- Location
- East of the Sun and West of the Moon
I figure Adorjan should have one where you get motes for destroying something that's the subject of a positive Intimacy, to key off her nonattachment thing.
General Exalted Thread
- Location
- Ottawa
I'd be inclined to take cues from the 2e Acts of Villainy for Shaping Rituals.
For Merits, I think traditional sell-your-soul-to-Hell stuff is suitable. Demons will respect and perhaps obey you even if they're not bound, you can commune with a Yozi (probably through a 3rd Circle) for possibly-corrupting advice, you receive various worldly rewards in exchange for possession of your (hun) soul when you die, and so on.
QafianSage
Ascending Ape
- Location
- United Kingdom
I'd agree, only the Acts of Villainy are meant to be fairly big things - you use them to remove Limit, which is rather more serious than conjuring a few extra sm.
Those are good ideas.
- Location
- Ottawa
Many of the Acts of Villainy are shrinkable, though.
She Who Lives could give sm for any suboptimal monologuing, Malfeas could give you a drip as long as you're deliberately provoking people to attack you, Adorjan could provide sm as long as your goal in the scene is to drive someone mad...
Anyway. On an unrelated note, I've recently discovered that I'm no longer banned on the OP forums. Not sure whether it's worth resuming posting there, though. Poking through the forum, I'm not too excited.
I know some people post on multiple forums. Maybe someone here could point me towards something cool over there that I'm missing out on?
She Who Lives could give sm for any suboptimal monologuing, Malfeas could give you a drip as long as you're deliberately provoking people to attack you, Adorjan could provide sm as long as your goal in the scene is to drive someone mad...
Anyway. On an unrelated note, I've recently discovered that I'm no longer banned on the OP forums. Not sure whether it's worth resuming posting there, though. Poking through the forum, I'm not too excited.
I know some people post on multiple forums. Maybe someone here could point me towards something cool over there that I'm missing out on?
QafianSage
Ascending Ape
- Location
- United Kingdom
I don't quite agree there about 2CDs and 3CDs, incidentally. There's a reason I tend to refer to 2CDs as "demon lords" and 3CDs as "demon princes" in prose, and that's not just because it reduces the wordcount. It's basically I broadly hold that while, yes, 1CDs can be weird tools first, higher demons do need to be able to work as demon lords and demon princes.
It's why of all my 2CDs, I think my favourite ones I've written are Claudia and Lelabet. Both of them are classic demonic patrons who offer power to others in deals. They're patrons of witches and subtle corrupters - but their "corruption" is more just that if you spend a lot of time around them and rely on them, they're going to influence you. Claudia gives you power and knowledge but everything you get from her has to be paid for in flesh because she believes that giving knowledge away for free devalues it and that if you really wanted her secrets you'd be willing to pay for it. Meanwhile, Lelabet is a powerful demon willing to serve as a familiar and she serves loyally - but only as long as you're an underdog, because it is her nature to help the weak overthrow the strong and as soon as you're on top, she flips instantly to sabotaging you and helping your enemies. It's not malicious - she just favours the lesser party in any conflict regardless of moral value.
The Ask the Devs thread is pretty great, but Vance and Minton have started frequenting the Discord as well, so if you don't want to go back just for that, you could bug them with questions when you catch them there.
- Location
- my house
@EarthScorpion you've mentioned before that you don't like Malfeas' Mythos Exultant as messing with charm recovery in combat breaks the game balance over its knees, and thus have chosen to replace it with Oramus' in your games. How does this interact with the various Malfean Overdrive pools, all of which assume you are in some way gaining points during combat, or at the very least through stunts. Do you rebalance them by giving them some other way to regain motes? Also how does this mesh with the various Solar mid combat mote recovery stuff like the glorious solar saber?
Azrael
Sakura Saber
- Location
- Throne of Heroes
...Did you miss the mote recovery effect tied to anima banners in his homebrew? Mid-combat regen still happens with that.
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Thaaaat is...mnm a good point tbh and actually pretty useful now that I'm going through and editing/re-organizing a lot of my loose homebrew stuff.
