Theion is the first among equals. Admittedly with a stronger emphasis about being the first rather than an equal.
General Exalted Thread
Theion is the first among equals. Admittedly with a stronger emphasis about being the first rather than an equal.
Ceclyne, by way of Orabilis, the End of all Wisdom, and his Expressive Soul Lucien, the Guardian of Sleep.
greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
Cool. Thanks.
Sure, that was exactly how the 2e model worked, and how I assumed the 3e model worked, too, until I tried to find support in the rules.
My takeaway is that it definitely needs clarification, whatever the true answer is.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Someone should probably mention this issue to the devs on the onyx path forums then.
Isn't discussing the leak still verboten over there?
Matsci
Grash itsh griah! Rwar arr rawrrawrarar!
There, and on the Exalted Subreddit. It has been allowed on RPG.net, though.
With how quiet the thread's been recently, I kind of assumed everyone was over there.
If you can't, you can Clash.
Which totally allows you to Shout aside arrows flying at your face.
Aleph
Princess of Stabbity
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
That describes pretty much all of the Artifacts I'm planning to have Keris make. Her first one, for example, is a miniature sculpture of An Teng that may slightly sort of be an interactive model a'la Google Earth that you touch and the earth and water reshuffles itself to "zoom in" or "move the camera". She's going to give it to the Shashalme, since it told her it wants An Teng, and so this is like a preliminary symbolic gift of the satrapy.
Edit:
Interactive Model/Artifact Map (••)
One of Peer Keris Dulmeadokht's earliest creations, and her first gift to Unquestionable Shashalme in gratitude and tribute for their generous aid, An Teng in Miniature is both repayment and replacement for the collection of ancient maps the Scatterer of Seeds gave her. Housed in a wide, shallow bowl of petrified wood lined with white jade, the artifact is a scale model of An Teng fashioned out of Tengese earth and water infused with vitriol. It is perfect in every detail, with forests marked by crushed plants and tiny waterways tracing the course of rivers - a miniscule replica of the kingdom the Shashalme covets.
The magic of the Artifact is not merely in its stunning accuracy, however. Bound within the soil in chalcanth is the motive power of an earth elemental, glutted on knowledge of every square mile of the simulated territory it shows. A touch and a word from the attuned owner sets soil and water shifting in a jumbled frenzy for a moment as the entire model reconfigures. When it stills, the selected area is shown magnified, as though the imaginary eye had swooped lower over it. Towns and villages are shown by small raised buildings, though only rough silhouettes devoid of significant detail. Various other commands can move the imaginary eye inward or outward, or send it flying across the land, and three sharp raps on the bowl's rim will return the model to its default state, showing the entire kingdom and a fair amount of Dragon Mouth Bay.
One of Peer Keris Dulmeadokht's earliest creations, and her first gift to Unquestionable Shashalme in gratitude and tribute for their generous aid, An Teng in Miniature is both repayment and replacement for the collection of ancient maps the Scatterer of Seeds gave her. Housed in a wide, shallow bowl of petrified wood lined with white jade, the artifact is a scale model of An Teng fashioned out of Tengese earth and water infused with vitriol. It is perfect in every detail, with forests marked by crushed plants and tiny waterways tracing the course of rivers - a miniscule replica of the kingdom the Shashalme covets.
The magic of the Artifact is not merely in its stunning accuracy, however. Bound within the soil in chalcanth is the motive power of an earth elemental, glutted on knowledge of every square mile of the simulated territory it shows. A touch and a word from the attuned owner sets soil and water shifting in a jumbled frenzy for a moment as the entire model reconfigures. When it stills, the selected area is shown magnified, as though the imaginary eye had swooped lower over it. Towns and villages are shown by small raised buildings, though only rough silhouettes devoid of significant detail. Various other commands can move the imaginary eye inward or outward, or send it flying across the land, and three sharp raps on the bowl's rim will return the model to its default state, showing the entire kingdom and a fair amount of Dragon Mouth Bay.
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So, I was reading all of shyft's (excellent) essays, and all the mentions of charms dictating the fluff, plus the various weirdness of certain things in the lore of 2e, put in my mind a thought, that literally blew my mind.
The Scarlet Empress is a solar eclipse.
A manse usable only by a solar? she is one.
Living way longer than every single other dragonblooded in setting(apart from that one in the first age who basically did every single possible thing to live longer, and well, Wonders of the first age)? she is a solar.
Having the realm collapse into a clusterfuck of epic proportions when she disappeared? suddenly, all those committed bureaucracy charms ended.
Having a superloyal group of secret police? Knowing the soul price. Also, Eclipse Oaths.
Nobody realized she isn't a dragonblooded? Perfect Mirror + charmshare. She got her servitude effected db to teach her db charms.
Having this empire be so absurdly efficent when following the empress orders, and everything going bad when not? Bureaucracy charms.
How she actually managed to do this?
Well, when there is a superdisease which is apparently incurable, plus an endless army of raksha flooding into creation, I think that the usual consideration from the wyld hunt and the sidereals in killing every single solar (and lunars) that appeared may have lapsed.
Something like "Holy shit, find a way to stop this clusterfuck, I don't care if a solar escapes because he's probably going to die anyway."
So a young eclipse exalts, and manages to learn how to disguise herself. She learns some db charms to look the part, then she joins a shogunate legion, which get recalled to the blessed Isle when things are going to hell.
At this point everything is dieing, so a little group enters the Imperial manse, and every db in the group dies. The eclipse doesn't, and uses the thing to great effect.
At this point she realizes that she has the most powerful thing in Creation, and only she can use it. She creates a disguise as the "Scarlet Empress" and creates the realm.
