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General Exalted Thread

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Crawling Chaos said:
That does seem like a potential route an Abyssal could follow. I think there are even a few different spins you could put on it such as turning yourself into a legion of the damned similar to say Alucard. Personally, I've always hated the whole option of an Abyssal Exaltation being able to be cleansed back into a Solar Exaltation. Similar to an Infernal there should be no possibility of reverting the transformation the Exaltation has undergone for better or worse. Therefore giving an Abyssal Exalted their own optional "apotheosis" for them to pursue only seems fitting.
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I could see a useful idea being that the Abyssal Exalt apotheosis is about... becoming a "good" version of the Labyrinth? The Labyrinth itself is literally the former world-bodies of the murdered Primordials, heaped and tangled together after they fell and the weight of their corpses tore through the bottom of the world. The Underworld above is a series of "shadows" of the Neverborn and their blasphemous genesis - the ideas of death and falling and shattered land carried by the Essence of the Underworld acting like a net for mortal polities to be caught by after they pass from the lands of the living. (This is also why hauntings occur; the Neverborn were murdered and robbed of the chance to pursue their desires, and so every time that event occurs again, on however small a scale, there's a chance for it to resonate off of the deaths of the Neverborn and draw in Deathly Essence like a lodestone pulling in iron filings.)

The Abyssal Exalted become more than mere Exalts by dredging up lost, Dead things and giving them a new identity and purpose. They reach out to the damned and the forgotten and give them the possibility of a future by tying their Dead, hollowed existences to the animating engine of the Exaltation. I'm adding a mixture of European Dark Age literary concepts of lordship (power going out from the king to his vassals through the swearing and honoring of oaths to him, those tied to a lord being left rudderless and bereaved in the wake of his passing, etc) and my minimal understanding of the European medieval concept of 'the king's two bodies' (which @Chehrazad is eminently more qualified to speak on, if they feel like doing so), where the king and the land are one and rise (or fall) together.

Hopefully some of this is helpful to you.
 
Crawling Chaos said:
I always did think they didn't go far enough with Abyssals. Rather than just being "technically still alive" they should be undead abominations sustained by their exaltation itself in a mockery of life after having given themselves to Oblivion. It'd help provide a sharper dividing line between Infernals, Solars, and Abyssals imo.
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If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it's because Exaltations are designed to leave their hosts once they die, and what power and genius the Neverborn and Deathlords still possess is insufficient make them stick to something that's actually dead, plus a bunch of more Doylist reasons.
 
If becoming a Solar is on the table, Abyssals have to be alive.

Besides, for philosophical reasons, the game wants to ensure that dying always ends the person who died. Your ghost is not quite you. Abyssals are too clearly themselves post-Exaltation.
 
A "heretical" Abyssal feels like a much vaguer concept than with (most) other exalts.

Devil-Tiger Infernals, Chimerical Lunars, Gremlin Alchemicals and the like all explore a space between what the splat was diegetically meant to accomplish and what the logical limits of their abilities mechanically are. This isn't them doing something they shouldn't, but doing something they should in a manner that's somehow repulsive. There's a very "wait, not like that!" aspect to them.

That's harder to define with regards to Abyssals. What form of destruction could they embody that the Neverborn would balk at?
 
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My initial assumption would be that they don't focus on destroying the living but also destroy the dead, or assist ghosts in moving on or the like.

That or something akin to wandering ronin, fighting but not in service to a lord.
 
The Neverborn are already suffering everything they could possibly suffer; I doubt there's any atrocity that would make them blink.

If the Abyssals are to surprise their patrons, there's probably more game in a good surprise than a bad one. Perhaps they could develop into something capable of bringing real peace to the Neverborn, ending their suffering. Perhaps by destroying the world, or perhaps without destroying the world.

Turning away from the Deathlords and Neverborn towards the Void itself might do the trick. And it'd be nicely ambiguous whether that's a positive change or a negative one, morally speaking.
 
Something to do with names and/or identity, perhaps? Basically any creature that has anything to do with the Neverborn and the Void has a title rather than a name, not just Abyssals. Maybe Abyssals could do something where they are still rejecting or abandoning their original mortal name/identity, rather than reclaiming it through redemption or the like, and instead mystically forge a new identity and sense of selfhood, refusing to be defined by their Abyssal title either?
 
Yeah, the Neverborn are in a state of constant suffering and long for the eradication of the Void. It's hard to think of anything that would disgust or upset them without completely walking away from the death and destruction themes.

Perhaps tie it to the idea of the self? The Neverborn are forever chained to their past and old attachments. They are desperate to escape into oblivion, but at the same time they cling to the scraps of their identity. Even as they suffer they won't completely divorce themselves from who they used to be, unable to conceive of a version of themselves that isn't defined by their past.

