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General Exalted Thread

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Just a fun 3CD idea I had, inspired by the art I've put in spoilers down at the bottom, as well as the Romanian stories of the Scholomance.

Dascal, the House of the Scorpion
Demon of the Third Circle
Third Soul of the Shadow of All Things

Many are the warnings of Dascal, for he is amongst the demons most hated by the Immaculate Order, and many others who devote themselves to holiness and piety. This is not for the terrible depredations he inflicts upon Creation himself, but rather for his pedagogy and his mocking imitation. For just as they gather in holy places to pass on sacred techniques and blessed scriptures, so he builds profane monasteries and schools of wickedness, passing on his encyclopaedic knowledge of all they would deny.

Dascal has only one form, though many believe he may take on three. This form is that of a great ogre, three-eyed, long-limbed, horned and fanged, with a pagoda-temple of seven levels rising from his back, and an immense, scorpion-like tail curving over it. When he walks abroad this temple is only small in proportion, but when he so chooses he may burrow into the earth and cause it to swell in size, growing to great size - and when he does so, the omens and signs of his presence are dampened by the clean earth, with which it is said he long ago struck some bargain, and not even the divinations of the Exalted can perceive his demonic power unless they descend far into his temple's depths.

When he buries himself so, the House of the Scorpion presses his tail up into the temple, where its tip takes on the likeness of a man or a woman, as he sees fit, and the tail's length disappears from sight. This figure cannot leave the structure, but Dascal knows the secret speech of all manner of creatures, and many spells to give beasts minds and thoughts and speech like those of men. It is rarely long after the establishment of his temples that he finds his first devotees, brought to him by his messengers, and quickly begins their tuition in matters of occultism, sorcery and heretical martial arts. Invariably, such students are those motivated by profound desires and deep-seated wants, whether noble or depraved. They advance quickly under his tutelage, and it is said that he can bring any man to sorcery in seven years of learning - though the man who first entered the House may not recognize the one who leaves again.

Many are those who claim that the teachings of Dascal bring all those who use them to bad ends, and this is not without grounding. Many of his students consume themselves with obsession, or are destroyed when their confidence or ambition outstrips their ability - and this is to the liking of the House, who is after all a child of the Ultimate Darkness, and loves the doomed and self-destructive. But he has no desire to destroy his students himself, and his lessons are not traps or snares. Though his tutelage often demands sacrifices or transgressions, he leads his students on with true promises, not with punishment - they may even leave his school whensoever they wish, though he binds their tongues with sorcery not to speak of it later. It is what his pupils do with those lessons that brings them to their ends, good or bad.

Summoning (Obscurity 2/5): Dascal is summoned by sorcerers who wish to learn from him, or tutor their apprentices or minions in profane arts or sorceries. Although his form as an ogre is great in appearance and might, it is not well-suited to the practice of the many martial arts of assassination and subtle death which he has learned over the years, and in truth he fights as a brute and a crude brawler, when he cannot simply blast his foes with sorcery - for he is deeply-learned in all manners of spellcraft, and this is another reason he may be summoned, to employ such spells on behalf of his conjuror. When he remains long in Creation, his students often build further structures around his central pagoda, expanding its environs into complexes and compounds for the learning of dark secrets, while he lays spells of concealment about them to keep them from prying eyes.

Although he rankles at forceful binding, the House of the Scorpion is often willing to accommodate a summoner, as he is regarded as a heretic and persona non grata by the Priests of Cecelyne, for his activities in teaching lesser demons secrets they are not meant to know. Though as his Unquestionable status protects him, they slay his servants and destroy his power where possible. It is said he has spread covert sodalities through the serfdoms of Hell for centuries, passing sorcerous secrets along these hidden strands, and using such agents to pilfer books from the libraries of Hell's Censor. For this reason Orabilis hates him, and long ago blinded his leftmost eye.

Dascal may slip into Creation when an abbot, abbess or other holy person of high standing forsakes their oaths for bloody vengeance or forbidden love and sets themselves against some great power. When such a thing comes to pass, the demon appears somewhere nearby and sends a messenger to draw his new student in. He gains Limit when his tail is attacked or revealed, and when his students are slain before they finish their training.

https://www.tumblr.com/ex0skeletal-undead/729473924356849664/by-nishikawatakeshi
 
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I'm surprised that Dascal isn't a third circle soul with the scale of their presence (a notable landscape feature) and implications of behaviour (teaching sorcery to potentially many students at the same time).

As a second circle would the lesson they embody be along the lines of "power doesn't corrupt its what you choose to do with it that does" with an ophidian bent?
 
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Corpusvoyeur said:
I'm surprised that Dascal isn't a third circle soul with the scale of their presence (a notable landscape feature) and implications of behaviour (teaching sorcery to potentially many students at the same time).
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I'm kinda debating back and forth, but I was envisioning he himself as mostly one building, which feels in-scale for a 2CD. The other parts of his school are actual buildings, usually constructed by his students or via his sorcery or summoned minions.

Making him a 3CD has the issue of creating trouble with the relative ease with which he can escape into Creation long-term, as well as the question of whether it's reasonable to have a 3CD just kinda hanging out in the background somewhere being Spooky Hogwarts. On the other hand, it would mean I could create 'professors' as his 2CDs, teaching various subjects within him, and make it more reasonable for him to semi-directly oppose Orabilis.
 
QafianSage said:
Just a fun 3CD idea I had, inspired by the art I've put in spoilers down at the bottom, as well as the Romanian stories of the Scholomance.

Dascal, the House of the Scorpion
Demon of the Third Circle
Third Soul of the Shadow of All Things

Many are the warnings of Dascal, for he is amongst the demons most hated by the Immaculate Order, and many others who devote themselves to holiness and piety. This is not for the terrible depredations he inflicts upon Creation himself, but rather for his pedagogy and his mocking imitation. For just as they gather in holy places to pass on sacred techniques and blessed scriptures, so he builds profane monasteries and schools of wickedness, passing on his encyclopaedic knowledge of all they would deny.

Dascal has only one form, though many believe he may take on three. This form is that of a great ogre, three-eyed, long-limbed, horned and fanged, with a pagoda-temple of seven levels rising from his back, and an immense, scorpion-like tail curving over it. When he walks abroad this temple is only small in proportion, but when he so chooses he may burrow into the earth and cause it to swell in size, growing to great size - and when he does so, the omens and signs of his presence are dampened by the clean earth, with which it is said he long ago struck some bargain, and not even the divinations of the Exalted can perceive his demonic power unless they descend far into his temple's depths.

