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General Exalted Thread

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The most in setting way to go about it would be to make it exceptionally costly to activate it for each use. If it costs Resources 5 to open it up at both ends every time you want to open a portal, it's not something that gives you world shaking utility, and it's not something you can afford to use except in the most earth shattering of emergencies. You can't then network all your settlements together and you still have to rely on roads and regular shipping methods.
 
Accelerator said:
So maybe make a keystone or something that an enemy can hit in order to destroy it? Or maybe make it maintenance heavy, with monthly sacrifices of resource 5?
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A big keystone is actually kind of too fantastical to fit the intended grit level. In the game, you destroy a Knot using plain old explosives to blast one of the pylons to bits. In another mission, you bring along experts who are able to repair a damaged pylon on-site. The 'experts' there I think is what you want to use as your 'maintenance' rather than anything super fantastical, or just plain boring like a monetary cost is. Now, the next stuff is based on context from Ex3, but you could have the Knots themselves be only moderately priced (for an artifact, I mean. Still crazy expensive relative to most other stuff) but have it require a kind of pseudo-Celestial circle working in order to activate, that costs 2-3wp to perform rather than a working's normal XP cost. Willpower regeneration is way lower than in previous editions, so this puts a limit to how much people can just zip around with them. Using a pseudo-working at the Celestial level means that Terrestrial sorcerers can use the Knots, but the people who can really get the most out of them are rare.
 
Personally, I'd design a fast travel artifact routing through Cecelyne. Ten days to go anywhere in Creation, taking you through secret paths with all the risks inherent. Much cheaper, but slower and dangerous.
 
Frakir's brother said:
Personally, I'd design a fast travel artifact routing through Cecelyne. Ten days to go anywhere in Creation, taking you through secret paths with all the risks inherent. Much cheaper, but slower and dangerous.
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That would be limited by her nature, you could only transit between places of Desolation, otherwise Infernals with the right charms can pretty much do that?
 
Accelerator said:
So maybe make a keystone or something that an enemy can hit in order to destroy it? Or maybe make it maintenance heavy, with monthly sacrifices of resource 5?
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You could also try something a bit like the gateways in Dungeon Siege III: you can get somewhere faster than you would normally by entering another dimension and traveling along roads within it, then coming out through the gateway closest to your destination.

However, the world in question is slowly creeping towards a total existential collapse - the "roads" are winding trails of heavily-enchanted brick through what could be charitably termed the "sky", as everything purely native to this interstitial realm is steadily coming apart and so far away you can only see various semi-identifiable blobs dotted all around you and a stupidly big blob below you stretching as far as you can see. (Someone in the game actually says it's almost like the dimension is "forgetting" what it used to be.)

This progressive decay has also done a number on the roads themselves, twisting them into a headache inducing labyrinth in the places where they haven't crumbled away completely. Whatever signage may have originally existed to help you navigate is long since lost, forcing wayfarers to either stick to a tiny handful of thoroughly-charted paths (which can still become troublesome as the roads continue to mutate over time) or try to chart their own path through the messy ruins of an ancient interdimensional interstate and hope their destination's gateway is still connected to the road.

It could work as a derelict piece of infrastructure based on digging tunnels through Elsewhere or something similarly hazardous, which has become a borderline deathtrap with the passage of time. If you're using it nowadays, then you have literally no better options, and you'd better be prepared to die in the attempt.
 
Sydonai said:
So the infrastructure involved with creating and maintaining it sucks the essence and life out of it's surroundings, effectively creating a "Place of Desolation" for it to operate on?
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I mean, that's...one, not something a non-Infernal wants to do, because places of Desolation are bad. Two, ripping chunks out of geomancey is not exactly advisable for building meaningful places to move between, as it makes it hard to supply food and water.
 
Monotov said:
I mean, that's...one, not something a non-Infernal wants to do, because places of Desolation are bad. Two, ripping chunks out of geomancey is not exactly advisable for building meaningful places to move between, as it makes it hard to supply food and water.
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If they thought they could contain the spread of the Desolation then that sounds like the sort of thing a First Age Solar would do.
 
Monotov said:
I mean, that's...one, not something a non-Infernal wants to do, because places of Desolation are bad. Two, ripping chunks out of geomancey is not exactly advisable for building meaningful places to move between, as it makes it hard to supply food and water.
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Queshire said:
If they thought they could contain the spread of the Desolation then that sounds like the sort of thing a First Age Solar would do.
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Basement sand gardens anyone?
 
