detached humanity and are effectively Hannibal Lector with magic powers, they are deliberately painted as subhuman and a threat to the protagonist for doing so. One can argue that, for conflicts between Exalted and Elders to have any kind of thematic weight of "this could be You someday," the kind of evils they do should better reflect the kinds of evils man inflicts against man, rather than use that as a vehicle to declare any given NPC a rabid dog with no purpose save to goad the character into killing her on the basis of one extreme quirk which quite frankly dominates the rest of her characterization and strips it of any nuance. This isn't the World of Darkness, where you're already assumed to become a monster one day yourself, so therefore making nice with people holding a similar stripe of subhuman urges is Expected as a matter of course.
Secondly there is the issue of threat posed by this cannibalism, which is the reason why rarely do the folk tales of Baga Yaga and similar figures ever run into someone who is both their equal and means to do them active harm. Fairytale monsters only work in the same manner that ghost stories do, by putting either the protagonist or someone she loves at genuine risk and out of a position of safety and control. But PCs are not children or daring youths imperiled by this nature, but arguably peers to the monster they face, and so someone like Raksi has has no unknowable, unstoppable control or supernatural authority which forces them to either take her flaws as the cost of doing business or not at all. They can simply wrest away her primacy and remove her and these gross habits from the equation to take what they would have asked or bargained for instead. By narratively-demanding she comprise a threat to the PCs as a Monster instead of towards some third party with the PCs intervening in the conflict, the potential for the "nuance" held up as the entire point of the "make deals with objectionable forces" exercise gets drained out by the greater position of the group to be a bigger threat to her than vice-versa.
You've created a situation where the most sensible response upon finding out you are dealing with Sadako is to bring along a Proton Pack. Simply because you can engineer conflict between two factions doesn't mean the story has two sides.
Lastly is the Personal thing I mentioned. Raksi's baby-eating is a trait which may as well not exist unless she meets with a player character. Its an element of monstrosity which both colors every single interaction a PC will have with her by reputation alone, while at the same time influencing Nothing Else about her goals, interests, or impact on the world around her. Its a single bullet-point of Something Weird to spring on anyone not prepared or prior-warned about it, much like Tammuz' rampant misogyny, Leviathan's allowance of institutionalized abuse, Maha's camps, and so on. In fact, this is something which comes up far more among Lunars than anyother splat Elder, where they are required to be more explicitly Terrible than most others, who can at least excuse their awfulness on big-picture planning or organizing some form of mass-scale conspiracy. The Lunar Elders are simply failed people, and delivered with a giant animal-form so that you don't have to consider them or their ridiculous actions as that of a once-human being anymore.
But setting that aside, lets Fix Raksi to make her something more nuanced, while still monstrous in her own way:
All who live in the shadow of the Queen of Fangs know well her many appetites, for she is a creature of tributes, tithes and offerings, seated upon a throne of unimaginable wealth yet never sated by these excesses. She ever hungers for more, but withholds her hand yet barely, content to lurk in her capital of Sperimin where the paths lie overgrown and the vines are thick overhead, knowing her desires will simply be laid at her feet. It is this dreadful influence which is felt throughout her domain, and the peoples who struggle beneath her yoke have devised many epithets for the role she plays as a tyrant beyond the walls and borders.
She is Raksi, the Scourge Upon the Young. All know the Lunar Queen's tithe, 'One yearly son for Sperimin's armies, or one yearly daughter for Sperimin's libraries.' Few make this offer willingly, knowing that her hunger seeks to bleed the disparate communities dry as aging hands and minds toil to keep culture and family alive. So many withhold out of defiant pride, despite the nightmares which stalk the treelines and darkened streets after the sun drifts low. Blood-curling howls pierce the late night hours, grunts and thumps against locked doors, bestial tracks and claw-marks riddle the unpaved roads and houses in the months following a successful birth, the rising pitch and intensity turning a time once of celebration into one of fear and suspicion. Chieftains meet and argue, insisting the other pay the price, debating ideas of lotteries, responsibilities, to no avail.
