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General Exalted Thread

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Kaiya said:
The Realm is bad, though. Like, they're incredibly super awful. They're not Team America: World Police over here, they're imperial Britain, imperial China, Rome. They're violent thieves extracting wealth from the rest of the setting to the benefit of their own people. They are cool. They're heroic, in a classical sense. They're sick-ass demigods with elemental powers playing the villains to a high fantasy setting, and they are definitely the bad guys.
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I feel like the Realm being bad and the Realm's Dragon-Blooded being bad are kind of...obviously not unrelated things, but still two at least partially distinct things. Like, Dynasts obviously see the best the Realm has to offer, while their experiences of the Threshold are often negative - fighting invading tribal armies and Fair Folk and such. Dynasts don't have to face the worst consequences of what the Realm does, but they get to enjoy what the Realm achieves, and finding the whole arrangement good and worthwhile and ultimately to everyone's benefit is completely reasonable from that perspective. Not true, but reasonable, the kind of conclusion even a fundamentally decent Dynast who wants to do the right thing might well come to. That Dynast's personal experience may genuinely be that the Realm does good things and works to protect the Threshold, too. Like, an officer who puts their life on the line and sees good legionaries die defending some satrapy from a Fair Folk raid probably isn't evilly cackling in the back of their mind while thinking about the reasons behind the satrapy's military dependence on the Realm or the profits that might be extracted from it in the future. I'd say that a big part of the way the Realm is bad is that there's a lot going on there structurally and culturally that makes it easy for good people to do evil things while feeling fully confident in the justification and righteousness of their actions. Collectively the Realm's a bad guy, individually the Realm's Dragon-Blooded might or might not be. In actual games I've certainly seen both Solars and Lunars who're more villainous than the average Dragon-Blooded and Dynasts who are pretty virtuous and do goo things on a personal scale, while still fully believing in the Realm.
 
The Realm is evil, and the Dynasty are the ultimate beneficiaries of its extractive imperialism. It gluts itself on the blood and riches of the rest of the world, and the Dynasty lives in luxury and splendour with vast wealth and thousands of slaves and a religion that teaches the masses that they are heroes who deserve respect obedience.

The ways in which it is evil are kind of mundane ones, though. It is bad in the way that empires are bad — Creation has no shortage of empires, in the present or in the past. Slavery in various forms as an accepted part of society is the norm across the setting, with rare exceptions. The Shogunate was only dubiously any better than the Realm, and was a lot less stable. The Solar led Old Realm ended with the Solar Purge and a cataclysmic war for a reason. The main thing separating the Realm now from various other contemporary or conquered powers is just scale. Like, the Realm is not more evil or villainous than Greater Zhao, Azure, Grand Cherak, or the Thousand Fangs Total Control Zone, they're just bigger and doing the things that those places did or are still doing, but on a larger scale.

It's very easy to justify playing characters from various walks of life in the setting who do not immediately think that the Realm is pure evil and needs to immediately be destroyed. Which is good. I don't play Exalted to "fix" the setting anymore than I play it to grandstand about my own anti-imperialist beliefs and make up evil nobles to be mad at, or to play out that one "and then the Exalted Host reunites" story that people sometimes treated as the win condition for the game back in 2e. I just don't care about those things very much, most of the time. I play this game to imagine people and perspectives very different from my own, and tell compelling stories about them involving their fantastical magic powers.
 
"The Realm are definitely the bad guys"

The Fair Folk, Deathlords, Yozis, power-hungry gods, a million other monsters, Solars/Lunars depending on how you play them...

Like i said before: the splats don't dictate good or evil, they dictate powersets and archetypes.
 
HalfTangible said:
"The Realm are definitely the bad guys"

The Fair Folk, Deathlords, Yozis, power-hungry gods, a million other monsters, Solars/Lunars depending on how you play them...

