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General Exalted Thread

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Jarovan said:
ACOUP's great and reading those posts was actually a part of what got me thinking about this. Equipment of the Realm's legions as described seems pretty different from the Roman legions, though, so I would imagine that their tactics differ, too. There's still definitely a lot in that blog in general and those posts in particular that helps with picturing and narrating warfare in Creation.
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I personally drew on different historical armies to characterize how each Great House fights in the field - my current campaign features House Tepet, whose tactics (and some foreign policy) I explicitly drew from the Roman legions, but you may want to instead look at Imperial China and their pike + crossbow tactics. After all, the Realm has always been Roman China. Small units of skirmishing ranged troops wielding javelins or crossbows can act to "deliver" a heavy infantry force into close combat (as you're aware having read the articles) due to the low lethality of indirect missile fire against heavy infantry. You could also characterize a Realm force with really good cavalry with DB leaders using their Charms to enhance their troops, drawing on how steppe nomads (like the Mongols) fought.
 
eagle_II said:
I personally drew on different historical armies to characterize how each Great House fights in the field - my current campaign features House Tepet, whose tactics (and some foreign policy) I explicitly drew from the Roman legions, but you may want to instead look at Imperial China and their pike + crossbow tactics. After all, the Realm has always been Roman China. Small units of skirmishing ranged troops wielding javelins or crossbows can act to "deliver" a heavy infantry force into close combat (as you're aware having read the articles) due to the low lethality of indirect missile fire against heavy infantry. You could also characterize a Realm force with really good cavalry with DB leaders using their Charms to enhance their troops, drawing on how steppe nomads (like the Mongols) fought.
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Imperial China might be something to look at. I have to confess I don't know much about ancient or medieval Chinese warfare, aside from there being some pretty huge armies involved. Using different inspirations for different Houses is a good idea, and I find distinct tactics for the various Houses actually easier to picture than the tactics of a sort of 'pure', orthodox Imperial legion. Maybe dropping the idea of a typical legion and focusing on the idiosyncrasies of different legions would be the way to go, now that I think about it. The way Heirs to the Shogunate describes Lookshy's field forces makes it seem like the Imperial legions, as opposed to field forces with their own specialties, are supposed to be pretty similar to each other. It'd make just as much sense for the individual preferences and talents of a Dragon-Blooded general to shape his or her legion more than a mortal commander might, though, especially as a Dragon-Blooded general can presumably remain in command of that legion for a long, long time. Maybe I'll try approaching this from the perspective of "how does this general fight" rather than "how does the Realm fight".
 
Jarovan said:
Using different inspirations for different Houses is a good idea, and I find distinct tactics for the various Houses actually easier to picture than the tactics of a sort of 'pure', orthodox Imperial legion. Maybe dropping the idea of a typical legion and focusing on the idiosyncrasies of different legions would be the way to go, now that I think about it.
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Here was what I did with the houses that feature in my campaign, as inspiration:
House Tepet: Rome. Tepet is characterized as one of the primary "military" houses before their disastrous defeat in the North, so giving them a military system that worked really well for a really long time made sense to me. I also took cues from Roman foreign policy and have them demand tribute in the form of soldiers, who return with gold and glory to their homelands and often form the backbone of imperial support in those places.
House Peleps: Carthage. Carthage was a naval power, like Peleps, and the description of their scions as often going off on military "adventures" makes me think of Hannibal. Carthage also used huge numbers of mercenaries, which fits Peleps's wide access to Creation and makes use of the wealth they gain from running the West.
House Ragara: Imperial China. Ragara's deep pockets allow it to finance materiel-intensive warfare, which makes the legions that they furnish very dangerous. I used Ragara's legions as the "shield" of the Realm's military, frequently deploying their troops as part of loan agreements they used to draw the other houses into their orbit.