GardenerBriareus said:
You could also try something a bit like the gateways in Dungeon Siege III: you can get somewhere faster than you would normally by entering another dimension and traveling along roads within it, then coming out through the gateway closest to your destination.

However, the world in question is slowly creeping towards a total existential collapse - the "roads" are winding trails of heavily-enchanted brick through what could be charitably termed the "sky", as everything purely native to this interstitial realm is steadily coming apart and so far away you can only see various semi-identifiable blobs dotted all around you and a stupidly big blob below you stretching as far as you can see. (Someone in the game actually says it's almost like the dimension is "forgetting" what it used to be.)

This progressive decay has also done a number on the roads themselves, twisting them into a headache inducing labyrinth in the places where they haven't crumbled away completely. Whatever signage may have originally existed to help you navigate is long since lost, forcing wayfarers to either stick to a tiny handful of thoroughly-charted paths (which can still become troublesome as the roads continue to mutate over time) or try to chart their own path through the messy ruins of an ancient interdimensional interstate and hope their destination's gateway is still connected to the road.

It could work as a derelict piece of infrastructure based on digging tunnels through Elsewhere or something similarly hazardous, which has become a borderline deathtrap with the passage of time. If you're using it nowadays, then you have literally no better options, and you'd better be prepared to die in the attempt.
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So what I got from reading this was "basically the Labyrinth." There's even a Necromantic spell, IIRC, whose purpose is basically to allow fast travel via magically enforcing a straight line through the Labyrinth between Point A and Point B.

Cecelyne is hardly the only place/method you can use to cheat travel time and distance, now that I think about it.
 
Monotov said:
That would be limited by her nature, you could only transit between places of Desolation, otherwise Infernals with the right charms can pretty much do that?
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The only people who care about Places of Desolation are people using Cecelyne-based magic. If you're using sorcery or artifice and aren't bound by the surrender oaths, you can make a gateway to the desert in the middle of an oasis without compromising it's verdantness.
 
Queshire said:
If they thought they could contain the spread of the Desolation then that sounds like the sort of thing a First Age Solar would do.
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Unbanshee said:
The only people who care about Places of Desolation are people using Cecelyne-based magic. If you're using sorcery or artifice and aren't bound by the surrender oaths, you can make a gateway to the desert in the middle of an oasis without compromising it's verdantness.
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Exodus Passage Gates (Manse 5)

In the High first age, when creation was far larger, the exalted started to run into an issue which even their unbridled might could not overcome. There kingdoms had grown to vast.

The greatest projects of the age required exotic resources from across Creation such that even with their perfect collaboration, they would still have taken centuries to complete. But the twilight luminaries would not be denied the chance to make their visions reality, and so they found a solution. Although shackled, the endless desert still bordered all settlements in creation. If this defeated titan could be bent even further to their will, it would the unlock the distant resources required to truly reach the heights of their power in a reasonable timescale. And so, the Exodus Passage Gates came to be.

An Exodus Passage Gate is a massive arch of White Jade capped with MM resonant with the demanse it caps. The Arch rests on a perfectly flat circular dais 1000 yards in diameter on which one of the most intricate arrays of the first age was carved using only the light of the Celestial Incarne. This array contains the forces they wished to further shackle and allows the gates to be used safely.

No debris ever remains on the surface of the dais, nor will any living entity willingly cross into the area above or below it. The simple minds of animals, plants and least gods flee the distant malice, while mortals only know great danger is near. The sight of the remaining Gates in creation remain eerily pristine to the enlightened who stumble upon it.

The usage of the gates is quite simple. Each individual gate has a unique signature. When the correct gate is 'dialled', at least Resource 5 of materials resonant with the target gate essence are placed on the dais. Within moments, they dissolve into pure elemental essence and are consumed by the arch. The force of the surrender oaths binds Cecylene extorting her to make a straight path between the gates 10 days long. The essence of the demanse, and the sacrificed essence then blaze along this path forging a road bound in the laws of creation.

The Arch stays active for 1 day for every Resource 5 sacrificed to engage it.

The hazards of this road were the same as crossing a normal desert, and daemons can only enter this path through their escape conditions.

The deliberative now had the means to safely transport the resources required for their greatest works

But that was only true in the First age. The usurpation saw to that.

Now the gates stand more as a last resort.

The endless desert suffered countless indignities though the usage of these gates, and now seeks to remind any who would dare attempt their use who the strong truly are.

Without constant communication throughout creation to confirm whether gates are still intact, unused and functional, the way may lead to the middle of nowhere, leaving travellers stranded in the endless desert 5 days from the comparative mercy of her brother Malfeas.