Like i said before: the splats don't dictate good or evil, they dictate powersets and archetypes.
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honestly, if objective morality existed in Exalted (it does not) there wouldn't be a real good or bad guy outside of the unconquered sun and ebon dragon. Everyone has motivations and sins to their names. Some are worse than others mind you, and i see the realm as being a bit lower on the evil scale all things considered. Of course, thats because they will fight agaisnt things like the fair folk, underworld, and yozi
 
Kaiya said:
The Realm is bad, though. Like, they're incredibly super awful. They're not Team America: World Police over here, they're imperial Britain, imperial China, Rome. They're violent thieves extracting wealth from the rest of the setting to the benefit of their own people.
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All of this is true, but just as their good deeds do not wash away their sins, those imperial crimes do not erase those good deeds.

And they do have a litany of good deeds, as the quoted source points out, that compares well to the empires you cite. (And while I've never watched Team America: World Police, my understanding is that it is a satire. How the real USA compares to the examples you give is probably not a subject for this thread, even if it might be an interesting conversation).
 
drakensis said:
And they do have a litany of good deeds, as the quoted source points out, that compares well to the empires you cite. (And while I've never watched Team America: World Police, my understanding is that it is a satire. How the real USA compares to the examples you give is probably not a subject for this thread, even if it might be an interesting conversation).
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This is something I think about a lot. To make a real-world comparison, George W. Bush's founding of PEPFAR has saved easily upward of 20 million lives over the past 20+ years. All the deaths of the War on Terror don't even begin to compare - no other president of the United States is responsible for saving more lives than him. This doesn't make him any less of a bastard or less responsible for all the misery he caused, obviously (I feel like I need to say obviously), but those lives don't not matter. And it's relevant to Exalted and the Bronze Faction, because when you think of how the tools of imperialism are often the largest and most effective tools for affecting change in the world in the first place, suddenly you can understand more of the Bronze Faction's appeal. They have infrastructure they can steer. The Gold Faction only really has the Cult of the Illuminated.
 
drakensis said:
I was reminded of this recently, and I think it's worth reposting:

I've said before, and I'll say again, the fact that I like the Dragonblooded means I find them interesting, which does not imply morally correct or that I feel they have to "win". Some people do, but I've never said so.

But here's the thing - I don't think they're bad either. I think they'll FAIL, sure, because that's the canonical end of the Age of Sorrows, but so will everyone else.

But they aren't going to fail because they're not heroic enough. Nor are the Solars. Nor are the Lunars. Nor are the Sidereals. They'll fail because the odds are too high and the time too short and the divisions between the Exalts too deep.

But I don't see any of them as fools and villains. And I'll explain why.

Now, it's easy to see why Solars are heroes: they're Exalted due to excellence. They were Exalted because they surpassed their fellow man even before they had a hint of divine power. They are left in the world, alone, to forge their own destiny. Some find others like them, but there's so few of them in such a huge world that most work alone. They have no backup, no support, and no cause beyond that which they choose for themselves (although sometimes Zeniths get instruction, they're very vague). They have to forge their own place in a world that, if it perhaps doesn't all fear and hate them, is mostly willing to take advantage of them at the friendliest. And they DO it. Their reappearence: scattered, without support, in a time of tumult, has nonetheless already redefined the world. Every Solar can change the world, singly or jointly. They can descend into the darkest sin or be a paragon of virtue(s). They were instrumental in building the First Age, and could build the Third. The Solars are undeniably heroes.

But they are not the only heroes.