When he buries himself so, the House of the Scorpion presses his tail up into the temple, where its tip takes on the likeness of a man or a woman, as he sees fit, and the tail's length disappears from sight. This figure cannot leave the structure, but Dascal knows the secret speech of all manner of creatures, and many spells to give beasts minds and thoughts and speech like those of men. It is rarely long after the establishment of his temples that he finds his first devotees, brought to him by his messengers, and quickly begins their tuition in matters of occultism, sorcery and heretical martial arts. Invariably, such students are those motivated by profound desires and deep-seated wants, whether noble or depraved. They advance quickly under his tutelage, and it is said that he can bring any man to sorcery in seven years of learning - though the man who first entered the House may not recognize the one who leaves again.

Many are those who claim that the teachings of Dascal bring all those who use them to bad ends, and this is not without grounding. Many of his students consume themselves with obsession, or are destroyed when their confidence or ambition outstrips their ability - and this is to the liking of the House, who is after all a child of the Ultimate Darkness, and loves the doomed and self-destructive. But he has no desire to destroy his students himself, and his lessons are not traps or snares. Though his tutelage often demands sacrifices or transgressions, he leads his students on with true promises, not with punishment - they may even leave his school whensoever they wish, though he binds their tongues with sorcery not to speak of it later. It is what his pupils do with those lessons that brings them to their ends, good or bad.

Summoning (Obscurity 2/5): Dascal is summoned by sorcerers who wish to learn from him, or tutor their apprentices or minions in profane arts or sorceries. Although his form as an ogre is great in appearance and might, it is not well-suited to the practice of the many martial arts of assassination and subtle death which he has learned over the years, and in truth he fights as a brute and a crude brawler, when he cannot simply blast his foes with sorcery - for he is deeply-learned in all manners of spellcraft, and this is another reason he may be summoned, to employ such spells on behalf of his conjuror. When he remains long in Creation, his students often build further structures around his central pagoda, expanding its environs into complexes and compounds for the learning of dark secrets, while he lays spells of concealment about them to keep them from prying eyes.

Although he rankles at forceful binding, the House of the Scorpion is often willing to accommodate a summoner, as he is regarded as a heretic and persona non grata by the Priests of Cecelyne, for his activities in teaching lesser demons secrets they are not meant to know. Though as his Unquestionable status protects him, they slay his servants and destroy his power where possible. It is said he has spread covert sodalities through the serfdoms of Hell for centuries, passing sorcerous secrets along these hidden strands, and using such agents to pilfer books from the libraries of Hell's Censor. For this reason Orabilis hates him, and long ago blinded his leftmost eye.

Dascal may slip into Creation when an abbot, abbess or other holy person of high standing forsakes their oaths for bloody vengeance or forbidden love and sets themselves against some great power. When such a thing comes to pass, the demon appears somewhere nearby and sends a messenger to draw his new student in. He gains Limit when his tail is attacked or revealed, and when his students are slain before they finish their training.

https://www.tumblr.com/ex0skeletal-undead/729473924356849664/by-nishikawatakeshi
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Following on from Dascal here, I got a bit of inspiration and ended up writing up a couple of his souls!

Alean, the Scholar Lovelorn
Demon of the Second Circle
Indulgent Soul of the House of the Scorpion

This is a lesser age, fallen far from what was before, and what greatness can yet be found arises only where some glimmer of that ancient light remains. Such is the proclamation of Alean, the Scholar Lovelorn, whose heart beats eternally for a woman two thousand years in her grave. It is said that when her oversoul fell in love with that golden lady, his Indulgent soul died of that passion, and from it was born the Scholar.

In seeming, Alean is a short and compact woman who wears her ink-black hair in an archaic bun, pierced by needles of gold. Her eyes are the eyes of a newt, and amphibians of all kinds love her and sing ancient laments for her and her beloved in the evening and the night. She dresses modestly, and some say this is due to her wish to keep herself chaste for her long-lost love - but this is not so. Rather, it is because she long ago suffered many wounds as stigmata during the Usurpation, and beneath her robes she is wrapped from neck to toe in enchanted bandages which seal her toxic blood within, and cover the cavity which gapes above her heart.

In manner, the Scholar is a strict disciplinarian, though she knows the object of her affections would not love her for this. She has lived many mortal lifetimes of despair, and this discipline has been the result; if she had not assumed it, she would have slain herself long ago. The order she imposed upon herself became habit, and now it has become her general manner in dealing with the students of her oversoul, as she often does - she is one of his favoured professors, and is deeply learned in the esoterica of cosmology, abstract sorcery and the Essence-sciences of the High First Age.

Summoning (Obscurity 4/5): Alean is summoned by sorcerers to instruct them in the intricacies of strange and abstract spells, to identify the purposes and function of ancient Artefacts, and to perform subtle workings of power. She is a sorceress of the Celestial Circle, but her preferred spells are rarely overt in action, and often seem underwhelming for her power and knowledge. Nevertheless, a prospective student would be well-advised to be cautious - to the Scholar Lovelorn, sorcery is not a tool for advancement or material gain, but a sacrament to her love, and demanding that she perform or teach her lore for such profane reasons causes her to gain Limit. In the extremities of rage she sheds her human appearance and becomes a terrible beast of amphibian aspect to destroy those who would profane her lore.

Though she has no children of her body, many are those of her adoption. Alean may escape from Hell through the Salinan Working, when a child of high birth but low circumstances begs the night for tutelage in arts beyond their ken. Then she emerges and takes the child away, raising them herself and instructing them as her child and apprentice, before sending them out into the world again to do as they will. It is said that she holds some alliance with the ancient Lunar called the Wolf at the Door, who sometimes seeks to arrange such releases for her, and may often use her children in his own plots thereafter.

Buha, the President of Owls
Demon of the Second Circle
Messenger Soul of the House of the Scorpion

Two hundred and sixteen number the eyes of Buha, whose many bodies flit across moonless skies. Demonomicae say they are kin in some way to the decanthrope, for their multiplicity, or even that Dascal shaped them from a demon of that breed (and such a thing would be to the liking of the House of the Scorpion, as high heresy against the Descending Hierarchy) but if this is true, neither the President nor the House will speak of it.

By nature and profession, Buha is a herald and and augur, for which skill they are sometimes named the Night-Seer. Their stock-in-trade is omens, both in their spreading and their reading. For the latter, they have learned countless divinatory arts across their long centuries, and with their hundred-and-eight bodies, each some creature of the night, they sit in council and debate signs and portents to a nicety, giving readings of the past and present of uncanny accuracy - though they often ask esoteric prices for such prognostication, the true worth of which becomes clear only later.

If soothsayers are ten-a-street in most cities, however, omen-heralds are a rarer trade - but one in which the President excels. Partly, this is due to their magic. They know songs which, when sung by night, make rain fall red and causes beasts to bear two-headed offspring, and dances on the wing which, when danced in the evening, bring omens of good fortune and prosperity. But it is also partly due to their expertise in simple trickery. They can mimic voices with perfection, can burrow into the hearts of men and demons and use their bodies to spread rumours and deceit, and know well how to stir fear, resentment, panic and righteousness. All these services they will perform - for the right price.