Even then, without the expert celestials who knew the intricacies of the manse, for none survived the usurpation, the road may no longer span the 10 days, leaving travellers with a mad dash to cover the remaining distance harassed by an unshackled vindictive primordial.

Even then, without the expert celestials who knew the intricacies of the array, for none survived the usurpation, the path may no longer secure to the daemons that roam the desert, eager for the reprieve that the head of a traveller would earn from the capricious landscape.

And even then, the usage of a gate heavily drains the essence of the surrounding area, and the discharge from its use renders the surrounding area a place of desolation, without efforts to restore the essence flows of the area each gate has limited uses.

Even so, the Exodus Passage Gates are one of the few remnants of the first age that all remaining in creation seek to retain. For in this fallen age, there are threats worth risking the deserts wrath.

Whether it was the shogunate desperate to retain whatever means they could to keep creation running and ensure they could respond to threats requiring the dragons to unite, and the sidereal supporting them.

The lunars seeking a way to access all corners of creation, and the Realm seeking to inherit the shogunates mandate.

Or the returning solar seeking to recover what was lost or rebuild all of creation.
 
Unbanshee said:
The only people who care about Places of Desolation are people using Cecelyne-based magic. If you're using sorcery or artifice and aren't bound by the surrender oaths, you can make a gateway to the desert in the middle of an oasis without compromising it's verdantness.
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Eos_Astraeus said:
Exodus Passage Gates (Manse 5)
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The problem is that this is attempting to force Cecelyenne to do something she can't do. Cecelyenne is only connected to places of Desolation, so to connect her anywhere it has to be a place of Desolation. This gate would mean her nature was forcibly changed on the most essential level by the Oaths to connect to not-places-of-Desolation, which kind of breaks all her other descriptions. Her very nature denies a connection to a lush forest, or a thriving city. She connects only places that suck. So you either need to break all her charms tied to Desolation, or only have the gates in places of Desolation.
 
Monotov said:
The problem is that this is attempting to force Cecelyenne to do something she can't do. Cecelyenne is only connected to places of Desolation, so to connect her anywhere it has to be a place of Desolation. This gate would mean her nature was forcibly changed on the most essential level by the Oaths to connect to not-places-of-Desolation, which kind of breaks all her other descriptions. Her very nature denies a connection to a lush forest, or a thriving city. She connects only places that suck. So you either need to break all her charms tied to Desolation, or only have the gates in places of Desolation.
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Not exactly! The only places she can use her magic to breach into Creation are places of desolation. There's thirteen gateways scattered throughout Creation that lead you into her Desert as well as several canon artifacts that open gateways from wherever a doorway in creation is into her Desert. There also should be, imo, a variant of the one spell that summons the calibration gate that summons a portal into to the endless desert.

There's nothing wrong with sorcerers or artificers making portals into hell to capitalize on the weird time warping properties imposed by it wherever they want, so long as there's still the ten day travel layover. You just can't do it with Cecelyne charms, because her nature precludes it.
 
Also, like, this is the sort of thing I'd let you bend with lots of expensive symbolism. Sure, maybe your manse is in the middle of a lush forest, but if you have a symbolic acre-big sandbox filled with Cecylene's own sand, boxed in above and below so that no water touches it for a hundred feet below ground, then you can credibly argue via Sorcery that "look, this is totally a place of desolation" and make the Artifact work anyway.

And for bonus points, all that sand's probably been stolen since the First Age and sold off to make Artifacts with, which is a nice obvious way for it fall into disrepair.
 
UrsaTempest said:
... I mean, I read at how it is made of White Jade, and pristine, and I was like 'why do people don't loot it'
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Eos_Astraeus said:
No debris ever remains on the surface of the dais, nor will any living entity willingly cross into the area above or below it. The simple minds of animals, plants and least gods flee the distant malice, while mortals only know great danger is near. The sight of the remaining Gates in creation remain eerily pristine to the enlightened who stumble upon it.
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Because it's horrifying to anybody that doesn't know what it is.
 
Maybe thread can settle a mechanical question I and some other have.
Lunar Attribute Specialties.
I am under the impression they do not count as dots of attribute for purposes of dicecap and excellency, which is good.
My main questions are: do they count as normal specialties for effects that work with specialties, like say a charm that turns specialty dice into success? (Alchemical Shenanigans)
If so, how would an Appearance specialty work with that? We were running it that for purposes of App modifiers in social combat, if said specialty applied, it just added a number of dots equal to specialty value. Would an effect that turns dice to successes effect this? I would say not, but as this seems to be the one case this is even a question I want more opinions.
 