Then, after months of harrowing stress and close encounters, the menace evaporates overnight, leaving behind only an empty cradle and a mother's sorrow. The community grieves as one, saying the Queen of Fangs has taken the child, to be eaten in her hunger as a distancing but gentle lie. For it is too difficult to acknowledge what the weeks of tension and strain has caused one among their people to do, what has been willingly offered up to the Lunar's agents out of fear, to assign blame for capitulating to the whims of a force beyond mortal control or reasoning. Sometimes both mother and child are found missing come morning, though running towards Raksi's domain or escaping her, perhaps even fleeing the village itself, none can truly say with certainty. The pall of silence reigns again over both the wilderness and the people, and uncomfortable peace remains until the year passes, and next child of omen is born.
She is Raksi, the Devourer of Minds and Hearts. The great vaults and libraries of Sperimin house the greatest repository of knowledge in the span of the Southeast, and everyone knows well the legends of the Lunar Queen's ever-consuming curiosity for intelligence and trivia alike. How she may grant an incredible boon to any who can brave the humid jungles and dangerous beasts to bring her something which she did not already know, and countless madmen have flocked into the tangled undergrowth on misguided pilgrimage, seemingly to foreseeable deaths at the hand of disease, accident and misfortune.
But the truth is more clever and cruel, for with the Queen of Fangs' blessing many find their way eased in safety and comfort, and though her court looms large with power and spectacle, generosity readily bestows any petitioner with the knowledge they wish... but always too much, and too quickly. This gift sours the thoughts of seekers with Raksi's own infectious ambition, twisting compassionate quests for unknown cures into relentless crusades to discover true immortality, and investigations into the sciences of the past into terrible abuses driven by scholarly fervor. Of those who possess an unquenchable greed comparable to her own, she keeps them close and lets run free amid the glories of Sperimin, to catalogue and compile its innumerable mysteries for her benefit, and none are ever seen again.
She is Raksi, the Beast who Traffics in Skins of Men. There is one game of which the Queen of Fangs never tires, when an envoy arrives on foot or horseback to the outskirts of a destitute village, singing highly in her praises. Clad in ape pelt and silver jewelry, sometimes carrying a disturbingly familiar cast of feature, the envoy speaks of the greatness of Sperimin's comforts, the wealth and finery of its courts and the might of its defenders. At how this beleaguered community could too know this wonder, the majesty in service, all for the price of the annual tithe. More daughters must equip Sperimin's standing guard, more sons must translate Sperimin's cryptic ciphers.
This too is seen as Raksi's mischief come to seed the people with despair, anger and questioning resignation, leading to sudden and uncharacteristic violence. Laws and morals cast aside, the messenger is beaten to death with fist and stone as an effigy of the Lunar Queen's overbearing demands, torn apart by dogs and thrown into a deep grave though all present know another will come. Another always comes eventually, despite the blood on their hands and the troubling feelings in their hearts, how stress and oppression conspire to make beasts of men. Raksi toys with their defiance and relishes this fraying unity, and sometime soon, she may well capitalize upon it to consume them all. The traditions, history and legends of the peoples, the failing cultures and beliefs held onto for so long despite all odds, may disappear forever as another neatly-filed record into lofty Sperimin's halls.
- Location
- Ekaterinburg, Russia
Egads...So. Panel 5. What Splat's perfect dodge? Lunar, Abyssal, other?[
Well, it can't be Solar - those are about human prowess and this is anything but.
Abyssal? Unlikely, the one I remember was about having the wounds inflicted, shrugging them off, and then the wounds regenerate swiftly.
This one... I'd probably make it Infernal, with emphasis on flowing around the attack, so either Dodge or Soak of some kind.
EDIT: Also, Lunar Chimera does sound close-ish. They have a Perfect similar to that. Also, are cray-cray.
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- Location
- Ottawa
Should be possible for regular Lunars, if you ask me.