Summoning (Obscurity 2/4): Sorcerers call the President of Owls to interpret signs and omens for them, to carry messages between far-distant parts of their domains - for what one body knows, all know - to act as familiars to whisper of them of what their people do, and to manipulate populations to their will. Often, Buha has been called to incite hatred of a people's lords before a sorcerer comes a-conquering, or to act as a signaller ahead of invasion to hidden elements of rebellion. These things they do without complaint, so long as their price is right, for their mentality is mercenary. In payment, they ask all manner of things - that the name of a firstborn child be this rather than that, favours to be named in future, or that they be given the pick of three men from a sorcerer's holdings to go with them, wherever they take them.

Often, these prices seem little enough to such great men at first, but many years later have unforeseen effects. Sacrifices long-presumed dead will return with new and dark learning to challenge their former masters, demon-chosen names will incite the hatred of those who might have been allies, and favours that seemed light at first become chains later on. Some perceive a deeper meaning in these turns of chance than the disasters and calamities loved by the children of the Ultimate Darkness, and even whisper that Buha has a standing arrangement with the viziers of Fate, acting to further the plans of destiny in some hidden way. But what agents of Heaven would consort with such a blood-drinking creature of night? Such is always a part of the President's retainer.

Buha may slip the bonds of Hell when an owl or other night-bird drinks the blood of a young man and a suckling lamb in a single night; that bird becomes one of their many bodies, and flies out to bring more through to Creation. They gain Limit when their prices are denied or cheated after having been promised, and will exact terrible revenges upon such as do so - though they may be long in coming.

Tanlato, the Inquisitor Circumspect
Demon of the Second Circle
Warden Soul of the House of the Scorpion

Two heads has Tanlato, the Heron Who Eats Dreams. That is a name he buries deep, though, and there are few who know it. He has two forms as well. One is a man of saturnine aspect, tall and dark-haired, with the severely-carven features of a man of the Blessed Isle and the blood of Danada, but with doubled pupils in each eye and teeth of hard metal. The other is a two-headed heron whose height can vary from reaching a tall man's knee to towering several feet above him, and whose beaks are made of steel. In either form he goes clad in black and red, whether these be his feathers or his robes, and he may be known by the clack of his talons upon the earth.

In demeanour the Inquisitor Circumspect is reserved but keen of wit, rarely failing to offer a cutting remark when he perceives some failing he can criticise - and he sees many, for his eyes are just as keen. Often he resides within his greater self, acting to police and regulate the many students of Dascal - but he may also go abroad, leaving his demons to do so in his stead. For this he is little-loved by those students, but it has long since taught him how to keep order even amongst the rowdiest and most unmanageable populations, and has become a masterful driver of slaves and servants of all kinds. His eyes can perceive hatred and resentment as easily as another might note the colour of a man's hair, and with attention and time can discern particulars such as against whom that resentment is directed.

His most significant ability, though, is known to few - and Tanlato puts great effort to keeping it this way. His beaks have the power to plunge into the head of another, and there his sensitive tongues can taste the memories of his victims. With the right head he picks out memories of events and places, and with the left he devours abstract knowledge. Thus it is that few students go forth from the House of the Scorpion with any knowledge of where to find it again, and Dascal is protected from the dangers of his great vice. The Inquisitor has served this office since his creation, but some say that he has become bitter with the years, and does so now out of a sense of obligation, habit and the fear of what might befall his oversoul - and thus himself - were the House left without his guardianship.

Summoning (Obscurity 3/6): Demonologists summon the Inquisitor Circumspect to put down rebellions and command unruly servants, to pick out spies and rebels amongst their followers, and for his knowledge and might as a sorcerer. In this he is as practical as his sister Alean is abstract, and knows many spells for confinement, death and the warding-away of hostile powers and attention. Those who know of Tanlato's other talent, however, summon him to be a censor and interrogator, for in the taste of the memories he swallows he can glean much from victims' minds - and what he cannot take by magic, he can take by torment, as he has had long practice in the art of interrogation.

Furthermore, he is a master of the Black Heron Style, a discipline of his own invention and an offshoot of Crane Style. This Style focuses on non-fatal defence and subduing attacks in a manner similar to its origin, but where Crane Style relies upon enlightened discourse to educate and edify its target, the Black Heron Style instead uses a combination of force and humiliation to subdue the target to its practitioner's will through fear and coercion. Although known in Creation, it is poorly-regarded as unsportsmanlike and reviled as a dark mirror of the Crane.

Some say the Inquisitor's role as a censor has brought him into some alignment with the End of All Wisdom, the ancient enemy of Dascal, and that he has some plot to muzzle, or perhaps somehow even overthrow and replace his greater self in the ranks of the Unquestionable. If such a thing is possible, perhaps Dascal would marvel at the beauty of his own destruction in the moment of betrayal. Tanlato gains Limit when one he had thought broken defies him, and may escape into Creation when the head of a monastery or formal school is imprisoned by rebellious students and begs for anyone to deliver him and restore the right order of the world. Then the Inquisitor will appear and with hands and beaks and sorcery set things to rights for that school, before departing on errands of his own - but who can tell, after he has come, whether all is as it once was or what he has taken?
 
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Physical Water Color commission I got from this artist. They really capture the Erembour I been obsessively commissioning.
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I also got another of my Lunar but I'm spoilering that once cause barely contained honkers warning :V
 
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My brain in its unbending lassitude has returned to thinking about Exalted (in part because I began rereading AGSItV). Well 2e Infernal exalted. Because I have never actually played the game and I find homebrew 2e Infernal/Yozi Charms fascinating. I am actually tempted to buy the 2e Infernals book.

The actual reason I decided to post is because I started wondering what Exalted of the Ebon Dragon might be like. Ideas are mostly one note based on weird stuff related to virtues without much thought put into things like Charms, power level, or Excellencies. Castes based on the four virtues and being bad at them. The Exaltion appearing as a shadowy "evil" twin who offers to "fix" the prospective Exalt's weakest virtues. Some sort of special mechanic analogous to Sidereal Astronomy or Nocturnal Domains with four special techniques based on the virtues with strong virtues capping how far these can be developed.
 
HalfTangible said:
Like... as a separate splat?

Cuz Infernals can take on ED charms.
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Yeah as a separate splat wholly originating from the Ebon Dragon. There would definitely be overlap with Infernal ED charms but possibly pushed into weird directions. Like ED Medicine, Crafting, and War charms. Just in theory every Yozi could have been the source for a unique line of Exalts with appropriately themed powers. When I started to think about that idea ED was just the first idea that I came up with that didn't seem absurd. Like Metagaos Exalted mirroring the Alchemicals split into five widely known Castes alongside the mysterious sixth Umami Caste.
 