For Lookshy, I instead drew on Greek and Macedonian warfare, given that their servants are called helots, a Greek term. I don't have a high opinion on Lookshy because as written they have a lot of Sparta in them, and if you follow ACOUP you know how bad the Spartans were. It also plays into the sense of "Lookshy is doomed" that canon seems to project sometimes by giving them a military system that ultimately faltered under the Romans in the same way Lookshy might falter when war comes with the Realm.
 
eagle_II said:
Here was what I did with the houses that feature in my campaign, as inspiration:

For Lookshy, I instead drew on Greek and Macedonian warfare, given that their servants are called helots, a Greek term. I don't have a high opinion on Lookshy because as written they have a lot of Sparta in them, and if you follow ACOUP you know how bad the Spartans were. It also plays into the sense of "Lookshy is doomed" that canon seems to project sometimes by giving them a military system that ultimately faltered under the Romans in the same way Lookshy might falter when war comes with the Realm.
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Don't they also relay on a lot of Magi-teck to augment their existing forces?
 
The way Lookshy is currently written about has their first age arsenal be significant, but like, ageing and something that they guard really jealously and use conservatively. Lookshy's primary strength is having a huge number of Dragon-Blooded and a really big, professional army. There's nothing in the current material to suggest that they're doomed.
 
eagle_II said:
Here was what I did with the houses that feature in my campaign, as inspiration:
House Tepet: Rome. Tepet is characterized as one of the primary "military" houses before their disastrous defeat in the North, so giving them a military system that worked really well for a really long time made sense to me. I also took cues from Roman foreign policy and have them demand tribute in the form of soldiers, who return with gold and glory to their homelands and often form the backbone of imperial support in those places.
House Peleps: Carthage. Carthage was a naval power, like Peleps, and the description of their scions as often going off on military "adventures" makes me think of Hannibal. Carthage also used huge numbers of mercenaries, which fits Peleps's wide access to Creation and makes use of the wealth they gain from running the West.
House Ragara: Imperial China. Ragara's deep pockets allow it to finance materiel-intensive warfare, which makes the legions that they furnish very dangerous. I used Ragara's legions as the "shield" of the Realm's military, frequently deploying their troops as part of loan agreements they used to draw the other houses into their orbit.

For Lookshy, I instead drew on Greek and Macedonian warfare, given that their servants are called helots, a Greek term. I don't have a high opinion on Lookshy because as written they have a lot of Sparta in them, and if you follow ACOUP you know how bad the Spartans were. It also plays into the sense of "Lookshy is doomed" that canon seems to project sometimes by giving them a military system that ultimately faltered under the Romans in the same way Lookshy might falter when war comes with the Realm.
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Lookshy being doomed is a bit of 2e lore. I think 1e might have had it in Savant & Sorcerer. But yeah, not something in 3e mostly. Though 3e does emphasize the deterioration of the arsenal a bit more than 1e (which talks on it) and 2e (which doesn't present it as being as on the ropes).
 
Even with the deteriorated arsenal, it's not as though anyone else in the Scavenger Lands, or much of anywhere else in the setting for that matter, has the capacity to field a warstrider or anything like a fang of gunzosha unless you're squaring directly up with the Realm, and they're pretty conservative about it too.
 
Lookshy's enevitable doom didn't make a whole lot of sense when you considered that even with its arsenals exhausted it still had more Dragon-Blooded than most Great Houses, but some of the execution was cool like how Tien Yu was kind of the god version of a Gunzosha Commando with powerful charms that were taking days off of the city's existence threaterning her with loss of purview or outright destruction.

It'd make more sense for maybe some remnant of Bagrash Kol's empire that needs the Eye of Autochthon to reverse its decline.
 
eagle_II said:
For Lookshy, I instead drew on Greek and Macedonian warfare, given that their servants are called helots, a Greek term. I don't have a high opinion on Lookshy because as written they have a lot of Sparta in them, and if you follow ACOUP you know how bad the Spartans were.
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In regards to this part, I think using the word "helot" is about as far as Spartan influences on Lookshy go, well, that and the extreme militarization of Lookshyan society fitting pop culture Sparta if not actual Sparta. I'm not sure if Lookshy should be more Spartan or just call its peasants something other than helots. Like, functionally citizens and helots are just nobility and peasants, or officer class and enlisted class, and using a term with a very specific real life meaning to refer to that peasant class despite it not resembling Lookshyan helots all that much just confuses things. I believe someone here at some point, well before I started posting here but not before I started occasionally checking this thread out, ran a quest with a more actually Spartan Lookshy. It was pretty cool, though I think I'd personally lean more towards just dropping the thin veneer of Spartan influence altogether. While I wouldn't want Lookshy to be the designated good guy faction or anything like that, I think Lookshy that's a fine place to live for Lookshyans who are willing and able to serve in the military is fine.
 