Let me tell you what it means to be Dragonblooded. To be Dragonblooded is to have a responsibility. To be Dragonblooded is to take up the sword to defend Creation. Every Dynast can ride, and shoot, and fight both bare handed and with a weapon, and lead troops into battle. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. The most fat, jaded, lazy bureaucrat of the Thousand Scales can take up a sword and fight a strong man to a standstill without use of a single Charm, and lead troops into battle with competence. The requirements for Lookshy Dragonblooded are even more strict. If you cannot learn to fight for Creation, Dragonblooded society has no use for you. They believe themselves to be the only force standing between Creation and that which would destroy it, and they act accordingly. That does not just include personal competence. To be Dragonblooded is not a title, or an adornment, but membership in a single nation. Only Dragonblooded, of all the Exalted, have a Charm that allows them to take their most hated Dragonblooded foe and instantly trust and love them like a brother to join together to fight a greater threat. That is their duty: that is their calling. You say they have failed Creation in their stewardship. But they have saved it. Saved it once, and twice, and many times over. When they overthrew the Solars, they were dying in scores, in droves, in their hundreds and thousands, but they would not surrender. They would not break. They fought until every last one was gone, because the brotherhood does not retreat. When the Great Contagion broke the armies of the Shogunate and the survivors faced oncoming endless hordes of horrors from beyond reality, they did not lay down and die, or flee screaming and broken. Oh, a few may have, but the records are clear on the whole: they fought. They fought to the end, they forced the Fair Folk to scratch and claw and die for everything they wanted to grasp, and in some places they even won, the broken remnants of reality against an impossibly larger foe! And ever since, whenever anything has threatened Creation, any horror has run loose upon it, the Dragonblooded have marched. They have fought the Fair Folk. They have fought rogue gods. They have fought the armies of the dead. Some have failed, some have died, a few have even turned traitor, but the brotherhood of the Dragons still stands in the defence of Creation. Even now, at the beginning of the setting, the Dragonblooded are the two mightiest forces in Creation. They have a religion that venerates them, yes, but also one that orders them to treat mortals well, which is more than one can say for any other known religion in Creation. And they police themselves. Sometimes it is effective and sometimes not, but even now the realms of the Dragonblooded are the safest and most stable in Creation. Even now, in both the Realm and Lookshy, you can find mortals in position of power. Even now, the peasants eat, the spirits are kept doing their proper jobs, and the foes of Creation dare not yet enter, because that is the peace that the Dragonblooded fought and bled and died for. Everything in Creation, everything that lives, owes its life to the Dragonblooded, because it is they who have been the army that defended Creation since the Solars were overthrown and the Lunars left. Every Solar owes his life to the Dragonblooded, even if he owes his death to them as well. Creation might need a more powerful protector, but it could never ask for a more loyal and dedicated one. The Dragonblooded are heroes.

But they are not the only heroes.

Let me tell you what it means to be Lunar. To be Lunar is to be tougher than any other Exalt ever had to be. Lunars don't Exalt for trying to do something audacious and remarkable, like Solars. They Exalt because they did something audacious and remarkable. A Solar might Exalt for taking up a sword to defend his village against the Fair Folk, but a Lunar only Exalts if he survived doing that. A Lunar has to win, to overcome a trial that seems impossible, before they get any reward. That is the life of a Lunar in a nutshell. They do not have the overwhelming power of the Solars, nor the brotherhood of the Dragonblooded, nor the support of Heavens and certain knowedge of the Sidereals. And yet they survive nonetheless. There is no challenge the Lunars cannot survive. The fury of the Primordials could not destroy them. The Dragonblooded and Sidereals could not stop them from escaping. The Wyld twisted them, broke them at their very core, crippled that which made them Exalted, and the Lunars yet survived. They not only survived, they remade themselves. Without their patron, without the Solars, without anyone else, the Lunars forged themselves new Exaltation and survived still. If they could not inhabit Creation, they inhabited the Wyld, a place absolutely antithetical to life, and survived still. And they did not just simply survive, either, cowering like dogs at the edge of a campfire's light. They grew stronger. They seized places of power. They forged nations. And they forged each other. They found new Lunars and tattooed them as the Lunars now needed to survive. And they did this without Sidereal astrology or any other means of instantly finding out when and where one Exalted. They did this through constant vigilence and looking out for those who needed it most. Nobody, not even the Solars, have faced what the Lunars have. The Solars merely died. But the Lunars were broken down to their very soul. Every Lunar, everywhere, is broken. But they have not died. They have not surrendered and become the lapdogs of the Dragonblooded and received the considerable benefits of their strength. They have not turned their backs on Creation, either. They have not walked out into the Wyld and left everything behind. Despite everything, despite terror and betrayal and death, despite being wounded more than any other Exalt could even imagine, they remain steadfast and true to themselves above all. The Lunars are heroes.

But they are not the only heroes.