It honestly makes sense, 1CD's are created by 2CD's so naturally they'd have the deepest knowledge of and the highest personal respect for their creator (usually, exceptions always etc). To a Neomah, Berengiere is much more proximate(?), prominent(?) than Ligier. She's the founder of their race, she's the one who made them what they are and Ligier, while to be feared and worshiped and shit for he is their Maker's greater self, doesn't have much investment or personal attachment to the species as a whole. They're by and large beneath his notice, a cruder kind of tool than he'd really ever need. Coupled with that since probably one of the most common vectors for Infernalism is "started listening too hard to the chatty 1CD" it means that, yeah, a hypothetical witch in this scenario is guided into the veneration of Berengiere specifically and Ligier generally while Malfeas himself is a vast, almost unfathomable concept. A -probably poorly translated name or more region-bounded title- as a kind of background noise to the story. A semi-mythic story to explain how the Green Sun and Weaver got here.
Plus 2CD's tend to have significantly looser escape conditions than Demon Princes and can be semi-commonly although non-trivially summoned by Celestials. Also they're not the walking nuclear hellstorms that 3CD's can be 'cause most 3CD's can annihilate a city in an afternoon and one breaking free should be lighting up some kind of switchboard in Heaven I'd think. Plus-plus it allows for more organic interconflict between cults which is all but a staple of the "devotees to the dark forces" bit. Sure we all agree that Ligier is the divine, imprisoned True Sun but those fuckers worship Sondok who is antithetical in every way to the beautiful works of our Weaver and so, naturally, we should go steal their Malfean-essence shit for our own use and maybe knife them too.
But yeah that's a pretty good direction I think. I mean I dig it, it feels really evocative y'know? "What is this demon lord like as a patron and a follower", which is to say "You're creeping up on the secret meeting of a cult to X, where are you, what's going on, and why" or "you want to request a boon from them, what do they have to give and grant and what's the catch" since, well...demons.
- Location
- my house
I didn't but I wouldn't really say that deals with the fact that if he is removing other mid combat mote regeneration than it seriously nerfs Malfeas' Overdrive pools. I don't have the best eye for game balance though so it could be that it does make up for it.
Unrelated, I was dissatisfied that Verdant Empress Endowment and its charms don't require the exalt to actually do anything, they simply snap their fingers and the effect occurs. So I rewrote the charm into two different ones. The first makes it so you can activate any time you hear a wish, and that fulfilling it gives you that botch mechanic, but doesn't fulfill the request for you. You still have to go and actually do the work. The second just makes it so you can improve a dot ability or specialty by 1 by training the target for a scene if that will fulfill there wish.
Verdant Emptiness Endowment
Cost: 10m, 1wp
Mins: Essence 3
Type: Simple
Keywords: Shaping, Sorcerous, Training
Duration: Indefinite
Prerequisite Charms: First Cecelyne Excellency, Transcendent Desert Creature
Few beings are as they would choose to be. Certainly, Cecelyne would rather that her inner borders were not fettered to Malfeas. Where dissatisfaction endures, emptiness spreads the idea of the Endless Desert. Prior to using this Charm, the character must have observed the target express dislike of her present circumstances and desire for some improvement or change. The wish need not be articulated with any intention of seeking its fulfillment or even seriously, but it must be unambiguous. Should the Infernal fulfill this desire, than at any point in the future, the Infernal may come back to that individual and demand any one task. If the target understands the demand and the task isn't literally impossible, she intuitively understands that doom will befall her for failing to obey. After one month or as soon as the task becomes impossible (or constitutes an unacceptable order), the duty ends without harm to the beneficiary. However, if the character stops working toward the goal for more than a day while the duty remains, she suffers a number of automatic botches equal to the Infernal's Essence rating. These botches match the effects of breaking an oath sanctified by an Eclipse Caste Solar and linger until the worst possible time.
Blessing of Cecelyne
Cost: -
Mins: Essence 3
Type: Simple
Keywords: Training
Duration: One Scene
Prerequisite Charms: Verdant Empress Endowment
This charm functions as an upgrade to Verdant Empress Endowment. When the Infernal activates that charm,they may spend spend the scene tutoring the target in one attribute, ability or specialty. At the end of this scene the target gains target gains one dot in the trained attribute, ability or specialty if doing so would fulfill their request. This Training effect can't raise any trait above its normal maximum, nor can it raise any trait higher than what the infernal possess. This Charm also can't target those who have any outstanding experience debt from prior use of any Training effect.