I personally would just roll with the terminology and depict Lookshy as written, without imposing more Spartan influences. Exalted plays fast and loose with this shit a lot, for better or worse. It's not like it's using words like "satrapy" anymore accurately.
 
Given the heavy Japanese influence, 'ashigaru' is probably the more pertinent touchpoint, especially since Lookshy doesn't practice Sparta-level slavery and racial discrimination (you could argue that the dragonblood and mortal separation is like that but that's true of... basically every DB polity, and Lookshy is actually the only DB polity to actually provide mortals with meaningful ways to fight Exalted, so I think that makes them the least Sparta-like, actually)
 
For Legion tactics, having Dragonbloods around is going to change everything.

The DB-per-mortal ratio in the legions is shockingly high, actually. I'm tempted to say too high. 50ish Terrestrials in a unit of 5000ish. With so many Exalts around, I doubt mortals get to take point on anything important or glorious.

Chances are, the tactics of each unit are shaped around the Charms of the DB leading them. Even within the same House, it might not be possible to generalize between a Legion led by an Air Aspect master of sorcery and a Legion led by a peerless axe-wielder of the Fire Aspect.

Jarovan said:
I don't think military awards are mentioned in any edition's Dragon-Blooded book or Realm book, at least, so I think the odds are that they're not mentioned anywhere.
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I'll try writing them up myself, then. I've got some ideas.
 
Lioness said:
Lookshy's enevitable doom didn't make a whole lot of sense when you considered that even with its arsenals exhausted it still had more Dragon-Blooded than most Great Houses, but some of the execution was cool like how Tien Yu was kind of the god version of a Gunzosha Commando with powerful charms that were taking days off of the city's existence threaterning her with loss of purview or outright destruction.

It'd make more sense for maybe some remnant of Bagrash Kol's empire that needs the Eye of Autochthon to reverse its decline.
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The "Inevitable Doom" had nothing to do with its arsenal declining and everything to do with it being Fate saying that Lookshy was not going to last forever. But the impression I get is that they've walked that back in Third Edition with the re-protagonisting of the Dragon Blooded as a whole, rather than it being the "You got fucked by lineage away from even having a chance to get an Exaltation that could actually matter." that 2nd edition constantly tried to grind in.

"Even a mortal gets more respect than a Dragon Blood, because that Mortal might--some day in the future--become a Celestial Exalt. The Dragon Blood never will". Good gravy, Second Edition loved shitting on the Dragon Blooded whenever it got a chance to.

Which is a shame! Because they're cool! Like, I'm not a huge fan of political games but their aesthetic is spectacular, and the perspective of a reformer is one I'd love to try at some point, especially if it was run by an ST who wasn't constantly plotting how to rip the rug out from under my feet.
 
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Alectai said:
The "Inevitable Doom" had nothing to do with its arsenal declining and everything to do with it being Fate saying that Lookshy was not going to last forever.
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Using up the arsenal was heavily implied to be bringing Lookshy towards its eventual doom hence why Tien Yu's stronger powers accelerated its arrival.
Compass Scavenger Lands page 146 said:
Lookshy cannot last forever, so fate has decreed. The pattern spiders have already woven the fall of Lookshy, and Tien Yu has seen it. She knows Lookshy's days are numbered. Many of Tien Yu's more powerful Charms erode Lookshy's remaining time, just as every battle Lookshy engages in erodes its arsenals. Therefore, she uses these Charms sparingly.
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Omicron said:
I mean, I really did like that "flash forward a few years into the future when everything is already on fire", one time, but I wouldn't want to play in it again, you know?

When I'm looking to play a Sidereal, unless it's very specifically the weird faction-agnostic Bird Boy, I want to actually engage with the setting that I love about Sidereals, the Faction politics, the bureau conflicts, the "all these spooky new Exalts have started manifesting and are becoming a problem, so how are you, the player, going to try and mitigate this oncoming disaster?"