Attribute specialties only apply when you are rolling the attribute. So if you had some kind of charm that converted those into successes, you'd apply them when rolling Appearance + something, it wouldn't just make them a straight stat boost.

Appearance in social combat isn't rolled for it's MDV benifits
 
Unbanshee said:
Attribute specialties only apply when you are rolling the attribute. So if you had some kind of charm that converted those into successes, you'd apply them when rolling Appearance + something, it wouldn't just make them a straight stat boost.

Appearance in social combat isn't rolled for it's MDV benifits
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No, but the MDV benefit is based on it's value, and when counting the value of an ability for anything other than charm minimums or dice caps, you include an attribute, therefor it would seem an appearance specialty would count when counting App as a static value, like you include specialties for DV calcs.

I do agree that you need to actually be rolling dice to turn specialty dots to successes though.
 
Monotov said:
No, but the MDV benefit is based on it's value, and when counting the value of an ability for anything other than charm minimums or dice caps, you include an attribute, therefor it would seem an appearance specialty would count when counting App as a static value, like you include specialties for DV calcs.

I do agree that you need to actually be rolling dice to turn specialty dots to successes though.
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I'm pretty sure App is not treated as a static value, definitionally (at least in 2e). Static Values are always Divided.
 
Someone with Appearance 5 (At parties +3) is not suddenly more physically attractive when they walk into a party, they are more able to leverage that attractiveness when rolling Appearance + Ability. The MDV change is not based on a hypothetical roll like DVs are, it's a flat Attribute comparison.
 
Shyft said:
I'm pretty sure App is not treated as a static value, definitionally (at least in 2e). Static Values are always Divided.
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Lunar's do treat soak as a static value for purposes of boosting via stamina excellency though (also without dividing if bashing), and that seems the closest comparison here. Lunar's can spike appearance with an excellency for Perfect Symmetry in a sort-of roll way, so why would a specialty not count?
Unbanshee said:
Someone with Appearance 5 (At parties +3) is not suddenly more physically attractive when they walk into a party, they are more able to leverage that attractiveness when rolling Appearance + Ability. The MDV change is not based on a hypothetical roll like DVs are, it's a flat Attribute comparison.
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I mean, they could be more attractive at parties? That doesn't seem unreasonable. In particular, the specialty is question is a state of dress, instead of a situation, which is also much more believable.
 
Exthalion said:
2E had something like this when magictech was everywhere and more accessible. They were called Gates of Auspicious Passage, 5 dot artifacts built into 5 dot manses with as much geomantic power going to them as a factory cathedral took to run, only connecting to other similar gates on the same network that each required escalating hundreds of successes to bring online.

All that is vastly more difficult than one Solar spell.
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Actually, there is a Sapphire Circle Spell (2E) that grants gates for teleportation.

What it does is Summon the Calibration Gate to Heaven.

From there, you may enter Heaven, negotiate for passage with those guarding the gate, get a ride to one of the sixty Gates on the borders of Yu-Shan, and exit at one of sixty pre-determined locations after a few hours of travel. That does cut down on the travel times - it's the same network Sidereals use to get around Creation if necessary. But it's usually restricted to those who can get proper permits from the Celestial Bureaucracy to enter and navigate Yu-Shan.
 
Monotov said:
The problem is that this is attempting to force Cecelyenne to do something she can't do. Cecelyenne is only connected to places of Desolation, so to connect her anywhere it has to be a place of Desolation. This gate would mean her nature was forcibly changed on the most essential level by the Oaths to connect to not-places-of-Desolation, which kind of breaks all her other descriptions. Her very nature denies a connection to a lush forest, or a thriving city. She connects only places that suck. So you either need to break all her charms tied to Desolation, or only have the gates in places of Desolation.
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The idea behind it was using the manse to open a path to the endless desert on both ends, strong-arm her into making that path clear, then add insult to injury by paving that path with something fundamentally opposed to her.

Lack of proper maintenance of the safety features may turn the surrounding area into a place of desolation. Moreover, you've got a 1000 yard cylinder reaching deep underground and far into the sky where no life willingly enters, rain will not fall on, rivers will not cross, even dust won't blow into. Its essentially a massive clean room which should count as a place of desolation if it comes down to it.

As for why you'd want this in such an opposing place to her nature, (e.g. lush forest pathway through Cecelyne) how else are you going to make sure you're on top of her shit list when you're using it?

There is a reason why unenlightened beings can practically taste the malice coming from these things.
 
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