Grytorm said:
The actual reason I decided to post is because I started wondering what Exalted of the Ebon Dragon might be like. Ideas are mostly one note based on weird stuff related to virtues without much thought put into things like Charms, power level, or Excellencies. Castes based on the four virtues and being bad at them. The Exaltion appearing as a shadowy "evil" twin who offers to "fix" the prospective Exalt's weakest virtues. Some sort of special mechanic analogous to Sidereal Astronomy or Nocturnal Domains with four special techniques based on the virtues with strong virtues capping how far these can be developed.
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Could be neat. Consider powers that let you grant blessings that ultimately damn people, and making it so that when heroes strike you down you become more powerful than they could possibly imagine.
 
I once came up with a Metagaos-themed Exalt type. They had three Aspects, and were Terrestrial level.

They weren't particularly inspired and I never tried to come up with mechanics. Still, I am very much a proponent of Individual Yozi Exalted.
 
Grytorm said:
Yeah as a separate splat wholly originating from the Ebon Dragon. There would definitely be overlap with Infernal ED charms but possibly pushed into weird directions. Like ED Medicine, Crafting, and War charms. Just in theory every Yozi could have been the source for a unique line of Exalts with appropriately themed powers. When I started to think about that idea ED was just the first idea that I came up with that didn't seem absurd. Like Metagaos Exalted mirroring the Alchemicals split into five widely known Castes alongside the mysterious sixth Umami Caste.
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The Chosen of the Shadow of All Things wouldn't be ability based, IMO. Essence based, rather, and with trees like Sabotage, Escape, Denial, ect. They would be about freedom and denying others the ability to restrict them, and sabotaging the efforts of others. The beauty of the doomed and dying, the love of Fate as something to defy, being a boundary-transgressing shadow, ect.
 
When @QafianSage and I were working on our 3e Infernal conversion, my take on the Ebon Dragon's Charmset was that it should have a distinct branch which actively removes power from the hands of the warlock using them - because in a universe which has always been governed by aristocratic elite, there is nothing more Ebon than the decentralization and distribution of power.

The Ebon Dragon's Chosen can give people the courage to defy their fear of oppressors, but it can't make those people follow the Infernal's direction. In fact, it works best when it's used to actively tear down the idea of central authority, that anyone should be allowed to impose their will on another - not just because this is a supreme defiance of the Great Man Theory which fuels Exalted, but because it is all too often a Doomed effort. Even if the local tyrant is overthrown, the new freemen will find themselves still surrounded by a world of slaves and masters, a collective logic which cannot understand them and will invariably seek to destroy them.

It's something heavily driven by my own readings on socialist, communist, and anarchist movements throughout history - and the account of the San Patricios, an intensely Ebon story of 19th-century Irishmen (and German Catholics, and African-Americans) who chose to betray the US army and side with the people of Mexico. To quote from the brilliant John Dolan's article on the matter:

The Saint Patrick's Battalion is a legend most Irish Americans vaguely recall with discreet pride. Sure, they betrayed the American army but hey, we won anyway, and there's something touching about the way the Irish instinct for a losing cause triumphed over the chance to…well, triumph. Tom Berenger, that meathead, made a movie about it, which I haven't seen and don't plan to see.

What people don't realize is what it meant to be a Catholic peasant in 1847. First-worlders these days think of the poor nations as fecund—too fecund, in fact. It wasn't like that in 1847. In the nineteenth century, poor children died at a much higher rate than rich ones, so the poor, excluded peoples of the world seemed to be dying out.

Mexico was a classic example of the demographics of these "dying peoples." Mexico, which stretched from the Oregon border to Guatemala, had a population of seven million people. Most of Mexico was empty, and the few populated areas were continually hit by civil wars, famine and epidemics. The country had been very effectively stripped of easily recoverable precious metals by the Spaniards, who had also done an excellent job of disemboweling the local aboriginal cultures.

Mexico was a classic Victorian "dying nation," and the thriving Anglos, who fully expected to occupy the entire planet in a few generations, didn't bother to hide their delight at the demise of such indolent Papists. To be a Mexican facing the Yankee hordes was very much like being a human in the years after Skynet decided it didn't like people in "The Terminator."

If there was one group of Catholic peasants who would not only have understood how Mexico felt, but had themselves experienced an even more horrific prospect of extinction, it was the Irish Catholic peasantry. If you want to stump your pedant friends, ask them how many people lived in Ireland in 1845.

They'll never guess anything like the real figure: nine million people. Ireland in 1845 was like Java now, a densely populated but largely rural island. For hundreds of years, the population ratio between the two islands, Britain and Ireland, held steady at 3:1. Then the Famine—THE Famine as opposed to all the other famines—hit, and the Irish peasantry was wiped out.

By the end of the nineteenth century, Ireland's population was only four million, less than half the 1845 figure, while Britain's had increased to 35 million. This ratio of 9:1 has held ever since. This is one of the greatest demographic anomalies in the history of Europe. One might almost consider it to have been intentional.

That's because it was, and was understood to be so at the time, by both perpetrators and victims. The civil servant assigned to organize famine relief, Sir Charles Trevelyan, wrote that the famine was to be understood as an "effective mechanism for reducing surplus population" and a "judgment of God" on the "selfish, perverse, and turbulent" Irish.

You couldn't ask for a finer expression of the intersection of free-market savagery reinforcing ancient ethnic and sectarian hatred. And luckily for Britain and the free market, Trevelyan was in a perfect position to see that no aid reached those Papist vermin.

The Great Famine is usually imagined as having struck Ireland, stripping it of all foodstuffs. Not at all. The island continued to produce huge surpluses of grain while a million surplus peasants died. This famine was much more like the one Stalin inflicted on another "selfish and turbulent" peasantry—the Ukranian "kulaks" who were potential irridentists. In both cases, peasants were allowed only tiny plots for their own support, while alien collectives controlled virtually all the arable land.

Stalin called them "kolkhozes," and Trevelyan's friends called them "estates," but they worked equally well at extirpating troublesome demographic groups. In both cases huge quantities of grain were exported while the local population went virtually extinct—and, in both cases, informed opinion throughout the civilized world looked on with approval at this latest manifestation of progress.

Imagine stumbling half-dead out of that nightmare, courtesy of ethnic hatred and the free market, and into the U.S., enlisting in an army entirely officered by Anglo-Saxon Protestants who hate your kind, and finding yourself participating in the invasion of a rural, Catholic nation which is already under-populated and is now being absorbed, digested, by the same civilization machine that just ate your homeland.

It really was the end of the world for those men. No one had any idea that the demographic trend would change in the second half of the next century, when cheap antibiotics and Cold War rivalry meant that the children of formerly "dying" nations would be kept more or less alive. As far as informed opinion in London and Boston knew in 1847, the Irish and the Mexicans were leaving the world together, and the world would be a more efficient, industrious place when they were gone.