It's like... I'm a little confused by this, because, like.

If I play a Solar I want to be one of the guys who gets to take part in driving back the Realm hegemony. I don't want the Realm to have already fallen into civil war by the time I get to play. You talked about Infernal/Abyssal coordinated alliances undermining Sidereal influence but isn't that... The playable space? Having Sidereals already severely undermined and so busy they're no longer a meaningful powerful opposition to play against doesn't seem... Fun?

Like I want a chance to take part in keeping the world, or at least my corner of it, from falling apart and drowning in demons and ghosts and rivers of blood. Not to show up when it's already that way and it's too late to do anything but draw firebreaks and pick up the pieces.

I'm very confused because this is like finding out that we actually liked two entirely different games this entire time.
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I mean, if we're playing E1 day zero then we are definitely doing that for sure. This is like...part of this is that I don't think I am capable of running a pure Sidereals game? It's a lot to keep track of in a way my brain doesn't like to track things. Mixed group Sidereals are totally great, I love having them, but a pure Sidereal game is just, my brain won't even work long enough to plan one. It nopes out, so it's just not on my mind at all.

If the game is about taking down the Realm, we'd set it at or near day 0, and the game would be about working through all that stuff, while others gather around you and maybe you decide to stop some of them because some of the Abyssals are even worse than the Realm.

I wasn't trying to say the only game I'd run forever, just the one that worked best for me, better than anything else I ever tried, that made it click the part of the setting I love most: what comes next as the fires blaze.

In general, the game genres I'm best suited for is 15 years post-Jade Prison breaking mixed Celestials, stuff that doesn't involve the Realm AT ALL and is mostly about fighting all the cool monsters and side-Empires who get relatively little wordcount, day 0 revolutionaries fighting a hegemon that is still ascendant, or Abyssal/Infernal high combat scenarios opposing Heaven's plans which I generally repurpose the five game ideas I have percolating in my head as setting background for "who is fighting the Sidereals, if not the PCs", or, veering off a bit, DBs in Fallout.

The first two are the ones I like most and am interested in that I don't tend to see others talk about, so I'm inclined to talk about those. I struggle a lot with the others in various ways, and am less inclined to talk about them even if I do think about them enough to implement them in the background when I run various other things.
Omicron said:
Like I want a chance to take part in keeping the world, or at least my corner of it, from falling apart and drowning in demons and ghosts and rivers of blood. Not to show up when it's already that way and it's too late to do anything but draw firebreaks and pick up the pieces.
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I will add that this is fundamentally the point for me, though, running this stuff? You can't defend the world, at some point everyone is sort of needing to deal with things on their own, but you can defend your part of it and let the rest of the Exalted figure their shit out while you and yours deal with everything going on in your corner.

and then the only way I'm running DBs in canon is pre-Fall of the Empress because anything else is hard in ways I'm going to struggle with so fuck that.
 
Super super super super happy how this came out. Really adore they way they drew Li.
:cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:
( Done by: Cloud Ya )



One day Beryl will learn to be subtle with his caste mark, but being in the middle of a desert with a Infernal is not that day.
 
Darmani said:
How is she nowadays
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Not so hot. But I'm still here (well, not here here so much).

Aaron Peori/Epsilon's death in 2019 is not something I ever recovered well from. He and I were closer than family for most of my life, he was my creative partner and muse for essentially everything, and he also culminated a series of deaths and unfortunate fallings out that left me almost completely friendless. And it's hard to make new friends when you're no longer young, and now have severe PTSD and social anxiety on top of the list of other preexisting issues. And then my wife, who was also my only remaining support, got viral encephalitis last year, went into a coma, almost died, spent over seven months in hospital and is now in a wheelchair, which completely upended our lives and continues to do so as we still don't have a permanent new home. "Holding on by my fingertips" would be a pretty fair description, honestly.

Life is really painful to live sometimes. But thank you for asking, genuinely. And I am amused to note that the passionate post I wrote on rpg.net all those years ago (when first edition was only edition!) in counterpoint to people taking what I considered an overly simplistic "DBs/Sidereals are the setting villains" outlook will probably be the most enduring thing I ever wrote, as long as an Exalted fan community exists. Well, I still stand by it more or less (I'd have tweaked Lunars a bit now; 1e Lunars was some thin gruel), so there are certainly worse reasons to be remembered.
 