Their god-monster schtick really should include a bit of shoggoth stuff; after all, that's one of the primary modern interpretations of the concept. And it fits with the shapeshifting powers too.
Their god-monster schtick really should include a bit of shoggoth stuff; after all, that's one of the primary modern interpretations of the concept. And it fits with the shapeshifting powers too.
- Location
- Ottawa
Well, Lunars have always been a bit incoherent. But the monster themes have always been in the soup somewhere, and the plan for 3e was (is?) to emphasise them.
To be clear, I think that was and is a good idea. Animal themes are fine too, but Lunars should draw from more than just mundane beasts.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
As always, I'll take the chance to reminisce about the prototype TAW doc's version of Chimeras - their Great Curse focuses on Intimacies, the people, places, and ideas that the Lunar wishes to protect (or protect against), magnifying their metaphysical impact until eventually you have things like a raksha-hating Lunar whose hatred for the Wyld occasionally seizes control of him and turns him into a mass of singing crystal which mindlessly consumes Wyld-things (and the Wyld-tainted, and villagers who live too close to Wyld Zones) to feed itself - and all he knows is that there's a crystalline Wyld horror on the loose in his lands, and he can't seem to track it down. He spends days, weeks even, trying to follow this abomination's trail, until sometimes it feels like vast stretches of time just fade away into a featureless blur...
Here's the start of those Cecelyne charm rewrites that I promised.
So Hellscry Chakra has the problem in that it's powerful, but in a narrow way that makes it useless a lot of the time. It gives a huge number of bonuses against demons, to the extent that I believe that the writer said that it would allow the Infernal to read a demon's character sheet.
However, it's the Infernal's 'perceive dematerialized spirits' charm and it can only perceive demons. There are three charm purchases you can make at Essences 3 and 4, along with extra mote commitments, to allow you to see gods and elementals, but even with everything purchased it can't perceive everything.
My solution was to split the base charm into two, so there's one purchase to see all dematerialized beings, and another to get a reduced set of bonuses against demons. Then I changed Wayward Divinity Oversight and its repurchase to Essence 2 and removed its applicability towards Exalts. Cecelyne doesn't have a strong answer for the Exalted, but her themes of insight and dominating spirits makes it hard for more spiritual beings to escape her notice.
HELLSCRY CHAKRA
Cost: 5m ; Mins: Essence 2; Type: Simple
Keywords: Combo-OK
Duration: Indefinite
Prerequisite Charms: None
The Infernal opens his caste mark as an imperceptible third eye upon his brow. This spiritual organ perceives the flow of demonic Essence as a garish synthetic overlay of colors and tastes.
While this charm is active, the Exalt gains the following benefits:
WAYWARD DIVINITY OVERSIGHT
Cost: — ; Mins: Essence 2; Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: Hellscry Chakra x2
Infernal Exalted understand demons better than other spirits because they are the most closely related in nature and power. However, the Primordials created the gods in the image of their aspects, so they remain understandable.
This charm permanently enhances its prerequisite, expanding the Infernal's perception and allowing her to apply the bonus successes from Hellscry Chakra against gods and elementals as well as demons.
A repurchase allows the Infernal to apply the bonuses from Hellscry Chakra against beings from outside of Creation, including Creatures of Death and Creatures of the Wyld. These bonus successes never apply against the Exalted
So Hellscry Chakra has the problem in that it's powerful, but in a narrow way that makes it useless a lot of the time. It gives a huge number of bonuses against demons, to the extent that I believe that the writer said that it would allow the Infernal to read a demon's character sheet.
However, it's the Infernal's 'perceive dematerialized spirits' charm and it can only perceive demons. There are three charm purchases you can make at Essences 3 and 4, along with extra mote commitments, to allow you to see gods and elementals, but even with everything purchased it can't perceive everything.