One of the saddest things about this planet is that most of the time, people from groups selected for extinction accept, even endorse, their fate. That was the case in Ireland in 1847. English travelers approvingly quoted walking skeletons as saying that all they asked was to be allowed a decent burial. It's exceptional when a member of a dying race, whatever that race happens to be, realizes that what's going on is not actually justified.

In this sense, John Riley, the man who created the San Patricio Brigade, was an exceptional man. He was born in Galway, part of the Irish-speaking peasantry that would become extinct during the Famine. He was enlisted in a U.S. infantry unit before war was officially declared on Mexico, a technicality that would save his life after the battle for the convent.

Life in the U.S. Army for an Irish Catholic was designed to enrage, then break, Papist recruits. Sect was everything in the Victorian world, as it is now in most of the Muslim countries. To think of sect as "a matter of religion" is a huge mistake; it was family, honor, language, land—everything that matters.

And the U.S. Army, the armed wing of the Scots-Irish ascendancy on the west bank of the Atlantic, had even less finesse than its older cousins on the other side of the pond when it came to humiliating members of the alien sect.

There were no Catholic chaplains. All enlisted men were required to visit Protestant preachers, who took special delight in telling those from the dying race that every member of their sect was doomed in this world and the next.

At some point, as the U.S. Army prepared to invade the dying Papist people to the south, Riley made the connection and decided he was fighting for the wrong side—fighting for the machines, if you think of the Terminator analogy. And the Anglos were like machines at that time, with a special affinity for non-living things, merciless and unstoppable.

Riley defected and made his way to the Mexican authorities, such as they were. They had the sense to put him in charge of recruiting other Papist defectors. He was surprisingly good at it; by the time the Anglo machine had ground through Monterrey, Riley had something like 700 men in his unit.

The Mexicans called them "los Colorados" for their red hair. But they weren't all gingers; there were German Catholics as well, and a number of African-American defectors who got sick of fighting for people who despised them.

The San Patricios were good artillerists and operated as an almost independent force, using infantry and artillery in close coordination. Their best moment came at Buena Vista, when they were placed on high ground and, on their own, isolated, bombarded, and then assaulted an American artillery unit, bayoneting the surviving crews and carrying back their pieces. U.S. cavalry assigned to overrun their position was decimated, and they covered the retreat of the Mexican Army virtually on their own.

It was a tactical victory that meant nothing in the strategic picture, which was an unstoppable American advance toward the capital. The bulk of the San Patricios were assigned to the suicidal defense of the convent of Churubusco, an easily surrounded fortress on flat plains. When it fell, as it inevitably would, Mexican officers and men might expect to be allowed to surrender (though some American units, especially the vicious Texans, were unreliable in accepting surrender.)

The San Patricios knew they would not be accepted as P.O.W.s. They were officially traitors, to be hanged on the battlefield. That wasn't even a matter of prejudice; that was simple, clear law of war, and applied, at least in theory, to defectors of any sect.

Anaya was a good commander, who tried to extend the defense beyond the death-trap of the convent walls by digging trenches out from the Coyoacan Road, with a strongpoint on the road itself. He put the San Patricios, with four cannon, right there in the center, astride the road to the convent.

The Americans attacked the strongpoint, charging into the San Patricios' cannon, and were blasted back again and again, until the militia in the trenches at either side of the position pleaded lack of ammunition and started streaming back to the convent. The San Patricios stayed—they had ammunition, whether that was because (as Mexican sources claimed later) the only available rounds only fit in the San Patricios' pieces or because they knew they were fighting to the death. Sometime later in the afternoon, after realizing that the trenches supporting them were empty, they dragged their cannon back the half-kilometer to the convent.

Now came the droll portion of the day's entertainment, as the San Patricios used their last hours to carry out a very direct form of class warfare. They knew what American officers looked like, and they killed as many of them as they could—with grapeshot, with musket fire, with shot. American casualties were over 1,000, the highest of any battle in the war, and officers made up a disproportionate number of the dead.

The Mexican militia, having done more than amateur soldiers could be expected, was ready to surrender after a few hours in the convent, but there was a glitch, in that everyone who attempted to raise a white flag over the convent kept getting shot dead by the San Patricios, who wanted to prolong their lives a few more minutes, and, most of all, take some of their hated superior officers with them before putting their own heads in the noose.

The militia decided to fight on, either re-inspired or just more scared of the zombie Colorados than the gringos outside. Only after vicious bayonet duels inside the walls did Anaya order a surrender.

The Americans were not calm, by all accounts. They weren't used to casualties on the scale they suffered at Churubusco, and they held the defectors responsible. The sectarian implications are clear in one American vet's memory of the aftermath: American soldiers, he said, "vented their Saxon expletives on the lovely sons of Saint Patrick."

There weren't all that many of these sons left, after the battle. Thirty-five San Patricios were killed in the fighting, with only 85 captured. Everyone expected them to be swinging from a handy local tree within minutes of the surrender.

But in one of the many humorous sidelights on the American Invasion, these representatives of a dying race weren't going to be permitted to die just yet. They had inflicted enough damage that some of them were reserved for a show hanging, part of a choreographed triumphal entry into the Mexican capital.

Some, including Riley, were spared on technicalities; some were considered only worthy of branding on the face. That left 30 men to be hanged at the moment of maximum dramatic impact, and these 30 were treated like valuable theatrical props—or Aztec captives, carefully preserved until the moment of sacrifice. Scott put them in the care of Colonel William Harney, to be guarded at all costs until that moment.

Harney is one of those wild Yankees, those insane Victorians, who, like Ahab, hath their humanities. There's something appealing about the bloody bastard, and he was capable of transcending local prejudice in an impressive way—on other days, in other places. In his later career on the Plains, Harney was known for his decency to the Indians even when it got him into trouble with the army.

But Harney was not in a forgiving mood in 1847. To be honest, I doubt I would've been either, if I'd seen my friends blasted with grapeshot by ungrateful traitors. In fact, Harney's toughest job was to keep these 30 Papist deserters alive until the exact moment when the American flag was raised over the citadel of Chapultepec, the last fortress guarding the capital.

That was Scott's grand theatrical plan. At the moment Chapultepec fell, the city would belong to the Yankees, and at the very moment it changed hands—just as the flag went up—the Irishmen would go down, as it were, all hanged at exactly the perfect moment.

You have to admit, the man had a director's touch, not to mention the confidence of Babe Ruth, planning his mass hanging with perfect assurance that the battle would go as planned.

It did. At about 9:30 on the morning of September 13, 1847, two weeks after they were captured at Churubusco, the defectors were lined up, trussed and standing on carts, at the base of the steep stone "Hill of Grasshoppers," Chapultepec. This was the last citadel on the western edge of the city. When it fell, the city would be doomed. Harney was diligent nonetheless. Scott had ordered him to hang 30 men at Chapultepec, but one of his lieutenants told him that there was a problem.