Let me tell you what it means to be Sidereal. There is no life harder than that of a Sidereal. To be Sidereal is to be chosen, from birth, although you neither knew nor asked for it. To be Sidereal is to Exalt and be told that now you must train to be the finest-edged weapon in Creation, that you will spend the rest of your incredibly long life protecting Creation, and that there is no time for weakness, for doubt, or for failure. You will do what is required of you, or you will die and another will be chosen who is of a finer mettle than you. And most every Sidereal you will ever meet was given that choice, nodded their head, and devoted their existence to keeping Creation from the abyss. You may sneer that Sidereals control the world. That is true, but it is nothing to be rejoiced about. Controlling the world is a literal thing for Sidereals, not figurative. They must espy every aspect of it. They must figure out when anything is going wrong. And then they must stop it. Ninety-nine Sidereals, to our knowledge, do this. Ninety-nine men and women work day in and day out for Creation, and their only reward is another assignment and knowing that Creation has gone on another day. They have given up friends. They can love, but will never be loved for themselves. They erased their very existences from Creation to better serve it; if their judgement on how to best serve Creation was wrong, it does not erase the sacrifices they have made in pursuit of the noblest goal there is. They don't have vacations, because there is no time and nobody to take their place. They can amass staggering wealth and power but will never be able to enjoy it. Some guide the Solars, some guide the Dragonblooded: in either case, they see young heroes who have their whole lives ahead of them and can do whatever they want with it, who have the ability, the sheer luxury of saying on any given day "screw this, I'm going to go do something else". That's the freedom the Sidereal will never have, can never have, but they will do their job nonetheless and try their damndest to help the Solars or Dragonblooded to save Creation. That is their reward - that Creation lives another day. Not adulation. Not even a thank you. Just a satisfactory result. And they die. Oh yes, they die. Sidereals are the longest-lived of all the Exalted. And yet barely any survive from before the Usurpation. Why? Because they are out, every day, doing what they think must be done to save the world. And many times they die doing it. And death might be a relief, except it's an abject failure which has taken out a key piece of the network that keeps Creation safe. You may not agree with the decisions they make, but only an ingrate or someone suffused with hatred could fail to be in awe at the sacrifices the Sidereals make for what they believe they have to do. Their lives are only the first step. Only a Sidereal could, and does, wield a weapon which is immensely more effective against someone they love. Not pretend to love. Not have convinced that he loves. Not said he loves. Loves. Truly. Deeply. That weapon was built because it would be used. Because to be a Sidereal is to put nothing above your task of defending Creation. Not yourself. Not the one your love. Not your desires. Not anything. You don't matter. You chose not to matter. You chose figuratively (and quite literally in the oldest cases) not to even exist, all in the desire, the drive, the duty to make sure that Creation does exist. The Sidereals are heroes.

But they, too, are not the only heroes.

All of them are heroes. Not individually, of course - there's always individual exceptions. But collectively? Yes. Oh yes. Collectively, they have given more of themselves then anybody should ever be asked to do, and they have done it gamely and with excellence. They have all accomplished feats that border on and in many cases should have been impossible.

They are EXALTED. The name of the game is EXALTED. And the Exalted, all of them, are heroes.

The tragedy of the setting is that being heroic is not enough. Giving of yourself is not enough. Straining yourself to the utmost is not enough. It's too late, too hard, the enemies are at the gates and they cannot be denied. Not by the Solars, or the Dragonblooded, or the Lunars, or the Sidereals or anyone else.

That's where the PCs come in.


Ayiekie, on Exalted
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This is kind of a fascinating artifact.

"But they are not the only heroes" is a nearly twenty years old post. It comes from a specific place early in Exalted's fan culture. It was entered into the Great Canon of Defining Quotes About Exalted. There were whole websites dedicated to preserving and broadcasting quotes such as this one. There are people who read this post on TVTropes before they even knew what Exalted was.

But it's nearly twenty years old. It's a time capsule, and we can look back and see how the game has changed since then. I'm not going to draw up a list here, but perhaps the foremost of it is how much we've decentered the apocalypse.