With the Abyssals though, one of the first things they do after they exalt is sacrifice their names to the Void. What if you built on that, have your heretical Abyssal sacrifice more and more to the Void, until there is literally nothing else left, every single iota of their existence wiped away, and yet the Abyssal still remains. A being of pure nothingness, yet is able to exist. Something to put the idea in the Neverborns' heads that the Void may not be the final end they think
 
ichypa said:
If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it's because Exaltations are designed to leave their hosts once they die, and what power and genius the Neverborn and Deathlords still possess is insufficient make them stick to something that's actually dead, plus a bunch of more Doylist reasons.
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I've got no issue with adjusting the setting to make it work. Have it so that while a living host is necessary for the exaltation to take hold they don't remain so with an Abyssal Exaltation. They die and then the exaltation forcibly holds their soul together or least till they take enough damage to disrupt that bond.

Anyways I did find this while searching:
QUIXALTED Extended said:
As an optional option, consider the similar line of transformations for the Abyssals. However, instead of transforming themselves, they should grow into the Underworld; becoming one with the land, so to speak. This may include budding off their own little non-Euclidean phylactery-tombs to circle around the Mouth of the Void, growing to become a source of dark power, and a Dominion, over time and Essence. This way, the Abyssals may eventually replace or supplement the Neverborn as the Dreamers of the Labyrinth and the conduit of Whispers. For example:
Immortal Malevolence Entombment (Essence 5): A sarcophagus grows for the Abyssal in a tomb of one of the Neverborn. If killed, the Abyssal will return to «life» inside it after a month. If he is killed with permadeath charms, he still returns, but after a year and a day, and also loses 1 dot of permanent Essence.

Phylactery-Tomb Separation (Essence 6):
The Abyssal's sarcophagus rises through the flesh of the Neverborn to the surface, where it soars to circle the Mouth of the Void as a new tomb-world coalesces around it. It a Dominion with (Essence - 5) Magnitude. The Abyssal may rearrange the interior with a thought, and can travel with it through the Labyrinth and the Underworld. If the Abyssal leaves, his tomb returns to the Mouth of the Void after (Essence) days
or (Essence) hours respectively. It serves as a conduit for Whispers and necromancy spells that rely on the Neverborn, ensuring their functions even in the absence of the dead Primordials. Elaborate as needed from here.

Alternatively, an Abyssal might sink his roots in some kingdom, becoming its lord and master, laying down the Old Laws as he becomes one with his Dominion, or entertain any other number of possibilities, like becoming a bodhisattva of the Void – fading in existence only to help others to cast off the chains of being, then returning to Oblivion. Generally, unlike Infernals, who become less human and eventually transform entirely, releasing the Exaltation, the Abyssals should remain as they are, but grow in power and acquire additional assets and capabilities, with the inclinations towards obtaining some sort of Dominion to rule and be empowered from. This is thematically very appropriate for the Deathknights.
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Overall, I'm feeling pretty unimpressed by Abyssals after looking through their stuff for the past few days? I mean they have cool aesthetics which I do enjoy but they run into the issue of "Goth Solars" while Solars (and Sorcery) are just better[1]. The mirror charms really, really did not help things. Not really sure how it'd even be fixed. I guess from a mechanical standpoint it could be potentially interesting to use a sort of midpoint between Ability-based and Attribute-based? With Charms for what you do and Charms for what kind of undead abomination you are. I'm unsure of the actual feasibility of this though. Sorta like folding the Liminials (from what I understand of them) into the Abyssals to a point.

Eh, my rant is done.

[1] Their abilities are just as easy to play for horror in their own way after all. An unstoppable killing machine is an unstoppable killing machine whether it shines gold or black after all.
 
My preferred take is that the Neverborn don't really have much in the way of minds at all. They're like if a human brain was rendered immortal immediately after being smashed into pieces - clumps of undying, ever-wounded neuronal tissue firing blindly into the dark, mutilated and ruined by their forced separation from the greater whole which together composed the person that brain belonged to.

For the Neverborn, the clumps can sometimes attain sentience or even full self-awareness, but the cognition of a healthy Primordial involves an entire ecosystem of distinct minds all thinking their own thoughts and interacting amongst themselves, and the shards of the Neverborn are, appropriately, as far from that as a brain that was just smashed on the floor (so the individual neurons are just starting to die) is from one that's still alive and resting inside the skull.

"The Neverborn", as a body, aren't capable of having coherent opinions on anything, and even if you polled the various eldritch horrors which have formed from the wreckage of their beings (and are capable of being polled and would provide a coherent response), decent odds you would get a variety of different opinions on what their source Neverborn "wants".
 