One of the 30, Francis O'Connor, had been wounded at Churubusco and American Army surgeons had just amputated both his legs in order to keep him alive, as ordered, until he could do his part in the grand pageant. Harney wasn't interested in Mr. O'Connor's medical problems. His reaction is a classic of military comedy: "Bring the goddamn son of a bitch out here! My order was to hang 30 and by God I'll hang 30!" (The army was the one place where gentlemen were supposed, nay expected, to swear in that more courteous era.)

The orderlies hoisted O'Connor, bleeding stumps and all, into position as the squad waited at the base of the hill for the Mexican flag to go down. But something remarkable happened, a counter-sacrifice, a gesture the Aztecs would have understood in their bones. And that gesture out-echoed the American mass hanging, in the memory of Mexico, to this day, turning the fall of Chapultepec into a moral victory, of the Catholic/Shia variety that Anglos still seem to have a hard time understanding.

What happened was simple: Juan Escutia, a romantic teenage cadet from the Mexican military academy taking part in the last-ditch defense of the summit, saw that the fall of Chapultepec was inevitable, wrapped the Mexican flag around himself and jumped off the cliff. A very papist thing to do; it's no accident that "wrap the green flag round me" is an ironic tag for surplus martyrdom in Irish slang.

Five of his friends—Juan de la Barrera, Francisco Marquez, Agustin Melgar, Fernando Montes de Oca, and Vicente Suarez, all in their teens, jumped off the vertical slopes of Chapultepec with him rather than be captured by the invaders.

Harney, fuming at being left to hang prisoners rather than assault the citadel, probably had no idea that this counter-sacrifice had neutralized the magical effect of the mass hanging in his charge. Not that he would have hesitated even if he had known.

Harney had no problem whatsoever hanging the sons-of-bitches assigned to his care. He was just waiting for the stars and stripes to be raised on the summit. He saw it starting to go up and made sure all was ready-- a quick head count, no doubt making sure that Francis O'Connor, the malingering double amputee, was in place, dripping onto the floor of the cart assigned to him.

The six cadets who jumped from the summit now lay at the base, unnoticed by the gringos, but already beginning to radiate a necromantic power very familiar to all the dead of the Valley of Mexico. The 30 San Patricios stood on their carts, with the apathy you see in those who know they're going to die in the next few minutes.

At about 9:30 on the morning of September 13, as the victors' flag went up, Harney gave the sign and the drovers whacked the cart horses. The 30 men were now standing in mid-air. (O'Connor must have made a strange sight, a legless trunk hanging there.)

Magical deaths, magical geography. All very familiar stuff, especially to the original landlord of Churubusco, Huitzilpochtli. He would have understood both sacrifices, that of the six Niños Heroes and Scott's mass execution—but he'd have grasped instantly that the Niños' sacrifice would be the stronger. In the end, both were successfully claimed by the tribe which seemed to have been defeated.

The Niños Heroes are celebrated in a huge fountain at the base of Chapultepec, a site of picnic pilgrimages for Mexico City families every day. And the 30 San Patricios are claimed too by their papist kin among the ex-dying races. The Museum of Defeats lists every one of their names on a carved stone plaque, and there's even a Mexican bagpipe band in their name—the ultimate sacrifice, from a people with a sensitive ear.

For those unwilling to read the full treatise, I'll lay down some of the most pertinent parts:


Mexico was a classic Victorian "dying nation," and the thriving Anglos, who fully expected to occupy the entire planet in a few generations, didn't bother to hide their delight at the demise of such indolent Papists. To be a Mexican facing the Yankee hordes was very much like being a human in the years after Skynet decided it didn't like people in "The Terminator."
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[The Great Irish Famine was] one of the greatest demographic anomalies in the history of Europe. One might almost consider it to have been intentional.

That's because it was, and was understood to be so at the time, by both perpetrators and victims. The civil servant assigned to organize famine relief, Sir Charles Trevelyan, wrote that the famine was to be understood as an "effective mechanism for reducing surplus population" and a "judgment of God" on the "selfish, perverse, and turbulent" Irish. [...] And luckily for Britain and the free market, Trevelyan was in a perfect position to see that no aid reached those Papist vermin.

Stalin called them "kolkhozes," and Trevelyan's friends called them "estates," but they worked equally well[; i]n both cases huge quantities of grain were exported while the local population went virtually extinct—and, in both cases, informed opinion throughout the civilized world looked on with approval at this latest manifestation of progress.

Imagine stumbling half-dead out of that nightmare [...] and into the U.S., enlisting in an army entirely officered by Anglo-Saxon Protestants who hate your kind, and finding yourself participating in the invasion of a rural, Catholic nation which is already under-populated and is now being absorbed, digested, by the same civilization machine that just ate your homeland.

It really was the end of the world for those men. [...] As far as informed opinion in London and Boston knew in 1847, the Irish and the Mexicans were leaving the world together, and the world would be a more efficient, industrious place when they were gone.
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Life in the U.S. Army for an Irish Catholic was designed to enrage, then break, Papist recruits. [...] There were no Catholic chaplains. All enlisted men were required to visit Protestant preachers, who took special delight in telling those from the dying race that every member of their sect was doomed in this world and the next.

At some point, as the U.S. Army prepared to invade the dying Papist people to the south, [John Riley, leader of the San Patricios] made the connection and decided he was fighting for the wrong side—fighting for the machines, if you think of the Terminator analogy. And the Anglos were like machines at that time, with a special affinity for non-living things, merciless and unstoppable.
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[...B]y the time the Anglo machine had ground through Monterrey, Riley had something like 700 men in his unit. The Mexicans called them "los Colorados" for their red hair. But they weren't all gingers; there were German Catholics as well, and a number of African-American defectors who got sick of fighting for people who despised them.

The San Patricios were good artillerists and operated as an almost independent force, using infantry and artillery in close coordination. Their best moment came at Buena Vista, when they were placed on high ground and, on their own, isolated, bombarded, and then assaulted an American artillery unit, bayoneting the surviving crews and carrying back their pieces. U.S. cavalry assigned to overrun their position was decimated, and they covered the retreat of the Mexican Army virtually on their own.

It was a tactical victory that meant nothing in the strategic picture, which was an unstoppable American advance toward the capital.
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[...] The Americans attacked the strongpoint, charging into the San Patricios' cannon, and were blasted back again and again, until the militia in the trenches at either side of the position pleaded lack of ammunition and started streaming back to the convent.

The San Patricios stayed—they had ammunition, whether that was because (as Mexican sources claimed later) the only available rounds only fit in the San Patricios' pieces or because they knew they were fighting to the death.

Sometime later in the afternoon, after realizing that the trenches supporting them were empty, they dragged their cannon back the half-kilometer to the convent[...] [... and] used their last hours to carry out a very direct form of class warfare.

They knew what American officers looked like, and they killed as many of them as they could—with grapeshot, with musket fire, with shot. American casualties were over 1,000, the highest of any battle in the war, and officers made up a disproportionate number of the dead.