If you read this post, it is primarily, overwhelmingly concerned with the overarching narrative of the coming apocalypse. The "canonical" end of Creation is that the Exalted bicker until the sky caves in, and only your PCs can change this. In the end, without the narrative agency of the player, the Wyld or Oblivion are the only winners.

We don't... do that anymore? The world of modern Exalted might end, but it probably won't. The Ebon Dragon is not lurking behind the page ready to make his escape and turn Creation into a new Hell. The deathlords are bound to follow the will of the Neverborn, but most of them don't want to - most of them are trying to slip the noose, to work the story to their advantage, to conquer and to hold and to work towards the annihilation on the world on only the longest, slowest of scales. Whatever ideological project there was among the raksha to pursue the destruction of the world of Shape, it died upon the Sword of Creation. Modern raksha love Creation as much as they hate it, and they are happy to exist within it and take from it what they want. If the Realm falls to civil war, it will likely bring about immeasurable violence and devastation - yet it will also, surely, release millions of lives from its yoke. It will not be the swinging open of the gates that allows the undead to drag Creation down into the maw of Oblivion, which no longer even exists in its old form.

And that, in turn, strips away many of the justifications the Realm used to leverage for itself. They are not the saviors of Creation. The Empress was, once; she wielded the Sword of Creation and saved the world, and then she used that power to claim the wealth of the world and secure her own power, forging a bloody-handed empire in the wake of an apocalypse. Today, the Realm is partly a tool which the Bronze Faction of Sidereals uses to defend the world, but it is also its own justification. The Realm is convenient because of how it centralizes power in one polity, one religion, one empire, and that makes it easier for ninety-odd secretive agents to leverage to uphold destiny. But it's not necessary.

That's a lie it's telling you.

Side note but it's striking to me how much this post makes the day to day life of a Sidereal sound like it sucks. Yeah, arcane fate is a curse. Yeah, their work is a burden. But no, they absolutely take days off. They take years off, sometimes! They eat the peaches of immortality and drink the wine of gods. They recline on silken cushions in the golden-roofed palaces of Heaven. There is power in their position, and there is pleasure. The self-sacrificing ascetic who has no life beyond The Job is like, at most the image that Chejop Kejak projects on purpose. It is not the inherent truth of the Sidereal condition.
 
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drakensis said:
All of this is true, but just as their good deeds do not wash away their sins, those imperial crimes do not erase those good deeds.

And they do have a litany of good deeds, as the quoted source points out, that compares well to the empires you cite. (And while I've never watched Team America: World Police, my understanding is that it is a satire. How the real USA compares to the examples you give is probably not a subject for this thread, even if it might be an interesting conversation).
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thats what i was trying to convey in my own little statement on the realm being a lesser evil. @drakensis here puts it a lot better mind you
 
Omicron said:
Side note but it's striking to me how much this post makes the day to day life of a Sidereal sound like it sucks. Yeah, arcane fate is a curse. Yeah, their work is a burden. But no, they absolutely take days off. They take years off, sometimes! They eat the peaches of immortality and drink the wine of gods. They recline on silken cushions in the golden-roofed palaces of Heaven. There is power in their position, and there is pleasure. The self-sacrificing ascetic who has no life beyond The Job is like, at most the image that Chejop Kejak projects on purpose. It is not the inherent truth of the Sidereal condition.
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Yes, you get PTO and the kind of vacations that people imagine for their best afterlives. (one of my sidereals is lazy as shit and spends as much time on sabbatical as his superiors allow)

You've still got the hardest, loneliest, most thankless job in existence. Not only do you have no friends or family outside of 99 coworkers, if you try, those friends and family will forget you, which is almost worse than never having them to begin with. Like can you imagine coming home to your wife and she pulls a gun because she thinks you're a stranger breaking into your house? You can try and patch that with a Resplendent Destiny but then you're living an outright lie at work, at home, or both and have to work to keep it secret.

If you do your job well, no one will ever know you did it and no one will ever care. You can drown in hedonistic pleasures as much as you like but you've given up every opportunity to connect and care about others on a deeper level than 'this is my duty'.