And then another take on the Verdant Empress Endowment. I really don't like the evil genie stuff and don't think it fits. The whole point of Ccelyne is that she gives you things, and you worship, revere and obey her in return. That's why Temple Self Apothesis and Locust Mana Plague make people who worship her or eat of her bounty revere her. With that in mind, a slight change to verdant empress to be more in line with that. Just replaces the botches with an intimacy of reverence.
Verdant Emptiness Endowment
Cost: 10m
Mins: Essence 3
Type: Simple
Keywords: Shaping, Sorcerous,
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: First Cecelyne Excellency, Transcendent Desert Creature
Few beings are as they would choose to be. Certainly, Cecelyne would rather that her inner borders were not fettered to Malfeas. Where dissatisfaction endures, emptiness spreads the idea of the Endless Desert. Prior to using this Charm, the character must have observed the target express dislike of her present circumstances and desire for some improvement or change. The wish need not be articulated with any intention of seeking its fulfillment or even seriously, but it must be unambiguous. Should the Infernal fulfill this desire, than the target gains an intimacy of reverence towards the infernal.
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I know @EarthScorpion and @Aleph have reworked VEE to be similar to that first version you put up- the clause about targeting yourself is a bit... uh, redundant, given all this version does is create the debt.
- Location
- my house
Lol, thought I removed that reference.
@runeblue360 Consolodating my charms and demons into documents.
Charms
Demons
Rogthnor's Demonomicon
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- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
Soooo.
I'm putting together a story that involves, among other things, somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 years passing after the Scarlet's disappearance and the emergence of the Infernal Exalted.
This seems likely to result in both the Green Sun Princes becoming a known quantity for the Realm, and the Yozis figuring out that their new servants are less "servants" than "younger siblings/children".
Any guesses as to the Yozis' reaction to that?
I'm putting together a story that involves, among other things, somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 years passing after the Scarlet's disappearance and the emergence of the Infernal Exalted.
This seems likely to result in both the Green Sun Princes becoming a known quantity for the Realm, and the Yozis figuring out that their new servants are less "servants" than "younger siblings/children".
Any guesses as to the Yozis' reaction to that?
Origami Clock
Right twice a day
- Location
- Brighton, UK
*SCREAMS GEOGRAPHICALLY*
QafianSage
Ascending Ape
- Location
- United Kingdom
Are we talking about the canon 'the Yozis set up the GSPs' or EarthScorpion's 'the 3CDs did it' scenarios?
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
Kerisgame, where the 3CDs are the primary actors within the Reclamation, but individual Yozis will show up if/when they feel like it.
QafianSage
Ascending Ape
- Location
- United Kingdom
OK. In that case... Hmm.
Well, on one hand, the idea of nascent Primordials loose in Creation that are allied with the Yozis is a BIG THING, and would be an immensely attractive proposition, especially if those Primordials are shaping themselves solidly along the lines of the Yozis rather than defining themselves as something entirely new. On the other, the Yozis are mad, broken things, and I can't even imagine the envy and fury of some of them - the Ebon Dragon, Kimbery, Szoreny and Malfeas to name a few - that there are free Primordials that aren't them. I mean, Auto-kun and Gaia are betrayers, and that's a big reason why the Yozis hate them so much, but they're also free, which is something else to drive their loathing. That association would be dangerous at best.
The 3CDs would probably be more than a little wary of being simply out-powered by the Green Sun Princes in their ascension, though I could imagine a few of them - and some 2CDs as well - wondering if there couldn't be some way devised to allow them to escape the soul-hierarchy of their Yozi and join that of a Prince. The Exalted are blasphemers par excellence, after all, and they've done the impossible before. Off the top of my head, Haiskald and Teng-Kigyo are individuals who might desire such a thing (this mainly came to mind because I'm currently fiddling with a devil-tiger charm to do exactly that). Of course, there's the potential for new players in the age-old political games of the Unquestionable, both with regards to the GSPs and their souls, which might be a good or a bad thing depending on which deva is looking at the issue.
In any case, I suspect that the Yozis will become VERY INTERESTED in this project that their souls have cooked up, or at least more so than they were, turning the GSPs' political tightrope-walking between the 3CDs into balancing on a thread if they want to stay in the service of Hell.