[...] Only after vicious bayonet duels inside the walls did Anaya order a surrender.
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[After the battle, 30 of the remaining Colorados - a full third of the less than 100 total survivors, out of the ~700 they had started with - were singled out by US military command for a carefully-choreographed execution, scheduled for] when the American flag was raised over the citadel of Chapultepec, the last fortress guarding the capital. At the moment Chapultepec fell, the city would belong to the Yankees, and at the very moment it changed hands—just as the flag went up—the Irishmen would go down, as it were, all hanged at exactly the perfect moment.
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At about 9:30 on the morning of September 13, 1847, two weeks after they were captured at Churubusco, the defectors were lined up, trussed and standing on carts, at the base of the steep stone "Hill of Grasshoppers," Chapultepec. This was the last citadel on the western edge of the city. When it fell, the city would be doomed. [...]

[...] But something remarkable happened, a counter-sacrifice, a gesture the Aztecs would have understood in their bones. And that gesture out-echoed the American mass hanging, in the memory of Mexico, to this day, turning the fall of Chapultepec into a moral victory, of the Catholic/Shia variety that Anglos still seem to have a hard time understanding.

What happened was simple: Juan Escutia, a romantic teenage cadet from the Mexican military academy taking part in the last-ditch defense of the summit, saw that the fall of Chapultepec was inevitable, wrapped the Mexican flag around himself and jumped off the cliff. [...] Five of his friends—Juan de la Barrera, Francisco Marquez, Agustin Melgar, Fernando Montes de Oca, and Vicente Suarez, all in their teens, jumped off the vertical slopes of Chapultepec with him rather than be captured by the invaders.

[...] The six cadets who jumped from the summit now lay at the base, unnoticed by the gringos, but already beginning to radiate a necromantic power very familiar to all the dead of the Valley of Mexico.

The 30 San Patricios stood on their carts, with the apathy you see in those who know they're going to die in the next few minutes. At about 9:30 on the morning of September 13, as the victors' flag went up, Harney gave the sign and the drovers whacked the cart horses. The 30 men were now standing in mid-air.

Magical deaths, magical geography. All very familiar stuff, especially to the original landlord of Churubusco, Huitzilpochtli. He would have understood both sacrifices, that of the six Niños Heroes and Scott's mass execution—but he'd have grasped instantly that the Niños' sacrifice would be the stronger. In the end, both were successfully claimed by the tribe which seemed to have been defeated.
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There's an Exalted Essence homebrew competition that's kicking off on the Onyx Path Discord server in about three hours from this post. If you want to try to take a stab at it, here was the announcement that I saw, including the link in the last sentence:

This will be a three-round homebrew competition using Exalted: Essence's ruleset over the next few weeks! The Iron Charms competitors will write their best Charms according to our prompts. You'll have a limited amount of time to submit and must include our secret ingredients. Bring your best Charm-writing skills and pit yourself against other fans in this high stakes technical competition. The submission will then be judged by a panel of our developers, and the winners will see their work put together in a pdf for all to enjoy! The winner of the entire competition will win the coveted Iron Charm Winner role, a spotlight in the pdf, and our undying admiration.
Anyone can submit, but will you survive the qualifying round? Only the top 15 submissions will move on and battle for the right to become the Iron Charms Champion.
The submission form will be posted on the Onyx Path Discord ( Join the Onyx Path Publishing Discord Server! ) in the Iron-Charms channel on Monday, 10/9, so get ready!
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Kaiya said:
The Chosen of the Shadow of All Things wouldn't be ability based, IMO. Essence based, rather, and with trees like Sabotage, Escape, Denial, ect. They would be about freedom and denying others the ability to restrict them, and sabotaging the efforts of others. The beauty of the doomed and dying, the love of Fate as something to defy, being a boundary-transgressing shadow, ect.
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Interesting. Essence, Attribute, and Ability are something like a sliding scale for thematic flexibility if that makes sense. The 2e Yozi charms are Essence based and are tightly bound by themes. Internals get around these limitations by having cross access to different powersets. Hmm. If I were to actually go all in on this idea basing things on Abilities would probably be more work overall and risk thematic dilution. But restrictions breed creativity so the idea of Ebon Medicine charms based on Humorism with Snake Oil serving as a fifth humor would not have otherwise occurred to me.

Also, I randomly started thinking about Cythera. Random ideas for her themes include duality, physics, spacetime, light, explosions, the Book of Genesis, and the nature of consequences. Specifically I had the idea that she might be the source of the no time travel no resurrection rule in universe. And that those ideas play into physics with things like the absolute nature of the speed of light, light cones, and quantum uncertainty. Also that she was the one who originally came up with gender.

Edit: The Cythera gender thing is because I found thinking of gender as a thing with conceptually weight in a fantasy setting disconcerting. Not like on a people level. But on a metaphysical level. Tying it to Cythera/some other primordial solves this problem for me as it is no longer something somehow inherent to existence. Instead it is an idea/concept that the other Primordials adopted for their own use.
 
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Folks on the fancord know I have a particular beef with the way langauges are kind of done in Creation. This is mostly just me sharing my house rules document's latest version, where I kind of sat down and talked about how I view the langauge geography of Creaiton.
Rather than buying langauges dot-per, I use a variant of the Merit from the Fancord where Langauges is a Merit that shows general polyglotness, Old Realm is a special Merit, and picking up indivdual langauges is soemthing done through roleplay.

Language Families Revisited

The corebook often at times is not clear whether a given language is a language or a language family. The list below revised a few of the less clear groups to better fit the idea of being a language family, or a language with many mutually intelligible dialects as listed below.

High Realm was originally the language of the Wàn people of the Northeastern Blessed Isle. While the version spoken throughout the Realm for administrative purposes and by the ruling class is by far the most prominent version, with dialects representing regional variants found in the home cities of different Great Houses, cadet houses like those of Cherak, the Dragon Caste of Prasad, and the ruling class of Zhaojun. It also includes many of the native languages of residents of the Dragon's Blanket and Imperial River Basin areas, including Pangu and the Imperial City itself. Dragon Tongue is considered a particularly esoteric dialect of Dynastic High Realm. It is also in some areas spoken as the native tongue in cities like Juche and Mnemon-Darjilis, where the local languages have been actively repressed by the ruling Great House.

Low Realm represents the numerous local languages of other areas of the Blessed Isle from before the rise of the Scarlet Empress, with Arjuf especially notable by still using its own language for many local uses even amongst its higher classes. Languages include Arjufi, Myionese, and the languages of other pre-Dynasty polities throughout the Isle and some of the Southern Threshold North of An-Teng. A notable subfamily of languages is Mountainspeak, which includes the languages of Lord's Crossing and Juche.