(Also succeed or fail you'll probably die horribly but that's typical for the Exalted, it's rare for an Exalt to pass away in his sleep)

Omicron said:
And that, in turn, strips away many of the justifications the Realm used to leverage for itself. They are not the saviors of Creation. The Empress was, once; she wielded the Sword of Creation and saved the world, and then she used that power to claim the wealth of the world and secure her own power, forging a bloody-handed empire in the wake of an apocalypse. Today, the Realm is partly a tool which the Bronze Faction of Sidereals uses to defend the world, but it is also its own justification. The Realm is convenient because of how it centralizes power in one polity, one religion, one empire, and that makes it easier for ninety-odd secretive agents to leverage to uphold destiny. But it's not necessary.
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Uhhe many apocalypses Creation is facing have had their focus lessened but they haven't disappeared. The Fair Folk still eat souls and while a second Balorian crusade isn't super likely, we're talking about the infinite potential of the Wyld. There's nothing to say they want have a sequel or come up with something far worse. (Oh hey there budding ideas for an Exalted/Warhammer crossover story, when did you get there?)

When the Realm collapses it will inevitably lead to opportunities for the deathlords. You can say that the Deathlords aren't actively pursuing Oblivion any longer, but they are, both by their actions and by their very existence in Creation. No matter how slow the timescale, their existence and the notion of Death's Chivalry point towards the end of all things, and they cannot truly shake off the oaths they swore to their masters, as both the Dowager and the Lion show clearly. The Abyssals aren't as tightly bound, but they are still bound. Just as Lunar essence is mercurial and prone to change and the Sidereals are tied to Fate's whims, the Abyssals are tied to death itself, the deathlords, and the Neverborn.

The Solars are coming back with their own agendas ranging from "okay let's build something good out of what's still functional" to "MAIM KILL BURN". The Lunars, again, have their own agendas, some of them good for the people, a lot of them not.

And all of that is ignoring the fact that Creation's next apocalypse is probably going to blindside them just like the Balor crusade, the Contagion, the Abyssal Exalted and arguably even the Usurpation did.

evtrax said:
honestly, if objective morality existed in Exalted (it does not) there wouldn't be a real good or bad guy outside of the unconquered sun and ebon dragon. Everyone has motivations and sins to their names. Some are worse than others mind you, and i see the realm as being a bit lower on the evil scale all things considered. Of course, thats because they will fight agaisnt things like the fair folk, underworld, and yozi
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Pretty much. I'm not going to claim the Realm is some empire of saints that have never done anything wrong (unless I want to troll or am making a joke) but the notion that they're the setting's villain is only true for Solars/Lunars, and even for them it's questionable. For Dragon-Blooded it's just flat out false, because even if you're from Lookshy or Prasad or some other polity where the Realm is supposed to be your enemy it's closer to a rival that you have an uneasy peace with than an enemy of Creation.

mothematics said:
The Gold Faction only really has the Cult of the Illuminated.
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Which is so small it's basically not worth consideration yet (YET being the key word).
 
HalfTangible said:
The Fair Folk still eat souls and while a second Balorian crusade isn't super likely, we're talking about the infinite potential of the Wyld. There's nothing to say they want have a sequel or come up with something far worse.
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Things spring from the Wyld but there are not literally infinite raksha waiting to crash into Creation.
 
HalfTangible said:
Uhhe many apocalypses Creation is facing have had their focus lessened but they haven't disappeared. The Fair Folk still eat souls and while a second Balorian crusade isn't super likely, we're talking about the infinite potential of the Wyld. There's nothing to say they want have a sequel or come up with something far worse. (Oh hey there budding ideas for an Exalted/Warhammer crossover story, when did you get there?)

When the Realm collapses it will inevitably lead to opportunities for the deathlords. You can say that the Deathlords aren't actively pursuing Oblivion any longer, but they are, both by their actions and by their very existence in Creation. No matter how slow the timescale, their existence and the notion of Death's Chivalry point towards the end of all things, and they cannot truly shake off the oaths they swore to their masters, as both the Dowager and the Lion show clearly. The Abyssals aren't as tightly bound, but they are still bound. Just as Lunar essence is mercurial and prone to change and the Sidereals are tied to Fate's whims, the Abyssals are tied to death itself, the deathlords, and the Neverborn.