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Aleph
Princess of Stabbity
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It honestly does largely depend on what the first few Infernal Exalted to hit that level do. Hell's reaction to the discovery will vary wildly depending on whether they go rogue in Creation and cut ties with the Reclamation entirely to set up a demonic empire in the far North, show up at the Althing Infernal flanked by half a dozen of their Third Circle souls to demand they be recognised as Unquestionable or Yozi-level entities in their own right, stay furiously loyal to the cause of the Reclamation as a whole and the right of the Yozis to rule Creation, obsessively devote themselves to a single Yozi but for the actions of their rebellious souls who work against them... etc.
Honestly, even 50 years on I'd expect there still to be a tremendous amount of turmoil and divided camps of opinion among the Unquestionable and even the Yozis themselves on the matter. Primordials are immortal; I doubt they come to conclusions about things of this magnitude quickly, and in fact the discovery is likely to kick off a multitude of cataclysmic wars between various Third Circles as different parts of their Greater Selves' minds clash in a titanic form of internal debate and conflicted thoughts. Which... yeah, given how conflicted the Yozis are going to be, I'd reckon at least some of those wars are going to be ongoing even half a century later. To say nothing of the fact that the Infernals will be getting involved in some of them and thereby extending their duration or sparking more.
Honestly, even 50 years on I'd expect there still to be a tremendous amount of turmoil and divided camps of opinion among the Unquestionable and even the Yozis themselves on the matter. Primordials are immortal; I doubt they come to conclusions about things of this magnitude quickly, and in fact the discovery is likely to kick off a multitude of cataclysmic wars between various Third Circles as different parts of their Greater Selves' minds clash in a titanic form of internal debate and conflicted thoughts. Which... yeah, given how conflicted the Yozis are going to be, I'd reckon at least some of those wars are going to be ongoing even half a century later. To say nothing of the fact that the Infernals will be getting involved in some of them and thereby extending their duration or sparking more.
More than that, remember most demons won't understand Yozi metaphysics.
I believe canonically most books on Infernalism speak of the demon realm Malfeas, ruled over by the demon king Malfeas, served by the prince of the Green Sun Ligier and other such powerful demons. The idea that Malfeas is both the realm and the king; that Ligier is both the sun and the prince of demons - and the heart of Malfeas - is not something most demonologists understand, let alone laymen.
So crank down the metaknowledge and look more from the ground level, and a lot of 2CD and 3CD stuff gets more evocative - and honestly, more fun.
Fundamentally, my goal with 2CDs is that they're a good early game arc-level threat or late game mid-boss (for a Celestial game) and always a good arc endboss for a DB, and that for 3CDs they're arc bosses for Creation's Exalted and, well, your bosses for Infernals. Take Enali for example - when you bring him into play in a campaign, you've basically decided you want to run a demonic invasion meets alien invasion story, with his second circles serving as his heralds and assets as he tries to intrude. And you can manage to barely prevent the summoning, in which case the rift in the sky closes before he can emerge, or he can get through and suddenly you're playing Independence Day and trying to banish or defeat him before he can descend on a major city and flood it with 10k demons and grab everything he can before leaving back to the demon realm with thousands or even tens of thousands of trapped souls for his sick experimentation.
- Location
- Ottawa
If only I was interested in reading a bunch of Evocations...
I like forums better than chatrooms; that at least is definitely worth checking out.
- Location
- Ottawa
Alright, so I've got some good news and some bad news.
Lunars are getting two circles of Necromancy this time around, but the necromancy rules are still a long way out.
Lunars are getting two circles of Necromancy this time around, but the necromancy rules are still a long way out.
Speaking of Necromancy does anyone know of any good homebrew for it so that it isn't 'Sorcery but worse'? Also good Abyssal homebrew as well? Something to emphasize the Lords of Oblivion/Undead God-Kings/Unholy Abomination angle preferably.
You could take some inspiration from ES's and how the aspect of the sorcerer and anchor change the spell. So just use Sorcery, but replace the aesthetics with something more deathly.
QafianSage
Ascending Ape
- Location
- United Kingdom
E.g. Death of Obsidian Butterflies becomes Slaughter-Seeking White Bone Razors. For instance.