My solution was to split the base charm into two, so there's one purchase to see all dematerialized beings, and another to get a reduced set of bonuses against demons. Then I changed Wayward Divinity Oversight and its repurchase to Essence 2 and removed its applicability towards Exalts. Cecelyne doesn't have a strong answer for the Exalted, but her themes of insight and dominating spirits makes it hard for more spiritual beings to escape her notice.
HELLSCRY CHAKRA
Cost: 5m ; Mins: Essence 2; Type: Simple
Keywords: Combo-OK
Duration: Indefinite
Prerequisite Charms: None
The Infernal opens his caste mark as an imperceptible third eye upon his brow. This spiritual organ perceives the flow of demonic Essence as a garish synthetic overlay of colors and tastes.
While this charm is active, the Exalt gains the following benefits:
- He perceives dematerialized beings with all senses, recognizing that they are incorporeal.
- He perceives all possessing beings as a smoky anima banner enveloping their host.
- He adds [Essence] bonus successes to all rolls to notice them, to track them, to understand their nature, and to pierce any of their disguise attempts while this charm is active.
- This extends to objects created from demons or using hellish principles, such as Helltech, Infernal relics, or other demonic constructs.
- If the target isn't using magic to contest this action, the Infernal may spend 1Willpower to automatically succeed.
WAYWARD DIVINITY OVERSIGHT
Cost: — ; Mins: Essence 2; Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: Hellscry Chakra x2
Infernal Exalted understand demons better than other spirits because they are the most closely related in nature and power. However, the Primordials created the gods in the image of their aspects, so they remain understandable.
This charm permanently enhances its prerequisite, expanding the Infernal's perception and allowing her to apply the bonus successes from Hellscry Chakra against gods and elementals as well as demons.
A repurchase allows the Infernal to apply the bonuses from Hellscry Chakra against beings from outside of Creation, including Creatures of Death and Creatures of the Wyld. These bonus successes never apply against the Exalted
For those interested the 3e dragonblooded kickstarter will drop on the 27th noon EDT!
for more info go here Dragon Blood From a Stone [Monday Meeting Notes]
The gist of it is as follows.
1. They fucked up the 3e core kickstarter badly and they are more than aware of that fact.
2. The book is text completed and fully edited, much like the Trinity kickstarter we will be getting sections of the book over the kickstarter with the final draft in our hands before kickstarter end.
for more info go here Dragon Blood From a Stone [Monday Meeting Notes]
The gist of it is as follows.
1. They fucked up the 3e core kickstarter badly and they are more than aware of that fact.
2. The book is text completed and fully edited, much like the Trinity kickstarter we will be getting sections of the book over the kickstarter with the final draft in our hands before kickstarter end.
- Location
- Ottawa
If this one and the next one go well, I might back the one after that.
They've actually noted you get the full text of the DB book before the end of the kickstarter, so you can go through it and decide to cancel your pledge if you find anything in the book you don't like.
Frakir's brother
Goodbye.
- Location
- The Sea of Trees
There is the ES fix where the Infernal has to actually work to grant the wish.
I'd give the Infernal a bonus to actions working towards granting the wish, maybe make ' Working towards granting a wish' an applicable modification to the Cecelyne Excellency.
- Location
- Ottawa
It's not the contents of the book that I'm worried about. It's the ability and willingness of Onyx Path to fulfil its promises.
I guess there's something to be said for backing with the full intention of pulling out. Would normally feel rather dishonest, but they seem to be okay with it.
You know, that's a good question. Let's check.
Name of the Harvest, the Last Ship Floating
Greater Dead
Union of Her Crew
"I'm fine," she said, brushing off a bruise and returning to her station. It hurt, but she could still fight.
"I'm fine," he said, hiding the wound that was killing him. He'd last long enough to do his job. Better not to distract anyone.
"I'm fine," they said, as their bodies mouldered and their ship returned to battle.
In a war for existence itself, there is no surrender. When the wounded will not be spared, the wounded get up and fight. When the dead will not be spared, the dead get up and fight.