Skytongue has two main subfamilies: Windspeak and Winterspeak. The former is concentrated primarily on the Penninsular North, with Medo being the Southernmost area to speak a language, while the area East of Malice bay serves as a transition area to more languages of Foresttongue. The latter is spoken primarily along the coast of the White Sea, parts of Malice Bay, and much of Mela's Fangs. Many of the more isolated communities in this region of the world speak a multitude of language isolates, some barely intelligible to speakers of a language form Skytongue.

The langauge of Riverspeak that is mostly known by much of Creatin's trade networks is based on the Academy of Language found in Nexus, a private Guild enterprise funded by the institution's publicaiton of an updated grammar and dictionary manual often considered mandatory for offical Guid documents and as such widely distributed by international trade, with mass woodblock printed versions sold throughout the Threshold. This prescriptive version of Riverspeak does not often capture many of the nuances of langauges and dialects found throughout the River Province. It barely resembles how most people speak in Nexus day-to-day, Lookshyan officla records utilize a language and script from the Shoguante that is otherwise dead, and Greayfalls has notable elements of both High Realm and Forestongue in its speech.

Foresttongue is one of the most widely distributed language families and thus one of the most diverse, with languages found amongst those conquered by the Empire of the Bear in the North, while the people of Volivat speak a barely-recognizable language in the Dreaming Sea. The most widely spoken languages are those used by the rulers of Mahalanka and Ixoatli, which use the language in both administrative and day to day life, as well as through trade.

Flametongue has two major subfamilies: Ashtongue and Summertongue. Ashtongue along with Seatongue encompasses many languages found throughout the lands West of the Firepeak Mountains, and populations on the Eastern side from Dajaz all the way to Paragon. It is also notably the language family which many of the Delzahn languages fall within. Summertongue by contrast encompasses many of the languages of the Varang City States, the native languages of Chiaroscuro, and along with Forestongue many of the languages along the Dreaming Sea.

The myriad of islands to the West that Seatongue is often one of the hardest families to navigate, with many islands having their own unique languages or dialects, sometimes more than one. Trade is generally conducted using the language of one of the major powers when possible, with the language of Abalone becoming the de facto trade language of Realm satrapies over the last few decades, although knowledge of Onyxian has become more prominent in recent years. Seatongue is also found in the Southwest, intermingling with Ashtongue languages, as well as along the coasts of the Northwest, with the creole of Coral Seatongue creole found in Fajad, as well as a few terms which have made their way into the local speech of Bittern.

Tribal Tongues also represent language isolates which can be found on every corner of Creation, from the Isle of Graces in the Northwest to the Old Realm-derived langauge of the sorcerers of Ysyr. Some exist even on the Blessed Isle, where some of the pre-Wàn languages continue to be spoken in everyday life, although languages like the native speech of Darjilis are close to extinction due to efforts of ruling Great Houses or patrician clans. The various unique ancient languages spoken among the mortal and Dragon-Blooded families of the Heaven's Dragons would also be considered such languages.

Old Realm predates the native language of any mortal being. Language can change quickly and it had long stopped being the main language of humanity since the Time Before. It has had deliberately crafted versions which were spoken by and used by humans throughout history for specific contexts, such as the Second Deliberative's official annals or the original manuscript of The White Treatise. Other dialects of Old Realm include those natively spoken by supernatural beings like the Fair Folk, various species of demons, the various elemental races, or the strange singular tongues of a many behemoths. Beings who speak Old Realm natively always understand all other dialects. A character must have the Weird Tongue Merit in order to speak Old Realm.

Autochthonian languages descend from the ancient mélange of tongues spoken by the original exiles to the Realm of Brass and Shadow, many extinct in Creation before even the First Deliberative. Each Nation of the Octet has its own official language, though communities within a Nation will often have their own distinct dialects, while years of cultural admixture between Nations has also resulted in a large body of shared vocabulary and grammar between them. They all generally use the same writing system, which is derived from a simplified form of Old Realm glyphs, often with developed idiographic meaning to help facilitate international communication. Additionally, a notable portion of Autocthhonian population is versed in hand gestures that allow communication in environments where equipment or loud noise would make speech otherwise impossible, as well as allowing for continued communciaiton for residents who have some form of hearing or speech loss. While such "Hand Talk" varies between and within Nations, it often is the first means of communication between unidentified groups.
 
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As for some kind of "why this" notes since that went long.

The first is honeslty I kind of always hated the idea that Old Realm was this big magic language spoken by everyone, but the Realm somehow spoke like, directly variants of it. Which to me feels just werid, and kind of privileges those language families in ways I don't feel comfortable with. So just making a point to say High Realm and Low Realm aren't actually Old Realm derived, and that's just propoganda is fine by me.

The second is honestly the High/Low Realm split is straight-up stupid in context of what the game says the dots in Linguisitcs in 1e and 2e, and Language in 3e i smeant to be. If a dot is a fmaily, and these were related utnil not, then there's no reason for them to be separate purchases when a person from Gem is speaking the same language as someone from Kirighast. So since 3e introduced the idea of the Wan ethnic group, I kind of have pushed more and more for my stuff that they're just separate language families, and High Realm is the language of the upper classes of a global empire, but has its own lower class versions and is a colonial language on other parts of the Isle.

The splitting-up of Skytongue and Flametongue is mostly also a bit where I kind of wanted just a more jigsaw of the map. The South has two mountain ranges to build on, and then this blend into the middle that seemed like a great way to add vareity and verisimilitude. I would even probably if I felt it push to just Ashtongue and Summertongue to not be related at all, but share alphabets, grammar and stuff kind of like how Nahuatl and Mayan langauges do in Mesoamerica. Almost entirely different language families that nonetheless influenced eachotherr greatly. I think it's kind of neat also for some of that again "Upper or colonial class speaks X, populace speaks Y" thing in Chiaroscuro.

Skytongue's split is more or less the same, but alsoo geography. There's a clear (to me) division of the Penninsular North and the Far North. So having the White Sea be a patchwork that kind of shifts into one or antoher as you go up into Mela's Fangs or in the Penninsula seemd like a way to split things up interstingly while also not just repating the South.

The Riverspeak thing is kind of based on something I always found inteersting/weird with English when I was doing my linguistics degree. Mainly that English doesn't really have an academy like say, French, Japanese, or German do. It was often defined as much by just who sold the most popular grammar books and dictionaries. Basically English had a "privatized" grammar and spelling institution, and something like that with Riverspeak that the Guild (and thus a lot of business) was conducted in seemed neat. Plus an add that this is straight-up what merchants use, not what folks normally actually speak in was me having fun I admit.

Autochthonian has a lot of the same gripes I had with the High/Low Realm langauges being given this special relation to Old Realm that made no sense to me. Especially the idea it was the native langauge of folks for 5,000 years of the First Age. So yeah, instead it's just its own langauge family at this point, with some cultural needs resulting in shared writing system, and what amounts to something like North Ameircan Indigenous handtalk as part of Autochthonian culture.
 
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