I feel that Liminals took a lot of cool Underworld stuff from Abbysals in the name of making the Abyssal experience more concentrated on emulating the Deathlords.
 
elfgames said:
Abyssals are pretty cool in Essence, have you looked at that?
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They are indeed cool, but with Essence not yet released to the general public I'm not sure how accessible they are.
Indivisible said:
I feel that Liminals took a lot of cool Underworld stuff from Abbysals in the name of making the Abyssal experience more concentrated on emulating the Deathlords.
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What Underworld things do Liminals even have that might have been taken from Abyssals? Per Essence, the main way Liminal powers interact with the undead is being good at finding them. Sure, they can also ask a zombie or corpse one question (ever, for a given target) or materialize a ghost for a bit, but Abyssals can interrogate a corpse for a full scene (with no rule against repeating it) or make a building in which ghosts can materialize every night indefinitely. Essence Abyssals can also create a new Underworld law, perform a ceremony empowering the ghosts it honors, and if they ever find themselves running out of ghosts their Tiger Warrior Training equivalent lets them train their soldiers to death to rise again as war ghosts. Oh, and one of the Abyssal advantages gives them bonuses in places of death, including but not limited to the Underworld. If you ask me which of these splats is more about cool Underworld stuff it definitely looks like Death's Lawgivers.
 
Indivisible said:
I feel that Liminals took a lot of cool Underworld stuff from Abbysals in the name of making the Abyssal experience more concentrated on emulating the Deathlords.
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You'd be surprised honestly. There was, like, one or two Charms that had to move over to provisionally being for Liminals at most, and the rest is nowhere close.

Liminals are by and large about how weird it is to have a body not your own, be a newborn person and be bound to someone, and helping ghosts/making them pass on. Abyssals don't help ghosts! They're pretty not nice to them! Theyopen shadowlands where Liminals close them, spread despair and horror where Liminals - while grotesque and disquieting - have powers about bringing peace to the dead and protecting the living from them (or vice versa). There's some overlap but all the Exalted can do similar things, like being able to scare people or fight spirits, so I think that's ok.
 
mothematics said:
You'd be surprised honestly. There was, like, one or two Charms that had to move over to provisionally being for Liminals at most, and the rest is nowhere close.

Liminals are by and large about how weird it is to have a body not your own, be a newborn person and be bound to someone, and helping ghosts/making them pass on. Abyssals don't help ghosts! They're pretty not nice to them! Theyopen shadowlands where Liminals close them, spread despair and horror where Liminals - while grotesque and disquieting - have powers about bringing peace to the dead and protecting the living from them (or vice versa). There's some overlap but all the Exalted can do similar things, like being able to scare people or fight spirits, so I think that's ok.
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Oh, did you work on Liminals or Essence? I remember the old devs saying that splitting the more body horror/helpful to the Dead/etc into the Liminals was intended to make the Abyssal experience more focused, with the ability to emulate Deathlords being a big new thing in 3e. Being more helpful to ghosts, and finding a more positive way to be an Abyssal and coexist with the Underworld was something that was being bandied about in 2e. I think their was at least one Abyssal from the Scroll of Exalts whose thing was about making sure the Living treat the Dead right.
 
Indivisible said:
Oh, did you work on Liminals or Essence? I remember the old devs saying that splitting the more body horror/helpful to the Dead/etc into the Liminals was intended to make the Abyssal experience more focused, with the ability to emulate Deathlords being a big new thing in 3e. Being more helpful to ghosts, and finding a more positive way to be an Abyssal and coexist with the Underworld was something that was being bandied about in 2e. I think their was at least one Abyssal from the Scroll of Exalts whose thing was about making sure the Living treat the Dead right.
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I'm an Exalted writer who playtested it a lot, the above is mostly just me passing on secondhand sentiment from developers.
 
Is the Abyssal Deathlord emulation thing the old devs had planned still in the cards?

To be clear, I'm not asking about the rapeghosts. I think it's safe to assume that detail is dead, buried, and not subject to any sort of undeath or reanimation. I'm asking about the general "have Charms themed after Deathlord X" plan.
 
I have no idea. I haven't really heard anything about the direction they're taking Abyssal's since the new devs took over, and I'm not sure where Abyssals are in the the schedule for release.

Solar
Dragon-Blooded
Exigents
Sidereals?
Abyssals?
Alchemicals?
Infernals?
???
 
Sidereals is the next mainline release, yes. I'm not sure offhand what's planned for after them.

Exalted Essence has given us a sneak peek at every Exalt type planned for the line, however. Looking over the Abyssal Charms, I don't see any obvious "the Lion Charms, the Dowager Charms, etc", but I also haven't heard about Abyssals being that closely linked mechanically to Deathlords, to begin with.
 
Abyssals is after Sidereals; a good example of a Deathlord-informed Charm in Essence is Iron Maiden's Kiss (clap a fool in armor like the Lion got got).
 
Sanctaphrax said:
Is the Abyssal Deathlord emulation thing the old devs had planned still in the cards?
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There's still Deathlord informed charms but maybe not to the same extent as the previous developers wanted.
It's still broadly more interesting than "like Solars, but eeeeevil" that 2e went with even before getting to things like how the Deathlords will inevitably change to suit the needs of the new edition.
 
I really hope they do a better job with Eye and Seven Despairs this time. I feel that the could be interesting as a mentor who wants things to go better for their deathknights than things went for them, with their support being unsettling because they're a very old ghost connected to the thoughts of the slain creators of the universe.
 
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