As long as you can still fight, you're fine. You have to be. Even if you aren't, you still can't let others worry for you.
And so, in the Balorian Crusade, it was not unusual for soldiers and sailors to abandon their broken bodies and find a place they can hide from the sun while they return to the battle. It was not unusual, but sometimes it went to unusual lengths, as it did aboard the fast battleship Name of the Harvest.
First one sailor died, and returned to his duty. His comrades found it somewhat odd, but celebrated the return of both a friend and another hand manning the cannons. He was needed, so the captain never reported the situation to high command.
Then more died, as the battles intensified, and the armies of the Wyld crashed on the waves of Creation. But they kept fighting, so it was fine. The Name of the Harvest was fine. If it wasn't fine, it'd be taken off the battle line, away from the war that absolutely must be won, so it was fine.
And then one day, no one living remained aboard the ship. It kept fighting. It was fine. Their fleet grew suspicious, but the ship was fine. The fleet found out, but it was fine. They kept their distance, but it was on their side, so it was fine.
Steel and jade hull broke under the onslaught of the fae. The crew provided bone. Motors and armatures gave way. Arms and sinew took their place. Cannons warped under the stress of firing. Long-dead sailors offered their skulls to fire from. Where legs were unnecessary, the crew fused into their stations. Fused into each other. They had been different people, but that did not matter. Only one thing mattered. The world would not be lost. The ship could still fight.
In the end, the war was won. But there was no port to return to. No one needed an abomination. There were new wars to fight, but none so vital a ship of the dead was needed.
And so Name of the Harvest set sail. The ship is still sailing. There's no port to return to, after all. None that lasts. Just more wars, more enemies, a decaying world they gave everything to save, and more people desperate enough to turn to a monster until they don't need it anymore.
But it's okay. It's fine.
They're fine.
Notes and Abilities: Greater Dead formed by the fusion of a ship's crew are one of the more common Unions, to the degree the word 'common' can ever apply to the Greater Dead. The people aboard a ship live together, fight together, and, when they die, usually do it together - a fertile seed for them to stay together even beyond that, whether by fusing together or being devoured by a stronger soul among them. The Last Ship Floating is one of the more manageable of this type - a fairly friendly ghost ship that mostly wants to be helpful to someone or other, and whose personal interests in Creation are mostly long-dead. However, anyone who wishes to work with them should avoid friendly interactions with the forces of the Wyld or Oblivion - Name of the Harvest has a great deal of forgiveness for everything except them, and will expend considerable effort to eradicate any percieved threat to the continued existence of Creation.
While affable, Name of the Harvest should not be depended on for loyalty. They do not, at any point, expect any association to be lasting, and have learned a long time ago not to open their heart. Beyond that, Name of the Harvest is a ship of the Shogunate, and is openly scornful of those who claim to be its successors or rulers of this fallen Age, such as the Realm. They will work with the Realm or its competitors if necessary or if properly incentivized, but will not remain until ejected from the premises as they would other masters. While born with many of the Shogunate's attitudes towards demons and Anathema, their own nature as an undead abomination has cooled those views, and they will be willing to hear such beings out and cooperate when needed.
A necromancer would primarily summon Name of the Harvest for combat. They are not a particularly precise tool, but remains one of the mightiest battleships on the face of Creation, with nearly unmatched firepower, armour, and speed, capable of devastating most artifice of the Second Age within moments. If they were bound down into a host, a great degree of convenience would be gained - a host is a great deal easier to fit into most areas of Creation than a massive battleship is - though they would lose the ability to ferry the necromancer across the sea. They may also take advantage of the ghost ship's expertise - the crew were not the brightest minds of the Shogunate, but were very experienced in operating and maintaining Shogunate-era artifice, and have expanded their knowledge since their death.
Just a ship! Probably genderfluid if anything, given the amount of genders that went into their birth. I mean granted you could use a girl as the host for them, but that's not my fault.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
I am disappointed. Where is the Sand-Ship-Girl who ravages the Southern Underworld?