Nobody notices because, seriously, FID and Perfect Mirror are absolutely Bullshit. And nobody is going to question, because she just saved the world, and it's not like she is impersonating someone.
Yes, the Realm and the Scarlet Empress are the greatest con in the history of creation.
A con so great that it influenced even the players of the game.
The Scarlet Empress is a solar eclipse.
A manse usable only by a solar? she is one.
Living way longer than every single other dragonblooded in setting(apart from that one in the first age who basically did every single possible thing to live longer, and well, Wonders of the first age)? she is a solar.
Having the realm collapse into a clusterfuck of epic proportions when she disappeared? suddenly, all those committed bureaucracy charms ended.
Having a superloyal group of secret police? Knowing the soul price. Also, Eclipse Oaths.
Nobody realized she isn't a dragonblooded? Perfect Mirror + charmshare. She got her servitude effected db to teach her db charms.
Having this empire be so absurdly efficent when following the empress orders, and everything going bad when not? Bureaucracy charms.
How she actually managed to do this?
Well, when there is a superdisease which is apparently incurable, plus an endless army of raksha flooding into creation, I think that the usual consideration from the wyld hunt and the sidereals in killing every single solar (and lunars) that appeared may have lapsed.
Something like "Holy shit, find a way to stop this clusterfuck, I don't care if a solar escapes because he's probably going to die anyway."
So a young eclipse exalts, and manages to learn how to disguise herself. She learns some db charms to look the part, then she joins a shogunate legion, which get recalled to the blessed Isle when things are going to hell.
At this point everything is dieing, so a little group enters the Imperial manse, and every db in the group dies. The eclipse doesn't, and uses the thing to great effect.
At this point she realizes that she has the most powerful thing in Creation, and only she can use it. She creates a disguise as the "Scarlet Empress" and creates the realm.
Nobody notices because, seriously, FID and Perfect Mirror are absolutely Bullshit. And nobody is going to question, because she just saved the world, and it's not like she is impersonating someone.
Yes, the Realm and the Scarlet Empress are the greatest con in the history of creation.
A con so great that it influenced even the players of the game.
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Aleph
Princess of Stabbity
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yes, but on the other hand, she does not spend literally all her time meditating, following an incredibly ascetic lifestyle and essentially barely interacting with the world beyond her personal home at all, which is how the only other Dragonblood as long-lived as her has done it.
And yeah, the "look, she's basically a Solar pretending to be a DB" thing has been noted before. They wanted to write a DB ruler, but they wound up writing one who does not, in all but a few limited areas, actually rule like a DB would have to.
I'm not counting Wonders of the First age.
Then you should preface that criterion as such.
And that's why I'm saying, it's not that they wanted to write a DB ruler, at least in the core, they always wanted to write a solar ruler using deception to pass as a db. Because Solars are bullshit.
It's just that the writers never realized the con, and then tried to fit a dragonblooded peg in a solar hole.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
She's also built up a massive personal dynasty and has the resources of an empire to support her.
I mean, unless you demand every elder Exalt have identical abilities? A custom charm that (just as an example) extends her life (Essence) years for every point of magnitude of her descendants would cover most of the discrepancy. Throw in some vaguely-defined minor life extension magic for taste.
Aleph
Princess of Stabbity
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
... and whatshisname who survived from the Primordial War has the resources of Heaven behind him, and he still only gets to live so long by following an incredibly strict regime that doesn't leave him able to do anything else. One of the signature disadvantages of Dragonblooded is their limited lifespans in comparison to the Celestial Exalted. They don't get any more leeway in getting past that with a custom Charm than Infernals would get in making a custom Charm to stop being a Creature of Darkness or Sidereals would get in creating a unique Spell to extend their set 5-millennia lifespan.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
You mean living through the Primordial War to the High First Age is more difficult than ~100-200 extra years? Zounds!
(Saibak Gauto's time spent as a low-ranking aide to the Deliberative - "several centuries" - could be interpreted to mean anywhere from a quarter to the entirety of her life.)
Point of order:
Scarlet's eldest surviving child is >600 years old IIRC; the martial arts master guy.
Mnemon I believe is ~400.
So she's lived a wee bit longer than an extra 100-200 years.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
Not really. She went past the typical time Terrestrials die, but nothing I've seen indicates that 6 or 7 centuries requires any bending or breaking of the age limits (Ragara is 600+ years old, and he isn't in charge of House Ragara because he wanted to retire, with no indication of being in a similar state to Saibak Gauto; ergo, while 300 years is the typical lifespan, you can apparently double it without comment).
Since she was a nameless lieutenant during the Great Contagion, we can safely assume she was less than a century old. I'm assuming she was 50, because easy math. She disappeared around Realm Year 760 (i.e. 760th year of the Realm's current existence). If she's ~50 years old, that puts her age at 800-and-a-bit.
Also, I've heard a lot about how hearthstones are overpowered, but they're a thing in-setting, and if memory serves there's an immortality-inducing one (of the stop aging variety) right in the 2e corebook. Out of everyone in Creation, It's really not a stretch to think that Her Redness would have one.
Ah, yes. The inevitable "but the lore!" argument.
When the criticism is being made at a narrative and functional level, citing badly written hearthstones (which are cheap bullshit solutions for what should be one of the greatest problems of long-lived god-kings [1] and thus are athematic and boring) does not actually work as a defence.
It was their, authorial choice to write the Empress such that her position in the setting, method of ruling, and governmental set up is not a Dragonblooded thing, but is instead a "Solar in disguise" thing. That is poor setting construction and does poor justice to the Dragonblooded and their role in the setting. "But the lore!" arguments don't cut the mustard when the argument is at a higher level.
[1] "Yo, Gilgamesh, bro! Just build a 5-dot manse and you'll never have to worry about dying from old age again!"