The Solars are coming back with their own agendas ranging from "okay let's build something good out of what's still functional" to "MAIM KILL BURN". The Lunars, again, have their own agendas, some of them good for the people, a lot of them not.

And all of that is ignoring the fact that Creation's next apocalypse is probably going to blindside them just like the Balor crusade, the Contagion, the Abyssal Exalted and arguably even the Usurpation did.
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This is extremely different in tone from the portrayal of older editions, which strongly emphasized that the world was at threat this very moment. The Empress is coming back with her dark groom tomorrow. The Mask of Winters acted too early in taking Thorns so the Deathlords are scrambling to catch up, but that's just given the world a small warning window to prepare for the oncoming horrors they mean to unleash. The Wyld was basically the only threat that was not immediate and that's because the raksha had fired their shot and whiffed in historical memory and still recovering, but they were still ready to take advantage of Creation fracturing by flooding in again.

There was a degree of assuming ideological cohesion to the various apocalyptic factions in 1e and 2e that is no longer true. The deathlords were actively, willingly working towards the end of the world right now, and the Abyssals were mostly on board. The Yozis and their Infernals were actively pursuing the Reclamation as a specific plan, which was "impossible" but also had a major supplement published about what it would look like if it happened. The end of the world in older edition was a threat right here and now, within a human lifetime, in fact within less than a decade.

This urgency is largely gone. The enemies of Creation are more scattered and pursue more esoteric goals. No one has their finger on a big button that can blow up Creation tomorrow, unless the Dowager rolls a double six again (but she only got the Great Contagion once in thousands of years and it still didn't do the job). There are, of course, a great many threats, but they're localized and embodied. Death, suffering, slavery, corruption, the crimes of empires, the dead being ruled over by tyrant spectres, the ravenous fae devouring the souls of mortal victims, Heaven being rotted through with corruption. These problems have to be tackled on their own terms, because you can't show up to Mnemon's house and say "The coming civil war doesn't matter, we are All Going To Die if we can't get our shit together."

It's an immensely richer setting for it, because there isn't one correct way to approach the world which is "get everyone to set aside their petty selfish problems and unite to stop The Great Threat because the alternative is everyone dying tomorrow," there are a thousand intractable problem that your characters have reasons to care about.
 
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Omicron said:
It's an immensely richer setting for it, because there isn't one correct way to approach the world which is "get everyone to set aside their petty selfish problems and unite to stop The Great Threat because the alternative is everyone dying tomorrow,"
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I appreciate that the game line is also like, not trying to make you feel like everyone's individual problems are petty and selfish.
 
HalfTangible said:
Not only do you have no friends or family outside of 99 coworkers,
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As a side note I'd like to bring up something that's often overlooked:

The Sidereals' only true "peers" are other Sidereals, so in that sense they are prone to cliquishness and isolation. But they are not their only possible relationships.

Every god who works for the Bureau of Destiny is immune to arcane fate. We don't have an exact rundown on the demographics of the Bureaus, but that means probably thousands of gods, from mighty Division Heads to lowly bureaucrats, who can all form durable relationships with Sidereals.

But that's not to say that "it's fine actually." There are two major factors that complicate this: First, these are all gods. Their perspective on existence will always be subtly yet profoundly different from that of humans, even nearly immortal humans like Sidereals. That means there will always be a chasm between them - and yet, because they are the only people who can remember them other than fellow Sidereals, the Sidereals must surely pursue such relationships anyway, because it's what they can have, even as time and time again they run onto the rocks of their irreconciliable differences in nature.

And that leads to the other factor: All these gods are working for the Bureau of Destiny. That means that Sidereals have a ready social group to bond with, to find friends, lovers, rivals in, and they're all coworkers. To pursue such relationships is to mire oneself further and further into work, until it consumes you entirely. Your wife? She works in the office next to you. Your entire social circle of friends? They attend the same work efficiency meetings as you do. Your respected mentor? They're in charge of Human Resources. It's a pernicious trap that awaits Sidereals, driving them further and further into workaholism, into seeing and thinking about the world only in terms of their job, until it becomes their entire personality.