Chris McNeil said:
Of course it is. All empires are evil.

But to say "the Dragonblooded are bad guys" is to miss the point of Exalted. The DB that jumps out of the window at a Cynis party to go save a peasant in trouble isn't being a bad guy. Cynis Avaku isn't a bad guy. The Empress is a bad guy who saved all of Creation when nobody else could.

As I said: if you're a Solar, you owe your life to them (them includes more than just the Realm anyways), even if they're also trying to kill you. It's just not a setting where pointing and saying "bad guy!" is that useful a concept. It's been tried before, and every time has led to a genocide that inexorably weakened Creation. You can deal with the oppressors by destroying and toppling them if you like; burn them personally with giant golden mirrors reflecting the sun's holy light while flashing your panties and you'll certainly have innumerable crimes you can point to as justification.

You'll also have destroyed the mightiest forces keeping Creation from falling into (literal) Chaos and Death, further strengthened the rifts between the Exalts who must work together for Creation to stay whole, either committed an unfathomable and unprecedented genocide of tens of thousands of Dragonblooded or ensured an ongoing war between Exalts that will last for centuries, and left a great gaping void in the centre of Creation for far worse things to come in. Oh, and you will most certainly kill an enormous amount of innocent people in so doing. I'm sure the better, purer, nicer empire you raise from the ashes will make all that worth it, though, right? Their blood will water the foundations of your new and glorious rule, which will definitely not end up like every one before you.

After all, you're different from them.


(YMMV, all answers refer to first and second edition as I don't pay attention to third, this was just for nostalgic fun really because I don't normally post here but a friend brought it to my attention.)
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The Realm does not protect Creation, save in that protecting Creation serves the interests of the Dynasty. They drain the world of wealth and material, they kill those who might protect it in their stead, they take its sons and daughters to as as light infantry for its legionaries, leaving their homelands vulnerable. The Realm isn't some pastiche of what America used to like imagining itself to be. It's just an Empire, and if it saves anyone, it does it in order to impose chains upon them and reap value from their life and labor.

EDIT: Like, for real. If the Realm vanished tomorrow, displaced to some empty setting it can happily loot without harming anyone who lives there, more people would be better off than not because the Realm is awful. It'd have some downsides, but nothing like what you're talking about. The unaffiliated DBs and Sidereals and Exigents and Solars and Lunars and Liminals got this handled, even if times'll be rough with the Deathlords and warring Solars and the plots of the Infernals and their demonic allies.
 
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Kaiya said:
The Realm does not protect Creation, save in that protecting Creation serves the interests of the Dynasty. They drain the world of wealth and material, they kill those who might protect it in their stead, they take its sons and daughters to as as light infantry for its legionaries, leaving their homelands vulnerable. The Realm isn't some pastiche of what America used to like imagining itself to be. It's just an Empire, and if it saves anyone, it does it in order to impose chains upon them and reap value from their life and labor.

EDIT: Like, for real. If the Realm vanished tomorrow, displaced to some empty setting it can happily loot without harming anyone who lives there, more people would be better off than not because the Realm is awful. It'd have some downsides, but nothing like what you're talking about. The unaffiliated DBs and Sidereals and Exigents and Solars and Lunars and Liminals got this handled, even if times'll be rough with the Deathlords and warring Solars and the plots of the Infernals and their demonic allies.
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If the Realm vanished tomorrow in some way that didn't involve the deaths of millions of people, ignoring the economic fallout, then the various smaller empires that it has subjugated or kept in check will rush in to fill the void. Like, the Realm's gone... So, now you have a resurgent Zhao Empire. Now Azure is the strongest power in the West. Mahalanka is still there, conquering and enslaving people the way it has been this entire time. Solars and other Exalts are not immune to this, and are no more inherently anti imperialist than anyone else -- less so, arguably, because of their power and Essence fever. Without anyone to put the Bulls of the North in check, you're trading one massive tyrannical power for dozens of smaller ones. Maybe that's an improvement, but it's certainly a complicated one.
 
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