Horrifyingly, it might actually be healthier to hit it off with that boy from the theatre district for a brief passionate fling even though he'll forget your existence within a few months because of your terrible curse.
 
You just also have to make sure that that doesn't drive you to a depression-fueled workaholicism

I guess the best way is to do some Creation-side kingdom building and faking ones own death every few decades and returning as the prophesied Hero-King to blow off steam
 
Trying to set yourself up as a ruler in your person as a Sidereal is sort of miserable and fiddly and involves spending basically your entire sabbatical wearing an RD. Then you do probably as much work as usual, but for less reward than your normal job. They're much better at playing puppet master or mysterious advisor to someone else.

I imagine most sabbaticals don't look like engaging in bloody-handed conquest for fun, though.
 
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I got a non player sidereal who got so exhausted of the co-worker aspect of Heaven. She went AWOL with a couple of Heaven's Dragons and setup a observatory in Whitewall. Important to remember that (Mispoke, its just how I run it) Sidereals won't be forgotten by their small exalt circles. But it if she packed up and vanished for a year it be a problem.

Still tragic, but if a Sidereal just wants to up and vanish from her work. There isn't much Heaven can really do to stop them. But most come back anyways cause they can only form truly long term connections with the Bureau of Destiny. (Like I made a excuse for a Sidereal secretly training a Infernal cause she finally found someone outside of fucking work who could remember her. May technically be a foe of creation, but she is past the point of caring.)
 
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MiracleGrow said:
Important to remember that Sidereals won't be forgotten by their small exalt circles.
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This is, unfortunately, an abstraction for player characters, not like, a function of how arcane works innately. In terms of the larger setting, forming a Circle with a group of Dragon-Blooded does not infer metaphysical protection onto them from forgetting a Sidereal. This is only really the case if you're in a game and the other players are the Dragon-Blooded.
 
Gazetteer said:
This is, unfortunately, an abstraction for player characters, not like, a function of how arcane works innately. In terms of the larger setting, forming a Circle with a group of Dragon-Blooded does not infer metaphysical protection onto them from forgetting a Sidereal. This is only really the case if you're in a game and the other players are the Dragon-Blooded.
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I deliberately over look this specific aspect as its useful for me in the games I run. (Should have specified that, my bad)
 
One of the important things about the Sidereal condition, in terms of the canon depiction, is that you can't find refuge in doing things like this. Your relationships with a group of Dragon-Blooded you like are going to have this sense of precarity about them -- one day, they will look at you and not know your face, and you will have to go through the trouble of reminding them (I had a whole like, monologue about this subject planned the one time I played a Sidereal in a mixed game, I've thought about it a lot).

It's likely easier to do this with individuals rather than a whole group, like, there are several Sidereals with long term Dragon-Blooded lovers who presumably manage. The easiest, most stable relationships you're likely going to find in the world are your colleagues with the Bureau, though. This gives it an inexorable pull that's hard for Sidereals to shake, and that makes it hard for those people not to mean something to them. Making arcane fate less harsh does make it more convenient for using Sidereals as NPCs in some cases, but I think the tragedy of it is very compelling.
 
Gazetteer said:
This is, unfortunately, an abstraction for player characters, not like, a function of how arcane works innately. In terms of the larger setting, forming a Circle with a group of Dragon-Blooded does not infer metaphysical protection onto them from forgetting a Sidereal. This is only really the case if you're in a game and the other players are the Dragon-Blooded.
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It's nowhere near absolute protection, but (at least by 2e rules, I dunno 3e) exalts DO tend to have significantly better dice pools for the relevant resistance roll, and a circle who'd all interacted with the sidereal on many of the same memorable occasions (e.g. going on adventures together) could help each other overcome occasional failed rolls, just by casually talking about the relevant events. Sunday 13 November 2011 That's also how Acquaintances are built up - at least when the process isn't being accelerated via Ride charms.
 
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